Create "Oh Crap!" Moments

One of the earliest things I did at a prior employer was discover an issue hidden in the numbers.

The organization tracked customer sentiment. We could produce a mathematical value that represented customer sentiment, and chart this metric over time. Standard stuff.

I’m a curious person, so I started diving deeper. The number might be relatively flat for the entire org. over time, but does that mean the distribution is uniform?

Spoiler - it wasn’t uniform. I found that certain processes had noticeably worse customer outcomes. The blended org-wide number was hiding opportunities under the surface.

Beyond the metrics lessons learned in here, the bigger thing I took away was the power of what I call “oh crap” moments. Well, technically, I call these “oh fuck” moments, but we’ll keep it PG for the rest of the newsletter 🙂

What are “oh crap” moments?

They’re just like they sounds. The process is like this:

• You’re going about your work
• Something happens.
• You go, “oh crap!”

Actually, it’s even better if you can cause these in someone else, but seeing it yourself usually occurs first.

These “oh crap” moments are hugely valuable and should be specifically targeted in your work.

In my anecdote above, I had one of these “oh crap” moments when I saw the data. The insight was so odd, I had to check and re-check my numbers. Then, when I showed it to others, they had a similar “oh crap” moment. I knew I was on to something important.

“Oh crap” means finding startling or surprising. Why is that valuable?

Why are they valuable?

Businesses exist to solve problems.

Businesses break up their internal organizations into departments and teams, each of them charged with solving a set of problems.

If a customer is experiencing a problem, but the teams inside that company don’t know about it, then we have an awareness gap. The company is not fully fulfilling its promise to a customer. If another company can, the customer has an incentive to leave.

“Oh crap” moments close the gap.

These moments teach you and the teams in your company of a problem that was previously unknown. And once you know about a problem you can solve it.

THAT’S why they’re valuable.

If you’re a leader, think about a scenario in which you had one employee who never found anything of note, versus another employee who found things that made you go, “Oh crap, I didn’t know that! We should fix that customer problem.”

If you have an employee who doesn’t find problems, then you’re the one who has to find and tell them to fix it. Having someone who can solve problems is valuable in a way, but nowhere near as valuable as someone who can also find them.

Put another way, the value of “oh crap” moments accrue to the person who discovers “oh crap” moments.

These moments are so valuable, I used to encourage my analytics team to find and share these with the org. Creating dashboards is fine, but what makes a powerful team is finding issues that can be solved.

And the value of this doesn’t stop as you advance in leadership; if anything, it gets more valuable the higher you go up. See this anecdote below from Ram Charan, where being told the problem to solve prevented someone from becoming CEO.

“One businessperson was on track to be CEO of a large company. He got raises every year, got the highest bonuses. Everyone said he was fantastic. He inspired people and always delivered on commitments. But when the board got to discussing this person, one of the directors said: “He takes the hill very well, but somebody has to tell him which hill to take.” The assessment underlying that one sentence eliminated the candidate’s chances of becoming CEO.”

• Ram Charan in “What the CEO Wants You to Know”

How do you create them?

Working backwards from an “oh crap!” moment, you’ll need to have found something surprising, or at least interesting. And where do you find interesting information? In data.

Access your data!

If you don’t have new information, you can’t say “oh crap!”

For quantitative data, you need your systems to be sending out data. Next you need to bring these multiple systems together to tell more complex stories about how customers and your internal systems are interacting to produce value.

Depending on where you work, that previous sentence might sound silly, but many small companies operate without hard data!

It’s often so difficult to get information out of your constellation of source systems that you don’t even bother. But if you don’t do this work, you won’t have access to the information that tells you something is not working.

As an engineer I’m drawn to numbers, but data exists in the qualitative, too. Here, that means listening to your customers and your team. If you have a customer survey, make sure there’s an open feedback question on it - and then read them! Read support tickets. Read customer reviews. Listen to what your team is telling you.

Create Information Flow Internally

What communication channels have you designed for your people to access information? And yes, while I advocate for moving authority to information, that’s not always perfectly possible. As such, you need to make sure information can flow across your org.

If you want to get really fancy about it, you can draw out a map of your org. Where is the information? Where are the people? How does information flow between them? What are the delays involved?

Do your best to reduce the friction associated with information becoming available to those who can do something about it.

Share Your Insights

Take advantage of the power of diverse thought and get different opinions on your data. What you might think is an “oh crap!” is actually an old dead end insight from six months before you started working there. And something you think is uninteresting might be the spark of something massive when seen by someone with the right context.

Once you find an “oh crap!” don’t keep it to yourself, even if you plan on fixing it. Your boss would love to know what you’ve found and how you’re fixing it.

Call to Action

The best leaders don’t just fix problems, they find them.

When you find something that makes you (or your boss) say, “oh crap,” don’t bury it. Share it. That’s how you create value, build credibility, and accelerate your career.

“Oh crap” moments are signals that you’re on to something important. They should be cultivated by ensuring access to qualitative and quantitative data, building and encouraging strong information flow, and then sharing these insights more broadly.

I challenge you to find an “oh crap!” moment this week. 🔎

Look at one of your key metrics and dig deeper. Is the number hiding a problem under the surface?

Pay attention to qualitative signals, too: customer comments, employee frustrations, little surprises in the day-to-day.

The organizations that grow fastest are the ones where “oh crap” moments aren’t avoided. They’re sought out, surfaced, and solved to reduce the awareness gap.

Kevin 💩