There's Always An Excuse ~Paul Thurrot
Hunter Powers: You're listening to Hunter Powers, broadcasting live from our nation's capital, D.C, proper, Washington D.C. And this is The One. Your one idea for today comes from notable tech reporter Paul Thurrot, who said, "There's always an excuse."
Hunter Powers: This was an offhanded remark Paul made on his podcast, What the Tech, where he was talking about a new product and how it wasn't really all there. And his cohost went into a number of reasons why you really shouldn't have expected so much from this product, to Paul, to which Paul responds, "There's always an excuse."
Hunter Powers: So what does this quote mean? Or what's the basic idea here? There's this end-of-day reality of things, and it either hits the mark, it either does the thing, it either meets the expectations or it doesn't, and that perhaps the reasons why we've ended up in this moment, in this space, aren't terribly relevant or not as relevant as we seem to think that they are.
Hunter Powers: And why? Because there's always an excuse. Things never go wrong without an excuse. It's always there. Probably the same thing, things never go right without an excuse, except for some, I don't know, rare happenstance. But in general, yeah, there's always a reason, and that we spend most of our time focusing on the reason, but perhaps a shortcut, or perhaps it's not as profound as we want to make it. Perhaps more focus should be spent on the result.
Hunter Powers: Perhaps that's a hack, a way to get straight to the heart of the matter, and that when you start examining the excuse, you're moving away from the result, right? So a project has gone amuck. A new product doesn't do what it's supposed to do or it breaks after one day, and you're like, man, this product is not very good. Say well yeah, but we had to get this product to market incredibly fast and the old head of product, they're not here anymore, it's a new person and a trade war's going on.
Hunter Powers: Plus it's summer, people are on vacation. Reasons why really, the thing that you have here was an inevitability. And I guess the obvious counter question is, if it was an inevitability, then why did you do it in the first place? And of course, their defense is that, well, we didn't know that it was inevitability at the time, and we thought all of these reasons which we're now stating as why it went wrong, or why you should be more forgiving of the current reality, we were hoping that none of those would be factors. But now given the current reality, they must have been factors.
Hunter Powers: So somehow in this final moment, when you're in this state of reflection, all of these things which had been discounted so heavily are now given a full weight, right? Up until the moment where you were dissatisfied with this thing, we weighted these factors of everybody was on vacation. It was an unrealistic timeline to begin with. There's a component shortage. I don't know, I'm making things up here. But we weighted them at nothing. And then now in this moment, they've crossed from being weighted at nothing to be weighted at everything.
Hunter Powers: And we know that there's always a list of reasons waiting to go from being waited nothing, to be waited everything. They're always there. There's always an excuse, and they're inserted as a way to defend the reality. And they force you to stop considering the reality and start considering the excuse or the reasons, like why did someone not show up today? Well, their grandmother passed away. Oh, well in that case, I guess I can't hold them accountable for anything because grandma has died, right?
Hunter Powers: We've stopped considering the situation and we've gone to the reasoning. Now the third time that the grandma died, you start to question the reasoning, but up until that point, you get a pass. So the counter to this idea comes in the form of, when things don't work out, we often should take a moment to look at the reasons why to find, how could we correct this going forward?
Hunter Powers: Learn from our mistakes. The past is not dead, it's not even past. A little Faulkner quote. An extra quote, an extra idea for the day. If we're supposed to consider the past so that we're not doomed to repeat it, but there's also all excuse, how do we marry these two ideas? Are we supposed to disregard everything that happened and just consider the current situation? Are we supposed to weigh them in?
Hunter Powers: I think this idea does suggest that we're potentially weighing them too heavily, and that they shouldn't be considered as justification or the current state. They are noted inputs, but they're not justification. And that if anything, the excuse is really just an amplification of the current state. This product doesn't do what it's supposed to do.
Hunter Powers: Well, they had to get it out. There was some competitor out, and they had to get it to market in just three weeks. Oh, so that excuse is meant to somehow give them some extra accordance, some extra room. And so, well, you know what, and actually, for three weeks this is pretty good. But perhaps what we should be doing is the inverse. Okay, so they thought they could deliver a great product in three weeks. What? What?
Hunter Powers: The excuse is only an amplification of the result. It's not a counter to the result. It's an amplification, which is why you want to deal with the realities. And it's really up to the person producing the output, the thing that didn't function to take a look at the reasons why, and how they were weighted and what went wrong, and what went well, and find the new strategy.
Hunter Powers: But you as the consumer of whatever is being output, or whether it's an idea or it's a product or it's someone being on time for something, you really shouldn't consider the excuse. And when it goes into excuse, it should really be seen as an amplification of the result. It only for the fact that, yeah, this was a bad idea to begin with. I thought maybe there was a mess up. And now that you told me all these reasons, yeah, okay. What were you thinking?
Hunter Powers: And then you can take whatever action you deem appropriate, given that this was still presented, this action was still taken, we are in this state of reality now. Given all of these factors that were deemed irrelevant before this moment, and now given maximum relevancy in the moment. There's always an excuse.
Hunter Powers: What are the edge cases? Where does this not apply? Goes to the degree to which... I think it's an empathy question when this doesn't apply, because we are expected... Okay, so let's say someone's grandma did actually die, and they missed a meeting. Grandma died and they missed a meeting. You're supposed to instantly say, "Okay. I understand, please go deal with that." Why? Because you have empathy for the situation. And at that point, if grandma died and they're 10 minutes late, and your response is, there's always an excuse, it's probably not the right response.
Hunter Powers: But as I say that, I still think the quote holds true in this situation, because I think how you read it is, let's take someone's late for meetings late. They don't show up whether you're suppose to meet them for lunch, meet them for dinner, it's at work, the project is supposed to be done, and there's a pattern of things not being done. They don't arrive on time. They're always late.
Hunter Powers: This particular time, grandma has passed away. And let's just assume that this is accurate, this is what happened this time. Well, the reality is that this single instance of being late isn't actually an issue. The issue is the pattern. There's always an excuse for each individual item, but what there isn't an excuse for is the pattern. And of course there is an excuse for a pattern, because there's always an excuse, but that's where you're supposed to dismiss the idea of excuses as being justification that you need to accept for the reality, is in the pattern.
Hunter Powers: The individual instance, sometimes the excuse should be empathized with, and considered and allow you to dismiss the reality, but probably less than you are doing. But in the aggregate, when we look at a pattern, the excuse should be given no weight as input to dismiss the reality. And so I do believe that I agree with Mr. Thurrot, that there's always an excuse. Until next time, and that's not an excuse, this is Hunter Powers from Washington D.C.