Designing a Winning Machine

Your inputs vs outputs

Author

Brian Bourque
August 31, 2024

In partnership with

Good day to every unicorn in the galaxy.

Several years ago I spent MONTHS interviewing candidates for a role I was trying to fill on my marketing team.

It was painful.

I talked to a hundred people or more.

Yet at the end of those 100 conversations I still hadn’t found the right person.

I explained to our CEO how much effort had gone into the search.

Yet his response got to the heart of the matter:

“Why are you still doing something that’s obviously not working?”

Which brings us to today’s unicorn growth insight:

If you’re not getting the desired outputs, you have to change your inputs.

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Today’s insight comes from Ray Dalio, the rich hedge fund guru whose book Principles continues to inspire me to consciously build an approach to my work.

Here’s the quote:

"Think of yourself as a machine operating within a machine and know that you have the ability to alter your machines to produce better outcomes."

-Ray Dalio

“Your machine sucks, man” - Rich guy

How to Construct the Right Machine to Achieve Your Goals

In hindsight this lesson was embarrassingly obvious.

My “machine” was extremely poor at producing high caliber candidates.

My fatal mistake was to accept the “machine” I’d been given.

Which consisted of 3 mediocre recruiters that were obviously not screening candidates effectively.

As a “get-shit-done-er”, my job is to produce outcomes.

I should have thrown out the machine I had and rebuilt it from first principles.

  1. Clarify problem statement: poor fit candidates are passing recruiter screening and no high caliber candidates are being surfaced

  2. Brainstorm a list of potential causes

    1. Bad job description

    2. Lack of recruiter understanding of the role

    3. Promotion of job opportunity to wrong audience

    4. Misaligned salary expectations for proper candidates

  3. Create hypotheses to test each as potential root cause

  4. Gather feedback and see what you learn

Is this idea useful to you?

Change your inputs to get the desired outputs

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Take Action

  1. Are you getting the results you want?

  2. If not, what are the inputs (actions) you’re using to try to generate these outputs?

  3. Which of the inputs is not meeting your expectations?

  4. Why might that input be failing?

  5. What are some alternative inputs that might be more effective?

  6. Test the alternative inputs, prioritizing the highest leverage opportunities

That’s it for today.

Go tune your machine.

-Brian