Since I agree that “Better structure means better results” I read a blog post with that title this morning.

The author talked about adjusting roles in a big company – was this needed? could it be part time?

I would call this tinkering.

Tinkering is satisfying.

Sometimes tinkering is useful.

However, often it is distructive.

Because it is very possible to tinker with one corner of a business to make it “more efficient” and have the unintended consequence of making the purpose of the whole thing harder to accomplish.

An example of this is a movie theater where the manager was told to cut costs.

The most expensive cost is personnel, so the hours on the concession stand were reduced to cut costs.

However, most of the money of the theater is made from concessions, and those happen during those hours that were cut.

So the movie theater cut costs and lost money.

Tinkering.

In technical fields like software consulting this can look like letting go the highly skilled people and bringing in juniors because the seniors “cost too much.”

And losing the person who gets the hardest projects over the finish line, in time and under budget.

If you are facing difficult decisions, start with the fundamentals of who you serve, how, and why they pick you.

And having an outsider like me around to make sure tinkering doesn’t accidentally cut the concession stand hours can be wise.