Some people think that designing their own house sounds like a dream come true. You may even be one of those people! I could be counted as one of those people, too, but only if we acknowledge that the “dream” would be more of a nightmare for me… I like to think that I am pretty good at living in my house. Anyone who knows me well knows that I have no pretensions about any sort of aesthetic sense of interior design but making the space work functionally? That I can do.

Over the past few months, I have also come to realize that the same distinction between those who thrive when building from the ground up and those who prefer to work within a more established framework can be directly applied to business systems. Working within an established set of processes and finding ways to optimize or adapt them for changing circumstances is a valuable skill set. Yet there is no guarantee that the people who can thrive in the Optimizer role will be any more comfortable when creating those systems entirely from scratch than I would be if you asked me to design my own house.

My deep-seated appreciation for constraints has been a constant theme in my previous writing. Contrary to the message that is so pervasive, in Silicon Valley at least, that an entirely blank slate is the perfect starting point for true innovation, I find my own creativity peaks when there are limits on the possibilities. My favorite challenges are those that initially appear over-constrained or where I can use my insights to narrow the options from an overwhelming plethora down to those that will work best.

All of which probably serves to raise an interesting question: If I hold zero interest in designing my own house from scratch, why do I love to design and build business processes where none yet exist? I think there are a combination of factors at work. First, writing this article has led me to realize that I probably could design a house from scratch if I actually applied my own process. If I actually took the time to really map out my requirements, understand the various materials available, and could build myself an encyclopedic knowledge of the external constraints, the rest of the design would probably feel manageable. Second, none of that seems appealing to me.

From the earliest days of my professional career, and I am referring to internships years before I started working at Google, through my most recent consulting work, I have made a dedicated study of business systems and processes. I have obsessed over what worked, what didn’t work, and what worked around what didn’t work until it did work after all. I have had the opportunity to tweak and test, design and build, adapt and refine. But all of this has required diving a heck of a lot deeper than tweaking and adapting alone.

“Tweaking and adapting alone” is a pretty good description of how I have engaged with my houses. This has actually been a boon for my marriage as my husband has real opinions about our dwelling spaces and my genuine support of pretty much anything he really cares about on this front does simplify many conversations. I could even go so far as to argue that I have not needed to develop any design skills in my domestic life because all of my ten years as a home owner have actually been as a co-owner with him. Since he takes the lead, I can lean back and only step in when we find areas where his interest or experience fail him. It’s wonderful.

The same can be true in a professional context. When there is at least one person in a business who is passionate about designing and building, a business can be well positioned to thrive early on as it makes the transition from a collection of A Players to an A Team. As long as there is someone involved who thrives in the tweak and adapt phase, those processes can keep pace with the inevitable shifts in priority and needs that any business experiences. 

Where the largest challenges arise are when someone with only “tweak and adapt” experience is suddenly handed “design and build” responsibility. It would be so easy for me to believe that being a good house-adapter would make me a good house-designer. In fact, I chose this example because my family’s history in the general contracting world (the “earliest internships” I referred to earlier) and watching my dad and his wife recently design their own dream home have put me face-to-face with the fallacy of that particular belief. I know just enough to be confident of how much I don’t know. There are probably dozens of other areas where I am solidly in the Dunning-Kruger spike for design, thinking that I know what there is to know when truly all I have done is scratch the surface so that it is covered in pretty patterns.

Unfortunately, I believe that very few people take the time to reflect on where they fall when it comes to business processes.

Every company needs people who simply have no interest at all. They have their own zones of genius and can let others focus on the business processes and structures that will allow them to thrive within it.

Then there are the people who have spent their careers tweaking and adapting. There are heroes out there who can make even the most convoluted and stereotypically-NASA-like labyrinths of policy and procedure hum with efficiency. Every business also needs these people once the ground work has been laid because business processes must be living systems that evolve over time.

Of course, there are also those among us who really loves designing new processes and structures from scratch. There are actually far fewer opportunities to put this skill to work than one might expect because so many process-oriented people are in large organizations where very few new organization-wide systems are built but every small business needs us at some point.

There are no wrong answers here. 

There will also always be people who fit into multiple categories. The business owner who has no interest but has spent most of their career designing processes from scratch because that was what their business needed. The executive who grew with their startup and has developed strong Tweak and Adapt prowess despite being a designer at heart. Or folks like me who really love designing but can also enjoy the tweak and adapt phase for the distinct challenges it brings. When it comes to people and our preferences, the possibilities are endless.

But if you happen to be one of those people who truly belong in one category and are being asked to jump into a different one, maybe it’s time to pause and think about how you can get back into your own happy space. For all that my husband has opinions about houses, he also has no interest in truly designing from scratch. If we ever went that route, we would hire an architect with opinions who would guide us rather than one who expected to follow our lead. 

You can do the same for your business. If you have no interest in business processes at all, find team members or consultants who do. If you are a tweak and adapt expert, find yourself a sounding board to help with the design. If you are a designer stuck in tweak and adapt mode, find yourself someone who is excited to take that puzzle off of your hands.

And if you aren’t sure where to start? Let’s chat! I may be able to help but even if I am not a good fit, I have spent a lot of time understanding the landscape of business process experts out there. We love this stuff and we’d love to help you, too!