Have you ever been involved in a project so massive and complex that you sincerely doubted it was achievable at all? Yeah, I am familiar with the feeling, but you know what? The most difficult problems are totally tameable if we:
- Don’t lose sight of why we need to solve the problem (the vision).
- Break the problem down into smaller pieces that we figure out one at a time.
I want to highlight the part where we figure out complex problems one at a time. We figure them out. This is important because the last thing I want you to think here is that you need to list all the tasks and order them sequentially, like in a Gantt chart. Forget about the Gantt chart. Destroy that freaking Gantt chart. We are not building a house where all blueprints and materials are defined and agreed upon. We are solving challenging problems, and for each problem we solve, new issues will arise, and then we will figure them out and keep going. So remember: eyes on the vision, brains on the problems, one at a time. Let’s see how The Martian deals with this.
The Martian is a science fiction movie about an astronaut named Mark Watney who is left stranded on Mars after his crew assumes he is dead and evacuates the planet. With limited resources and no means of communication, Mark must find a way to a. survive on the hostile planet and b. go home.
The Martian is based on a book. I haven’t read it, so everything I’ll say is based on the movie, ok, my friends? Let’s go!
Eyes on the vision, brains on the problems
The vision
To stay alive on Mars for enough time to find and execute a way to return to Earth.
The problems to solve
#1 - Don’t starve to death!
Mark realizes pretty early on that, even if NASA notices he is alive, it’ll take years until they can rescue him. Dude checks the pantry. Dude realizes he doesn’t have enough food to survive that long. First order of business: to figure out how to not starve.
Yes, Mark decides to grow potatoes on Mars. Bear with me here because I’d like to use what he does to illustrate OKRs (Objectives and Key Results).
Objective: don’t starve to death. Key Results: produce enough food to nourish himself for years. Features to accomplish the key results: grow potatoes! So, in this case, the potatoes are the output, and the outcome is that he has food and won’t starve to death. He could have grown tulips or roses. The output would have been beautiful and totally cool. Would the outcome have taken him closer to the vision? Nope! It seems pretty evident, but you’d be surprised how many teams work on tasks that don’t get them closer to the objective.
You may ask: why is this lady talking about OKRs in a text about solving problems one at a time? Remember: eyes on the vision, brains on the problems. OKRs are a pretty effective way to align our efforts with the objective.
Before we move on, I don’t have to say that figuring out how to grow food on Mars is a tough problem. I don’t have to say either that Mark is quite an accomplished botanist and that being super smart doesn’t prevent him from encountering a few setbacks. He learns from his mistakes, keeps trying, and boom! Freaking organic potatoes on Mars.
#2 - Figure out a way to take a long journey to the site where his hypothetical rescue (Ares IV) will eventually land
The key with this one is that he must figure out many additional smaller problems because his Mars Rover is unprepared to take overnight trips. Then he realizes that everything would be easier if he could contact NASA on Earth. Now pivots. He forgets about the long-distance trip and focuses on contacting NASA.
#3 - Figure out a way to contact NASA
Here Mark takes a colossal gamble using some legacy NASA equipment. This is a movie, and (spoiler alert) Mark does come back to Earth at the end, so yeah, Mark’s gamble pays off this time. He could have failed. In fact, you will fail, your ideas won’t always work, and you will have to figure out alternatives. After all, you don’t live in a movie, so be ready.
Can we play the OKRs game again? Yeah, let’s try:
Objective: Communicate with NASA on Earth so that they can help you out of Mars. Key result: Send and receive an average of 40 words per minute to/from Earth/Mars. Features: Rescue and repair the legacy equipment. Build a transcoder to enable a written messaging system.
The key here is that they spend minutes, if not hours, sending and receiving simple messages the first time he makes contact. They need something faster. The output is the text messaging system. The outcome is invaluable real-time communication with NASA.
#4 - Repair his little Mars home after an accident destroys half of it, including the potato crops
Key takeaways with this one:
- Sh*t always happens. Keep calm and fix the damage. Eyes on the vision, brains on the problem.
- Mark lives on Mars by himself, and there’s only so much he can do to maintain his habitat. You can do better, and I am talking about preventing technical debt: don’t allow tech debt to propagate to the point that your code explodes, and you need to start again.
- After the accident, Mark and the team on Earth are forced to trash their current plans and create new ones to survive with less food and execute the rescue faster. Setbacks like this will happen to you. In this case, it is like when your senior leadership suddenly tells you they have promised a client that the super cool product you were building now has a tighter deadline. Ha ha ha. Have fun.
- Oh, one more thing: in the movie, the NASA folks need to ask China for help with everything that implies. What do we learn from this? Don’t make enemies with other teams. You are going to need their help eventually.
#5 - Figure out a way to take a long journey to the Ares IV site
So the new plans force Mark to accelerate his trip to Ares IV. What is super cool here is that he has the same problems he had when he first anticipated the journey to the Ares IV site, but the difference now is that he has a team supporting him. Yeah, everything is better with a team, but we already know that, right?
Let’s talk prototypes now. How is the team on Earth helping Mark? They are prototyping and testing, failing, improving, and testing again. When they know the prototype works, Mark builds the real thing up there on Mars without the accidents he had when trying to grow potatoes at the beginning of the movie. Prototyping is the best way to learn and mitigate risks. When you prototype, you can know if your solution will work before you spend valuable time and materials building the real thing. Prototypes are your friends.
#6 - Travel to the Ares IV site
Nothing terrible happens to Mark here, thank god. This is just a beautiful trip across scenic Mars. This is the equivalent of those days when you shut down your laptop, feeling like the most fortunate person in the universe because you get to work with your team to create amazing products. Just one thing to add: while Mark is traveling, the team on Earth continues to prototype and figure out how he’ll take off. When we say solve problems one at a time, it doesn’t mean that you can’t look ahead and work on some problems in parallel, especially if there’s more than one team rowing in the same direction.
#7 - Get out of Mars and into the transport to Earth
So this is a movie, and of course, the dramatic climax happens here. It’s a life-or-death situation, so the stakes are pretty high. This is like product launch day or something, but hopefully, no one is at risk of dying.
Of course, nothing happens according to plan (we are used to it already, right?), and the rescue crew now needs to shine to prevent Mark from being stranded and floating in space forever. One of them says something that summarizes this entire text:
Come on, guys! Keep it together. Work the problem!
I have seen this movie at least seven times, and I still hold my breath when Mark iron-mans his way toward Jessica Chastain.
Ok, I am going to shut up now, but let’s solidify some of the things we’ve seen:
- Eyes on the vision, brains on the problems.
- Prototype, test, learn, and prototype again.
- Be ready to steer as long as you don’t lose sight of the vision.
- Solving difficult problems with a team is way better than solving them alone.
- And finally, in Mark’s words:
You just begin. You do the math, you solve one problem, then you solve the next one, and then the next, and if you solve enough problems, you get to come home.
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