Soup of the stone

We can all probably recall a moment when we were presented with an exciting and demanding challenge, only to learn later that we haven’t been provided with enough, if any, resources to complete the tasks in hand.

I’ve personally lived and witnessed first-hand similar situations, specially in professional field, when someone was asked to: - Create a widely successful marketing campaign (just make it go viral!) within an extremely low budget. - Deliver a critical project to a key-client on time, using a team composed mainly by junior associates (because no one else was available at a time). - Execute an already challenging product roadmap 2X faster, while increasing the size of your team by 10% (you should capitalize on learnings and experience of your dream-team).

I see where it comes from. Many of the executives and senior managers want to challenge their teams to strive for excellence and top performance. They want to be sure that available resources are being used in the most efficient manner (“efficiency is doing things right” P. Drucker). There is also a pressure to demonstrate to their superiors like c-suit or board, that the company has set the aggressive goals and teams are fully committed to deliver on them. Finally, purposely limiting oneself (or his/her team) can boost creativity. It’s certainly one way to look at this situation.

However, I remember a story from my childhood, when an astute and very hungry young man who was travelling, wanted to feed himself and those around him, by cooking a delicious dish. No one wanted to share their ingredients with him, not because those ingredients were scarce or unavailable, but because people wanted to make sure that their ingredients were going to be used in the best way possible (feeding their families). After struggling for a while, this young man decided to become street smart and as a result, he tricked an old lady by using her curiosity and ego against her. He ended up getting from her all necessary ingredients, so he cooked a delicious dish, feeding himself and the old lady. At the end of the story, each one of them was happy, with a full belly, thinking how smart he/she was.

I know this fairytale under two names “soup of the stone” or “porridge of the axe”. Depending on where you live, you’ve probably heard a similar story under a different name with some variations.

The most important are the key takeaways from this story:

(1) Even if your intentions are good and you have the necessary skills for a challenge, you still need to be smart when asking for the resources you need.

(2) Our end-goals are frequently aligned, but we believe we are playing a zero-sum game and choose not to trust each-other.

(3) As humans, we are making many of our decisions using the subconscious mind, which tells us how it is important to outsmart someone else in order to taste victory.

(4) Except from probably a Big Bang theory, the formula to create a good output can be summarised into: output = ∑(inputs) X factor

As good managers, we need to make sure that the factor is maximised and is always >1.

(5) Trust is an important pillar for value creation, but trust should be built by showing successful results.

I’m pretty sure that the young man and the old lady are going to cook and eat the delicious soup of the stone again, though the original story skips this part. I also hope that we can learn something from this fairytale, whether we are going to ask for resources for our next project or we are going to challenge our team to deliver more results without committing more resources from our side.

PS: By trying to outsmart everyone else, we can end-up fooling ourselves.