Yes, two days of Rory Sutherland tips in a row.
At Kilkenomics, Rory did both apologise in advance for saying he’d tell one or two stories that many would have heard him tell before, but also joked that not telling some of them would be like The Eagles not playing Hotel California!
One of those stories was his famous one about what a colossal waste of time and money investing in high speed rail lines has been in the U.K. (quite a small country), as when billions were to be invested in improvements to rail journey, speed improvements would, at best, take only about twenty minutes off a journey that was already only just over two hours long (in the case of HS2).
In a speech years ago that went viral, he even made a throwaway joke that instead of spending billions and taking years to make it a little faster, they could have paid male and female supermodels to walk up and down on a fashion parade whilst pouring vintage champagne. Not only would this cost less than HS work but passengers would ask for the trains to go SLOWER!
Yes, some of us had heard this story before (the original talk is on YouTube and worth seeking out !), but this time I heard something fresh to me.
Rory said that if they had taken time to define what the right question was when looking to improve the rail journey, the railway company would have many other potential answers other than “make it faster”. His question:
“What would we need to do to make it crazy to choose any alternative to going by train?”
Brilliant, quite brilliant!
Speed could be one option, but there are many more (eg reliable WiFi, flexible tickets etc).
I connect this dot to note that in my work with CEOs and other senior leaders, I often guide them to take more time to decide on the right question to ask of their people, of their organisation. This is ever more important as the world moves faster and faster and companies and other large orgs more and more represent complex and adaptive systems.
In closing, an oft-used phrase of mine is:
the role of a CEO is no longer to have all the answers, but to ask the right questions of their business.
From this post I hope that I have landed the point that it is important to truly take the time and approach needed to arrive at the right questions to ask.