Stop repairing potholes!

All right.

Hi, Hello, and welcome to today's episode, my name is Tom Rolley of systemio.dev, excited to bring you an update from an insight that happened today.

And that is the famous potholes of Byron Bay.

Now, if you have lived in the area in Byron Bay, or perhaps you've lived in a similar area that comes to mind, which is Maui, and perhaps all of why, but I've only been to Maui, but both areas suffered from a very similar problem, which was extensive potholes in the road.

Now, we're discussing Byron today.

And the population here is maybe 30,000.

Maybe swelled a bit with people trying to leave the cities and come here, maybe it's 35, or 40,000.

But on top of the resident population is a huge number of tourists that come.

And this has led to serious degradation on the roads.

Now the choice of the council generally has been to repair the potholes, in fact, where I live outside of it is just a literary, like an illusory that is that a word? Probably not like, it's more potholes than actual road.

And every time it rains, the potholes come back, and they come and fill them.

And this methodology kind of works in the short term, like it fills it up.

But the underlying problem, the fact that the road is largely potholes beyond repair, is avoided.

And so the council, instead of sucking it up and going, hang on, there's a problem here that needs to be dealt with.

What they do is they just fill the potholes.

And this is very similar to a methodology that shows up in most people's lives, and certainly many businesses, which is just like, Okay, there's a problem, we'll fix it, and hope that it doesn't show again.

But if it then happens, again, they fixed it.

Again, there's no insight that this is a recurring problem, that this is actually something that needs to be fixed at a deeper level, which in the case of the potholes is, obviously to actually repair the whole road.

Yes, it's a lot more work.

Yes, it means traffic problems.

Yes, that means peeling back all the layers of the asphalt, and getting down to the bare dirt and then having the machines and then laying the new shore.

But once that is done, then the maintenance required for that is minimal.

It might be 1020, even 30 years with reasonable small amounts of maintenance before that road needs to have that done again.

Otherwise, it's come back and fix the potholes every time it rains.

It rains this mindset though, it's endemic.

And it's a lot more work in the short term to fix the potholes to actually come and repair the road at the level that will fix it for a long period of time.

And this is really the decision.

Are you going to fix things in the short term, but leave them to be problematic in the long term? Or are you going to fix them in the short term so that they're fixed? Yes, it takes more work.

Yes, it takes more money.

Yes, it is more difficult.

But the payoff.

If this is done across the board, it begins to snowball so that slowly instead of dealing with potholes everywhere, the potholes become less.

Realize this, that as each road is repaired, and no more potholes appear, that slowly but surely, all of the potholes will be fixed.

And yes, there may be some longer-term issues that crop up occasionally.

But this is the choice that you face.

And this is the mindset of thinking in systems.

The potholes are putting out fires, I'm going to sort out this problem and not deal with the underlying problem.

I'm just going to fix the pothole.

The actual systems mindset says that, hey, this road is busted.

This road is not coming back anytime soon.

We actually need to have deep remedial action and fix this.

So that is now fixed, it's now cured, it's now sorted out.

So that is the mindset shift that must take place for you.

If you are dealing with potholes in your business, yes, it is hard work at the beginning but knows that the hard road becomes easy, and the easy road continues to be hard.

If this is a conversation that interests you then head over to systemio.dev, jump on the training there about the benefits of thinking systematically and how to bring this to your business.

Alright, thanks so much for joining in today's episode.

Look forward to seeing you on tomorrow's episode to continue this journey into the exploration of systems and processes and their benefits in business.

See you then.