Dan and Chip Heath’s last book Decisive was about making good quality decisions and problem solving using the wrap framework. Dan’s new book Upstream looks not at problem solving but rather putting on a mindset for problem avoidance. He calls this approach “working upstream” rather than downstream. Upstream is where we create environments that stop problems from ever happening. Downstream is where we solve the problems we couldn’t foresee or prevent in the first place. Most of our efforts are directed towards the downstream areas. Think about beefing up budgets for EMTs rather than invest in preventive care or healthy living, increasing call centre personnel rather than understanding why customers need to call in the first place, etc.
The book is divided into three sections. The first section deals with why we fail to take obvious remedial steps to prevent problems from occurring. The second discusses questions leaders must ask themselves to bring in more upstream thinking and the final section deals with long term up far upstream thinking. I find the first two sections far more practical and useful in daily life so I am going to stick to my notes about them.
##### 3 forces that push us downstream
1. **Problem blindness** – If you ever hear your colleague or friends say things like ‘it was supposed to happen’ or ‘that’s just the way it is’ you should dig in further to confirm if they are suffering from problem blindness. When we do or experience things a certain way for a prolonged period of time, we stop noticing the problems associated with them. This comes from focus on other things (which can be great but also a deterrent in finding better solutions). Response based solutions come naturally to us and we need to break this cycle by being open minded to review everything we do regularly.
2. **Lack of ownership** – There are often no clear owners for preventing bad things from happening. There are almost always clear owners for solving a bad thing once it has happened. Call centre reps are a classic example of being responsible for handling customer issues quickly. A story that Dan talks about is that of Expedia’s call centre that received an overwhelming number of calls from people asking for their itinerary. It took Expedia a long time in deciding to solve this problem by eliminating the problem altogether by going upstream. They did that in many different ways that included sending their itinerary over email, displaying it in their accounts section, setting up an IVR for letting people get it again, etc. This happened after they decided to look at the problem differently and setting up cross functional ownership.
3. **Tunneling** – Scarcity brings in tunnel vision. When we are facing too many problems we give up trying to solve them all. It confines us to straight movement like in a tunnel for most of what we do. This is particularly hard to tackle as scarcity by its very nature restricts us from investing more into something but it is important to recognise that we are in a tunnel so when the opportunity presents itself, we can invest in the right area.
##### 7 questions leaders need to ask to explore more upstream solutions
1. **Who all need to be in the room?** – We can look at data in two ways. To investigate and to learn. The latter is where good things and upstream solutions come from. If Expedia kept looking at data with an investigation mindset, they’d have continued to add to their call centre capacity but instead they wanted to learn what was common across those calls and were they even necessary. That was only possible when people from different functions came together with their own suggestions. The first thing we need to do to inspire upstream thinking is get the right people in the room.
2. **How does the system need to change to avoid creating the problem altogether?** – This is the second step. We need to acknowledge that the system that created the problem needs to change for the problem to stop happening. If that isn’t possible then it is perhaps ok to focus on downstream efforts. More often than not, there is a lot of value in changing things ‘the way we do’.
3. **How to find points of leverage?** – Every problems has a specific leverage point which is in our control. Dan takes the example of the gun violence amongst youth in Chicago. There were obvious solutions for gun violence around gun prohibitions and control but those are heated topics and very prone to stalemates. Instead teaching kids about controlling rage and reducing their access to their parents’ guns is a more low fi solution to a highly volatile situation. The leverage in this case is not guns but behaviour.
4. **How do you identify early warning signs?** – Early warning signs can be put together to give us a quick sense of upcoming problems. These signs can help kick in efforts that either prevent the problem altogether or ameliorate its effects. Japan’s revolutionary earthquake warnings only ever provide a 30 second response time but that is often enough to stop critical machinery, take evasive actions and save lives. Another example discussed in the book was how Linkedin’s hiring tool team dig into their data to notice the signs of churn (people canceling their Linkedin pro subscription). They realised that the signs of churn often lay in users’ usage of pro features in the first few days of them subscribing. They then focussed on onboarding subscribers with renewed focus on educating them about getting the most value out of the product.
5. **How do you know of you’re really succeeding?** – By its very nature upstream victories sound like ‘ghost victories’. The ***evidence of having avoided a problem is almost always just theoretical as there is no alternate timeline in which the problem actually took place***. Success criterias are hard to set up in upstream thinking and it makes sense to have intermediate goals but we must be equally wary of short term goals to ensure that they don’t hurt the real mission.
6. **How to avoid doing unintended harm?** – Upstream solutions have hard to foresee second or third order effects. Dan talks about how single use plastic bag ban led to an epidemic of transmissible diseases amongst the homeless people who were using the cheap plastic bags to dispose of their waste. The plastic ban was a noble step but it did more harm than good. These types of second order effects are hard to predict but we should expect and plan for situations that may arise from our upstream efforts. Upstream work hinges on humility and the valley’s favourite quote of “move fast & break things’ doesn’t really work here.
7. **Who will pay for what never happens?** – This is the last but not the least important things one needs to worry about. Upstream work prevents issues from happening and so the benefits aren’t easily understood in all cases. If you adopt a healthy attitude by investing in a treadmill the benefits accrue to you yourself in the form of no or low sickness related expenses. This is not always the case when several parties come together to solve a problem and share the benefits. We’ve known prevention is better than cure for hundreds of years but it is mind boggling how little we invest in preventive health care. A quote from a medical professional in the book that I think sums it up really well – ‘if you do everything right and save lives your budget will be cut’. We need to look at other financial models to set up the right incentives. The fees for service model puts impetus on problem fixing rather than avoidance. If you’re looking to avoid problems, you can also start by tweaking the incentives to focus on avoidance rather than fixing.
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I run a startup called [Harmonize](http://www.harmonizehq.com/). We are hiring and if you’re looking for an exciting startup journey, please write to jobs@harmonizehq.com. Apart from this blog, [I tweet ](https://twitter.com/dillisingh)about startup life and practical wisdom in books.