Congratulations! You are the new “head fishing engineer” for the north-Atlantic tuna fleet! People love tuna, and your fleets need to bring more in each year. So you get to work designing new netting, tow-cables, and fishing procedures to maximize your hauls.
There’s just one catch. People love tuna, but they HATE killing dolphins. And if you kill dolphins you can’t put the much-coveted “dolphin safe” sticker on your tuna cans. The two species are roughly the same size, have similar prey, and are in a habit of swimming near each other. So how are you supposed to catch tuna and NOT catch any dolphins?
Let’s break this down, you need to prevent something bad from happening (killing dolphins) but do so in a way that doesn’t impede your desired outcome (catching tuna). This, is the dolphin dilemma.
Take a sec to think of a few ideas.
Got a few?
Hold Up…
Before we go further, you may be wondering – “what the hell Thomas, why should I care how fisherman catch their tuna?”
That is because, no matter your industry, we all have to deal with dolphin-dilemmas. Take a few examples;
Banking:
Your clients demand that you prevent bad actors from taking their money, but they also demand quick and seamless access to their money at anytime, anywhere in the world.
Health Care:
Your hospital is home to some of the most valuable (and addictive) drugs on the planet. You need to keep these locked up and carefully monitored, but you also need your nurses to be able to get key drugs at a moment’s notice or lives will be lost.
Technology:
To maintain a safe social ecosystem you need to quickly identify and remove dangerous content from your platform. But you also need to make it easy for good content creators to join and add their creativity.
Obviously, our true north is to save all the “dolphins”, while catching all the “tuna”, but much like the Kobayashi Maru – there is no perfect solution.
So, what is an equivalent dolphin-dilemma in your industry?
And how do you solve it?
Learn as Much as You Can About Your Tuna and Dolphins
- If you’re unsure where to begin, start by learning as much about the “tuna” and “dolphins” in you industry as possible. Your ability to stop bad outcomes while avoiding negative impacts to the good ones is directly proportional to how well you understand both behaviors.
- In healthcare, this may mean learning more about the circumstances and reasons why medicine theft occurs. Is if for personal use? To sell? When is it most likely to occur?
- In technology, it may mean clearly defining what “bad behavior” on you platform looks like, and what are the reasons users engage in it?
- In tuna fishing, it means understanding how tuna and dolphins respond differently to nets, their herding behavior, eating habits, etc.
If you’re struggling to move closer to the “true north” condition, begin by reviewing what you think you know – and pushing the envelope further. This understating will directly enable you to engage in the next step.
Design for the Difference
- Our goal is to catch the bad guys and release the good guys right? So let’s use our knowledge about them to design points in the process that will be high friction for bad actors, but low friction for good ones.
- When you log into your bank account for the first time from a new device you see a great example of this. Most banks will issue a challenge – they’ll send a text to your phone with a code. This is a minor annoyance for you, but will likely be a much harder block for a bad actor.
- Similarly, think about ATM withdrawal limits. They are high enough to accommodate 99% of your needs, but prevent someone from illegally emptying your bank account in one fell-swoop.
- Tuna fish netting is designed to have buoys that are easy for dolphin to push down and escape, but are impassable to most tuna.
Match Severity of Action to Severity of Impact
- Balance the severity of the friction point, with the severity of the outcome.
- In tuna fishing the initial intervention is very low-touch – it involves the design of the net. As the process continues the intervention escalates, all the way up to having a speed boat circle the net and actually scoop dolphins out if necessary.
- This is where a lack of organizational alignment really hurts. If an exec offers a bonus to the captain who catches the most fish – do we really think this won’t impact the number of dolphins killed as well?
- Don’t make this decision in a vacuum, involve a diverse group to explore your proposed plan and help uncover hidden consequences so everyone is aware and comfortable with the trade-offs you’re making.
There is no “right” number of dolphin deaths, just like there isn’t an acceptable number of drug overdoses or fraud. Nevertheless, we all frequently need to create policy or design processes that essentially define such a thing. In order to move as close to our true north of “zero dolphin deaths and zero lost tuna”, remember the below three principles.
- Learn as much as you can about your tuna and dolphins
- Design for the difference
- Match severity of action to severity of impact
Want to learn more about tuna-fishing than you ever need to know? Check out the research paper that got me thinking on this topic. You’d be surprised by the ideas you get from studying a seemingly unrelated industry.
Keep on improving!