Medieval Plumbing

Delayed feedback

When I was a child I lived in a farm house in North Yorkshire.  I’d like to tell you that I was part of the county set and owned a Range Rover and a horse, but it wasn’t that sort of farm house.  It had stone walls that were three feet thick in an attempt to keep out the cold and an outside “alfresco” dining area that we used once every seven years. It sat in the Vale of Mowbray, wedged between the Moors and the Dales. It was like living in a wind tunnel between the North Sea and the South. 

North Yorkshire is beautiful, but lord it can be cold.

Cold showers

The house was built about 400 years ago and my parents were the first to add a gas boiler and double glazed windows.  They never quite got around to sorting out the plumbing. I swear it was an original feature.  Whoever installed it had never heard of a shower.

The morning ordeal went something like this:

1. A good dousing of icy water (there was nothing wrong with the pressure)
2. Violent swearing and tap turning in an attempt to get some hot water
3. A marginal improvement in temperature to somewhere below tepid
4. Further tap spinning until the cold was firmly off and the hot was all the way on
5. An indeterminate delay and pipe gurgling
6. A deluge of water hot enough to strip your skin off
7. Repeated swearing and tap turning to get some cold water
8. A further delay
9. A second dousing with icy water

My only positive memory of the plumbing was listening to my wife (then girlfriend) yelping as she tried Yorkshire plumbing for the first time.

My sister and I thought it was most amusing.

Delay in the system

The problem wasn’t the tap spinning, it was the time it took for the warm water to make its way from the boiler — stuck in an outbuilding — to the shower.

If I’d had any sense I’d have waited for the temperature to equilibrate, rather than turning the taps madly.  But it is hard to be patient when you think you are going to die of hyperthermia.

The longer the delay between action and feedback the more unstable the system and the more unsatisfactory the result.

It isn’t just plumbing

Malcom Gladwell claimed in his book “Outliers: The Story of Success” that to be good at something you need to have at least 10,000 hours of practice.  Critics of his 10,000 hour rule will tell you that whilst practice helps, it isn’t the only factor.

• A triage nurse on a casualty ward who has worked for 10,000 hours will have perfected her judgement.  A wrong decision about who needs treatment and who can wait could mean life or death. The feedback comes thick and fast.
• A radiologist — a doctor who spends all her time in a darkened room looking at medical images —  who makes a mistake can wait months before her diagnosis is confirmed or denied.  There is no guarantee she will ever find out.

Whose judgement would you trust the most? It is hard to improve, if not impossible, without timely feedback.

Reduce the delay

Faster feedback = improved understanding = better results.

That is the secret behind agile projects.  The coders get in the moment feedback from their customers.  Contrast that to a waterfall project where the requirements and delivery may be separated by months or years. 

Likewise the real beauty of lean manufacturing isn’t the cash created by removing stock.  Managers in organisations without buffers and safety stocks can sense changes to customer demand and respond far faster than their competitors.

The worst thing

If you want truly poor performance then look for a system where the initial response is good but the delayed response is bad. 

When frantic tap turning led to a trickle of warm water the obvious response was to turn the taps further, even though this would cause a scalding torrent. The first positive signs promoted more of the same action, which resulted in disaster. 

The same is true of many cost saving projects. Managers pat themselves on the back for stripping out heads and saving wages. It feels like success so they press on. Then, six months later, their quality and service stats have gone to hell in a hand basket.

Improving feedback:

If you agree with the line of argument, then logically there are two ways to improve performance:

• Work to get the feedback faster. Strip out anything that causes delay
• Learn to sit on your hands and wait. This is not an easy job when you have your boss screaming for action.

But whatever else you do, don’t over-adjust.  It is guaranteed to give you poor results and, if you are really unlucky, a good drenching with cold water.

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