Focus on the things you can control
On noise factors, control factors, focus, and agency
Product design teams often struggle because they disperse their energy across too many factors outside their influence, rather than concentrating on elements within their control.
Japanese engineer Genichi Taguchi introduced a framework for designing systems that perform reliably under varied conditions. In Taguchi's methodology, a robust design process distinguishes between noise factors and control factors.
Noise factors are environmental conditions or external variables that influence what kinds of solutions we can build, but lie beyond direct control. Things like macroeconomic conditions, the competitive landscape, weather patterns, the plot of land you're building on, or even the programming languages to build a piece of software. These variables are inherent to the problem space and must be navigated rather than altered.
Control factors, conversely, are elements that teams can directly influence and manipulate—such as material choices, written code, design decisions, and resource allocation.
Noise is the reality we confront; control we can design.
Anyone who's worked in a decent-sized organization or with a diverse team on a challenging problems has seen a team dwell on noise factors. Complaints about the macroeconomics of the job market, what their competitors are or aren't doing, or worrying over the recurring odd behaviors of their customers that they wish they could change. It's one thing to understand the variables of noise, what factors you're working with and what constraints they impose on your design process.
But stewing over what you can't control steals your limited attention from the factors you have command over. Filtering out the noise brings clarity.
My friend
wrote a post recently that caught my attention, and resonates with this theme:
In noisy situations, it's easy for all those external factors to take over. Sometimes it feels like the environmental surroundings are going to kill what you're working on. It feels like we need to do something.
And doing something is the right decision: doing those things in your control to do.
Allow the noise in just enough for you to get your bearings on your operating environment. Then focus on the levers you can pull, the buttons you can push.
Just because you can't control every variable and build your perfect solution doesn't mean you can't find creative approaches: quite the opposite in fact.
The noise factors are your constraints. And constraints are the catalysts of creativity.