Lately, one of my guilty pleasures is watching one of the Food Network or baking shows before bed. I have a pretty out of control sweet tooth, and these shows really appeal to me.
On an episode of Zumbo’s Just Desserts (it’s on Netflix, highly recommend) one of the dessert makers forgot to add SUGAR to his cake. Sugar!
The judge noticed immediately and called it out – because a cake without sugar just doesn’t taste like a cake.
In computer science, the phrase “Garbage In, Garbage Out” was created to explain that for the computer or software system to produce the correct results, the correct inputs need to be made.
If you put bad data into a model, a bad prediction comes out.
If you keep bad records for contacts in your CRM, don’t expect to get much use out of that CRM tool.
But Garbage In, Garbage Out can be expanded for just about any context. In Zumbo’s Just Desserts, if you put the wrong ingredients into a cake, the cake isn’t going to taste good.
Some days, I’m not feeling like myself. Just about every time, it’s a function of GIGO. When the system (my body) isn’t yielding the results I want, I look at the inputs:
- Did I get good sleep?
- Have I been drinking enough water?
- What’s the nutrition of my food like?
- Did I drink any alcohol?
- Have I been exercising?
If you look at your business and things seem slow, have you looked at the inputs?
- Have you been having conversations with advocates?
- Have you been talking to people about potential work together?
What if your latest piece of creative work doesn’t seem right?
- Did you work through the same process as usual?
- Did you put as much care into the details?
- Did you think about the outcome you wanted before hand?
As my friend Zach would say, every system is perfectly designed to achieve the results that it is achieving.
So if the system is producing results that you’re frustrated with, how are you complicit on facilitating the inputs that are perfectly aligned to achieve those results?
Garbage In, Garbage Out.