Lagging Indicator

“Creativity is a function of all the previous work you put in.” – Robert Greene

“When you sit down to create something…what you create is a culmination of everything you’ve seen and done previous to that point.” – Tinker Hatfield

Hat tip to my good buddy and follower of this blog, Joe, for sending me the below story. I believe it comes via Billy Oppenheimer from a Twitter post. It’s so good and speaks for itself. Thus, I’ve just pasted it in full below. Enjoy!

In 1998, Citibank and The Travelers Insurance Company merged. 

They hired legendary designer Paula Scher to create a new logo.

In their first meeting, on a napkin, Scher drew what became the iconic Citi logo.

As Scher got up to leave the room, someone from the Citi team asked,

How can it be that it’s done in a second?

“It’s done in a second and 34 years,” Scher replied. “It’s done in a second [and] every experience and everything that’s in my head.”

Takeaway 1:

As Scher has become a master of her craft, she’s experienced an interesting problem. 

“A lot of clients like to buy process,” she explains. “they think they’re not getting their money’s worth [if] you solve the problem too fast.”

This is known as the “Labor Perception Bias.”

It’s an interesting phenomenon: we are generally impatient, yet, we are skeptical if, for instance, we’re at a fancy restaurant and the food comes out only minutes after we ordered.

One of the famous examples of the Labor Perception Bias is the parable of the engineer and the hammer:

A factory owner hired an engineer to fix a broken-down engine. The engineer inspected the engine for one minute, took out his hammer, hammered the engine once, and then started the engine with no problem.

The engineer charged the factory owner $5000. The factory owner was shocked, protested that the engineer had worked for only one minute, and asked for an itemized bill. The engineer sent the factory owner an itemized bill:

Hammering the engine: $5

Knowing where to hammer the engine: $4,995

Takeaway 2:

On my desk, there is a notecard that says, “All success is a lagging indicator.” 

The line comes from one of my favorite Ryan Holiday articles. “When a day’s writing goes well,” he writes, “it’s a lagging indicator of hours and hours spent researching and thinking… Receiving a promotion is a lagging indicator of a lot of quality work. Delivering a keynote with confidence is a lagging indicator of a lot of preparation.”

Knowing where to hammer the engine is a lagging indicator of the years and years working with hammers and on engines.

And Paula Scher’s ability to create an iconic logo in a second is a lagging indicator of 34 years spent honing her craft.