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on the walls: “Keep the store just the way it is.” *
    Likewise, the founders of Crate and Barrel didn’t wait to build fancy displays when they opened their first store. They turned over the crates and barrels that the merchandise came in and stacked products on top of them. †
    Don’t mistake this approach for skimping on quality, either. You still want to make something great. This approach just recognizes that the best way to get there is through iterations. Stop imagining what’s going to work. Find out for real.
    * Walt Stanchfield,
Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes
, vol. 1,
The Walt Stanchfield Lectures
, Oxford, UK: Focal Press, 2009.
    * Pasolivo Olive Oil, Zingerman’s, www.zingermans.com/product.aspx?productid=o-psl
    * “About Kingsford: Simply a Matter of Taste,” Kingsford, www.kingsford.com/about/index.htm
    * Fara Warner, “Walk in Progress,”
Fast Company
, Dec. 19, 2007, www.fastcompany.com/magazine/58/lookfeel.html
    † Matt Valley, “The Crate and Barrel Story,”
Retail Traffic
, June 1, 2001, retailtrafficmag.com/mag/retail_crate_barrel_story

CHAPTER
PRODUCTIVITY

Illusions of agreement
    The business world is littered with dead documents that do nothing but waste people’s time. Reports no one reads, diagrams no one looks at, and specs that never resemble the finished product. These things take forever to make but only seconds to forget.
    If you need to explain something, try getting real with it. Instead of describing what something looks like, draw it. Instead of explaining what something sounds like, hum it. Do everything you can to remove layers of abstraction.
    The problem with abstractions (like reports and documents) is that they create illusions of agreement. A hundred people can read the same words, but in their heads, they’re imagining a hundred different things.
    That’s why you want to get to something real right away. That’s when you get true understanding. It’s like when we read about characters in a book—we each picture them differently in our heads. But when we actually
see
people, we all know exactly what they look like.
    When the team at Alaska Airlines wanted to build a new Airport of the Future, they didn’t rely on blueprints and sketches. They got a warehouse and built mock-ups using cardboard boxes for podiums, kiosks, and belts. The team then built a small prototype inAnchorage to test systems with real passengers and employees. The design that resulted from this getting-real process has significantly reduced wait times and increased agent productivity. *
    Widely admired furniture craftsman Sam Maloof felt it was impossible to make a working drawing to show all the intricate and fine details that go into a chair or stool. “Many times I do not know how a certain area is to be done until I start working with a chisel, rasp, or whatever tool is needed for that particular job,” he said. †
    That’s the path we all should take. Get the chisel out and start making something real. Anything else is just a distraction.

Reasons to quit
    It’s easy to put your head down and just work on what you
think
needs to be done. It’s a lot harder to pull your head up and ask why. Here are some important questions to ask yourself to ensure you’re doing work that matters:
    Why are you doing this? Ever find yourself working on something without knowing exactly why? Someone just told you to do it. It’s pretty common, actually. That’s why it’s important to ask why you’reworking on______. What is this for? Who benefits? What’s the motivation behind it? Knowing the answers to these questions will help you better understand the work itself.
    What problem are you solving? What’s the problem? Are customers confused? Are you confused? Is something not clear enough? Was something not possible before that should be possible now? Sometimes when you ask these questions, you’ll find you’re solving an
imaginary
problem. That’s when it’s time