Bikeshedding for Fun and Profit
Have you ever given a talk and had all the discussion center on some trivial detail that you just threw in at the last minute? Meantime, they ignore the really important stuff you wanted to focus on? That’s a phenomenon called “bikeshedding.” In this article, we’re going to look at a recent example, and then get cynical and see how you can exploit it.
What It Is
I included this video because it actually explains, in detail, why C. Northcote Parkinson invented the term “bikeshedding” — it’s because there was once an actual bike shed that meeting attendees obsessed about!
I love this narrator because he’s the very model of a modern software engineer. (The video at the end provides the reference if you didn’t get that.) You can just look at him and know he’s not from McKinsey, Bain, or Boston Consulting Group.
He’s actually delivering a lecture on User Experience (helpful fact: he just calls it “UX”) but he first explains the real meeting that gave the term its name.
As you can see, the committee had three items on the agenda:
A nuclear reactor ( £ 10 million)
A bike shed ( £ 350)
Coffee ( £ 21 / year)
The actual time they spent discussing those items:
2.5 minutes
45 minutes
75 minutes (ending with no resolution)
We can (and should) laugh about this, but if you review your own meetings you’ll probably see it’s all too common. And he tells you why the managers behave this way
They don’t understand nuclear reactors and assume the staff has already done the work. But they can’t just say nothing, so they harp on the bike shed and coffee because that’s something they do understand.
Bikeshedding in the Wild
OK, that nuclear reactor meeting was long, long ago. How about a more recent, real-life example? Theory is nice, but does it work out in practice?
You can’t believe how much time I spent looking at YouTube videos, and trying out the various AI-based “video summarization” services (and there are many). No one, not even yours truly, is willing to watch all those mind-numbingly boring videos, some of which go on for three hours. (And just imagine having to be there in person!)
Not surprisingly, none of the tools really do what I want, which is just:
Break out the speakers, with timestamps
Summarize what they said
Group the speaker-timestamp sections by subject
That would make the task so easy! However, glancing at the transcript for this one (if you want to follow along, just expand the Description, clicking on the “more” link, and you’ll see the transcript).
it looked like it might be a candidate. So let’s summarize this budget that the Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority is considering during the pandemic:
Items
Revenue
Taxable room revenue: $192 million (down from previous year)
Expenditures overall
Capital: 240,000
Payroll & related: 805,181
Supplies & services: 57,900
Debt service: 8,842,438
Services: 43,150
Mail Services Department
Supplies & services: 9,940
HR Department
Supplies & services: 44,155
IT Department
Supplies & services: 177,900
Room Tax Department
Payroll : 216,652
Supplies & services: 17,380
Finance Department:
Payroll : 574,537
Supplies & services: 471,419 (mostly insurance)
Board of Directors:
Supplies & services: 325,800
incl. 60,000 strategy consultant)
Marketing
Payroll 608,152
Promotion, Marketing 2,771,463 (incl. 170,000 outdoor media)
Tourism Sales
Payroll 325,641
Convention Sales
Hospitality 87,850Booth Expenses 113,900
Booth Expenses 155,020
Discussion from the Board
Here I’ve just counted the discussion involving any board member with the presenters:
Strategy consultant 6:13 (starts around 37:02)
Outdoor media :10
Booth expenses :46
I think the $60,000 for the “strategy consultant” is the bike shed of this meeting. It consumed nearly all the discussion time with the Board and it accounts for a tiny fraction of the expenditures (I should note that, like the “coffee” discussion in the nuclear reactor meeting, no resolution was reached).
This is not to say he wasn’t right to question the need for a consultant, of course
Meantime, “outdoor media” which accounts for almost 3x as much money took up only 1/37 as much time. Other much larger items took up no time at all.
I watched this insomnia cure of a meeting so you don’t have to.
What to Do About It
The first error for that Nuclear Reactor presenter was to show the three agenda items as if they were all equal. Of course the attendees were going to pay attention to them: he asked them to.
For Good
The narrator in the video presents some common sense strategies to adapt to the audience’s Bike Shedding tendencies. The obvious thing is: don’t throw the trivial in with the important. Your audience will always look for something to nitpick.
If you want them to focus on something truly important, make that the only agenda item, and prep them in advance. As the narrator says, they don’t want to sit there and look like a potted plant, so maybe they would actually think about your agenda. Maybe.
For Evil
Suppose you want to slip one past them (who would ever do that, right?):
Then you do throw in a trivial item that’s certain to get their attention. Some suggestions (depending on what kind of meeting it is):
A Software Meeting
Talk about the date-time library. Programmers always love to argue about that. If you put it at the end, they’ll be in such a hurry to get there that they’ll skip right over your important, controversial items.
Throw in a user interface slide at the beginning. Everyone loves to critique those.
Mention user authentication and how you enforce it (actually, this really is often the most important thing, so discussion is not wasted). People can argue endlessly about that.
In general, any number will draw comments. Especially if you don’t list a source for it, so some pedant can ask where you’re getting that number. Throw in lots of numbers.
A Budget Meeting
This is generally all numbers, so “throw in numbers” is kinda superfluous. So you have to be creative about your numbers. A small one that looks suspicious is always good.
In golf, they call a very short putt a “gimme.” When you play with your friends, they won’t force you to make that putt. So throw in some gimme’s. That “strategy consultant” item in the Reno-Sparks meeting could be thought of as a gimme (except the staff didn’t actually give it up). Put in one small item that’s controversial, and let them have a little victory in removing it.
An Employee Communication Meeting
Talk about employee benefits; especially about family and partner eligibility for them.
Parking and public transportation subsidies: that’s always a good one.
Since the pandemic, “remote working” is always guaranteed to elicit responses.
Ask for audience comments. With any luck that will consume the rest of the meeting, and you won’t even have to talk about the real business (if there is any).
Conclusion
“Bikeshedding” is a word that almost every software engineer knows (that might be because it’s so common in our profession). If you didn’t know it: now you can use it for good. Or for evil. Your choice.