You should be careful about how you manage your time. There is an art to decide where to draw the line. For this super-contrived example that literally involves breaking into a zoo to get from an animal a part that can be bought off the shelf with same-day delivery... I am not sure that the answer is "don't buy a new hose." You could just pay the cash toll to drive across the Tappan Zee Bridge. Get a great hose, wash your car, and continue to ignore your neighbor whose pillow you ignored.
In general, you should have a cost and benefit attached to every action you are planning. Buying a hose is super easy and solves a lot of problems; you can start watering your garden again, you can wash your car, you can spray your kids. The cost is low, the benefit is high, so you should consider it today. At the bottom of the chain is "break into a zoo and shave a wild animal". The benefit is low, you can buy yak hair on Amazon. The cost is high, you're likely going to be maimed AND end up in prison. So don't do that!
This is a super dumb example and we shouldn't even be discussing it. Management consultants always have a contrived example where their advice sounds good because the example is bad. This is that.
This indicates both side of yak-shaving. The chain of requirements in the contrived example is (IMO) deliberately silly, and misses what you're (correctly) pointing out: it's not yak shaving if it's building capability...
...unless you know you won't - or don't know that you will - benefit from that boosted capability. Then it's back to yak shaving.
That's the thing I'm discovering with recent new management. They've always got a clever sounding one liner to back up their directive. But a lot of the time it leaves me less convinced that their directive is the correct one because it doesn't actually reveal anything new about the issue.
Comments
You should be careful about how you manage your time. There is an art to decide where to draw the line. For this super-contrived example that literally involves breaking into a zoo to get from an animal a part that can be bought off the shelf with same-day delivery... I am not sure that the answer is "don't buy a new hose." You could just pay the cash toll to drive across the Tappan Zee Bridge. Get a great hose, wash your car, and continue to ignore your neighbor whose pillow you ignored.
In general, you should have a cost and benefit attached to every action you are planning. Buying a hose is super easy and solves a lot of problems; you can start watering your garden again, you can wash your car, you can spray your kids. The cost is low, the benefit is high, so you should consider it today. At the bottom of the chain is "break into a zoo and shave a wild animal". The benefit is low, you can buy yak hair on Amazon. The cost is high, you're likely going to be maimed AND end up in prison. So don't do that!
This is a super dumb example and we shouldn't even be discussing it. Management consultants always have a contrived example where their advice sounds good because the example is bad. This is that.
This indicates both side of yak-shaving. The chain of requirements in the contrived example is (IMO) deliberately silly, and misses what you're (correctly) pointing out: it's not yak shaving if it's building capability...
...unless you know you won't - or don't know that you will - benefit from that boosted capability. Then it's back to yak shaving.
That's the thing I'm discovering with recent new management. They've always got a clever sounding one liner to back up their directive. But a lot of the time it leaves me less convinced that their directive is the correct one because it doesn't actually reveal anything new about the issue.