The Random Shit Department
There is something that, to me, proved to be definitely hard to define during all these years roaming around different organizational landscapes. If I am rushed to quickly define it with some term, the one that comes to mind is: random shit.
Although we all know what we mean when we talk about “random shit” in our workplaces, technically speaking, our idea of “random shit” is not entirely random, and here lies the main challenge both for its definition and for its management.
Let’s see an example:
Say you sell shoes, more specifically male shoes. That’s your business, that’s what you know. That’s what pays the bills. Sales have been a bit boring lately, but nothing too serious for now. One day, an email arrives from someone who knows someone that you know, asking if you could design and produce 100000 pairs of shoes for male orangutans.
What do you do?
Well, on one hand, it’s shoes, and you know how to make them, that’s your business. Also, the amount looks awesome, because 100000 pairs of shoes could mean some nice profit. Stonks.
On the other hand, orangutans? How much do you know about orangutans’ feet? Adult or young orangutans? Who is asking for this? Why would someone want to give shoes to an orangutan? What are the chances anything tangible will come out of such an eccentric inquiry?
Soon, you’re replying to this mysterious contact that you want to know more. Where this will lead is uncertain, but you’re already mentally engaged in diving deeper about orangutan’s feet.
In reality, what we call “random shit” is, in my view, some sort of intelligent noise. In other words, not entirely useless, unrelated, pointless stuff, but, on the contrary, stuff that is:
Clearly sitting far from your main areas of interest and focus
Not far enough to unambiguously cross the SNR boundaries
In radio engineering domains, there’s the concept of “jamming”. This is, creating electromagnetic signals which are intended to deceive a receptor, i.e. purposely crafted to be difficult to discern from ‘good’ signals with the sole intention of confusing and misleading the reception process. Workplace random shit is like jamming. With the difference that radio jamming tends to be generated with malice, whereas company jamming may be good-spirited. I mean, someone may be genuinely thinking of providing shoes to orangutans. Maybe they feel cold.
This is clearly why random shit filters in so easily. Someone may see potential in looking deeper into the thing although it takes fair amounts of brain power to figure out if such potential proves to be true or not. Lots of business worldwide may stem from the most random shit ever.
But, to make things more efficient, every company should have a Random Shit Department in place. If possible, precisely named like that, no need for more polite wording. And make no mistake here: the Random Shit Department shall be staffed with smart people with strong common sense and the most ruthless capacity to discern signal from the noise. The Random Shit Department shall be the hardest receptor to jam, filtering charlatans with no money wanting the strangest things for free from sound customers wanting something interesting and willing to pay for it.
Visually:
