Perhaps it has happened to you. You have a great idea—one that will fix a difficult problem at work. It's creative and outside the box, exactly the

The “Bus Test” Considered Harmful - by Adam Ard

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2024-09-16 19:30:07

Perhaps it has happened to you. You have a great idea—one that will fix a difficult problem at work. It's creative and outside the box, exactly the type of innovative idea they've been begging for in engineering meetings for the last six months. You're excited enough to craft an email and send it out to the team. Everyone responds with great enthusiasm, and it looks like the idea is going to move forward. But then someone kills it by invoking the "bus test":

"Well, that solution will be unique in the organization. You'll gain specialized knowledge. No one else will know what you did. What if you get hit by a bus? Then what will we do?"

And your idea is left for dead. It was watertight and demonstrably able to solve the problem at hand, but since it failed the bus test, nothing else mattered. What is so important about the bus test? Why does it often trump all other considerations, preventing so many good ideas from being implemented?

A thought experiment which explores the impact of losing a person: If a particularly empowered individual in an organization is hit by a bus, will the organization suffer greatly? If yes, fail. If no, pass.