How a home repair illustrated the power and pitfalls of being a service provider

Springtime has a distinct feeling - the gentle chirps of robins, the tickle of renewed allergies, crisp sunrises with more warmth and hope, and, in my case this year, a geyser of icy water to the face, blasting through a cracked sprinkler pipe.

For years, my sprinklers had been reliable, a broken head here and there, but no leaks, no breaks, and certainly no inadvertent self-baptisms. Why this year?

After a brief toweling off (and plenty of muttered cursing), I set out to find the answer. It did not take long: there was a new layer of paint on the pipes from the contractors that painted the exterior of the condos last summer. A quick google search put all the other pieces in place.

Free tip to homeowners and landscape enthusiasts: do not paint copper pipes, particularly if you live in a place like Colorado where winter is one long series of freezes and thaws. 

As part of the drying process, paint on a copper pipe will naturally pull away from the surface, leaving room for moisture to get in. In abrupt temperature swings, any moisture in that pocket will freeze and expand, then melt and release, sink into the newly deeper pocket, and refreeze. The cycle repeats as winter dances above and below the freezing point. 

Pipes don’t always survive these changes:

What it means to be a service provider

When providing a service, whether IT consulting, architecting human engagement, building a website, or painting a house, the goal is always the same: to provide value from expertise. 

In theory, it seems simple enough: I know a thing, that thing can help you, let me help you with that thing.

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. 

In practice, there is.

Yogi Berra

Stepping out of the comfortable theory, real world complexity takes the wheel.

Everything Is Connected

The most dangerous word in any project is “just.”

• We’re just replacing the CRM

• We’re just focused on customer experience

• We just need to create a formal process

• We are just painting the outside of the house

Mentally, it is much easier to process discrete tasks than to consider the ecosystem of a change. 

At first blush, it may seem that the exterior color of a house has almost nothing to do with the plumbing. At first burst pipe, that feels less true. 

Service providers naturally lean on their expertise. After all, that is why they have been hired and what they bring to the table. It is easy for both the provider and the client to want to box in the areas the provider will be affecting. Contractually, providers want to protect a scope of work and manage expectations while clients want to manage budgets and outcomes. Both instincts establish good guidelines for a project. No matter how brilliant and iron clad the contract is, however, we cannot escape the reality that all parts of an organization are connected.

Sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, there will be a ripple effect. 

To manage this reality, a service provider has to be willing to receive feedback to assist with current and future efforts, which means potentially stepping out of their expertise, putting the client’s needs above their current project, or expanding the scope of work. Beyond the added value for the current customer, understanding the ripple effects helps providers predict what ripples may occur in future projects, allowing them to expand their expertise and, by extension, their value to any customer. 

On the flip side, any customer benefits from considering their own ecology. They will know their own internal processes and connections best and must share their knowledge. 

During any initiative, it is easy to get tunnel vision and focus on completing tasks to meet deadlines. While this can help move the ball, it is much harder to say whether the ball is moving in the right direction without continually evaluating the context of the change.

You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

Even with the best intentions, established processes, transparent communication, and deep domain knowledge, edge cases will be missed.

As professional painters, I am sure the provider has painted hundreds of houses and still may not have seen this issue or known the potential fallout. As the resident, I have experience with the particular plumbing and have gone through the cycle of turning on and off the sprinklers for many years. Even with both sides of knowledge, no party predicted the damage the overlap would cause. 

The complexity of interrelated systems and seemingly loose ties between them makes the situation ripe for unintended consequences. When this happens, it is important to lead with empathy over blame, since it is unlikely either party acted with willful neglect and blame will create resentment. Responsibility may lay with one party more than another, but resolution will be contentious if conversations begin with accusations as opposed to partnering to find a solution.

In organizations and residential maintenance alike, customers and providers benefit from applying curiosity to mitigate “unknown unknowns.” Many initiatives begin with “requirements gathering” to understand the current state and desired future state for an initiative. It is crucial to collect insights from various parties that may be connected to a change. We can avoid even more gaps by asking all parties: “What other teams, departments, and/or processes may be affected by this change?” 

The more this process is treated as a dialogue, rather than a dump of knowledge or expertise by either customer or provider, the easier it is to garner buy-in for a change as well as catch potential issues before launching. 

It can be easy to balk at spending hours (read: money) at the beginning of a project on interviewing people to understand the ecosystem of a change. After all, the project has a goal, and this can feel like a delay in making progress towards that goal while adding “unnecessary” expense. 

If I only had an hour to chop down a tree, 

I would spend the first 45 minutes sharpening my axe.

Abraham Lincoln

From personal experience, I can attest that not asking questions in advance can hit you later like a blast of ice water to the face.