Signals From the Noise

In 2002, Gino Menchini was introduced to a room full of people by the Mayor of New York.

Michael Bloomberg didn’t spend long explaining Gino’s new job.

He simply announced:

“Gino Menchini, who will not be here next year if 311 is not up and running.”

Which could have been a problem for the poor guy.

Because 311 didn’t even exist.

What did exist were more than 40 city helplines, spread across 14 pages of the New York phone book.

Gino’s job was to make all of that disappear behind three numbers.

3-1-1.

On March 9, 2003, at one minute past midnight, it went live.

The first call was about a noisy party.

Then New Yorkers discovered 311 worked.

And started calling.

Potholes. Noise. Rubbish. Heating. Landlords. Water. Broken streetlights.
Cats having sex.

Within a year, around 35,000 calls a day were arriving.

It looked like chaos.

35,000 calls to answer, log, categorise and send somewhere before another 35,000 arrived tomorrow.

But Gino started looking at the calls differently.

He noticed they weren’t random.

The same problems appeared again and again.

Certain problems clustered in certain places.

35,000 calls became 35,000 observations about New York.

Gino started separating the signal from the noise.

That was 2003.

More than twenty years later, in some housing organisations, it can feel as though we’re still back in 2002.

Except there’s some good news.

Your job is easier than Gino’s.

Because your housing challenges aren’t spread across New York.

Their in your process.

And I bet you’ve got data on:

Number of calls.
How long they take.
Abandonment rate.
Wrap-up time.

But here’s the rub, do you know:

WHY people called?

Which demand was handled in one stop?

Which was passed on?

Which came back?

Which calls were people chasing something that should already have happened?

Which repairs failed and generated another call?

That’s where the signal is.

Because if you knew that, guess what you could do?

Pick one.

Fix it.

Watch what happens.

Then pick the next one.

No enormous transformation programme.

No shiny new technology.

No AI strategy.

Just understand what people are asking you for and why.

Isn’t it amazing?

Almost everything you need to start making progress tomorrow is already sitting right under your nose.

You just have to stop counting the noise long enough to see the pattern.

Oh, and Gino?

He kept his job.

He stayed with New York City for another three years.

Which isn’t bad for a man who’d been publicly told he’d be fired if he couldn’t make 311 work.

www.loweffort.com