The Frozen Pizza Incident

A few years ago, I stayed at a hostel near the Canadian Rockies. Two young students from Germany were also staying there on a summer holiday. And those two Germans kept popping into the communal kitchen to check whether their frozen pizza was finally done. I didn't pay much attention at first, but when they were still waiting after what must have been an hour, I got curious.

Well, dear reader, you might know that Canada officially uses the metric system, just like Germany. But appliances up here still use the imperial system. That means the oven was set in degrees Fahrenheit. Our Germans, mistakenly assuming they were working with degrees Celsius, had set the oven to a measly 180 degrees Fahrenheit. That's not even enough to boil water. At that rate, they could thaw the pizza, but not much more.

I love this anecdote for all the layers it contains: checking your assumptions, investigating early when things don't go as expected, and, most importantly, the lesson that in some cases, if you don't crank the temperature (or whatever other important ingredient) up enough, you'll never get to your desired outcome.

The business version of this: For any initiative, there's a minimum required "temperature". Too little, and the entire effort is wasted. The topical example are the countless AI initiatives that businesses run that amount to little else than having a few employees dabble in ChatGPT.

Crank up the heat, or you'll be waiting forever for the desired results.