Parcels are getting stolen outside. So you get them inside. They get stolen inside too. Now what?

I had a version of that conversation in a building this week.

First, we worked out what was actually happening. Where were the parcels going now? Which entrances were drivers using? Where did the building want them left?

There wasn’t one answer. Parcels were ending up in different places depending on the driver, the entrance and what happened when they got there.

So we talked about a better process.

Pick the best available parcel location. Get the driver to the right entrance, through the right door and then to that spot.

That’s when the fair question came up:

But parcels get stolen from inside too. What’s the point?

If the only measure of success is whether theft disappears immediately, maybe there isn’t one.

But right now everything is mixed together. Some parcels are outside. Some are inside. Some are at the wrong entrance. Some are scattered around the lobby.

If we can consistently get them to one place, we’ve removed a lot of that noise.

For that to happen, the process has to work all the way through.

If I tell a driver to use a particular entrance and they get there only to find a locked door, I haven’t built a process. I’ve built an instruction that fails.

They still have a parcel in their hand and a route to finish. They’ll buzz someone, tailgate in, try another entrance or leave it somewhere else. Do that a few times and why would they keep following the instruction?

That’s where Amazon Key comes into this particular process. If the locked entrance is where it is likely to fall apart, remove that obstacle and keep the driver moving towards the destination we’ve chosen.

Now suppose parcels still get stolen.

If they’re consistently landing in the same place, we’ve still learnt something important: we can control where they go.

The problem is no longer parcel theft across a whole building. It’s how to secure one location.

Maybe that means a parcel room. Maybe lockers. Maybe something simpler.

But if owners are going to spend real money on that next step, we’ve already answered one important question: will the drivers actually get the parcels there?

That’s very different from building a secure parcel room and hoping they use it.

The problem at the start was enormous: parcels are getting stolen.

The first step might not stop that.

But if it gets the parcels where we want them, we know what to solve next.