Metadata
- Author: John Cutler
- Full Title:: TBM 242: The Simplicity Fetish
- Category:: 🗞️Articles
- Document Tags:: Company culture,
- URL:: https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-242-the-simplicity-fetish
- Finished date:: 2023-09-14
Highlights
In both stories, we find an “impedance mismatch” between the complexity of the problem and the systems or time allocated to solve them. No matter how hard we try, we cannot bend a problem or situation requiring nuanced communication into a purely transactional, stable, and unchanging problem. The harder we try to do that (or the more we are forced by our environment, incentives, skills, etc.), the harder it becomes to find a way forward. What might have been difficult but within reach now becomes intractable. (View Highlight)
What would it look like if we could ask, “how do I make this the absolute best environment for complex problem-solving” instead of “how do I take away all these annoying hard problems.” The stuff we want to accomplish in the world is hard. But can be joyful to accomplish. (View Highlight)
Try as we might—and as uncomfortable as this makes driven managers leaders—we can’t cheat the physics of complex, socio-technical systems. We can “dance” with the system, but we can’t bend the system to our will (thank you, Donella Meadows). (View Highlight)
how much people look for ways to make complex problems easy rather than make it easy to work on complex problems (View Highlight)