Brilliance is…
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“Some years ago I spent a week giving an in-house program design course at a manufacturing company in the mid-west of the United States. On the Friday afternoon it was all over. The DP Manager, who had arranged the course and was paying for it out of his budget, asked me into his office.
“`What do you think?’ he asked. He was asking me to tell him my impressions of his operation and his staff. `Pretty good,’ I said. `You’ve got some good people there.’ Program design courses are hard work; I was very tired; and staff evaluation consultancy is charged extra. Anyway, I knew he really wanted to tell me his own thoughts.
“`What did you think of Fred?’ he asked. `We all think Fred is brilliant.’ `He’s very clever,’ I said. `He’s not very enthusiastic about methods, but he knows a lot about programming.’ `Yes,’ said the DP Manager. He swivelled round in his chair to face a huge flowchart stuck to the wall: about five large sheets of line printer paper, maybe two hundred symbols, hundreds of connecting lines. `Fred did that. It’s the build-up of gross pay for our weekly payroll. No one else except Fred understands it.’ His voice dropped to a reverent hush. `Fred tells me that he’s not sure he understands it himself.’
“`Terrific,’ I mumbled respectfully. I got the picture clearly. Fred as Frankenstein, Fred the brilliant creator of the uncontrollable monster flowchart. `But what about Jane?’ I said. `I thought Jane was very good. She picked up the program design ideas very fast.’
“`Yes,’ said the DP Manager. `Jane came to us with a great reputation. We thought she was going to be as brilliant as Fred. But she hasn’t really proved herself yet. We’ve given her a few problems that we thought were going to be really tough, but when she finished it turned out they weren’t really difficult at all. Most of them turned out pretty simple. She hasn’t really proved herself yet — if you see what I mean?’
“I saw what he meant.”
~ Software Requirements & Specifications by Michael Jackson
A client sent me this just the other day and it made me laugh out loud. What a wonderful story. It speaks to our capacity to make things complicated – and how that generates the Bad Work that consumes way too much of our time and our life.
A model I like – and which I’ve seen both here and here – says that processes can be put into one of three camps…
1. Simple
Like baking a cake. Follow a few steps, and you’ll pretty much get to where you want to go.
2. Complicated
Like launching a space shuttle. Or baking a really complicated cake. Lots of step by steps, project management, flow charts … but get it all done and in the right order, and you’re likely to get that rocket into space.
3. Complex
Like a flock of birds. Birds don’t have a long list of to-do’s or rules and procedures on how to fly. They follow two or three key principles, and that allows them to decide the best behaviour. If you imagine one of those big swirling flocks of starlings, they 1. stay as close to the other birds as possible 2. fly towards to center of the flock, and 3. don’t run into any other bird.
These simple rules allow them to become a self-guided, self-governing group. (You can learn more about boids, the computer program that first helped describe this, here)
The problem is…
We default to complicated – over-management, excess rules, prescriptions on this that and the other – when we as humans are actually complex, and respond best to clear principles on how to act.
Of course, there are times when detailed and specific rules on how to act are appropriate. But, as Dan Pink and others have described, this is the work that is typically outsourced and off-shored. For those of us working in organizations today, over-prescription tends to do nothing but create bureaucracy – and Bad Work.
Great Work requires you to be like a bird, not a piece of machinery.
Tags: complexity, Dan Pink
I recommend Jonathan Livingstone Seagull by Richard Bach if you enjoyed and identified with this post.
Michael,
Please indulge me in my childlike enthusiasm. I’ve said this out loud maybe 5 times this summer after finishing one of your blogs. And I thought it may please you to actually hear it:
You. Rock.
Your friendly and elegant flair for piecing things together is a benefit to society as we aim to to create a world that’s much much more fun.
I’ve officially started the MBS Rock-o-meter count. I’ll keep you posted on its progress.
Mireille Albert
Nice way to look at it. Also seems to gracefully accept the word “needlessly” as one moves through the various categories. I would expect this also helps categorize the type of innovations that would be anticipated. For complicated – step reduction/simplification. For Complex – relationship clarity and such. And I love the story, of course I would have laughed harder if the problem hadn’t been named ‘Fred.’
Brilliantly put! I’ve often used the “multiple drivers on a freeway” for the simple rules in complex situation, but this is much more elegant and understandable.
It is pity we can not have an opinion of birds (yet) on what is simple and complicated for them. My assumption is that for birds forming a flock is pretty simple.
Somebody said: “Things are complicated until they become simple.”
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Thanks for this, I can’t tell you how perfect the Complexity reference was…I referenced you in my own latest blog post. Lovely, lovely post.