We Over Complicate What We Don't Understand

I’ve been thinking a lot about complexity.

If you look at our world everything feels very complex today. Whether it’s geopolitics or software development or social upheaval everything feels like it’s so hard to unravel.

But like with all complex things, once you understand them, they become simpler. Not easier but you understand it well enough to summarize and ignore the ancillary details that may be important, but not necessary to explain the larger picture.

I think back a lot to my time at mFoundry and finding that a very high level executive was literally trolling through JIRA tickets to figure out what was going on with a project that was delayed.

And then his successor who knew every technical step needed to deploy our monolith.

At the time with both of those leaders, my main thought was… why do you feel like you need to know this? What is this level of detail and complexity doing to help either you, the company, or the project?

I’ll be honest, I never asked either of them. Probably because it felt like it wasn’t fair to ask, or because I thought I already knew the answer (let’s be real it’s totally that I thought I knew the answer lol).

Regardless of what the reason was, the outcome was a focus on complexity. Which is necessary… for practitioners. But I’d argue it isn’t necessary for anyone who isn’t doing the work.

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But Scott, doesn’t that level of deep knowledge allow for better decision making and better overall outcomes?! How can knowing LESS somehow be valuable?

The short version? Go read “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There” lol.

Longer version… There are people who need to know all the ins and outs of a system, whether that system is government or that system is a piece of software. And you need those practitioners to know how things operate in order to keep them working. However, as a leader, you don’t need to know all the grimy details.

Now that doesn’t mean you can get away with not understanding anything! Not knowing how a piece of software gets built or deployed generally is going to make it really hard to lead a team that builds and deploys software. But also, you don’t need to know what commands they need to use, or how the tickets need to be formatted, or any of the detail that is necessary to complete the task without being necessary to understand the task.

Essentially, I’m arguing for a philosophy that I held while I was in school: you should never do more work than is necessary to achieve your desired outcome.

In high school, I made a bet with my dad that I could get straight A’s through the entire tenure (specifically on the semester grading periods)… so my goal was to get a 90% in every class. If I could get more, without doing more work, I’d do it, but if I could game the system… why wouldn’t I spend the least amount of effort to get to my outcome?

Applying this to the work world, my goal is always to understand something JUST enough to be able to talk through it but not so much that I ended up being able to manage it as well as the practitioners.

My goal, in every one of these situations, is to disconnect that complexity from the workflow.

So aside from the “don’t spend more energy than you need to” of it all, there’s an additional layer that leads me to this specific desire to learn just enough to be dangerous but not so much that I understand every nuance.

The nuance is important when you’re in it, but it’s not important if you’re trying to make directional decisions as a leader.

And my goal, is to provide value where I am in a position to uniquely provide that value. My skill set is tailored to the idea of big decisions needing to be made and connections needing to be identified that people don’t normally think of. It’s not in detail oriented tasks.

As a result, my knowing about details of tasks doesn’t provide value because 1) I won’t retain the knowledge 2) I’m not going to volunteer or accept an assignment that requires me to do the detail work 3) there is someone who is more qualified and better suited to do that detail work so I won’t worry about it unless something is going wrong!

Now, I realize that a part of this is me evangelizing my point of view, but it’s also me saying… this is what’s right for me but not right for everyone. My specific role in life is more well suited to this ethos, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the right or only way to be. I need people who are detail oriented around me who can dig into the weeds and tell me where we need assistance or change.

And somehow I’ve done the very possible, which is change up what my thesis is 2/3 of the way into writing something lol.

Because while I firmly believe we’re overcomplicating life, and making it seem much harder to do things than it needs to be… that’s not the cause of problems, rather it’s a symptom of them. It’s a sign that your team isn’t built correctly.

Whether that’s in government or in software development, it’s the same, and it relates back to an article I was reading over the holidays (I wish I’d bookmarked it or copied the link but I didn’t and I can’t find it quickly so I’m just going to say… I read something about this lol) that was positing that teams built with B+ players will outperform teams built with A+ players.

And my first instinct was go say “duh”. Now… this relates back to my philosophy on not doing more work than is needed. This is going to sound really cocky, and it is, but I know that in a work setting, I have the capability of being an A+ player. At work, I have the talent, the ability, the temperament, all the things you need to be an A+ player. Which includes the cockiness to actually write that shit down.

But, I also know that one of the problems with A+ players, is that they want to win. And they want to be the leader of that winning team. But when you put a bunch of those individuals on a team, the team outcome starts becoming less of the focus and the individual outcome becomes more important. So instead of that team working harmoniously, they end up working against each other.

Let’s look at a team as an example… The Miami Heat in their first season with LeBron, D-Wade, and Bosh.

They’re a great example because having A+ players WILL raise your floor. You won’t be putting out a shit product. But there will be signs of friction. Watching that team in the moment, you could see that they would just end up trading possessions because they couldn’t all lead at the same time but they were all wired to be the best player on their team (ok, Bosh wasn’t really, and he wasn’t the most willing to be a bit player, but still let’s just roll with the metaphor).

Now again, the example also shows that the Heat went to the finals that first year, but they were ultimately undone by… the Dallas Mavericks. Now no one would argue now or then that the Mavericks were more talented. They absolutely weren’t. But they WERE a better team.

And that’s because they were built for purpose. Dirk was the unquestionable leader, doing all the little things right, being a master of footwork, and a leader on the floor showing the type of effort he was willing to expend for the team. But then the rest of the team was built with players with specific skill sets that complimented one another. They didn’t have issues with “who has the ball in the final 2 minutes”. You knew the ball was going through Jason Kidd who would unlock the team potential and either get Dirk the look he wanted, or hit Peja in the corner for a three, or do a pick and roll with Marion to get to the hoop.

And now I’m just cribbing off of Bill Simmons and talking about the secret to winning basketball, but it’s something that applies to all teams.

If you have a team full of people that know everything, have always been the smartest person in the room, and are used to doing things their way… that team just doesn’t have the ceiling you’re looking for unless you can convince some of them to be bit players, and by their nature, high performers aren’t likely to want to be bit players.

Which is why I love being an A- student. Because I can hover between two roles. Sometimes I’m needed to be a practitioner, where I’m needed on a small team to lead them or get them to focus on the task at hand. And sometimes, I’m needed to be an organizational leader, thinking more broadly, needing to act like I know all the answers and can help us achieve what we need to achieve.

So what who cares, right?

Well, the point of this all is, in the end we’re all a part of a team. Whether that is your family, your work, being a citizen, being a person generally, all of those are team memberships that you have willingly or unwillingly signed up to be a part of.

And if you got anything from this, my hope would be that it’s to look critically not at the output of your team, but rather the makeup of it. What role are you fulfilling in that team? Is it the best role for you? Or is it one you’re in out of necessity? Are you inadvertently derailing your team for your own benefit? Are you just floating along in your team, hoping that your teammates pick up the slack (ahem, please vote lol)?

Whatever your situation is, you should be critical of it, rather than accepting of it.

We’re watching the final season of stranger things (WE’RE NOT DONE NO SPOILERS PLEASE lol) and a character talks about their options when they’re in a cage, and it’s either 1) end your own suffering 2) accept your fate 3) escape. And I feel like that applies not just to being in a cage, but rather a way to look at life. Now obviously, I think there is no situation where 1 is the right answer so instead, it’s that you really should be making an active choice in your life… am I in the right spot, then if I’m not, should I accept that fate, or make a break for it?

While I would like to say I default to making a break for it, I definitely don’t. I bitch and moan like the rest of us, but most often I accept my fate. But I make sure it’s an active choice and not something that’s being thrust upon me. And I hope that even if you pick the same door of accepting your fate, you’re doing it with intention.

By the way, when you assemble bad teams, they let you get away with shit… like let’s just say kidnapping a head of state from his home and sending him to New York, where he isn’t a citizen, to be deposed and probably to rot in prison. Or try to take over Greenland, or sow discontent in Cuba, or Panama. So, don’t think this shit doesn’t have real world consequences.