3rd October, 2021
Week 40/52
Image: Tesla Coil, by me
⏱ Complicate
We often talk about simplifying things. But, paradoxically, when we look at those people who have been successful and study their methods we find they have done the opposite: they have gotten beyond complexity.
There are those who like to glorify the complicated. They talk about how long it takes for others to understand what they work on. But actually this just exposes them as somebody who hasn’t gotten over the hump that lets them see and describe the simplicity on the far side.
It’s not binary: simple vs complicated.
It’s a progression: simplistic → complicated → simplified.
Source: Diagram & Model via David Slyfield1
The goal in the first transition (from simplistic → complicated) is to understand the details, so we have a more complete understanding of the thing we’re working on. As we get into those weeds we’re going to learn the nuances, edge cases, exceptions, and trade-offs. It’s going to get complicated. But we need to keep pressing.
The key to the second transition (from complicated → simplified) is to think harder about the essence, to strip away the noise and to focus on the bits we learn (normally by painful experience) actually make a difference to performance and results.2 And then, to be able to explain that in a way that others can understand too - because it’s a very rare thing that a single brilliant individual can do by themselves.3
There is a lazy expression:
Those who can: do. Those who can't: teach
I think this is bollocks.
If you can: do. That’s hard enough.
But, to be a great teacher we need to be able to both do and explain it to others in a way that develops them into somebody who can do too.
When too many of those who are trying to teach have never actually done it themselves, the whole system breaks down.
Maybe it would help if we used some of the names that we give to teachers in the private sector: mentor, adviser, director, consultant, manager, coach, etc?
I’ve found that real experts usually don’t consider themselves experts. They more often behave like students - constantly seeking improvement, asking questions, trying to understand more.
Anybody calling themselves an expert is a warning sign!
Related: The Cynefin Framework
🥋 Breathe
Whenever we make something new there is a trade-off.
Perhaps we have a fixed timeframe.
Perhaps we have a limited budget.
Perhaps we have to meet pre-agreed quality standards.
But, we can't have all of those things. We need to choose.
The memorable catch phrase is:
Good, fast or inexpensive. Choose two.
Actually we can chose two at most. Often when we build complex things we won't achieve any of those three things. We don't have to look far to find a long list of projects that are delivered late, over budget and with poor quality.
When we pick the two that we want to attempt to treat as fixed, it's useful to flip the language. Good, fast and inexpensive all sound like good things. But the combinations of two, at the expense of the third are much more difficult choices:
Maybe we have lots of money to throw at the problem, so budget isn't a constraint (this is a common choice for many start-ups right now, given the amount of capital that is available). However, this means we're choosing the expensive option - both in terms of the cash we spend immediately and the value of the equity we retain in the long run.
Maybe we think we can cut some corners on quality in order to make the build faster and cheaper. However, this just means we're leaving debts to repay in the future (this is actually sometimes the correct decision, in some specific circumstances, but I'll write more about that in a couple of weeks).
Whatever, just let's not pretend we can have all three! That always comes back to bite.
To make this even more difficult there is also a fourth variable which is sometimes overlooked or obfuscated: scope.
Scope is often conflated to include aspects of all three of the variables above. But it's actually a separate thing. It's the line we draw in advance to define our expectations - what are the anticipated features of the thing we're making?4; what can customers actually do with it?; what's it for? In my experience this is nearly always what gets compromised when the pressure comes on, in the name of trying to work within the other three constraints. Sometimes this is appropriate - it's nearly impossible to define scope specifically in advance, and when we discover the flaws in our assumptions it's usually better to adjust the plans than to be stubborn. But, sometimes it's just the easiest thing to compromise on.
I have in the past joked that the job of a product manager in a start-up is to manage infinite lists.
I wasn't really joking.
In a start-up there is only business-as-usual. We are never finished.
As I’ve said elsewhere:
This can be tough to understand for technical people who have predominantly worked in a project environment, for example as you would commonly experience in a consulting business. In that world, projects have a defined beginning and end and then everybody moves onto the next project, and the software moves into “business-as-usual” or maintenance mode.
Source: Product Management, by me
It’s a difficult adjustment to make. When we're building something new we really only have two options:
Understand and accept the trade-off between good, fast and inexpensive;
Be impatient.
I appreciate the first option isn’t very popular at the moment. In fact, it’s almost old fashioned.
But I also know that everybody I know who has built something worthwhile has ignored all of that and focussed on quality and efficiency, and on sustaining themselves through the longer-than-we-think it actually takes.
So, breathe.
In through the nose. Out through the mouth.
Deal?
🏉 Win
Indulge me just a little here...
In the aftermath of the Rugby Championships, which completed in the last fortnight with two dramatic games against South Africa, split one win each and both decided by a last minute penalty goal, the headlines are predictably apocalyptic:
On Stuff: All Blacks suffer shock loss to Springboks
And on NZ Herald: World Media react to ABs loss
Honestly, I think we significantly over-estimate how much attention the world's media pays to rugby in general and All Blacks games especially. This particular article references two separate stories from South Africa and one from an online Welsh news site. 🤨
When reflecting on a rare loss, we quickly forget that we are living in the golden age. The All Blacks are winning now more than ever before. Significantly more, actually.
Don't believe me? Let's quantify it...5
During the decade from 2010 to 2019 the All Blacks won 87% of the games they played. Another 3% were drawn.
So, yes, they are winning more than ever. That includes the early days of the Invincibles or the legendary 60s era older folks remember so fondly.
And they playing more than ever too!
In the 20 years since the first World Cup in 1987 they have played 382 tests and won 314 of them. That’s an 82% win record while playing more than twice as many games as were played in the previous 80 years.
In the professional era (starting 1996) they have won 83% overall. But, what about just the games against the best teams during that time?
(I'm using a slightly bespoke definition of "best" here - the table includes the three other countries that have won Rugby World Cups, plus France, who have lost three finals. Readers from Wales, Ireland and Argentina may object to their omission. Unfortunately the last time Wales beat the All Blacks was in 1953, and the other two only recorded their first wins ever in recent years. I'll be as delighted as anybody to expand this list in years to come, based on results).
So even against the very best they still win three times as often as they lose.6
Of course, the only problem with sustained exceptional performance like this is that it comes to be taken for granted.
Let’s remember: these are the good ol' days!
Top Three is a weekly collection of things I notice in 2021. I’m writing it for myself, and will include a lot of half-formed work-in-progress, but please feel free to follow along and share it if it’s interesting to you.
I learned about this idea and the expression “simplicity on the far side of complexity” from David Slyfield. You likely won’t recognise his name, and that’s the way he likes it, but if you’re a sports fan I guarantee you know nearly all of the people he’s worked with and worked on over the years - not even a full list but let’s start with Rob Waddell, Sarah Ulmer, Hamish Carter, Barbara Kendall, Cameron Brown, Sarah Walker, Blair Tuke & Peter Burling etc etc. He is not only a great teacher but also the canonical #QuietOne.
If you want to learn a methodical method for doing this, try starting with the Feynman Learning Technique
Sometimes technical people call this “functionality”. But, that's a word I've discovered is meaningless to most non-technical people. It’s nearly always better to talk about what the user does than what the software does.
This is an update of a table I published in a blog post in 2007.
Or should that be “we” win and “they” lose? 🤭