Should we be trying to “reduce complexity?” An executive walks into a meeting room, clearly exasperated. It's been a long day of back-to-back meetings, conflicting priorities, and a growing sense that everything is becoming unmanageable. Normally, they don't attend this meeting but need answers for the CEO.
I so agree with this distinction! I would love to do complex, challenging work, and be able to focus on that work without navigating too many dependencies and ever-changing priorities.
And from personal experience, I know that constant high cognitive load in a complex adaptive system can easily lead to burnout.
This is a great point, some things are just complex and executives should create an environment where those things can get done.
I do think if you're the person running or coordinating this work, you have a responsibility to communicate it clearly. You should know what context the executive needs to understand and make a decision. If you're doing a death march through word walls of updates you probably didn't spend enough time thinking about how to communicate your points and get the decisions you need.
Good point about reducing complexity not only being misguided, but principally limited due to the inherent complexity of product work - linked to what some are calling the "physics of flow".
I like the notion of "bounded bubbles of complexity" to avoid or at least limit the impact of local complexity on other teams. Goldratt's book "Rules of Flow" points out some other aspects like controlling work in process (avoid overload), reducing multitasking (avoid waste), providing full-kits (avoid start-stop) etc.
I so agree with this distinction! I would love to do complex, challenging work, and be able to focus on that work without navigating too many dependencies and ever-changing priorities.
And from personal experience, I know that constant high cognitive load in a complex adaptive system can easily lead to burnout.
This is a great point, some things are just complex and executives should create an environment where those things can get done.
I do think if you're the person running or coordinating this work, you have a responsibility to communicate it clearly. You should know what context the executive needs to understand and make a decision. If you're doing a death march through word walls of updates you probably didn't spend enough time thinking about how to communicate your points and get the decisions you need.
Focus / less priorities are essential and executives can contribute there.
Good point about reducing complexity not only being misguided, but principally limited due to the inherent complexity of product work - linked to what some are calling the "physics of flow".
I like the notion of "bounded bubbles of complexity" to avoid or at least limit the impact of local complexity on other teams. Goldratt's book "Rules of Flow" points out some other aspects like controlling work in process (avoid overload), reducing multitasking (avoid waste), providing full-kits (avoid start-stop) etc.