TBM 389: Overthinker!

From a young age, being accused of “overcomplicating” or “overthinking” things felt like a dismissal of who I was. 

Later, in professional settings, I struggled to stay calm when I witnessed reductionist ideas being used (often by those in power) in ways that harmed others. That pattern became my kryptonite, and if you’ve read my work, you’ve likely seen the fingerprints of that struggle everywhere.

Lately, I’ve given a lot of thought to reductionism and reductionists, as well as the concept sometimes referred to as “embracing complexity,” systems thinking, or complexity. I’ve thought about it personally in terms of both personal and professional identity, as well as how people interact in the workplace.

I’ve been thinking about the “overthinking” kid who wanted to feel accepted and helpful, and what they became over the years.

This post is about finding a third way that allows me to act without distorting reality or betraying who I am, and about coming to terms with how I navigate work environments.

Reductionism

Structure-first reductionism assumes that if you “get the org chart / process / operating model right,” human behavior will naturally align.

People-first reductionism assumes that if you “hire good people” or “fix the culture,” everything else will fall into place.

Three-bucket reductionism assumes that if you treat “people, process, and technology” as discrete levers, you can pull the right one and the system will improve.

Systems-thinking reductionism believes that if you map out everything influencing the system and understand exactly how it all connects, then acting on the “right leverage point” will make the whole thing magically tip in your favor.

Humans are very good at reductionism. 

Biology favors fast, good-enough decisions. We can only hold a limited amount of information in working memory. The brain interprets uncertainty as potential danger. Under threat, we reduce, compress, and latch onto whatever seems controllable. We tend to gravitate toward linear narratives with straightforward cause-and-effect relationships. Reductionism is a hedge against existential anxiety.

In many contexts, reductionism is often the most effective approach. It is fast, energy-efficient, and usually the only way to get started. As a temporary step to make a problem actionable, and as a reasonable step for bounded problems, it is one of the most effective human tools we have. 

Reductionism can be wrong, but actionable.

Complexity can be right, but paralyzing.

A Polarity

I think this is why many Eastern traditions don’t ask you to pick one. They treat reduction and complexity not as competing truths, but as lenses through which you move. Both are useful as long as you don’t become too attached to them.

The Two Truths doctrine, developed in early Buddhism and formalized by the philosopher Nāgārjuna, distinguishes between conventional and ultimate truth.

Conventional truth is the world of models, categories, and simplifications. Ultimate truth is the underlying reality that is far more fluid and integrated than any model can capture. The teaching isn’t to pick one or the other, but to use reductionist tools without mistaking them for reality.

Or as Zen tradition puts it, “Do not mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon.”

A Demand

The same pattern shows up outside philosophy. Experienced organizers and movement leaders navigate this tension daily.

Activists deeply understand complexity. They know movements behave in nonlinear ways, spread through networks, and produce unpredictable tipping points. However, they also recognize that if you attempt to explain the entire system, you lose the audience. Sometimes the only way to win is to answer reductionism with a clearer, sharper reduction of your own. As Saul Alinsky put it, “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” Marshall Ganz teaches organizers that strategy is “turning what you have into what you need to get what you want.” Even Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” 

None of them were arguing for oversimplification, just that without clarity and a tangible ask, you never advance your cause.

An Interaction

I deeply appreciate Peter Block’s writing. He speaks often about engagement, human needs, and relationships, while refusing to sugarcoat or oversimplify reality. Block reminds us that change does not come from better models, but from people choosing to take responsibility. I want to note here that Block’s call to “take responsibility” is not a scolding about personal accountability. Rather, it is an invitation to create the conditions where people choose responsibility because they feel a sense of ownership, agency, and connection.

He warns, “If the client does not own the problem, the solution will not matter.” His critique of expert-driven (reductionist) diagnosis is blunt: “What is fundamentally corrupt in the process is the idea that one person knows and the other does not.” Instead of control, he emphasizes presence, personal vulnerability to go deeper, and participation: “We cannot force others to go deeper, but we can make the dive ourselves and hope others will follow.”

Block doesn’t deny complexity, but he refuses to hide behind it. He treats engagement itself as the strategy.

A Prototype (And Everyday Life)

Design futures thinkers like Cameron Tonkinwise make a similar point from a different angle. Tonkinwise argues that you cannot simply model or speculate your way into a new system. You have to prototype it, live into it, and let practice reveal what a different future makes possible.

As he puts it, “Designing is the process of making futures… making futural possibilities partially real in the present so that they can be evaluated and detailed; chief among these are: prototypes.” Terry Irwin expands on this by emphasizing that change must be embedded in lived experience, not just in frameworks: “The many socio-technical sectors which the [MLP framework] seeks to transition need to be symbiotically integrated at the micro, meso and macro levels of scale of human experience / everyday life.”

And as Ezio Manzini reminds us, “Small, local, open, and connected interventions can trigger significant changes.” System change starts small (practically “reduced”), not because we are ignoring complexity, but because action is how we learn to work within it.

A Path

So where am I going with all this?

The reality is that we will encounter many people in our work lives who are certain they understand how things work and why things are broken. They will put you in a box, and being placed in a box feels terrible. Not too long ago, I was told by a manager to “stick to your superpower, workshops,” as if 1) we only have one superpower and must live inside it, and 2) the only acceptable way to express my thinking was to translate it into something digestible, time-boxed, and non-threatening.

That didn’t feel great.

Corporate environments are filled with confident simplifiers, but also filled with equally confident critics determined to expose them with the messy truth.

But as Imre Lakatos noted, it isn’t enough to point out that reductionism is flawed. If your alternative doesn’t generate better predictions or more useful interventions, you’re just running what he called a  “degenerating research program.” It may be more nuanced or more philosophically correct, but if it doesn’t help people intervene more effectively in the world, it is functionally less useful than the flawed theory it opposes.

In other words, you don’t win by being right in principle.

You win by being useful in practice.

And I think the point I’m trying to get at here is that we become useful by acting, prototyping together, engaging, interacting, and connecting. While also sensing and finding ways to grapple with (but never fully understand) the ultimate truth.

We use our bias for action AND bias for reflection and sensing.

To my fellow “overcomplicaters”…let’s make it happen! If not us, then who?