Simplifying the view doesn’t make the system less complex

This is a quick follow-up to yesterday’s post.

Imagine you have a system with many nodes, relations and perspectives. The closer you look, the more details you find. You can put this onto a flat 2D drawing board to visually share it with others. In your head it will stay more or less four-dimensional, at least if you think like me. You might have a clear imagination of nodes interacting, processes happening in parallel (third dimension), and the system changing over time (the fourth dimension). I love system models like that. I really do!

A model of that level of complexity has its many downsides. One of my bigger issues is to explain things in a simple way. I simply cannot. Reducing them to two dimensions is painful for me. For every aspect I explain I want to mention all the relations and dependencies. I want that the person across can build a mental model similar to mine. And that they have all the information relevant to understand the innards of said system.

Not everybody cares about this level of details. Often they are not relevant to the person or maybe too intimidating. When you look at a convoluted process model, it scares people away. When you have a product where you need to read a 100 page manual, you won’t use it. Nearly nobody is willing to go on the level of detail if they don’t absolutely have to (job) or want to (interest, hobby).

Try to abstract the model and simplify it to a view of the system that is easier to digest, at least for a start. People want simple solutions. People don’t like change. The more detailed you look into a model, the more often someone has to adjust their model. They have to ask additional questions, get clarifications, understand different perspectives and motives. This takes time and energy. And if there is no personal benefit in this, why would you make that investment.

Looking back to my 2016 workshop “Quality eats process for breakfast!”. I asked a participant to describe me the process of “making a good cup of coffee”. The process was described to me more or less as: Put ground coffee into the machine, put water into the machine, switch on the machine, wait, enjoy coffee. Simple, right? I don’t drink coffee and I rarely make coffee, I cannot evaluate if this results in good coffee myself. But I have two friends who know a lot about coffee. When talking or just listening to them, I heard things like roasting of beans, coarseness of grinding, water temperature, pressure, pre-heated cups, and so on.

What I try to say is, when you simplify a model, the complexity beneath it doesn’t go away. You just lower the bar for time and energy investment to start looking into the topic. Creating a simpler view of a topic doesn’t actually simplify it. And remember that you have started with a simple view on the topic yourself. Then you started digging. Now is the time to simplify again what you learned and maybe improve the simple view. Provide a better simple view than what you started with.
This applies to every topic around you. Products and processes, companies, cities, countries, relations on every level. There are simple views that help to survive, but if you want to understand the system, start digging.

I started in IT in 2000. And the motto of the company I started with was “Plan – Build – Run”. Yes, you can simplify IT projects to that degree. We all know that the reality is not that simple. IT projects have a lot in common with sausage making. When you know too many details you might not want any more sausage.

When I look into my hobby of woodturning, the complexity is shear endless. And I have only scratched on the surface over the past 15 years. Take a piece of wood, put it between centers, start the motor and hold a piece of (sharpened) metal in the way of the wood until you removed everything that you don’t want. That’s as simple as you can describe it. Or wait: A potential buyer might not even be interested in the process, as long as a piece of interest is on the table to acquire. Magic happens. Bowl appears. Want bowl. Done! Is that helpful? To some it might be, and the others need to start asking questions.

Be curious, ask questions, dive deeper and enjoy the complexity.