While reading a fascinating discussion of inefficiency of traffic control systems—road signs, traffic lights, etc—in Matthew May’s In Pursuit of Elegance, I came across this interesting thought:
When you are fully involved in a process governed by very simple relationship rules, a natural inclination takes over, and a self-organized pattern emerges that is more orderly than anything legislation could produce. Under those circumstances, you’re connected and interacting with what’s around you. Lose that connection, and a mess ensues.
Immediately, one of the tenets of the Agile Manifesto sprang to mind:
The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
Self-organization is better than prescriptive governance. Lucky are the companies that understand this.
We don’t need most of the things that surround us
Ben Hamilton-Baillie, a British urban designer, is quoted saying this about inefficiencies of traffic controls:
What’s wrong with how we engineer things is that most of what we accept as proper order of things is based on assumptions, not observations. If we observed first, designed second, we wouldn’t need most of the things we build.
I’ll go so far as to say we don’t need most of the software in existence.
To his point, in spite of the billions spent each year around the world on installing and maintaining traffic controls, there’s absolutely no comprehensive research anywhere to demonstrate the benefits of traffic signals—in either the context of traffic flow or safety—but there are a number of studies showing their detrimental effect.
Sounds familiar? All those CRM, ERP, CIM, etc, systems—just about everything with the word “Enterprise” in its name—aren’t worth the time, money, or headache.
Why?
Because the vast majority of software lacks elegance. The kind of elegance that actually solves problems.
We come to the table with assumptions, not observations. This, to a great extent, is why the “Big 3” American car manufacturers are in the red. This is why the Toyotas and Hondas of the world leapfrogged them. It’s a cultural issue, rooted on the power of observing and subtracting clutter.
[The core philosophy of engineers and executives of Toyota]: they both believe that the job, any job, simply cannot be done in an office, from behind the desk, drawing conclusions and making decisions solely on the basis of reading reports.
That’s what Police Chief William Bratton did in NYC: he focused on the statistically measly 3% of crimes perpetrated on the subway. It’s the Broken Windows Paradox at work. The only way to see it was to put cops on the streets and subways, observe what happened, and act on it (incidentally, good software helped centralize the knowledge base).
Stop trying to regulate risk
The more we try to control and regulate our risk, the more exposed and at risk we are, because the more protected from hazards we think we are, the less conscious of potentials dangers we become.
Even thought it has been said in the context of, again, traffic control systems, this quote reminds of the Chemical Burn scene from Fight Club.
Get the book!
In Pursuit of Elegance is an excellent book (and a blog). Its theme is finding that “elusive element behind many innovative breakthroughs in the fields of ranging from physics and marketing to design and popular culture.”
Who knew Jackson Pollock’s paintings were of highly fractal nature… even before the word “fractal” was invented?
