Big Bang & The Immutable Laws of Nature

Think Big. But do it Smaller & Shorter.

Enterprise organisations have a habit of trying to do big things, all in one go. Big Bang.

Big Bangs and solve-it-all technology solutions inevitably fail. Not because of mysterious hexes or bad luck, but due to well understood immutable laws of nature.

1. We Do Smaller, Simpler, Things Better

We find it easier to achieve smaller simpler things. Take an easy, simple thing and make it bigger and more complex, and the rate of success falls. That’s how people work.

Put people together it teams and organisations, and things get harder still. Teams can do more, but they are also harder to coordinate, and above a certain size, almost impossible to coordinate. Human teams don’t scale linearly.

Technology, in particular, is rife with unpredictability, complexity, bugs and traps. Aggregating technology is a bad idea.

2. We’re Not Clear

We are not very good to understanding the problem we’re trying to solve at the first go. Even at the eleventh go we still don’t always get it.

It’s not just listening. We’re also not very good at expressing our needs for others to understand. Sometimes we change our minds. And sometimes the world changes and our needs change with it.

Human communication is noisy. That’s reality.

3. We Make Mistakes

We’re not robots. We make things imperfectly.

And sometimes we just plain screw them up.

Enterprises denying these laws of nature are either ignorant or arrogant.