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Steph Ango

CEO at Obsidian

What can we remove? Our bias is to always add more. More rules, more procedures, more code, more features, more stuff. Interdependencies proliferate, and gradually strangle us. Systems want to grow and grow, but without pruning, they collapse. Slowly, then spectacularly. When a piece of trash drifts across the beach, it is our duty to pick it up so the next person can enjoy a pristine shoreline. When a thousand pieces litter the beach, it is too late. We can only lament the landscape. That’s just how beaches are now. A good system is designed to be periodically cleared of cruft. It has a built-in counterbalance. Without this pressure, our bias drives us to add band-aid after band-aid, until the only choice is to destroy the whole system and start from scratch. Why is it so much easier to add than to remove? Maybe because we attach our identity to what is visible. But there is a difference between the ornamentation that defines our style and the vestigial burdens we carry. Remember those who did the invisible work of removing. Their legacy was not to build a sand castle, but to care for the beautiful beach on which we play.

  • Our bias is to always add more. More rules, more procedures, more code, more features, more stuff. Interdependencies proliferate, and gradually strangle us. Systems want to grow and grow, but without pruning, they collapse. Slowly, then spectacularly. When a piece of trash drifts across the beach, it is our duty to pick it up so the next person can enjoy a pristine shoreline. When a thousand pieces litter the beach, it is too late. We can only lament the landscape. That’s just how beaches are now. A good system is designed to be periodically cleared of cruft. It has a built-in counterbalance. Without this pressure, our bias drives us to add band-aid after band-aid, until the only choice is to destroy the whole system and start from scratch. Why is it so much easier to add than to remove? Maybe because we attach our identity to what is visible. But there is a difference between the ornamentation that defines our style and the vestigial burdens we carry.
Silvio Casagrande

Building effective and successful pre sales teams

4mo

Continuing with the analogies, I think that we tend to connect with the things that we created/acquired. With my family, we moved across 3 continents, 4 countries and +12 apartments/houses... We learnt by brute force to abandon/drop things, and it always surprises me how much you can accumulate in a few months. Now, I have to cleanse the apartment where my mother lived once, and I found things that have been in boxes for +20 years, and still, it is hard to decide what to drop. I went to the apartment the first time with the rule "If I haven't opened this box in the last 10 years, then anything there I do not need at all. To the recycle bin!" And still... This is just one picture (of 1000's) in one box that never opened in +20yrs. A picture my father took in Colombia in the early '60s when working there. I returned with a full box of memories...

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