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KiSS - Keep it Simple, Stupid! The complexity of simplicity.
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Greetings!
"The diffrense between a person and an angel is easy. Most of an angel is in the inside and most of a person is on the outside."
~ Anna, from "Mister God, this is Anna" ~
 A simple statement from a four (five? six?) year old. What does that simple statement say to you? Does it speak of the wholeness and integrity of the one and of the fragmented dissonance of the other? Is there a difference in how secure an angel is compared to a person? Which one is characterized by giving and which one by getting? Is that statement as simple as it first sounded now?
Simple things, or what we think of as simple things, are often undergirded by a mind-boggling web of complex structures and endless processes. Is walking simple? It is if you are in full possession of the systems normally found in a human body. We do not need to think about the mechanism of walking. We simply decide where we wish to go and walk there. None of us ever thinks about the millions, perhaps trillions, of nerve signals that are sent back and forth in order for walking to even be possible. No one recognizes what an incredible feat of strength it is to be able to stand upright in the first place! Few understand the full extent of the co-ordination between visual signals, impulses from the cochlea in the inner ear and the many muscles required for walking to take place. Few, that is, except perhaps for those involved in robotics and those aspiring to build artificial persons, or rather, artificial human bodies and those involved in bionics.
How about a single cell? That should be simple enough. Many people would know of nucleus and cytoplasm. Some might remember ribosomes, golgi apparatus, endoplasmic reticulum, centrioles, mitochondria and so on. However, few are acquainted with the mind-boggling complexity that makes just a single cell appear more complex than an entire universe! Watch this short video clip to get an idea!
One more simple example. Have you heard of how a difference of just one degree causes water to boil? Water doesn't boil at 99 degrees C, it boils at 100 degrees C at what is known as Standard Temperature and Pressure (STP). This is often used by motivational speakers to remind people that "It's always darkest before the dawn", "Success is just around the corner", "One more step and they would have made it", and so on. Whoa. I mean really. Take a step back. Remember what the latent heat of vaporization is? Yes, the amount of energy required to overcome the forces holding water molecules together. It happens to be quite a fair bit of energy, which is probably one of the contributing factors why "a watched pot never boils"!
 So what has this got to do with business? Just a little, perhaps. Being aware that trends might be something else. That all the data in your Business Intelligence (BI) systems is actually pointing to something other than what your analysts believe and are telling you. That the anthropologists you have deployed in various countries around the globe so you can predict localized market needs in order to provide products, services and systems tailored to what people want have been feeding you with what they have been observing, but people aren't buying your stuff. It isn't always that way, of course. This issue is to remind all of us to appreciate all the hard work and dedication our people put in so that our processes, customer interface, etc., become seamless and simple. Let your people know you appreciate them today! |
I have known Patrick Wee since 2006. Both of us were then associate trainers with Lifeskills Enrichment Pte Ltd.