Out Of Control
Brad Feld and Ian Hathaway on building entrepreneurial ecosystems that thrive:
Complex systems cannot be controlled. We have deep human impulses to want to control things, but this is an illusion as we are in control of very little. In startup communities, any effort to control or engineer a desired outcome is futile. Our advice is much bigger than “don’t try to control.” Instead, we suggest that you “let go of the illusion that you are in control.”
Which reads like an invitation to do nothing.
Alex Danco on World Building and Antifragility:
System problems cannot be fixed in one step, nor can they be fixed in a sequence of linear steps. Why not? Because when systems find a steady state -- which is probably where you're encountering them, if you're setting out to change something - they're "steady" not because they're static, but because they're dynamically held in place by feedback loops. If you try to change one variable, you can apply as much effort as you like, but the minute you let go, the system will just snap right back to its original configuration. If you want to change how a system works, and move the system into a new steady state that's closer to your goal, sequential effort won't do much. What you need is parallel effort: you need several different things to happen, all at the same time, for the system to actually move in the direction that you want and stay there.
It isn't.
It is an instruction to change the shape of the effort.
The system is not stuck because you pushed too gently. It is stuck because everything else is holding it where it is.
One variable, pushed hard, snaps back the moment you let go. Several, moved at the same time, take the whole thing with them.
So the work is gardening, not steering.
There is no wheel to hold. Just enough things watered at once that the garden does not revert to lawn.