Thread by @johncutlefish

🧵a huge challenge with scaling B2B SaaS is the exploding complexity problem.

through heroics and brute force you can try to contain the problem...until you can't. At which point it consumes everything.

Why does it happen? ... (1/n)

first is the general non-linear nature of the problem

innocently we imagine that adding a new product (or person, segment, etc.), for example, is like going from 10 to 12. Instead, it is like going from 10 to 20.

you quickly overwhelm systems designed for linear things...(2/n)

second, is that the exact efforts to contain the problem at first -- the heroics, the longer hours, the more complex meetings, the project plans, the dependency wrangling -- HIDE THE PROBLEM.

It just gets soaked up into our brains and our processes (3/n)

in fact, if you punish the systems thinkers and empaths who sense the impending wave for being "problem focused" or "not pragmatic and in the here and now" ... you lose, perhaps, your only early warning system.

JUST TRY HARDER...(4/n)

...it is easy to explain away what is happening as a management problem or process problem. Oh hey, lets hire in a new level of management...that will do the trick!

Does it? No...it actually impedes feedback loops and adds more noise ... (5/n)

so you see the classic drift into failure.

before you know it, the people who actually knew what it was like "before", leave.

normalization of deviance.

self preservation at the expense of outcomes... (6/n)

amazon.com/Drift-into-Fai…

this is hard problem, but it seems to me that that key lesson might be:

1) few things are linear in complex sociotechnical systems
2) monitor the health of feedback loops
3) listen to the messengers (don't shoot them)
4) accept the problem.... (7/n)

When someone says

"What! Are you telling me we can only do three things well? We can't do four?"

... in the back of your mind remember it isn't 3 to 4. (8/end)