“Why is this so difficult?” I asked. We were diligently poring over our business plan for 2011.
“Part of it, it’s difficult to look at the larger picture when you have your nose down in the dirt,” Ellen replied. “Our work volume is increasing, but we are not committed to increasing our overhead. We don’t trust the market. This is very complex.”
“But, your company is used to dealing with complexity,” I nodded encouragement.
“This is different. Detailed complexity, we can handle. I mean, we have a staff of computer geniuses, who can write code to handle a hundred thousand details. But, this is different. You can’t write a computer program to deal with this complexity.”
“Why not?” I pressed.
“This complexity is not detailed complexity. And that’s why this planning exercise is so difficult,” Ellen shook her head. “This complexity comes from uncertainty. You cannot write a computer program to deal with things you do not know.”
As a computer specialist, I totally agree. Too often, we IT professionals attempt to use “logic” instead of creativity and dealing with uncertainty. Your blog is awesome Tom!
Dealing with things you do not know is work.
That is what we are paid for.
That is life nothing is certain, we lay our best plans taking into account the risks closest to occur and we start executing the project & modifying the plans as we work .
With experience we gain the ability to make more efficient plans, plans that work.
As stated in this post, it is easy to miss the big picture when getting caught up in the minutia. It is like examining grains of dirt when you have never seen the beach as a whole. It is a trap easy to fall into because individual aspects of any situation rarely change and are easy to diagnose, whereas the whole is constantly changing and harder to examine, its easier just to “keep your nose to the ground”