I recently listened to a podcast where Lex Friedman interviewed Elon Musk and they discussed Musk’s five-step process for problem-solving with emphasis on step two “Delete a part or a process” where he explains that you need to delete so much that you have to put something back. As an engineer, this makes me uncomfortable and it feels wasteful. However, he said this is to overcome our nature to add complexity.
What if he is right, Are companies destined to accumulate complexity over time? If your company has been around for many years are things more complicated than they were 10 years ago, 40 years ago? Are we trying to fix complexity by adding more complexity? How much more admin is in your job as compared to the past? Is there more complexity because technology makes it easier (for instance, it is easier to collect data or measure something at tighter tolerances because the is now available) or are we trying to reduce risk to the point that it does not make sense?
It feels like there is a point that this complexity adds too much cost.