Harry 0:00

Tearing a fence down without understanding what its utility is and why it was put there in the first place and what problems it was trying to solve feels so terribly foolish to me.

Narrator 0:18

You're listening to Traction Heroes. Digging in to get results with Harry Max and Jorge Arango.

Jorge 0:29

Hey, Harry, it's good to see you.

Harry 0:30

Hey, that's great to see you again, Jorge. Thanks for making time today.

Jorge 0:34

I'm always, grateful for the time that I get to spend with you. What have you been up to since we last talked?

Harry 0:40

Man. I'm excited. I got a new client, a really exciting new client. I can't, it's one of those I can't talk about. If I did, they'd have to kill me. But I so enjoy being called to do the kind of work that I feel like I'm uniquely suited to do and do work with people who value in me what I value in myself, really utilizing the diagnostic skills, utilizing my product design information architecture, background, and also being a real hands-on product leader and so, bringing all of that to a coaching and consulting relationship in a company that I respect with a leader that I admire, just brings me a lot of joy. What about yourself?

Jorge 1:34

I've just wrapped a big project that's kept me busy for the first few weeks of the year. And I'm working on, on a product actually that hopefully brings to bear some of the things that I've been writing about regards to information architecture and artificial intelligence, which is consuming so many people's thinking these days, right?

Harry 2:00

Yeah, no doubt. Excellent. Good luck on that. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help.

Jorge 2:05

I'll let you know when the time is right.

Harry 2:09

Excellent. Did you happen to bring something to share today? I know we've been going back and forth on this.

Jorge 2:15

Yeah. I have a reading that I wanted to share with you. And before I read this, I'll rephrase it by saying that this is from the early 20th century. So some of the language might be... might sound odd, I'll just say that. But I think it's very relevant. So here goes.

Harry 2:43

Okay.

Jorge 2:44

"In the matter of reforming things as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle, a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case, a certain institution or law, let us say for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, 'I don't see the use of this. Let us clear it away.' "To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer, 'if you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.' This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by subnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were, for some reason, loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. "It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question. If something is set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools, but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease."

Harry 4:39

Oh. Oh man. Talk about striking a nerve I cannot guess where that came from, but boy does it remind me of... you,Youommended a book to me a while back called Seeing Like a State, and I'm pretty sure that's not from that book, but boy oh boy, talk about, similar themes.

Jorge 5:13

I'll tell you what the book is, for the sake of folks who might wanna follow this up. So this is GK Chesterton, and it's a book called The Thing, it's a book of essays about Chesterton's religion. But this is, I think, the most famous part of it, which is where the idea of Chesterton's Fence comes from, which is I think, an important concept, especially nowadays.

Harry 5:38

This is new to me, I have to say, and I'm delighted and always a little embarrassed when something that I should probably know, I don't know and haven't encountered. Too many thoughts came to mind starting with the book I mentioned a minute ago about not understanding why things are the way they are and, not looking for the utility and history behind things and not understanding that things don't just grow there, mostly. Everything gets designed and built pretty much. Maybe the tree just grows there, but even that's probably second growth or third growth. I'm so curious, what prompted you to... like, did you dig this up specific for this conversation? Were you reading it and did it jump out at you? Like, what brought this into the foreground?

Jorge 6:38

I became aware of the idea of Chesterton's fence because of my interest in systems thinking. There's another book that has influenced me there called Systematics, where this notion of Gall's law appears, and I'm not gonna do it justice right now. I'm just gonna paraphrase by saying that the gist of it is that you can't institute a complex system from the top down. It kinda has to emerge that way. And whenever I see someone stepping into a position of leadership and taking the approach that things that their predecessors built are to be scrapped so that they can start over, I get a little nervous because I feel like there's a violation of Gall's law happening. And studying Gall's law led me to this notion of Chester's fence because this passage that I read articulates why it's so dangerous to do that, right? To just say, "Let's do away with the old and in with the new, and we're just gonna do things over. We're gonna do it over."

Harry 7:53

Yeah. As if we're so much wiser, and we're not. That wisdom comes from reflection on what's worked and what hasn't worked and why what's worked and why what hasn't worked has revealed itself over time. And to fences, good fences make good neighbors right? But it also, thinking about information architecture, I think about our, friends who founded Adaptive Path and the concept behind Adaptive Path, adaptive pathing and adaptive paths, that the lines of utility get created. You make some things easier. You make some things harder. The things you make easier, hopefully, are the things you're trying to incent, behaviors you're trying to incent, because they make things better. And the things you make harder are things you're trying to dis-incent and trying to create more friction. And this notion of fences and paths and doorways and thresholds and it cuts to the heart of Christopher Alexander's work in what are you trying to... what paths are you trying to clear so that people can move from one place to another with grace and low friction and low conflict. And tearing a fence down without understanding what its utility is and why it was put there in the first place and what problems it was trying to solve feels so terribly foolish to me. It points directly to the concept that I've been talking about with many, people for a long time of stupidity, which is deceiving oneself while trying to achieve outcomes that are the opposite of what your behavior is likely to lead to.

Jorge 9:53

Wow. Can you repeat that? That feels like one that bears listening to again.

Harry 9:58

Sure. Let me back up 'cause I'm not gonna repeat it perfectly, but I'll tell you where it came from. and I worked for a lot of really great people in my career. I'm incredibly fortunate. And then, I worked for somebody who wasn't so great. I'm not gonna mention who that was or what company it was, but I became fascinated with the concept of stupidity. And I wanted to write a book about it. And in fact, ultimately that's where the book on prioritization came from. But the idea was that there's no such thing as a stupid person in this worldview. And that stupidity is actually a result of a series of actions that lead to an outcome that's the opposite of what you say you want under conditions of self-deception. And so, if it's not self-deception, it's either a calculated risk or it's an error in judgment, or it's gambling or it's addiction or any number of things. But in situations where you're willfully ignorant or actively deceiving yourself and saying you want one thing and pursuing a set of actions and decisions and behaviors and conversations that are likely to lead to the opposite of what you say you want, and in all probability gonna harm other people and harm yourself potentially without any real gain. You cut right to the heart of what I think stupidity is.

Jorge 11:32

The word stupidity sounds a little judgy.

Harry 11:36

It is totally judgy.

Jorge 11:39

I like the word unskillfulness because it speaks to a similar idea but it... Your face leads me to believe that you're not convinced.

Harry 11:50

I'm not at all convinced. And I think the reason for that, and I don't want to get all high-horsey about this, because I'm my own best student of stupidity, let me tell you. And I think that's partly why I got so interested in it is, I'm trying to take the negative valence or the pejorative out of the term. And it's not possible, right? You hear the term stupidity and you immediately think of all the negatives, and that's unavoidable and it's partly why I've never really pushed this idea as hard as I'm probably sounds like I'm pushing it right here, right now. Because unskillfulness doesn't necessitate self-deception being an active contributor to the outcome.

Jorge 12:37

That makes sense. It sounds like the judginess is called for, in some ways. To try to be pragmatic about this, the idea of Chesterton's fence is a nice mnemonic to remember that you might not have all the facts, right? Like when you're in a position to do something about something, right? If, I don't know, you're a new leader, you're brought into manage a team that necessitates change. So that's, the first thing, right? There's change that needs to happen somehow, either because it does need to happen or because the leader has deemed it necessary. I think that the first thing is some degree of humility in understanding that you don't have perfect understanding and that your first job should be to get as clear a read of the situation as possible.

Harry 13:33

Mm-hmm

Jorge 13:34

And of course, that might not be possible under all circumstances. Sometimes you're dealing with a situation that needs quick action, and you don't have time to do the research, you don't have time to develop nuanced understanding. But, particularly for irreversible changes, it behooves you to be a little humble and to acknowledge that you don't have all the answers right off the bat.

Harry 14:05

Yeah, I think ignorance, is defensible. I think willful ignorance is not defensible. And when you go out of your way to dismiss people who are better informed or have a better understanding of the dynamics of the information of the systems, of the facts, and you go about intentionally ignoring them for the purposes of maintaining your own sense of self -importance or your own sense of rightness, I think that's where you start pushing into this zone that I'm, very judgy about. And the fact that I'm judgy about it starts to call into question my humility, because I find it hard to be humble when I see that stuff going on. It makes me angry. It makes me frustrated. It makes me irritated. One of my instructors many years ago used to say, "If you wanna figure out where you're an artist, look at what disgusts you." And so, perhaps it's my interest in design and my interest in information architecture, my interest in building useful things, that allows me to make a lot of fine distinctions when it comes to looking at the facts and doing the best job I can to interpret what is and is not there, and synthesizing that into some sensible understanding before committing to and promoting decisions and actions that are likely to have, as you said a minute ago, irreversible and potentially catastrophic results.

Jorge 15:44

Another point that came to mind when I was thinking about this in preparation for this conversation was, I think, implied in what you said when bringing in Adaptive Path into the conversation, the notion of paths. if you think about paths and fences, the role of the one is connecting; the role of the other is dividing. They're both structural elements, right? And systems, organizations, teams, products, what have you, systems have structures. Long-running systems have structures that have emerged over time, and there is knowledge that is explicitly articulated about those systems. But then there's also knowledge that is in implicit in the structures of the system that has not been captured anywhere. And part of the humility that someone has to have when facing these kinds of challenges is knowing that while you might not understand the reason for the structure, the structures are there for reasons. Now, it might be that those reasons are not valid, or not valid anymore. They might have been valid when they were put in place. And one of the tough calls that you have to make as an agent of change is developing the criteria, the... maybe taste is not the right word to use in this context, but developing the means to tell which structural elements are there and no longer serving the functions that they were put into place for. Or perhaps they're serving those functions, but those functions are no longer relevant. They were designed for a different world, right? And I think that's one of the toughest things there. But, anyway, I think this is all pointing to a more thoughtful and nuanced approach to dealing with these changes than coming in and hacking about.

Harry 18:03

Totally. And perhaps, at least in my work, I'm probably accused of being too thoughtful at times. There are people that would, maybe on the far side of that, claim that I take a more bureaucratic approach or a more top-down, a more overview-oriented approach, because I really wanna understand what it is we're dealing with before we go and start messing with it. Because it seems to me, at least in my experience over the years that I've been working, that what's most likely to show up that's gonna cause problems or the unintended negative consequences of seemingly good decisions that were made with insufficient information or the assumptions behind them were never challenged, and it just doesn't take all that much time and energy to slow down a little bit and to think about the possible implications of what it is you're about to embark on before pushing headlong into something that you can't undo. And we're living in a very complex world, and so it's not like we're ever gonna know all of the ramifications and all of the positive, unexpected outcomes and negative unintended consequences of anything that we're gonna do. But we can certainly decrease the likelihood that we're going to make decisions in a local context that have a broader global set of considerations. It makes me think of Sidney kecker's book Drift Into Failure, which I read many years ago, and then reread just a short few years ago, and this idea that it's possible to make decisions in a local context and really miss the broader, more systemic context in which those decisions are being made, can lead to disastrous outcome. His book really focuses on the kinds of cost-cutting decisions that were made at Boeing. He really focuses on the airline industry and on the kind of decisions that get made to continually cost-cut. And what happens is these decisions get made with a decreasing contextual awareness of the situation in which they never should have happened. Because in a larger, longer temporal frame, if you look at a longer period of time, then you might do some of them, but you wouldn't do all of them. But when you shorten that timeframe up and you're making decisions in that tighter timeframe, to make these decisions without considering what's happened before it and why they were made and what specifications mattered, why the thing was there, and what it was supposed to do, that's what causes planes to fall out of the sky,

Jorge 21:25

So I'm gonna try to bring it to a close on a kind of practical note, because it sounds like we've discussed three things to be aware of when facing these kinds of changes these kinds of potentially traumatic structural changes, right? The first is having some humility, enough humility to know that you don't know what you don't know, and doing at least a minimal baseline amount of research to get understanding on the situation. The second is respecting the idea that there is knowledge that is inherent to the structure of the current system. It might not be articulated explicitly, but just the fact that the system is structured in the way it is, is information. And the third, what I'm hearing you say there, is to ensure that you are doing the changes for the right reasons. That you're clear on the goals and how those goals either support or don't support your ultimate goals.

Harry 22:32

Absolutely that. That's a hundred percent right.

Jorge 22:35

Alright, that seems like a potentially good place to wrap this up. Thank you as always. I'm going to look up Dekker's work. I was not familiar with that, but it sounds like it's highly relevant to this.

Harry 22:48

Yeah, and he's written a lot of good stuff, but I'm a ginormous fan of Drift Into Failure because it does such a compelling job of making the case for really understanding the facts and the context around the kinds of changes that you're trying to make.

Jorge 23:06

All right. I'm also gonna put a pin: we did not talk about Seeing Like a State, and I'll say that's intentional because that was one of my books that I was hoping to bring in to our conversation, so we, might do that in a future conversation, but as always, it was such a treat, talking with you, Harry.

Harry 23:25

This was a good one. Thanks Jorge.

Narrator 23:33

Thank you for listening to Traction Heroes with Harry Max and Jorge Arango. Check out the show notes@tractionheroes.com and if you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating in Apple's podcasts app. Thanks.