The Limitations of Extending a Broken Model

Today I deployed a new version of my website - leaner, cleaner, with more focused content, fewer words and fewer gadgets.

As I backed up and removed the old website, something occurred to me regarding the result that had been produced.

The older website, while serving its purpose well for years, had grown organically during that time, extending out in all directions in terms of content, gadgets and intention and as a result, had gotten very unwieldy.

It had lost its purpose!

My website was broken in terms of value to anyone reading it.  Every time I wanted to add content, I duly did so while continuing to live within (and extend) the broken model that it had evolved into, making the problem even worse.

I had fallen into the natural tendency of living within implied constraints, limiting what I could accomplish as a result.

And as I lived within those perceived constraints, I was getting increasingly frustrated with the website, even though no one told me that I had to live within the rules and constraints by extending the broken thing that it was.

I was either taking the easy way out or assuming that I had to remain within the existing model.  It wasn’t until the pain of living with the old model became great enough that I decided that I needed to create a new model instead of trying to improve a dying one.

This is often the case in Life, both personally and professionally.

Many times we feel constrained by having to comply with the model and rules that have been defined for us (or that we have defined for ourselves), whether it is an existing software architecture as in my case or in our lives in general.

When we believe that we can only improve a result while still remaining within the rules and constraints of the existing model, we are perhaps denying ourselves a much more significant, positive result in our lives.

Now I know there are times when we simply can’t toss out the existing model that we have, build a brand new one and start all over.

But I’m willing to bet that the opportunities to do so are probably more readily available than most of us are willing to admit.

And by not admitting this, we are perhaps limiting ourselves to not living up to our potential or producing the result we are capable of …. to not realizing our purpose.

Care to take that wager?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Courage to Say “It Can’t Be Done That Way”

I read an interesting statistic yesterday.

When the Social Security system was invented, the average life span of an American citizen was 61.

So offering to pay benefits when someone turned 65 was a pretty safe bet – there were very few people who would be collecting anyway.

Now that the average life span of an American man and woman is 75.6 and 80.8 years respectively, we are asking the Social Security system to accomplish the same result for which it was designed but with a completely different set of inputs. 

We want it to be self sustaining while paying Americans a pension that allows them to enjoy their retirement, ignoring the fact that we have far more people drawing from the system, the ratio of contributors to withdrawers is unsustainable, retirees draw for much longer and the amount each individual needs to draw from the system is much larger than when the system was created.

Politicians, not often known for their bravery when it comes to revealing the true state of things, keep tinkering with the system with the hope that they can fix it without revealing to the world that it is broken.  So instead of the desired result, we have a system that is bankrupting itself while at the same time, keeping the average retired American well below the poverty line.

The problem with reality is that we can’t hide from it, try as we might.

Sometimes we need to accept the fact that original intentions and assumptions, while having served their purpose for the day, are no longer relevant and in fact may be dangerous to embrace in the current environment.

When this happens (which, by the way, is a normal result in the evolution of any “system”), it is quite ok to admit that the current system doesn’t work at all and needs to be redesigned from the ground up.

Sometimes it’s better to gut something and start over - frightening, disappointing or angering everyone for the moment but then creating a result that everyone will like rather than deny there is any problem right up until the thing that needs to be fixed, whether it be a personal Life plan, organizational intention, large-scale computer system or government program, collapses beyond repair (taking innocent people and organizations down with it).

It’s like being given a Sopwith Camel (a World War 1 fighter plane with a maximum speed of 115 mph) and being told that we are to use it as a low-cost replacement for the Space Shuttle.

We can set an expectation now, temporarily disappointing people by denying the request and insisting that we be smarter with our intentions and our actions.

Or we can be another “yes person”, petrified of disappointing people and deferring the disappointment until years and bazillions of dollars later when people discover that we had no chance of ever getting it done.

In either situation, pain, anger and disappointment are inevitable. 

However, in one case, the feelings pass when we focus on a solution, complete the project on a high note and establish the potential for a bright future.  We might even provide the basis for a case study in a business strategy 101 course as the courageous way to do the right thing.

In the other situation, there’s also possibility of ending up as a business strategy 101 case study.

Just not the kind any of us want to be remembered for.

In service and servanthood.

Harry