21–30 of 62 posts
a lot of time I feel like the diminishing return of a planning is pretty steep for many situations but it's hard to tell how much time we should spend for the planning beforehand. (this is a planning for planning and maybe this itself is over-planning lol).
The driving parable reminded me of my one and only time driving in the USA. The thing that absolutely did my head in was the intersections with four-way stop signs. There was no clear indication of who had right of way which I would have thought would cause a lot of collisions. It just seemed like the biggest bully goes first. Give me roundabouts any day.
The rule for four-way stops is simple: Right-of-way is established in order of arrival at the intersection. First to arrive at the stop sign can go first, followed by the second, etc. Not everybody follows the rule, and technically they're breaking traffic laws by doing so. And you're right. I prefer roundabouts too, they're objectively safer. Massachusetts has a fair few roundabouts, but other parts of the country s…
These rules combine in such a way that it's genuinely unclear who should go in some situations - the above rules might contradict, or you might need information you don't have cause you got there after something broke "the order". But if you think it's your turn and start to go, people will let you, and ultimately no one gets stuck forever.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> question like "Will we want to change our action in some way based on the result of this test?" This is my absolute favorite question. I am continually amazed at how much crap it can cut through.
Agreed. This question is a superpower. Not just 'the result of this test', this applies to all kinds of questions. It's also relevant when people ask for ill-specified 'dashboards', or 'reports'. Will what we do change substantially based on what we see on these dashboards? If not, why make them? And if so... can we just automate that behavior so we don't have to rely on someone noticing the dashboard?
For those purposes it is difficult to answer 'what will we change' and even harder to automate the process.
The author is suggesting replacing a bad plan (everyone discuss each intersection) with another bad plan (just drive however you like). (And as an aside, stopping at each intersection to discuss is not ideal, but at least no one is going to die.) Anyway, I’m unconvinced. Most of the planning failures I’ve seen came about because people were bad at planning, not because they were talking too much. I’ve seen the opposi…
The author is suggesting replacing it with the normal rules of the road, which are as close to not planning as possible (following basic heuristics like go on green). The example in the parable didn't have "unjust" stop signs or traffic lights for a reason.
>The common way of determining right of way on roads is some combination of right of way, stop signs, and traffic lights. None of these take into account the needs of the drivers, so should characterize them as unjust. In modern societies having equal rights is 'unjust'.
And that counts even if you assume everyone is honestly participating rather than selfishly manipulating the system. Once you take that into account the least unjust approach quickly becomes equality.
“Doing” is not at all enough. (Well, it shouldn’t be.)
Peer into any random engineering org and you’ll inevitably find loads of engineers driving around in circles with the wind in their hair, smiling with a sense of how “fast” and productively they’re moving!
> Finally, the third, and most pernicious situation in which there is too much planning is when planning becomes its own end. This can happen because individuals in organizations get more reward for planning work than actually executing on it. It might be seen that the execution is the “easy part”, and can be done by anyone, whereas the grand visionary (or “architect”) is the real cause of success. I've experienced t…
"I know that every large project has some things that are much less fun than others; so I can get through the tedium, the sweeping or whatever else needs to be done. I just do it and get it over with, instead of wasting time figuring out how not to do it. I learned that from my parents. My mother is amazing to watch because she doesn't do anything efficiently, really: She puts about three times as much energy as necessary into everything she does. But she never spends any time wondering what to do next or how to optimize anything; she just keeps working. Her strategy, slightly simplified, is, "See something that needs to be done and do it." All day long. And at the end of the day, she's accomplished a huge amount." - Donald Knuth
[1] https://shuvomoy.github.io/blogs/posts/Knuth-on-work-habits-....
[2] https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/d/d5/optimization.pn...
A couple of things this makes me think of: No plan survives contact with the enemy. It's a military saying but I think it applies equally to business. I think that's the whole point of rubrics about how much you need to talk to customers. When seconds count, the police are minutes away. Said by pro gun people. I'm of mixed feelings about that but I still like the saying very much to encapsulate an idea about making h…
