Part of your job as a technology leader is to simplify technology. But it's not at the expense of obscuring the complexity.
Take the case of the 747 airplane that my Uncle Vernon piloted for years. When I commented on the hundreds of indicators and switches in the cockpit, he said you basically fly the plane on 3 instruments. However, you wanted the pilot to know all of them and you wanted all of them tested threefold before you got on the plane. That’s simplifying complexity and respecting complexity.
It's similar with metrics. As Jack Welch said, “Too often we measure everything and understand nothing." [1]
In a conversation with journalist, I said “Simplifying complexity (CIO) and respecting complexity (CEO)”.
I think I told you the story, my uncle who flew 747 cargo airplanes. “Uncle Vernon,” I said, “I've seen the cockpit of a 747” (before they began locking the doors), “there's a million instruments and a million lights; how do you manage that?” And he said, Well, you really fly the plane on three instruments. That's easy, focusing on three. I met a British Airways pilot a number of years later, to whom I mentioned that story. And he thought for a minute, and he said, no, you can actually fly it on two instruments. He said, You're constantly scanning to see if there's an alert, something that's beeping or flashing? But he said, but otherwise, you focus on two. And so that's interesting to think about, although you have an increasing amount of data each month. But what are the key leading indicators that you're flying this plane with? |