Jack has a nice overview of Eli Goldratt's new book Inherent Simplicity.
The key idea of the book and TOC, for me, is that every complex situation is inherently simplicity (hence the title). If you believe this then when confronted with a complex situation you will, because of your belief, go looking for the simplicity hidden in amongst the complexity. You may find it easily, you may not, but if you don't go looking for it then you're very unlikely to find it. Eli believes this, he says, because he is a scientist ... and that's just something scientists believe.
I've heard Eli talk about this before, both in real life and on DVD, but it wasn't until I read the book that I realised something that is blindingly obvious in retrospect: both the complexity and the simplicity exist at the same time. The complexity is easier to see because it is all around us. The simplicity ... you have to go looking for it.
An example:
The next time you are flying long-haul whether it be on business or for pleasure, spend a little bit of time, looking for the complexity. It's everywhere isn't it. You are sitting in a huge aircraft that took years to design and months or perhaps even years to construct. It is made up of thousands and thousands of interacting components. It flies through the air - something that seemed impossible a century ago even if it seems mundane today - carrying hundreds of people, each paying a different price and travelling from different origins to different ultimate destinations. The pilots have hundreds of flying hours under their belts, with years of training. They are supported by a trained crew, all of them pretending to be nicer and more tolerant than you'd expect of normal human beings, and by thousands of people working on the ground in dozens of different roles. The minds does boggle at the complexity - the huge amount of detail.
Once you've filled your mind of all that detail ... go looking for the simplicity. It's there if you go looking for it. Ignore the thousands of components which make up the aircraft and think of the pilot who controls this beast. Think of the joystick (do they still call it that?) and of how he or she can control much of the aircraft's movement with just a few pounds of pressure. Think of the pilot engaging the autopilot with (I presume) a push of a button or two causing the aircraft to fly itself. Just think of those two tools - the joystick and the autopilot - and what can be achieved by them ... and most of the complexity disappears ... even though ... it's still there.
That's the point: you can look at the same situation and see both the complexity and the simplicity at the same time; you just may not see the simplicity if you're not looking for it.
