I read something yesterday that got me thinking – it said that a particular approach was “a simple framework to solve complex problems”.
I’m not sure that’s the right way to look at it.
The real world is messy. Everyone knows this.
If you have a complex problem-situation – one that has people with different, perhaps incompatible views, and options with different costs and benefits – surely it doesn’t make sense that some simple framework can address such complexity.
Wouldn’t you need an approach that’s capable of at least as much complexity as the situation? Just to match up the situation and options for resolution.
It’s like consultants who come in with a four-box framework and think they can apply it to any client.
And, if you’ve been on the receiving end, you know that this usually ends poorly.
Simple approaches are fine for simple problems.
That’s why the promise of bait and switch approaches are that here’s an easy button, this is a simple solution, buy this and things will get better.
They probably won’t.
Some people go the other way.
They use complex approaches to address simple problems.
That’s just a waste of resources.
The pragmatic way is to accept that the real world is messy and complex and engage with it – to learn, understand and figure out an appropriate approach.
That’s where value hides.
Handcrafted insight 