The bigger picture

A fallacy I've seen (and fallen for) countless times is failing to separate the important parts from the insignificant ones. Even when able to separate important from insignificant it's also a common fallacy to prioritize incorrectly anyway. The problem is of course that no matter how many insignificant things you get right, in the end it doesn't matter if the important foundation isn't solid. It's easy to focus on what looks like a problem here and now, this is a strategic mistake as that will take focus from building a good future, in investment that feels a lot less urgent and often with intangible rewards.

An easy to understand reason for this is the fact that current issues cause stress and pain for those affected so getting out of that state as quickly as possible makes sense. So frequently the action to take ends up being in conflict between the short term and long term perspective or a compromise between them.

Another reason for the difficulty to prioritize correctly is that insignificant issues are often very concrete and easy to grasp (something is not working). This can risk constantly fixing symptoms, but the problem is rarely the use of a specific tool or process but rather a failure to get feedback or slow/failed action on available feedback. A good culture based on some principles of robustness must allow for small imperfections but when looking at issues it is frequent to see attempts to perfect execution to reduce issues, which in complex contexts rarely works.

The amount of vested interest is hugely important, what might seem insignificant on one level can be very important on another level. Typically there is no hierarchy in these matters, it's not enough to get the important parts right on the top level, the important parts need to be good enough on all levels. If there are fundamental issues even in the lowest levels of the organization it will cause a very large impact on the whole. This is one of the reasons for autonomy on team level is important because it offers a way for the team to address those issues and ensure that what's important works, even if it doesn't seem to make sense in a different context.

As there is no such thing as perfect it's critical to find correct compromises and in our complex reality this is incredibly hard. Listen to 10 experts from different fields to get their analysis on how to solve a problem and you are bound to find inconsistencies or conflicts of interest. Trying to make such decisions by gathering and internalizing all the information needed is time consuming. The fundamental parts of a solution is that they work like a chain, the solution is not better than it's weakest link. This often means the compromises that must be made look bad or imperfect from any single perspective because in reality the chain has several weak links.

Enjoy this clip from Life of Brian on the theme: