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• Expand the View of the System to Find Ways to Improve Results

  By expanding the system view and looking at the results of the entire system it is often possible to find improvements that are not possible by only looking at “your” system. These changes can sometimes be more challenging to accomplish as they may require convincing others to make changes.

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• Annual Performance Evaluations are a Poor Management Practice

  When you understand the challenges with evaluating a complex system it isn’t hard to know that evaluating individuals is not easy. Much of the evidence of individual “performance” is so dependent on impacts within the system that are totally out of even the individual’s influence. Yet it is easy to find numbers within a complex system that can be used to argue for or against an individual’s performance.

  The contributions any individual brings to an organization is largely dependent on the system in place (see: 94% Belongs to the System).

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• 10x Productivity Difference in Software Development

  I think these orders of magnitude are not present between people in many jobs. And I think people’s ability to correctly access who are orders of magnitude better is often faulty. But my experience leads me to believe the difference between exceptional software developers and average (not even below average) is very high.

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  In many fields interruptions are costly (and multi-taking is wasteful). In software development those interruptions are often much more costly than in other fields.

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