NOTHING IS SIMPLE ANYMORE

A friend of mine is very clever but he also has the irritating habit of describing complex issues as “incredibly simple” or even “insanely simple”. In fact nearly everything we have created nowadays is distinctly not simple at all. The idea of ‘just in time’ as a supply chain concept couldn’t be simpler but in fact it requires Rolex precision processes to work. It’s complexity is such that any tinkering with it will break it.  ‘Almost in time most of the time’ is not a viable concept; it’s like a watch without a minute hand.

What has shocked me most over the past months is the pitiful ignorance of many politicians in failing to understand how complex businesses with sophisticated supply chains work. I suspect they imagine that Tesco is like a larger version of a corner shop or what we used to called “Mama & Pappa Shops” or more interestingly “Cat in the Window” shops.

Our world, like it or not, comprises Smart Phones which are ludicrously over powered pieces of technology worth thousands of pounds but through volume production driven down to cost just pence. The warehouses that supply us with books and clothes and food are increasingly driven by robots so when the Ocado Warehouse in Andover caught fire last week the fire brigade couldn’t get in as it was totally robot controlled. Eventually they hacked holes in the roof but too late. The warehouse was completely destroyed.

The big things we create like the NHS with bigger and better hospitals, new MOD toys like leading edge aircraft carriers and fighter planes so technologically advanced that understanding just why a glitch occurs and how much it will cost to fix is not simple -  it’s very complicated.

There was an old world that an 85 year-old dreamily described as “when we made Spitfires”  (during World War 11 we made 22,000.Morgan currently makes 1.3 k cars a year – fewer but that’s Spitfire country.)  That old world was duller, slower, dirtier (who remembers smog?), and much less efficient in every way but it was simpler and we collectively are beginning to feel it’s simplicity that’s been stolen from us.

How many people really understand the algorithms that drive the Facebook Empire. When  the late Molly Russell’s parents tried to have their daughter’s social media data retrieved – her suicide possibly encouraged by online imagery -  they couldn’t get it done because we’ve become victims of complexity.

I used to play the game “what would you do if the internet permanently collapsed?”  The Millennials burst into tears whilst older people rubbed their hands, got out their Airfix catalogues and Parker pens.

The reality is our sophisticated, incredibly clever systems can’t be done by hand. If the internet collapsed it would be chaos. Banks, retailers, hospitals, transport systems, schools and government would grind to a halt.  Our world is too complex to go back.

And that’s why none of this is simple however much we wish it was.

FASTER

“You’ve got to be faster, cheaper and better” - but the greatest of these is faster

In the world in which we live this mantra has the joint distinction of being both true and fantastically annoying. It’s on the lips of all Management Consultants and MBAs. Because in 2017 tortoises don’t win; they get run over.

But speed contains its own perils like prosecution, fatal collisions and blinding headaches. In Britain, as we are demonstrating in our preparation for Brexit, speed is not our priority because when we attempt to rev up we become like Lord Ronald in Stephen Leacock’s “Gertrude the Governess” - one of his Nonsense Novels:

“Lord Ronald said nothing; he flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.”

Our great trophy - HS2 - will cost £56 billion give or take and save 30 minutes on the journey time to Birmingham. If the money were spend instead on increasing broadband speeds and improving mobile reception this would improve our lives and the speed at which we operated in a much more relevant way. What sort of country Lord Ronald, we ask, do you want Britain to be? Currently we are 31st for broadband speed in the Global League Table. 17 of the EU countries come ahead of us. But (zut alors) we come ahead of France on whose slow broadband we contemptuously spit.

Presuming that we wish in our post Brexit lives to remain a green and pleasant land but also be supremely fit for international business for the next generation, speed in the right area rather than on a slightly quicker trip up north would seem the smart thing to do. But presumably we’ll push on with HS2 because we said we would.

Our second mission in speeding up our lives is to stop wasting our time. I have had a run-in with BT (yes them again) for several months over our defective landline. It hasn’t worked except for odd moments. Dealing with them is made harder by most of the conversations irritatingly being online or with a computer. Worst of all I’m wasting your time by telling you all this. (Breaking news…..Trevor from BT just fixed it and was mystified it had taken so long…)

By trying to make things simpler we’ve complicated processes so trying to fix anything takes a very long time. Today it took a very accomplished workman 3 ½ hours to fix one kitchen tap and conclude that another one was defective. The way they were assembled made this process incredibly longwinded.

We have too much bad design, too much choice, too many applications. We are wasting our energy being busy. In the recent Great British Menu one of the contestants produced a brilliantly complicated confection. The judges started at it and concluded “There’s a lot going on here…far too much”

So the greatest word is not faster.

It’s simpler.

Being less elaborate and more effective should be our mantra.