Dealing with Complexity in Product Development

This week’s Cyb3rSyn Newsletter summarizes the key highlights of the inaugural Cyb3rSyn Labs Podcast episode - my conversation with Daniel Schmidt, the Founder of DoubleLoop.

I wanted the first episode of the Cyb3rSyn Labs Podcast to be at the intersection of the ideas that we discuss in the Cyb3rSyn Community (Systems Thinking, Complexity, Cybernetics) and Entrepreneurship - I couldn’t think of anyone better than Daniel Schmidt! DoubleLoop helps product development teams to build products in ways that embrace some of the insights from these fields to avoid the typical pitfalls of the mainstream.

Table of Contents

• Focus on Input Variables

• Messy Middle & Aligned Autonomy

• Outcome-Oriented Product Development

• Full Episode

Let me begin today’s post with a pertinent quote from Margaret Wheatley

Here are some of the topics we discussed…

Focus on Input Variables

We discussed the importance of focusing on input variables rather than obsessively chasing output variables (e.g., quarterly profit margin). While the mainstream management approach can be framed as "Management by Objectives (MBO)," there is an alternative school of thought called "Management by Means (MBM)."

MBM calls for focusing on your means of production instead of just focusing on your results. When companies focus solely on their results (such as quarterly revenue or profit), they often end up compromising their means of production in the long term.

Jeff Bezos, wanting to avoid this pitfall, publicly downplayed profits to Wall Street analysts and systematized this approach at Amazon through leadership principles that explicitly direct leaders to focus on input variables (e.g., Fast Track In Stock: percentage of detail page views where products were in stock and immediately ready for two-day shipping) instead of output variables (e.g., quarterly revenue/profit).

Quote from Amazon Leadership Principles:

Of course, careful consideration must be given to selecting appropriate input variables. Listen to Daniel discuss how DoubleLoop helps in this regard and explore deterministic and probabilistic correlations in the full podcast episode.