The Meaning of (My) Life
It’s taken me 30 years to realize what I’m supposed to do in this world. Or, at least, what I seem to enjoy the most, and am good at. It’s really quite simple (and yes, the irony does not escape me):
To organize and simplify
Sure, that’s a lofty way to not say very much, but let me explain.
Organization
Let’s start with organization. You’re saying to yourself, “Is this fool really about to explain what organization means? I did go to grade school, sport.” Just stay with me here; I’m done burying the lead:
Wikipedia describes the principle as such:
Examples of MECE categorization would include categorizing people by year of birth (assuming all years are known). A non-MECE example would be categorization by nationality, because nationalities are neither mutually exclusive (some people have dual nationality) nor collectively exhaustive (some people have none).
You may have heard of McKinsey, the gold standard when it comes to management consulting. It’s like the Goldman Sachs of business strategy consulting. They explain MECE succinctly using a case study on Coca-Cola.
Simplification
Again, this one’s pretty easy. Let’s explain it using a simple equation (I did get my BS in Mathematics after all :)
Problem: 2x + 6 = 12
As you can see, simplifying something requires you to move pieces of it around, test certain pieces, and continue breaking things down until you can’t go any further. Sometimes you even have to use different strategies, as what worked the first time (i.e., subtraction) doesn’t work the second time (i.e., division).
In order to simplify the simple equation above, we take a lot of experience for granted, because it now seems obvious. For example, if I had never heard of division before (forget even algebra), there’s no way I would have gotten past step 2. But, I may have kept testing various processes to see if they work. Once something works, you keep moving on.
What Does This Mean To You?
These concepts are pretty simple, but taken together and applied to complex topics, it becomes one of the most difficult things to do, but when done correctly, it seems obvious in hindsight.
Look at the touchscreen and app-based navigation/UI on the iPhone, then compare that to the RAZR flip phone that came directly before it, or even the Blackberry’s operating system. It seems so obvious now that we scratch our heads and say, “why didn’t I think of that”. But, it took Steve Jobs’ entire life and one of the biggest companies in the world working at that problem in order to organize and simplify the experience.
This Is My Promise
This is my job, and this is my promise to you: that I will do my best to organize and simplify everything I touch. It’s going to be a long, hard, tough road fraught with yelling matches and seemingly endless iterations in pursuit of perfection that can never be obtained.
As I approach that asymptote, I’ll back off a bit, but my goal is to get at least 95% of the way there, then try to forget about the outliers.
I promise.
