• Complexity tends to be irreducible. You can move it around the system but it is hard to eradicate. Refactoring is a process of reducing complexity by internalising it in order to process it.
• Refactoring requires upfront complexity to create downstream simplicity. It will feel slow and then it will feel fast.
• Most people can’t handle more than seven concepts at the same time. Typically three is easiest to understand.
• A new concept usually needs to be repeated three different times in three different ways (and sometimes by three different voices) in order to really stick.
• Modularity allows for large concepts to be broken up into smaller ones. Once a large concept has been broken down, it can be interrogated, scoped, reorganised and understood. It does not remove complexity, it simply makes it explicit.
• Externalisation allows for thinking to happen outside an individual’s head, which can offer opportunities for feedback and collaboration. Not all work requires this and sometimes it can be an impediment (for example when in flow) but it frequently helps increase collective understanding to “show your working out”. See also: transparency.
• Authority exists within a company whether or not it is made explicit. Flat hierarchies tend to obscure hidden hierarchies and make it harder to navigate.
• Incentives are not just “carrot” and “stick”, money, etc. Incentives can be designed - like almost everything else - to allow autonomous actors to move in the right direction without requiring instruction at every decision point.
• Incentives exist in the system whether made explicit or not. A system with no explicit incentives has implicit ones, which are created by the emergent behaviour of the group, and are usually perverse.
• Most management books/ways of working/hyped management trends will not work for you as easily as you think. Each organisation/team is a system with different variables.