Are You Facing a Mess? Then Eat a Sandwich

Have you ever tried to solve a complex mess? If so, you know that what we typically do for problem solving does not work in that context. Being a great problem solver, you likely broke the situation down into a collection of smaller problems and tackled each one independently, fully and successfully, but without actually achieving your objective of getting rid of the mess. At least I did just that many times. Why is that you did not succeed? What can you do instead? Eat a sandwich!

When a mess, which is a system of problems, is taken apart, it loses its essential properties and so does each of its parts. The behavior of a mess depends more on how the treatment of its parts interact than how they act independently of each other. A partial solution to a whole system of problems is better than whole solutions of each of its parts taken separately.

Russell L. Ackoff

Isn’t that brilliant? Likely one of the greatest bits of systems thinking teaching ever. Russell L. Ackoff is one of my heroes, and at the very top of the list. Let’s try and understand that gold nugget together.

A mess is different from a collection of problems. If it was just a collection of problems, we could separate each one from the rest and solve it in isolation. We could make things better solving one problem at a time. We cannot do that with a mess because each problem, when broken apart from the rest of the mess, “loses its essential properties”. Let’s imagine I am craving a cheese sandwich but I cannot eat the whole sandwich at a time. If I take apart the sandwich separating the slices of bread from the rest I no longer have a sandwich but 2 slices of bread and some slices of cheese and bits of salad. Not very satisfying.

The mess is a “system of problems” because the relationships between the problems matter more than the individual problems themselves. In the sandwich the bread becomes the covers, the mustard becomes the spread, and the cheese and salad become the fillers. There is even a proportion of them that we will like more than the rest of the combinations. Each component acquires some characteristics not by themselves but in relationship to the rest.

Then, how do we make a mess better? By making it a smaller mess, reducing it a bit at a time. When I cut the sandwich in half the right way I have two sandwiches, only smaller. The relationships between the bread, the mustard, the salad and the cheese is still the same, which ensures it is a still a sandwich. My half sandwich is like “a partial solution to a whole system of problems” in that I have eaten only a part of the original sandwich and it was still a sandwich. Eating the bread and then the cheese is like “whole solutions of each of its parts taken separately” in that I have eaten a full slice of bread and then a full slice of cheese but none of them was a sandwich.