This sat in my drafts for a couple years.

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I had a flippant reply to this tweet.

where does the desire to systematize everything come from?

— christian (@cxgonzalez) January 13, 2023

And then I spiraled thinking about it.

By the end of ice ages, humanity hunted large mammals like mammoths to extinction. We also eliminated giant sloths, sabertooth tigers, among others.

Hunting these creatures required cooperation, coordination, planning, and execution. They needed many people, acting in concert by understanding and trusting each other to behave in predictable ways. Mutual understanding.

Modern project and operations management needs the same. Managers struggle when all the steps of a plan have to be mapped out in part because analysis can sometimes miss things. Acting in concert by understanding and trusting each other is required for success.

Managers can struggle getting to where workers work well together. Turnover changes team dynamics. Events external to work can create a minefield. People are full of wild variables to navigate. They are the solution, but it takes work.

Systemization creates the promise of making it better. Create an understanding of how it all works. Make the processes consistent, acting in concert by being understood and trustable by all. Like a mammoth hunting party.

Systems work is different. The work can be sustainable. The human element is a difficult challenge here too. So a system to coordinate the systems. At some point the systemization becomes the mammoth. It’s what we hunt and why we cooperate, but in the end we are going to extinguish it. Well, replace it with another “better” system. Better meaning a different one we think will be more efficient but that’s only because we haven’t used it yet. Odds are it’s going to be more complex with more issues and challenges.

What I love about automation is eliminating the need for myself. I create things that do my work so I don’t have to. It frees myself for other things… like doing more automation. The dream of AI is to have something that will create my automation for me so I am freed to… I dunno. Whatever I would do if I didn’t have to do anything?