Reducing Complexity

I just started working at a company that makes shoe glue — literally the stuff that holds a shoe together — and over the past two weeks I have learned more about shoes than I have in my entire life (including my reading of Shoe Dog). The best way I can summarize shoe construction and the industry at large:

Its complicated.

Image taken from: Gallantway

In fact the majority of what we do on a day to day basis is extremely complex. Driving to work in a car involves so much complexity. The fact that I am even driving a car, which in itself is difficult to fathom.

If we start at the car level and work our way down:

1. A car is a summation of a myriad of different parts and components that come together to execute the vision of a single design.
2. Those parts came from different factories across the world and all serve some function in the car — all those parts were designed
3. All the parts are made out of something: metal, plastic, wood, rubber, chicken feathers. The parts were made out of raw materials came from somewhere and were chosen for a specific reason.
4. Raw materials in this example are often products of refinement and design and actually came from other more raw materials. The rubber that goes into the tires was painstakingly designed and formulated to give a specific property.