Chapter 6. Why Things Break

“I’m not convinced,” said Linda, “that we can get rid of blame and punishment at the firm. It seems so ingrained in how we do things. It’s the flip side of reward—you get rewarded for not screwing up.”

“You get rewarded,” said Bill, “at least in part, for not being fully accountable.”

“It’s a reflection of our misunderstanding of how complex systems function,” said Ollie. “Failure is a normal part of complex systems, yet it’s always so surprising when they fail. Why aren’t we more surprised when they function?”

“Failure is normal?” said Linda, raising her eyebrows.

“In complex systems,” Ollie replied, “failure is absolutely normal and expected. Malfunction is as ‘normal’ as ‘regular’ functioning.”

“That makes no sense, Ollie!”

“OK, let’s get a little philosophical for a minute.” Ollie said. “Why do things break?”

“It seems that you’re saying that things break because they do—that it’s just normal,” Linda said.

“There are lots of reasons that things break,” Bill said. “Somebody does something, wear and tear, an ‘Act of God.’ It’s not like there’s a single root cause for all failures.”

“Well, what if I said that there is a single root cause for all failures,” Ollie said, smiling. “And for all successes, too. There’s something that all systems—working or breaking—have in common, and that’s change.”

“Sure,” Bill said, “I can see that when things break, somebody usually changes something, like a router configuration, and all hell breaks loose. But once you have a system that’s functioning, the last thing you want is for someone to muck with it.”

“Any system that’s functioning is, in fact, changing,” Ollie said. “A system needs to change in order to function. But most of the time we’re not aware of the changes. For instance, right now, as I’m speaking, my vocal cords are vibrating, and my tongue is moving, and the sound of my voice is traveling to your ears and vibrating your eardrums, which are sending signals to your brain, which is converting them into information that you can understand. Then it’s storing it in your memory. That’s just a sliver of what’s happening at this moment. But you can see that all these processes require change, which is constant. Without change, our communication would be impossible.”

Bill sat up. “I’ve never thought of it that way. Even in computing, it’s all zeros changing into ones and back again. Without change, computing would be impossible.”

“Exactly!” said Ollie. “But wait, there’s something even more fundamental! Why is change possible?”

Ollie looked at Bill and Linda, who were contemplating his question.

“Not sure what you mean,” said Bill. “Maybe getting a bit too philosophical for me, man.”

Ollie said, “What I’m saying is, there’s something that enables change, and that is required for change: that is, the fact that things are changeable. It’s their basic, fundamental property.”

“Things change because they’re changeable?” said Bill, puzzled.

“Perhaps a better way to say it is that all things are impermanent. And it’s not just me saying it—it’s the nature of the world we live in. Twenty-five-hundred years ago, the Buddha said that all compounded phenomena are impermanent.”

“Compounded?” asked Linda.

“‘Compounded’ meaning ‘consisting of two or more things,’” Ollie replied. “And I think we can all agree that the systems we work with consist of more than two parts!”

“That’s for sure,” said Bill, smiling. “So things break because of impermanence, and there’s not a thing that we can do about it.”

“They function because of impermanence, too,” said Ollie. “In fact, if we had to pick a single root cause for all failures and successes, it would be impermanence.”

“It’s certainly not very satisfying to blame impermanence for an outage,” said Linda. “You can’t hold impermanence responsible. Doesn’t seem useful at all.”

“It’s not,” said Ollie. “It’s useful only as a reminder that if we ever find a root cause of any outage that’s not impermanence, we’ll know that it’s just an illusion and wishful thinking.”

“So if there’s no root cause,” said Linda, “do things just happen randomly?”

“If things did happen randomly,” Ollie replied, “we might as well give up and go home. If we planted a seed, and sometimes it grew into a plant, assuming the right conditions, of course, and sometimes it grew into a bicycle...”

Bill interrupted Ollie. “Assuming the right conditions? How do we know what conditions are right?”

“That’s precisely what we do—whether we’re scientists or engineers or farmers or even philosophers—we try to figure out which set of conditions gets us the desired outcome, at least more often than not. We can’t possibly know all the conditions, and the ones we do know are not always in our control.”

“You mean the butterfly effect?” asked Bill.

“Exactly! Maybe one of the reasons—one of the conditions—of the outage we just had was some butterfly fluttering its wings somewhere in Africa.”

“And sometimes it’s someone like Mike fluttering the keyboard keys,” added Linda, mimicking Ollie’s intonation. “Again, you can’t hold that butterfly responsible. How is that helpful or useful?”

“It’s useful because it more accurately describes the world we live in. If you want a simplistic view of the real world, you can always blame the humans for screwing up. And while you might feel better having found the culprit—the so-called ‘root cause’—this nice and comfortable story is complete fiction. It won’t help us prevent future accidents.”

“So what will?”

“Learning from both failures and successes. Feeding these learnings as signals back into the system, which will change and adapt to this new information. That’s why air travel has become as safe as it is over time—every time there is an accident or near-accident, it’s investigated, and the results are fed back into the system. This system includes air craft, traffic control, weather, engineers, and so on.”

“Given all this impermanence—” Bill said, “the constant change, the unpredictable conditions—it’s a wonder that we’re able to build homes that don’t fall down, airplanes that don’t crash, and trading systems that work.”

“And one of the reasons for that is that the people who build and work in these complex systems are exceptionally good at learning what works and doesn’t. They’re good at adapting quickly and continually. We have this amazing ability to make sense of these complex systems, and to do what makes sense at the time. We deserve at least as much credit for when things go well, as blame for when things fail.”

“I’ll drink to that!” said Bill, raising his empty glass and looking around for someone to refill it.