More structure is not always better.

Changed My Mind / Systems / Work

I naturally like systems. If information is messy, my instinct is usually to organise it. I want a place for things to live, a name people can use, and enough structure that the same problem does not have to be solved from zero every time.

For a long time, that made more structure feel almost automatically better. If something was unclear, add a framework. If people forgot a step, document it. If information was scattered, build somewhere for it to live.

I still believe in all of those things. I am simply less convinced that the answer is always another layer. Structure reduces ambiguity only when people can actually use it. A process that requires constant maintenance can become its own project. A dashboard that duplicates information creates another version to keep current. A template can remove unnecessary decisions, but it can also preserve assumptions that should have been questioned instead.

The question I ask more often now is not, “How can this be more organised?” It is, “Which decision should this structure make easier?”

That change sounds small, but it shifts what counts as a successful system. The goal is no longer to make the information look orderly. The goal is to remove friction that should not need to exist.

Sometimes that requires a framework. Sometimes it requires deleting one.

I still like systems. I just trust them more when they remove decisions rather than multiply them.