Four Floors of Pipe

Donella Meadows turned the hot faucet in an old London hotel. The water heater sat in the basement, four floors below.

Nothing happened.

She turned it further. Still cold. A full minute passed before scalding water hit her skin.

She yanked the cold faucet. Another minute of scalding, then freezing. She overcorrected again. And again.

Her shower was violent swings between extremes.

The faucet wasn't broken. The delay was four floors long. Her reactions were faster than the system could respond. Every correction landed on top of a correction that hadn't arrived yet.

You've done this at work. Quarterly numbers dip. You restructure. The restructure hasn't taken hold before next quarter's numbers arrive. Still bad. Another pivot. Then another.

Each pivot was reasonable. Each pivot was responding to a problem that was already resolving.

You couldn't tell, because the delay was longer than your patience.

Your pivots weren't wrong. Your clock was.

When your correction cycle is faster than the system's response time, every fix makes things worse.

Meadows eventually figured out the shower. She stopped turning the faucet and waited.

Before you pivot again, ask whether the last one has landed.

Go deeper: The Shadow Strategy