Junctions and boxes
There’s the intuitive idea that if you want to reduce traffic on existing rounds you need to build more roads. The counterintuitive to that is that junctions are where traffic gets blocked and for every new road you create at least two junctions, so more roads creates more traffic jams.
I wonder if the same is true for things we draw boxes around in organisations. The more projects, programmes, teams, groups, committees and communities there are, the more interfacing between them is necessary. Even if there are no dependencies between the boxes (and there almost always is, even if it’s only people’s time and cognitive load) and so very little coordination required, these things don’t exist in isolation, they interface and interact with each other. So, what’s the counterintuitive for organisations?