I just watched a video of Tim Hartford’s talk at TED Edinburgh, entitled ‘Trial, error and the God complex’.  The summary is that he says any successful system has been produced by a process of trial and error.  And the idea of a system is exceptionally broad - he points to the evolution of the human body.

Our ‘God complex’ is that we believe we are able to understand problems which are far beyond the grasp of a single (normal) human brain, and that this belief leads us away from trial and error and towards intuition.  Successful businesses evolved, they weren’t formed in their current shape.  And evolution has to be hallmark of a startup.  Google initially intended to charge businesses to use their software to search their internal documents.  Apple spent years trying to be a better PC company.  Airbnb wanted to rent airbeds in people’s homes - they’re evolving into a booking engine for apartments, hostels and guesthouses.

When I think of businesses that I’ve been involved with, our biggest successes have come from trying things out.  Some stuff didn’t work, some stuff did.  If you aren’t trying new things then you aren’t going anywhere.  Even if you’ve got a plan.  You’ve got to say “Let’s try it”, and see where it leads to.

A huge part of being able to evolve is admitting when something is wrong.  This is why government IT projects are, by and large, a disaster.  Politicians do not admit they were wrong - it basically never happens.  In fact, if you admit you were wrong then you’re going to be shown the door.  So there is no evolution.  There is a single trial - The Project - and there will be no errors.  Even if there are errors, they will not be errors.  And there will be no further trials.  It either works or it works.

In fact, the phrase that sums this up is ‘not fit for purpose’.  Something will be built, in a straight line, from A-Z on the plan and completed.  There will be no pivot, no change, no evolution.  Then, when it’s finished (and after a suitable interval) if it doesn’t work then it’s not fit for purpose and has to be destroyed.