What does the car Homer Simpson designed have to teach us about adding value by subtraction?

Hello and happy Monday! I hope you had an enjoyable weekend.

For the first time in six months I got outside with my chainsaw 🪚, which is one of my favorite things to do. Austin had the freeze last winter that felled a lot of trees and I’m still not done processing them all. I had my Garmin track me and I moved 1.26 miles during the hour I was out there. The biggest tree was about 18 inches (46 cm) in diameter. The freeze partially cracked it about 12 feet (3.6 meters) off the ground, with the top half folding over toward the ground. I’m super careful out there and managed not to get crushed or cut. 🙌

In the digital world I made progress on using Obsidian as a personal CRM. I was recently using something called Clay, but it hasn’t been great. The paid version is $20/month, which is too expensive for what it does for me (I don't use all the other integrations). If you have a good personal CRM solution let me know and I can maybe share it in the newsletter for others next week.

Last week I finished the books, “Contagious,” “To Sell Is Human,” and I started “What a Unicorn Knows.” 🦄 The first two books had a few good ideas and I’m glad I read them, but didn’t rate them highly. I’m not finished with “Unicorn,” but so far it’s been a great practical strategy book. The first chapter on strategic speed was *chef’s kiss*🧑‍🍳💋.

Enjoy your week! And as always, please reply back and let me know what you think about this week’s newsletter. Did something resonate? Is there a topic you’d want me to dive into in the future?

Thanks!
Kevin

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A Quote

“ If you are in middle management, don’t be a wimp. Don’t sit on the sidelines waiting for the senior people to make a decision so that later on you can criticize them over a beer—”My God, how could they be so dumb?” Your time for participating is now. You owe it to the company and you owe it to yourself. Don’t justify holding back by saying that you don’t know the answers; at times like this, nobody does. Give your most considered opinion and give it clearly and forcefully... — Andy Grove, "Only the Paranoid Survive"

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Three Things

1 - 📺 Deep Life Stack 2.0 with Cal Newport - Cal Newport, Author of several books and a computer science professor, recently shared what he’s calling his “Deep Life Stack 2.0”. The link takes you directly to that part of the video, but listen to the earlier parts if you’re interested in what he learned from v1.0. I really like Cal’s framing below (I promise the thinking is better than the handwriting). In Stage 1 you ‘become a capable human’ and then you ‘cultivate depth.’ These are cycles you can continue to tweak over time. He suggests revisiting every six months to a year.

2 - Manitou Incline - New item for my bucket list! I found this climb in Colorado that’s 2,744 steps up. It takes the average climber about an hour to get to the top. The steepest grade is 68%. I like how the website describes it as, “It’s like a StairMaster, but outside” 🤣 The next time I get near Colorado I’d like to stop and tackle this. The views from the top look awesome!

3 - 🐦‍⬛ Blackbird - There’s a new restaurant loyalty program that’s been built on top of the Base blockchain by Coinbase. The restaurant partners are only in Los Angeles and New York right now. You can read their paper here: https://www.blackbird.xyz/flypaper An argument can be made as to whether this needs to be on the blockchain, but I like the experimentation. I’m on the newsletter and will give it a shot if it ever comes to Texas.

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Deeper Dive

​In a 1991 episode of The Simpsons, Homer’s half brother, Herb, brought Homer Simpson on the payroll of his company (at $200K/year!) to design a car for the average American. He gave Homer the ultimate authority in decision making, so Homer exercised those rights.

What did Homer want in a car? Everything.

Tail fins! Extra large cup holders! A ball on the antenna! Shag carpeting! Bubble domes!

He and the designers even put in a separate sound proof bubble dome for the kids with restraints and muzzles.

Unfortunately, with every addition, the value of the overall package was reduced. The final result was a “monstrosity” with an $82,000 sticker price (in 1991!) that bankrupted Herb’s company.

Sometimes less is more. Sometimes addition is subtraction.

On the surface it makes sense that each thing you add to a group increases the resulting value. I mean, if each individual thing has value, then simple arithmetic means that adding them together creates even MORE value.

There are times when this is true, which is why we've all likely heard the term “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” 1 + 1 = 3

But there are also times when 3 + 3 = 1. Adding things together can decrease value, too.

Today we’ll look at a few of the principles that underpin this idea, and then a handful of examples where they play out in real life.

The principles we’ll explore are:

- Parsimony
- Miller’s Law
- Paradox of Choice

Parsimony

The Principle of Parsimony, connected to Occam’s Razor, is often translated in modern day language to mean that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

In the natural world, things operate in ways in which they conserve energy, meaning they usually operate in a straightforward manner. A apple falls straight down from a tree; it doesn’t fly around for five minutes.

This is why doctor’s often look for the most straightforward explanation for an illness; “if you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.”

So the more you add to something, the more complex it becomes. It moves further away from simplicity and can put tension on this Principle of Parsimony.

Miller’s Law

This law states that human’s have a limited working memory. We can hold roughly seven pieces of information in our heads at a time. This is why phone numbers in the US are seven digits long.

The seven things can be digits like a phone number, but they can also be ‘chunks’ of information, like a single word, or a person’s face.

Give us greater than seven things to remember, and they start to fall out of our working memory.

Paradox of Choice

The Paradox of Choice states that as you provide a greater number of options, humans get overwhelmed. Humans have a limited capacity for processing information. The more choices you provide to someone, the more difficult it is for them to make a decision.

This is why you often want to limit the choices you provide consumers. There’s a study from university psychologists about jam in which they provided consumers a booth with six options, and another with 24 options.

You’d think the one with more options would sell more, when in fact it was the opposite. 30% of consumers purchased a jar from the limited selection, and only 3% from the extensive collection. That’s 10x more sales by cutting the options by 75%!

Examples and Practical Application

There are so many interesting examples of where “addition is subtraction” comes into play! Rather than select just a couple, let’s look at…seven. In honor of Mr. Miller 🙂

1. Debate and Persuasion - The more arguments you add in an attempt to convince someone, then less you’re likely to convince them. The arguments overload their processing. Each argument gives them an opportunity to disagree, and if they disagree with one, they’ll often discount your entire argument.

2. Strategic Speed - In strategy people often want certainty. They want more information. One more data pull. One more experiment. One more discussion. One more…you get it. Not only will more pieces of information likely confuse the strategic team and dilute the point, adding more things also subtracts from speed.

3. Interviewing - It’s common during interview to increase the size of the panel; you go from 3-4 up to 6-8. More people muddies the water are more complex perspectives are shared and contradict. It’s not clear who to believe or how to process the information. Speed and hiring quality suffers.

4. Commitments - The more commitments you give yourself or your team, the less likely you are to achieve any of them. Each one is a drain on resources. Adding commitments does not increase your goals as much as it reduces your likelihood of success.

5. Business Dashboards - Metrics are super fun! Colors and charts are fun! Why not add one more to your dashboard? Before you know it you’ve got dozens of dashboards with dozens of charts. You become lost in a sea of information with no insight.

6. Meeting Participants - It’s common to add more people to a meeting invite, even when the rationale is weak. That’s more people to insert their opinion. It’s more schedules to coordinate. It diffuses accountability and responsibility.

7. Product Features and UI - We already saw the effect of adding features with Homer’s car. The applications you use are effective because they simplify the user interaction. If the designers go overboard and add a ton of elements, it creates architecture and code issues on the product end, and users get confused and lost.

What other examples have you seen where the addition of something reduces quality, speed, or impact?

We now know that adding things isn’t always better; it can subtract from the thing we care about. It's unintuitive, but subtracting is often what adds value.

We know this idea is connected to the Principle of Parsimony, Miller’s Law, and the Paradox of Choice. We’ve also seen seven different examples of where this plays out in real life.

Let’s take this information into life this week and find an opportunity to make a change. This week try to be aware of where you’re caught up in “addition.” Subtract things - don’t add them - to create more value and speed.

For example, are you over-arguing your case? Convey, don’t convince. Simplify your message and focus on just three key things.

Are you bloating your meeting list, your feature list, your commitments, or your data requests? Look for an opportunity to simplify and reduce the asks.

Good luck this week! Let me know if you made any changes after reflecting on these ideas this week. Hit reply and let me know!

Kevin 🤗