Beware of "Moreness"

It's been a while since we've checked in with Heraclitus (the ancient Greek philosopher who was the world's first creativity teacher). His words of wisdom for us today are:

       "The way up and the way down
               are one and the same."

What does this mean? Well, it's pretty enigmatic.

But I think there's a creative strategy implicit in this insight, and I interpret it to be:

       "Beware of Moreness."

When things are made larger, they take on a complex, new life of their own, and unexpected — even undesirable — things can happen.

Here's an example.

Let's say that you have a recipe for strawberry shortcake that serves four people.

One day you invite over seven friends to eat this desert. To make it, you simply double the recipe's proportions.

On another occasion, you make it only for yourself and a friend, and you halve the proportions.

Now, let's suppose that you invite 50,000 people over for strawberry shortcake. At this point, the biggest challenges confronting you have nothing to do with the recipe. These include buying strawberries on the commodities market, making deals with the teamsters to deliver enough cream, traffic-flow coordination, and large-scale renting of tables, chairs, bowls, and spoons.

The same things can happen when situations become larger: issues come up that weren't even thought about in the original plans.

Two questions to ask yourself as you contemplate a current problem or issue: 

Where would you be better served with "less" rather than more?

What problems might having "more" create for you?

Comments

[Randy]

Great post, Roger. Another take: reference so many businesses, not-for-profits, organizations and individuals who, upon achieving initial success conform to "we've always done it that way", avoid change since "we've never done it that way before", and lose their success to "moreness" by not reinventing themselves, not watching market, competition, timeliness, et.al. For them, "moreness" is the "what goes up must come down" but they remain in denial.

[Roger von Oech]

Randy: Good observation! I also like what Peter Drucker once said:

"Every right idea eventually becomes the wrong idea."

[Alex von Oech]

YAHOO - You Always Have Other Options

[Tom Volkar / Delightful Work]

Where would I be better served with "less" rather than more? Emails in my inbox and folders everywhere immediately come to mind.
I also be better served with less obligations in my life. But I'm the one who gets to decide what's an obligation and what's a choice.

[Jorge Castillo]

This is an interesting interpretation, Roger! Under your point of view we can interpret this Heraclitus' wisdom as the value of balance. There's a lot of situations in life, business, politics, science, etc. that show that more is less and less is less too.

[Roger von Oech]

Alex: Indeed so.

Tom: I agree.

Jorge: Both are correct, as is fitting when interpreting Heraclitus.

[terry grant]

I had a friend who had a successful little bitty manufacturing business. It rolled along nicely for years, growing only a little at a time. Then she got an order from a huge chain. A huge order. She hired people, she ordered supplies, she produced and packaged and before delivering learned that the chain had gone into bankruptcy and they cancelled the order. She could not pay her employees or her suppliers. She lost her house and her marriage along with it.

[vexenhexer]

My thought upon reading the quote was in the same vein as Randy's... but my vein (vain?) was 'ego'.

To make the leap of faith required for success in a new endeavor requires not a small amount of 'ego'... you must believe that you can accomplish what others have not. And with all your preparation, you still must go forth, blindly, to the eventual truth.

But the 'ego' that offers you success can also lead to failure. One should not think that the ego that leads to success, should be the 'ego' that always leads.

If you succeed, 'ego' has been your shield. If you fail, 'ego' may well be the tantō in your seppuku.