Completism is the desire to create or acquire a complete set of something. In our personal lives, it drives collectors to pay high prices for rare items that "complete the set." In business it drives us to squander our resources in surprising ways.
eter Farrell and Andrew Kulyk of Buffalo, New York, aren't ordinary sports fans. In 1999, attending the All-Star game of the National Hockey League in Tampa, Florida, they decided to try to attend games at all the venues of the four major U.S. sports leagues: baseball, football, basketball and hockey. They "finished" in December 2002, but since new venues are opening all the time, their odyssey continues.
William Ross Ashby. Self-portrait, 10 Dec 1955. W.R. Ashby (1903-1972) was one of the founders of the field of cybernetics. In 1956, shortly after the photo above was taken, Ashby published Introduction to Cybernetics (Chapman & Hall). It contained a statement and proof of his "Law of Requisite Variety," which describes a necessary condition for a system to maintain stable equilibrium. That condition is that the controller must be capable of assuming any of a set of states, in variety equal to or greater than the variety of the perturbations of its environment. Ashby's Law implies that a business system needs a certain minimum variety of internal states to cope with perturbations of its environment. But since variety isn't free, we must select the elements of the controlling system's state library carefully. Completism can lead us to populate the system's state library with variety that is of little use in coping with environmental perturbation, thus saturating the system's capacity without providing the coping variety it requires. Introduction to Cybernetics is also available in Acrobat format from Principia Cybernetica. Photo is Copyleft 2002, no rights reserved.
Projects of this kind appear in almost every field of human endeavor. You can buy an anthology of ; you can join the New England 4,000 Footers Club by climbing every peak in New England exceeding 4,000 feet; or you can join the Seven Continents Club by running a marathon on each of the seven continents[1].
This pattern is so common that we have a name for it: completism. In pop culture, conpletist activities are somewhat amusing (if sometimes questionable) hobbies, provided they don't interfere with one's health and well-being.
In business, completism is often an indicator of trouble. Here are some of the forms completism takes in business.
The lop-sided product line
We sometimes offer products that exist mostly to "complete the set" — to make our offering span the entire market. We use descriptors like "full spectrum" or "complete" to describe these offerings.
Does it make sense to offer products that serve less than 1% of the market? Perhaps, but we could ask the question more often than we do. Sometimes full coverage is important — it can simplify the buyer's decision process. But often, full coverage is simply completism and provides no advantage to buyer or seller.
Does it make sense to offer products that serve less than 1% of the market?
The overfull benefits menu
Packing the menu of employee benefits is one approach to solving the problem of inadequate benefits. Some companies offer options that few people want and still fewer elect, but the menu appears to be complete, which makes it an attractive recruiting tool. The complexity of the offering is confusing in itself.
Offering a simpler array of truly valuable benefits might be cheaper for the company, and more useful to its employees.
Creeping featurism
In product design, completism sometimes leads to offering numerous capabilities that only a few users can understand and most wouldn't use even if they could understand them. To make the products look simple, we hide these features, which further reduces their accessibility.
Simpler products are cheaper and easier to use. Reducing the feature array might make marketing more difficult, but let's solve marketing problems with marketing, not featuremongering.
Perhaps the most common and expensive example of completism at work is the compound failure — the failure to cancel the zombie project that has already failed but lives on. What are you or your company doing only for the sake of completeness? What would happen if you stopped? TopNext Issue
[1]
Perhaps the most interesting element of the marathon collection is the Antarctic Marathon.
Are your projects always (or almost always) late and over budget? Are your project teams plagued by turnover, burnout, and high defect rates? Turn your culture around. Read 52 Tips for Leaders of Project-Oriented Organizations, filled with tips and techniques for organizational leaders. Order Now!
Lifelong learners use a variety of approaches, usually relying heavily on reading. Reading works well for some ideas and techniques, especially for those with limited emotional content. For adding other skills and perceptions, consider a personal coach.
Elise slowly walked back to her office, beaten. Her supervisor, Alton, had just given Elise her performance review — her third consecutive "meets expectations." No point now to her strategy of giving 120% to turn it all around. She is living a part of the Pygmalion Effect, and she's about to experience the Pygmalion Side Effects.
Renewal is a time to step out of your usual routine and re-energize. We find renewal in weekends, vacations, days off, even in a special evening or hour in the midst of our usual pattern. Renewal provides perspective. It's a climb to the mountaintop to see if we're heading in the right direction.
When an organization is experiencing problems with conflict, "pushback," or "blowback," managers often hire trainers to present programs on helpful topics. But self-diagnosis can be risky. Often, there are more direct and focused options that can help more and cost less.
Politicians know that answering hypothetical questions is dangerous, but it's equally dangerous for managers and project managers to answer them in the project context. What's the problem? Why should you be careful of the "What If?"
I offer email and telephone coaching at both corporate and individual rates.
Contact me for details at rbrenner@ChacoCanyon.com
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Managing global or dispersed teams is challenging — miscommunications, misunderstandings, and interpersonal conflict all thrive in the typical environment of the distributed team. And they're even more common in global teams, because of time-zone offsets and language and cultural differences. We'll inventory the challenges distributed and global teams face, and provide tools for anticipating and addressing them. The focus of this program is practical — attendees will learn concrete techniques for preventing and dealing with the problems that accompany global and distributed teams. Read more about this program. Here are some upcoming dates for this program:
Organizational Politics for People Who Hate Politics
Have you ever felt powerless to implement an important new idea? Have you ever been "blind-sided" at a meeting? Have you ever lost two good employees because you could find no way to keep them from attacking each other? These are some of the issues of organizational politics. Many of us have become enmeshed in them from time to time, but we've also known some people who seem to be able to engage and prosper. How is that done? We'll inventory the challenges of organizational politics, and provide tools for anticipating and addressing them. The focus of this program is practical — attendees learn concrete techniques for dealing with the problems that arise in workplace politics, while keeping their integrity intact. Read more about this program. Here are some upcoming dates for this program:
Adopting agile approaches to software development carries risk. If you've discovered some of the problems for yourself, or if you've heard horror stories from others, you know some of the risks. This session explores the nature of the risks of agile adoption. We'll explore the top three risk factors that tangle agile initiatives, and examine relevant mitigation strategies. Most organizations err by starting with training. A more constructive approach with faster return on investment is organic agile capability development. We'll discuss how you can grow organizational agile capability organically by balancing training, coaching and restructuring. Faulty or misleading agile capability indicators are a second pitfall. Although there is no standard measure of agility yet, we'll show you how to focus on what matters to your business to achieve the full promise of agile methods. Finally, we'll explore the importance of measurement methodology and how you set up expectations around budget and schedule targets. By looking at what has gone wrong in agile adoption initiatives, we'll help you prevent the foreseeable problems, and mitigate the risks of the unforeseeable ones. With Nancy Van Schooenderwoert. Here's an upcoming date for this program:
Most of us can assess technological risks, but risks related to human behavior tend to resist our best efforts. This session provides a framework for evaluating risks related to the behavior of individuals, teams, organizations and people generally. Human-centered risk differs from technological or market risk, because objective evaluation requires acknowledging personal and organizational limitations and failures. Since some of those limitations and failures might apply to the people assessing the risks, or to their superiors, there's a tendency to deny them or to explain them away. Our approach examines capability, organization, context, risk mitigation, and workplace politics. It has tools for guiding the assessment and management of human-centered risk, and we show how to extend these tools to suit your situation. You'll learn how to identify sources of risk in human behavior; recognize systemic and individual barriers to acknowledging risk; assess the effects of organizational turbulence; determine the risk associated with inappropriate internal risk transfer; estimate the effects of team dysfunction, toxic conflict and turnover; and measure the impact of workplace politics. Read more about this program. Here's an upcoming date for this program:
What do you do when your team can't make critical decisions? Or worse, when they make a decision, what do you do when they open it up again next week? Making good decisions and facilitating group decisions are both critical skills for project managers. In this revealing and interactive program, I demonstrate a model of decision-making that captures the internal conflicts we all feel when we make difficult decisions. With a better understanding of how we resolve conflicting priorities, we not only become more skilled at making decisions, but we learn how to make decisions that "stick." Read more about this program. Here's an upcoming date for this program:
The Politics of Meetings for People Who Hate Politics
There's a lot more to running an effective meeting than having the right room, the right equipment, and the right people. With meetings, the whole really is more than the sum of its parts. How the parts interact with each other and with external elements is as important as the parts themselves. And those interactions are the essence of politics for meetings. This program explores techniques for leading meetings that are based on understanding political interactions, and using that knowledge effectively to meet organizational goals. Read more about this program. Here's an upcoming date for this program:
Person-to-Person Communication for Project Managers
When we talk, listen, send or read emails, read or write memos, or when we leave or listen to voice mail messages, we're communicating person-to-person. And whenever we communicate person-to-person, we risk being misunderstood, offending others, feeling hurt, and being confused. There are so many ways for things to go wrong that we could never learn how to fix all the problems. A more effective approach avoids problems altogether, or at least minimizes their occurrence. In this very interactive program you'll learn a model of inter-personal communications that can help you stay out of the ditch. In those moments of intense involvement, when we're most likely to slip, you'll have a new tool to use to keep things constructive. Read more about this program. Here are some upcoming dates for this program:
Ever wonder if there isn't a better way to travel? Travel is essential, but the hassles of travel aren't. Read 202 Tips for Business Travel to learn how to convert business travel from a time-wasting hassle to a breeze. Revised and updated for 2008 with 101 new tips! Check it out!
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The key to managing virtual or global teams is creating a sense of team despite the obstacles of separation. Read my tips booklet, 303 Tips for Virtual and Global Teams, to learn how to make your virtual global team sing. Newly revised and updated for 2008 with 101 new tips! Check it out!
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Do you ever wonder if all these meetings are really necessary? (They aren't) Or whether there isn't some better way to get this work done? (There is) Read 101 Tips for Effective Meetings to learn how to make meetings more productive — and more rare. Check it out!
Exchange your "personal trade secrets" — the tips, tricks and techniques that make you an ace — with other aces, anonymously. Visit the Library of Personal Trade Secrets.
eter Farrell and Andrew Kulyk of Buffalo, New York, aren't ordinary sports fans. In 1999, attending the All-Star game of the National Hockey League in Tampa, Florida, they decided to try to attend games at all the venues of the four major U.S. sports leagues: baseball, football, basketball and hockey. They "finished" in December 2002, but since new venues are opening all the time, their odyssey continues.
Top 
Next IssueAre your projects always (or almost always) late and over budget? Are your project teams plagued by turnover, burnout, and high defect rates? Turn your culture around. Read 52 Tips for Leaders of Project-Oriented Organizations, filled with tips and techniques for organizational leaders. Order Now!
Coaching and Haircuts
Pygmalion Side Effects: Bowling a Strike
Renewal
Please Remove My Appendix
The Hypothetical Trap
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Ever wonder if there isn't a better way to travel? Travel is essential, but the hassles of travel aren't. Read 202 Tips for Business Travel to learn how to convert business travel from a time-wasting hassle to a breeze. Revised and updated for 2008 with 101 new tips! Check it out!
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Are you doing work you love? Are you less in love with the job? Bad boss, long commute, troubling ethical questions, hateful colleague? Read Go For It! Sometimes It's Easier If You Run to learn what we can do when we love the work but not the job. It helps you get moving again!
The key to managing virtual or global teams is creating a sense of team despite the obstacles of separation. Read my tips booklet, 303 Tips for Virtual and Global Teams, to learn how to make your virtual global team sing. Newly revised and updated for 2008 with 101 new tips! Check it out!
Are you managing a change effort that faces rampant cynicism, passive non-cooperation, or maybe even outright revolt? Read 101 Tips for Managing Change to learn how to plan and execute your change efforts to inspire real, passionate support. Check it out!
A Tip a Day arrives by email each business day. It's 20 to 30 words at most, and gives you a new perspective on the hassles and rewards of work life. Most tips also contain links to related articles. Free!
Do you ever wonder if all these meetings are really necessary? (They aren't) Or whether there isn't some better way to get this work done? (There is) Read 101 Tips for Effective Meetings to learn how to make meetings more productive — and more rare. Check it out!
