Beating around the bush

The Legal Design team often gets called in when the stakes are high and the complexity is becoming difficult to comprehend and oversee, let alone communicate. Somehow, I always expect that the first briefing will focus on the complexity of the issue, and that the meeting will end with a clear vision on the issue and key message. However, in reality, this hardly ever happens. Now in my new role, at a new company, I see it happening again. People call because they have incredibly complex issues at hand, but end up asking for a pretty PowerPoint template. Wait, what?

Do you recognize these situations where you seem to spend an entire meeting discussing some trivial detail instead of the real issue? Don’t worry, it’s not the team, company or topic. It happens everywhere. Sometimes the real issue is just too difficult for us to comprehend. It can be so big, and its consequences can be so extensive that no-one oversees it anymore. Welcome to the bike shedding phenomena or Parkinsons’ law of Triviality.

Parkinson’s law of triviality was first proposed by Cyril Parkinson and it states that people tend to give disproportionate focus to trivial projects at work. To illustrate this point, Parkinson described a fictional committee team assigned with the task to create a nuclear power plant. During the planning stages, a big debate breaks out about the color of the bike shed. Instead of arguing about the details of the power plant, everybody focusses on the roof of the bike shed. Why does this happen?

It’s a human tendency to spend a disproportionate amount of time discussing trivial issues. Topics we are comfortable with. When we working on something that’s very complex, things can get intimidating fast. Focusing our attention on the trivial stuff is just so much easier. Okay, that might be the case, but that does not help us overcome the phenomena. What does?

Let’s start with embracing it. People feel overwhelmed and debating the little things helps them get their feet on the ground. Part of being a designer is being a therapist as well. As goes for being a good lawyer. So listen and empathize. That is how you get from the small stuff to the big stuff. Use the feeling of accomplishment once the small stuff has been dealt with to progress to discussing the more complex issue at hand. And last but not least, set a deadline. When we feel the pressure of time we tend to focus more. Less time often means more creative solutions, faster decisions and more focus. And when nothing helps? Just lean back and enjoy the show. At least now you know what is happening.

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