The Right Kind of Chaos

It only takes 2 simple rules to create chaos. Despite our best efforts, we try to treat things as though they are simple anyway.

I'm not innocent in that fantasy, I enjoy breaking down complicated topics into simpler terms and concepts, and I hope to create some value for someone as a result of that breakdown, but there are things that are too difficult to fully break down. In my experience anyway.

Let's look at a deceptively simple, yet familiar concept: a business.

I've worked in companies both big and small, so I've experienced a range of environments. My first job out of college was, at the time, at a growing marketing firm with the tech department consisting of about 15 people and around 150 people total in the company. In my most recent position, I was one of 70,000+ employees.

It's a stark contrast working at a company where the CEO is in the office every day versus a company where you see the CEO on TV semi-regularly and may go 4 years without seeing him presenting in person in front of an audience. But both experiences were valid and valuable.

In all my experience though, I've only been a cog in the company machine, I've never been the head of an organization big or small. Being a CEO seems like an immensely stressful endeavor in any situation: growing company, global corporation, solo operation, or anything in between.

Running a company is difficult, no matter the size. A little inspiration and second hand advice from Alex Hormozi, summarizing a lesson from [Stephen A. Schwarzman](https://www.google.com/search?q=stephen+a+schwarzman): ["Small goals and big goals are equally difficult. You have to expend time to achieve either of them so you might as well make them big."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxQIcDrre1E&t=812s)

But why is it difficult? Complexity.

There are more factors in running an organization than a human brain can comprehend at once. Humans are great at pattern recognition, but only to a certain extent and only for a certain amount of time, and only for certain details we can recognize. There's too many patterns in an entire business to keep track of for one person. Eventually it's too much data to process. This is true for any size company. There's too many changes happening constantly to possibly hope to organize perfectly. Teams of people will help, even teams dedicated to one particular aspect, but there will always be factors that can't be predicted or controlled.

The real kicker is that most of these factors are because of humans. People create a lot of complexity by just being themselves. I believe most of this is innocent, though some is intentional - there will always be bad actors, but majorly the disorganization is a byproduct of people being people.

And being part of that system can be frustrating, even overwhelming at times. There are so many ideas and goals and desires and actions conflicting with one another, it sometimes feels like a miracle that anything gets accomplished at all.

A tweet (post is the proper term now?) from Anthony Pompliano that sums this up: ["One thing you realize over time is that every company is utter chaos internally. Some are just better at hiding it."](https://twitter.com/APompliano/status/1523080901776666624)

So we've established companies are chaos. What do we do about it?

Unfortunately I don't think it's something that can be solved. So that's maybe the biggest take away. Accept that there will always be chaos. Operating a company will always be a challenge, you can't control everything as much as you'd like to, but you can still do your best to handle the situations you do control. You can try to prevent issues where you can, prepare for as much as you can within reason, put systems in place to help people manage the chaos as best they can, and so on, but the chaos is unavoidable.

If you're in the middle of such a complex system, it's still the same. You can only really worry about the things you can control, and accept the fact that there will be chaos. There are different kinds of chaos, so you may be able to find a chaos that is more suitable to your personal preferences, but all companies are going to have chaos to some degree.

What worked for me was always trying to remind myself that I can control what I do and how I handle situations, even if I can't control what others do. The ever present challenge of becoming a master of one's self. I can give advice or direction or instruction but ultimately people are going to do what they do. I did, and do, my best to accept people for who they are and adapt accordingly. Learn to work with people the way they work best. It can help to resolve some of the chaos, but it's not a guaranteed solution. Conversely, too much flexibility can create too much chaos for yourself, some people will turn that flexibility against you, so like all things, it really becomes a game of balance. But a healthy dose of flexibility can work wonders.

So we've also established that human beings are primarily the chaos in a company. However, humans aren't entirely to blame. Even if you removed humans from the equation entirely and distilled a company down to only its rules for how it operates, you still have an enormously complex system, no matter the company's focus or size.

[Conway's Game of Life](https://www.google.com/search?q=conway%27s+game+of+life) is a simple, yet mind blowing program that perfectly represents how quickly a system becomes complex with just 2 rules.

Another Veritasium video worth a full watch, but [he explains Conway's game](https://youtu.be/HeQX2HjkcNo?si=IcVKu4Oy3bAW0Cjb&t=77) much better than I can.

But basically Conway's Game of Life consists of live or dead cells that follow 2 rules:

- Any dead cell with 3 neighbors comes to life

- Any cell with less than 2 or more than 3 neighbors dies

And with just those simple rules, incredibly complex patterns emerge.

That's just 2 rules for a system. Businesses in essence can have hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of rules if you consider every possible situation, scenario, procedure, instruction, regulation, guideline, forecast or product in any business. Throw a few people into that mix, and there's more complexity than you could ever possibly hope to understand fully.

Finally, I think the goal is to appreciate the beauty of complexity and embrace it as an integral component of pretty much everything, not especially businesses. It makes successes that much more of a cause for celebration given the inherent entropy of any system. There will always be chaos. Just accept it for what is, and do your best with what you have. And if you happen to find the right kind of chaos for you, don't be afraid to give it a chance.

A bit of a chaotic article itself, but thanks for sticking with me! If you have any comments or questions, let me know [@jaypetersdotdev](https://twitter.com/jaypetersdotdev) or email [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]). And if you want to start your own newsletter/blog combo on beehiiv like this one, you can do that and support me at the same time with this affiliate link: [https://www.beehiiv.com/?via=jay-peters](https://www.beehiiv.com/?via=jay-peters)! Thanks again!