Alex Komoroske: Systems Thinking, Builders vs Gardeners, and Working In Large Organizations

In this episode, Alex Komarowski, a former Google and Stripe employee, delves into systems thinking, emphasizing the importance of understanding and influencing complex systems rather than controlling them. He uses metaphors like "gardening versus building" to illustrate how nurturing and responding to systems can lead to sustainable outcomes. Alex also discusses the transformative potential of AI, likening it to "magical duct tape," and underscores the need for privacy and security in leveraging AI's capabilities. He advocates for a future where AI augments human creativity and collaboration, moving beyond the limitations of current app-centric paradigms.

• Alex Komarowski introduces the concept of systems thinking, comparing it to gardening versus building.
• Systems thinking involves understanding and interacting with systems as living entities rather than attempting to control them.
• The gardening metaphor emphasizes patience, influence, and the recognition that systems are alive and can produce outcomes over time with proper nurturing.

"I find one of the core things that is a commonality across a lot of the work I've done in my kind of academic career as an undergrad, and then in industry, it comes down to systems thinking, gardening systems, swarms."

• Systems thinking is a recurring theme in Alex's work, both academically and professionally.

"To really wrestle with systems, you have to... let go and just dance with the system."

• Engaging with systems requires a flexible and adaptive approach rather than a rigid, instrumental one.

"A garden requires a gardener. A gardener is somebody who pulls weeds, trims back things, plants certain seeds in places it thinks might without saying that it builds that thing."

• A gardener influences the system without claiming to control it, recognizing the system's inherent complexity and potential for growth.

• Builders focus on immediate action and control, often relying on heroic execution.
• Gardeners, in contrast, focus on nurturing and influencing systems over time, allowing for organic growth and emergent outcomes.
• The builder mindset is prevalent in traditional business practices, while the gardener mindset is less common but potentially more effective in complex systems.

"The builder gets immediately to work... The gardener's just sitting there, you know, dilly dallying... At a certain point, though, the gardener starts creating outcomes that start becoming large and beautiful."

• Builders and gardeners have different approaches to creating value, with gardeners often achieving more sustainable and impactful outcomes over time.

"In the gardening mindset, it's much more about acknowledging, I don't know the answer. And yet I still can assert that I can make good outcomes happen."

• The gardener mindset accepts uncertainty and focuses on creating conditions for positive outcomes rather than guaranteeing specific results.

• Sarumans represent the typical heroic, powerful leaders who believe in the great man theory and create reality distortion fields.
• Radagasts represent leaders who practice indirect influence, nurturing potential and creating emergent value without seeking credit.
• Both archetypes have their place, but Radagasts are often less visible and their contributions can be mistaken for luck.

"Most founders, most CEO's are canonically the former type, the Sarumans, the builders, than the gardeners."

• The Saruman archetype is more common among leaders due to its direct and visible impact.

"The Radagast magic works by loving everything and everyone around you and seeing seeds of greatness everywhere you look and helping develop those seeds of greatness."

• Radagasts create value by fostering potential and enabling emergent outcomes through indirect influence.

"People will say, oh, you just got lucky. You just happened to be there when that miracle happened. And no, it's like, I'm farming miracles."

• Radagasts' contributions are often undervalued or misunderstood as luck, despite their intentional and impactful efforts.

• Steve Wozniak, Stuart Brand, Kevin Kelly, and Dee Hock are cited as examples of Radagast leaders who have inspired and catalyzed significant outcomes.
• These leaders often work behind the scenes, enabling others and creating conditions for success without seeking the spotlight.

"Dee Hock was one of the people who I didn't know about before I worked at a payments company... 100% chaotic organizations. Like the whole. His whole vibe for. Is 100%."

• Dee Hock, founder of Visa, is highlighted as a perfect example of a Radagast leader who embraced complexity and created a lasting impact.

• Recognizing and understanding the inherent complexity of systems is crucial for effective influence and leadership.
• Leaders who can see both inside and outside the system have the greatest leverage and potential for impact.
• Embracing complexity allows for more informed and strategic actions, leading to significant and sustainable outcomes.

"When you embrace the complexity of the organizations and the world around you, the world is complex. That complexity is terrifying. When people experience it for the first time, it feels like staring into an abyss."

• Acknowledging complexity can be daunting, but it is essential for understanding and influencing systems effectively.

"One of the tricks to doing magic is to recognize that what feels like death in a given context is not death."

• Understanding the true nature of risks and opportunities within complex systems enables more effective and impactful actions.

• There is no standardized curriculum for becoming a systems thinker; individuals often have unique paths and experiences that lead them to this understanding.
• Early exposure to concepts like chaos theory and agent-based modeling can spark interest in systems thinking.
• Practical experience, mentorship, and reflective practice are key components in developing systems thinking skills.

"I read about complex adaptive systems and chaos theory and stuff in high school, and I built a little agent based model of an ant colony."

• Early experiences with complex systems and modeling can lay the foundation for systems thinking.

"Mentoring is one of those things where it adds value directly. It's an end and of itself. It has to have a huge impact on someone's life and career."

• Mentorship and reflective practice help distill and articulate intuitive knowledge, enhancing systems thinking capabilities.

"If you're a platform product manager, then, you know, there's some layer of indirection of like, do this thing and then it causes developers to do a thing which then causes the outcome I want."

• Practical experience in roles that require indirect influence and understanding of complex interactions further develops systems thinking skills.

• Understanding systems theory early in one's career can be a double-edged sword.
• Seeing steps ahead of a boss can lead to conflicts and misunderstandings.
• Credibility is crucial; early career individuals often lack it.
• Systems thinkers can be wrong and disengaged from practical realities.

"The number one rule, the emergent rule of all organizations, is pretend your boss is right, because your boss can fire you."

• Acknowledges the power dynamics in workplaces and the necessity of aligning with one's boss.

"If you understand something they don't understand and you're doing something that, like avoiding a problem they don't see, it can be a real problem for you because they'll say, no, simply do x."

• Highlights the conflict that arises when subordinates act on insights not shared by their superiors.

"A lot of systems thinkers, I found, who are early in their career will confidently state certain way dynamics, and it's like, I don't, I don't think that's how that works."

• Emphasizes the risk of overconfidence in early systems thinkers.

• Systems thinking involves long feedback loops and complex cause-effect relationships.
• Actions taken may not be viable in the given context despite being theoretically correct.
• Constraints must be acknowledged and worked within.

"The feedback loops are so long in some cases, and the cause and effect are such a black box, that it's really, even if you are good or are becoming good, it's difficult to gain confidence in that 100%."

• Illustrates the difficulty in gaining confidence in systems thinking due to its inherent complexity.

"This is a constraint. This is like saying, well, if gravity didn't exist, then this would work. It's like cool. But gravity does exist. So that's a constraint to fit within."

• Stresses the importance of acknowledging real-world constraints.

• Planting diverse ideas (acorns) and investing in those that grow.
• Not holding on too tightly to specific plans.
• Creating a wave to surf by responding to promising developments.

"For me, it's often, it's the general technique is what we call optimizing for serendipity, farming for miracles. And what you do is you plant a small number of diverse set of acorns."

• Describes the approach of planting diverse ideas and nurturing the promising ones.

"You just plant a whole bunch and then respond to the ones that are going in the direction you want and don't hold on too tightly to any particular plans."

• Emphasizes flexibility and responsiveness in systems thinking.

• Identifying real constraints, both visible and hidden (dinosaur bones and laser beams).
• Authentic relationships and understanding what people actually think are crucial.
• Tactics like cold reading statements to uncover constraints and insights.

"If you actually understand what people think, not the official thing of what they're supposed to think, but what they actually think. You often can uncover. Oh, wait a second. Here's the answer that works."

• Highlights the importance of understanding true thoughts and constraints.

"I believe in the official strategy, and I think it's going to work. But, man, are there a lot of challenges."

• An example of a cold reading statement that can reveal underlying issues and constraints.

• Building authentic relationships through subversive comments and cold reading statements.
• Demonstrating authenticity to encourage openness.
• Using amoral tactics with a moral compass to ensure ethical behavior.

"One of the things I would do if I meeting someone new in an organization is one, I would curse drop the f bomb within the first 30 seconds. And two, I would observe something embarrassing about the leadership team."

• Describes a tactic to build authentic relationships quickly.

"If someone were to show me a video of this in ten years in front of 100 people whose opinion I deeply care about, would I be embarrassed?"

• A guideline for maintaining ethical behavior while using amoral tactics.

• Sometimes taking immediate action is necessary to maintain momentum.
• Organizations and people get antsy without progress.
• Kayfabe (professional wrestling term) as a metaphor for maintaining optimism and belief in plans.

"There's cases if the thing is going to die if you don't take some action in the next step. Take some action, man. Momentum matters."

• Stresses the importance of action to maintain momentum.

"Kayfabe is one of the things that makes organizations work. If every time that someone proposed a new project, like a leader said, we're going to do so, and so someone raised their hand in front of everyone goes, this will definitely not work, then I can guarantee you it will not work."

• Explains the role of kayfabe in maintaining optimism and belief in organizational plans.

• Planting ideas and allowing them to grow organically.
• Techniques like safe subversion to suggest changes without direct confrontation.
• Using narrative tricks to make ideas coherent and compelling.

"One of the tricks of doing miracles is you just have dozens of candidates at all times, and people don't see the ones that don't grow, and they do see the ones that do."

• Describes the strategy of planting multiple ideas and nurturing the promising ones.

"Safe subversive, where you connect nine of the ten dots and leave the last dot unconnected."

• A technique to suggest changes without direct confrontation, allowing others to connect the final dot.

• Ensuring survival before aiming for success.
• Balancing normal tasks with innovative bets.
• Investing in promising ideas and people.

"You got to survive to thrive. Like, first you have to survive. If you are knocked out in round one, it doesn't matter what would have happened. Around two, three, or four or five, you're dead."

• Emphasizes the importance of survival before aiming for success.

"70% of my time should be done normal. Just do the thing everybody thinks that we should be doing. Turn the crank. Even if the crank's not attached to anything."

• Describes the balance between normal tasks and innovative bets.

• Example of mentoring a PM to develop a new strategy.
• Using narrative and visual metaphors to make the strategy compelling.
• Planting the idea in anticipation of a reorganization.

"Imagine an entire product area of a large organization that is working on a thing that if you ask every individual person that they behind the scenes and say, I can't make this work, I don't think this strategy works."

• Sets the context for the case study of strategic change.

"I worked with this person behind the scenes. I spent, like, maybe 40 hours of, like, helping them story workshop. And, like, this is too direct. These teams will feel threatened."

• Describes the mentoring process and the importance of narrative and visual metaphors.

"And then the reorg happens, a new VP comes in, and the VP, of course, says to everybody, this organization clearly not working that great, says, what's the one thing I should read? And everybody points them at this deck."

• Illustrates the successful outcome of planting the idea in anticipation of a reorganization.

• People often misjudge the downside risks in situations, overestimating the potential negative outcomes.
• The actual consequences of actions, especially those perceived as embarrassing, are often negligible in the long run.
• Self-awareness and understanding one's motivations can help navigate these perceptions better.

"Nobody's going to read what you write unless you say something controversial, which don't do that if it's not any good, no one will read it. And if it's good, people will read it."

• Good content naturally attracts attention, reducing the perceived risk of failure.

"We weigh the social downside so massively. The perceived expected value of even a small amount of embarrassment is just so scary to people that it prevents them from doing things that are, in all rationality, zero downside, all upside."

• Social fear disproportionately influences decision-making, often to the detriment of rational choices.

"I am deeply driven. Like, the monster that drives me is a deep-seated need to be liked by people."

• Personal motivations, like the need for social acceptance, play a significant role in professional behavior and decision-making.

• Presenting oneself authentically in job applications can be more effective than trying to fit a specific mold.
• The risk of not being accepted is minimal compared to the potential upside of being hired for who you truly are.

"When you apply for a job that you really want, like your dream job, the thing that people default to do is I want to show them how well I fit exactly what they want. But what if you don't fit exactly what they want?"

• Authenticity in applications can differentiate candidates and align them with roles that truly match their strengths.

"If it doesn't work, whatever it was like it was, you were never going to see that person again."

• The downside of rejection is minimal, emphasizing the importance of genuine self-presentation.

• Systems thinking involves considering second-order outcomes and the broader implications of decisions.
• It requires coordination and accuracy, as errors in initial assumptions can lead to incorrect conclusions.

"Systems thinking is almost defined by its multiply thinking."

• Systems thinking is characterized by its layered, complex approach to problem-solving.

"If you get any of the earlier replies wrong, your entire conclusion is incorrect."

• The accuracy of initial inputs is crucial in systems thinking to avoid flawed outcomes.

• Focus on investments or actions with compounding returns rather than linear ones for long-term benefits.
• Compounding returns often overshadow linear returns over extended time horizons.

"If you have one thing that has linear returns and one thing that has compounding returns, it kind of doesn't matter what, like, oh, what's the rate of growth?"

• Compounding returns dominate over time, making them more valuable despite initial growth rates.

• Allowing teams to self-organize and focus on improving existing products can lead to significant growth.
• Large, centralized plans often fail to deliver the expected outcomes due to their complexity and lack of adaptability.

"If you take a thing and you make it work better and work like, one way of looking at product debt is how different is how your product actually operates from how your user thinks it operates."

• Reducing product debt by aligning product functionality with user expectations can drive growth.

"Allowing a bunch of people who care about their products to invest in the things that they suspect will make their product better without some overarching plan is actually a pretty good plan."

• Decentralized, motivated teams can achieve significant improvements without a rigid central plan.

• Self-organization works well for incremental improvements and small projects but struggles with medium-sized, coherent outcomes.
• Centralized planning is often overestimated in its effectiveness, especially for complex, adaptive systems.

"Self-directed organization is not going to work because you're never going to get anything."

• Self-organization has limitations in achieving medium-term, coherent goals.

"The grandiosity of the plan is like, should ring alarm bells instead of give you comfort."

• Grand plans often fail to deliver, and their complexity can be a warning sign rather than a reassurance.

• The adjacent possible refers to the set of actions that are within reach and almost certain to work.
• Iterative progress, guided by a North Star vision, allows for significant long-term achievements.

"The adjacent possible is a design thinking frame, and it's the set of actions that are within your reach that if you did, then they would almost certainly work."

• The adjacent possible focuses on achievable, incremental steps.

"You need to have both to some degree. Like what? Because if you just follow the local adjacent possible, you can iterate yourselves into a corner."

• Balancing iterative progress with a long-term vision prevents getting stuck in unproductive niches.

• Regularly exploring new opportunities can help avoid complacency and ensure continuous growth.
• Management coaching and self-reflection are valuable tools for personal and professional development.

"Once a year you should allow yourself to be recruited by another company."

• Periodically considering new opportunities helps maintain a proactive career approach.

• Intentional Decision Making: Importance of making deliberate choices about staying or leaving a company.
• Social Complexity in Organizations: Large organizations develop complex internal social logics that can overshadow their external focus.
• Efficiency Frontier: Organizations reach a point where they barely produce new value due to absorbed social complexity.
• Metabolic Rate of Organizations: As organizations grow, their internal complexity increases, making them less efficient.
• Long-term Impact of Actions: Importance of staying in an organization long enough to witness the long-term effects of one's actions.

"If you realize no matter what they would possibly offer me, I would not take it, like, stop. You don't want to waste time."

• Making intentional decisions to avoid wasting time in unproductive situations.

"Every large organization, fundamentally, the internal social logic of that organization comes to dominate."

• Large organizations develop internal social complexities that dominate their operations.

"It's good, I think, and important to move, to spend enough time in organizations for the long term implications of your actions to happen."

• Staying long enough in an organization to understand the long-term effects of your actions.

• Fear and Excitement: The dual emotions involved in starting a new venture.
• Destiny and Ideas: When an idea feels like destiny, it becomes irresistible to pursue.

"At a certain point, it just feels like when you have that idea that you can't stop thinking about, that feels like your destiny."

• The compelling nature of an idea that feels like destiny.

• Legitimacy of AI: AI, especially Large Language Models (LLMs), represents a significant advancement.
• Meta Moves in AI: Companies can either provide infrastructure (pickaxes) or anticipate future needs (post-gold rush).
• Commoditization of AI Quality: High-quality AI models are becoming widely available, increasing competition and reducing costs.
• Exploration for New Value: The tech industry must explore new paradigms to find novel value in AI.

"I think LLMs are legitimately a step change in the kinds of stuff that we can accomplish as a species."

• LLMs represent a significant advancement in human capabilities.

"If you benefit from having high quality generalized models, you will be in a good spot."

• Companies leveraging high-quality AI models will have a competitive advantage.

"The best way of finding it is a swarm of individual explorers going off in every which direction."

• Exploration by diverse individuals is essential to discover new value in AI.

• Misuse of AI: Current applications of AI are often not fully utilizing its potential.
• Probabilistic Reasoning: AI operates on probabilistic reasoning, not novel reasoning.
• Augmentation vs. Agency: AI should augment human capabilities rather than act independently.

"People are trying to use this duct tape to create big factory farming tractors out of it, and it's like, yo, it's not going to work for that."

• Misuse of AI in applications that it is not suited for.

"They are probabilistic reasoners. They are vibes based reasoning."

• AI operates on probabilistic reasoning rather than definitive logic.

"I think assistance should be augmentation of your desires as opposed to some agentic thing that you happen to partner with."

• AI should augment human capabilities rather than act as an independent agent.

• Fluid and Malleable Software: Vision for software that is adaptable and personalized.
• Active vs. Passive Technology: Technology should encourage creativity and collaboration.
• Privacy and Security: Fundamental challenges in creating secure and private software environments.

"What if instead we use this magical duct tape and we escape the box?"

• Vision for using AI to create adaptable and personalized software.

"Technology should be about active. It should be about helping people create and use hand hewn tools to extend their agency."

• Technology should promote active engagement and creativity.

"What you need is something that allows untrusted third party code written by others to collaborate seamlessly. In a way that's safe."

• Importance of solving privacy and security challenges in software development.

• Individual vs. Organizational Use: AI is currently more useful for individuals in informal ways.
• Underreported Influence: The actual influence of AI is often underreported, especially in educational settings.

"AI is extremely useful for individuals to use in, like, hacky kind of jury rigged ways and sort of informal ways constantly."

• AI's utility in individual, informal applications.

"College professors saying, nobody's using AI, and AI writing every kid's college, every kid in college's paper in America."

• Underreported use of AI in educational contexts.

• Books and Thinkers: Suggested readings and individuals to follow for deeper understanding of AI and systems thinking.

"One of my favorite books is origin of wealth by Eric Beinhocker."

• Recommended book on complex adaptive systems and innovation.

"Ethan Malik, who's a Wharton professor, has an amazing sub stack and a consumer good friend."

• Recommended thinker and resource on AI.

These notes encapsulate the key ideas and themes discussed in the transcript, providing a detailed and comprehensive overview suitable for exam preparation or in-depth study.