(2025-11-15) Cutler Tbm389 Overthinker

John Cutler: TBM 389: Overthinker! From a young age, being accused of “overcomplicating” or “overthinking” things felt like a dismissal of who I was. Later, in professional settings, I struggled to stay calm when I witnessed reductionist ideas being used (often by those in power) in ways that harmed others. That pattern became my kryptonite

Lately, I’ve given a lot of thought to reductionism and reductionists, as well as the concept sometimes referred to as “embracing complexity,” systems thinking, or complexity

This post is about finding a third way that allows me to act without distorting reality or betraying who I am, and about coming to terms with how I navigate work environments.

Reductionism

Structure-first reductionism assumes that if you “get the org chart / process / operating model right,” human behavior will naturally align.

People-first reductionism assumes that if you “hire good people” or “fix the culture,” everything else will fall into place.

Three-bucket reductionism assumes that if you treat “people, process, and technology” as discrete levers, you can pull the right one and the system will improve.

Systems-thinking reductionism believes that if you map out everything influencing the system and understand exactly how it all connects, then acting on the “right leverage point” will make the whole thing magically tip in your favor.

Biology favors fast, good-enough decisions

In many contexts, reductionism is often the most effective approach. Effective at Outputs, maybe not at Outcomes.

Reductionism can be wrong, but actionable.
Complexity can be right, but paralyzing. Small action designed to make progress while also testing/validating the key assumptions is the way to go. Quadruple-Loop Product Management, Thinking In Bets

A Polarity

I think this is why many Eastern traditions don’t ask you to pick one. They treat reduction and complexity not as competing truths, but as lenses through which you move

Or as Zen tradition puts it, “Do not mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon.”

A Demand

Activists deeply understand complexity. They know movements behave in nonlinear ways, spread through networks, and produce unpredictable tipping points. However, they also recognize that if you attempt to explain the entire system, you lose the audience.

clarity and a tangible ask, How about: Agility, Context, and Team Agency?

An Interaction

I deeply appreciate Peter Block’s writing. He speaks often about engagement, human needs, and relationships, while refusing to sugarcoat or oversimplify reality

an invitation to create the conditions where people choose responsibility because they feel a sense of ownership, agency, and connection.

He warns, “If the client does not own the problem, the solution will not matter.” His critique of expert-driven (reductionist) diagnosis is blunt: “What is fundamentally corrupt in the process is the idea that one person knows and the other does not.”

He treats engagement itself as the strategy.

A Prototype (And Everyday Life)

Design futures thinkers (design thinking) like Cameron Tonkinwise make a similar point from a different angle. Tonkinwise argues that you cannot simply model or speculate your way into a new system. You have to prototype it, live into it, and let practice reveal what a different future makes possible.

Terry Irwin expands on this by emphasizing that change must be embedded in lived experience, not just in frameworks: “The many socio-technical sectors which the MLP (multi-level perspective) framework seeks to transition need to be symbiotically integrated at the micro, meso and macro levels of scale of human experience / everyday life.”

And as Ezio Manzini reminds us, "System change starts small (practically “reduced”), not because we are ignoring complexity, but because action is how we learn to work within it."

A Path

we will encounter many people in our work lives who are certain they understand how things work and why things are broken. They will put you in a box, and being placed in a box feels terrible. Not too long ago, I was told by a manager to “stick to your superpower, workshops,”
That didn’t feel great.

as Imre Lakatos noted, it isn’t enough to point out that reductionism is flawed. If your alternative doesn’t generate better predictions or more useful interventions, you’re just running what he called a “degenerating research program.”

you don’t win by being right in principle.
You win by being useful in practice.

we become useful by acting, prototyping together, engaging, interacting, and connecting. While also sensing and finding ways to grapple with (but never fully understand) the ultimate truth