Complexity Is a Tax: Find Your 13,000 Parts

Written by: David Carneal – Digital Efficiency Consulting Group – DECG

Read Time: 3 min

Why complexity feels invisible (until it invoices you)

LEGO didn’t almost implode because people stopped liking toys. They almost imploded because the company became a complexity factory.

When you multiply versions of parts, products, forms, tools, and exceptions, you don’t just add work. You add coordination. Coordination is where time goes to die.

The sneakiness of complexity is that it shows up everywhere, but never in one obvious place. It’s death by a thousand ‘quick favors.’

What one extra version actually costs

Here’s the part nobody budgets for: every extra version drags in hidden labor. Someone has to remember it exists, train it, update it, store it, and explain it when it breaks.

It also creates ‘decision tax.’ A person stops, thinks, asks around, and then does the work. That stop-think-ask cycle is where your cycle time quietly doubles.

If you want a fast sanity check, look for places where people say, “Which one do you use?” That sentence is complexity waving at you from across the room.

The ‘13,000 Parts’ translation for normal businesses

You probably don’t have 13,000 plastic widgets. You do have 13,000 little decisions: which spreadsheet, which form, which version of the quote template, which customer exception, which system nobody wants to admit we still use.

Every extra version creates a fork in the road. Forks create training. Training creates questions. Questions create interruptions. Interruptions create… you checking email at 9:47 p.m.

A quick audit you can do without a committee

Run this ‘13,000 Parts Audit’ in 20 minutes. No consultants required. No incense. Just honesty.

• List your repeatable work (pick one):
  • Order entry
  • Scheduling
  • Shipping paperwork
  • Customer onboarding
  • Inventory adjustments
• Count the variations:
  • How many forms/templates exist for the same task?
  • How many “special” customer rules are you still honoring?
  • How many tools do people use to do the same job (Excel + ERP + email + a sticky note)?
• Circle the worst offender and ask one brutal question:
  • If we deleted this version tomorrow, what would actually break?
  • If the answer is “nothing,” congratulations:
    • You found free time hiding in plain sight.
• Create one tiny standard:
  • One default template
  • One naming convention
  • One ‘approved path’ for the task
  • One escalation rule for true exceptions

Warning Signs

• Watch for these complexity symptoms:
  • “It depends” is the default answer to simple questions
  • New hires need a tour guide for basic tasks
  • You have ‘tribal knowledge’ files that can’t be replaced
  • People keep their own ‘shadow systems’ because the official one is too slow

Micro Metrics

• If you want to measure the tax (without a data science lab), track one of these for 2 weeks:
  • Number of handoffs per order/case
  • Number of approvals per request
  • Number of times someone re-enters the same data
  • Number of ‘quick questions’ on the same topic
  • Rework reasons (top 3 only)

LEGO’s turnaround wasn’t magic. It was subtraction with discipline.

Your next efficiency win probably isn’t a new tool. It’s a brave ‘no’ to one more exception.

One tiny standard and one deleted exception can do more than a year of ‘process improvement initiatives.’ Yes, I said it.

CTA: Pick one ‘13,000 part’ this week and delete it. Not optimize it. Delete it.

Footnotes

1. The Guardian (2017) – How Lego clicked: the super brand that reinvented itself
2. LEGO Company (2003) – Annual Report 2003