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Brooks’ Law is a principle in software development that states: “Adding manpower to a late project makes it later.” It was coined by Fred Brooks in his 1975 book “The Mythical Man-Month”.
As more people join a project or organisation, the number of communication channels increases exponentially. This leads to more meetings, more discussions, and more coordination efforts, which can take away from actual time doing the work.
Don’t throw bodies at the problem: whilst the natural instinct is to add more people, Brooks’ Law warns against this, suggesting that it can actually worsen the situation.
While Brooks’ Law originated in software development, its underlying principles can apply to other scenarios.
Demand in the social sector is rising across the board, and each sector is now desperately trying to manage the unmanageable.
People say we need more resources, but that isn’t the solution.
Last week I spent time at a health and housing event where people shared potential solutions to the crises enveloping the two sectors.
Not that we should rush to solutions: Taps Mtemachani summed up the issue that prevents true innovation in both health and housing:
“Einstein said If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.
Yet in the NHS we spend 5 minutes thinking about the problem and 55 minutes thinking about solutions.”
The issue of rising demand is only exacerbated by solutionism – which drives organisations to adopt solo approaches to solving what are, in effect, wicked problems.
A wicked problem is a complex social or cultural issue that’s difficult to solve due to its interconnectedness and ever-changing nature. It lacks a clear definition and has contradictory requirements, meaning addressing one aspect may create new problems. Problems like poverty, healthcare access, and income inequality require multifaceted, collaborative approaches, focusing on managing rather than completely solving them. Solutions often involve a combination of changes: technology, behavioural shifts, policy, and a long-term commitment from various stakeholders.
Wicked problems, due to their complexity, cannot be managed by one organisation alone.
While a single organisation may initiate action, progress requires cooperation among various stakeholders.
A shift from solving to managing.
A shift from uncoordinated solo efforts to co-operation and systems approaches.
And the crucial bit: the pooling of resources and skills
And what amazing skills we have: if we just take health, housing and social care we already have about three million people employed in the UK alone. That’s before you even go near the skills lying untapped in communities.
In my last post I wrote that the most practical way of approaching these problems is through the adoption of place based ways of working – because it upends business as usual. By changing where you sit and who you sit alongside it literally forces you to think differently.
We talk about this in the latest Let’s Talk Ideas:
“Place-based working encourages a holistic understanding of the interconnected social, economic, and environmental factors influencing a particular location. This results in a systems thinking approach which helps identify underlying issues and develop solutions that address multiple aspects of the problem simultaneously”
This helps organisations tailor solutions to address the unique complexities of problems in that specific area, rather than applying generic, one-size-fits-all approaches.
It also fosters collaboration and partnership building between local organisations, government agencies, businesses, and community members. This enables collective action, resource pooling, and shared responsibility, crucial for addressing complex, interconnected challenges.
Working in this way can bring immediate and often unexpected results as by its nature it is bottom-up and unpredictable. Which funnily enough is the reason that the practice is not widely adopted – it rails against the risk averse predilections of the planners and bureaucrats. It threatens their power.
Keir Starmer has laid out a 10-year plan to save the NHS, but as John Seddon points out important changes could be achieved in more like 10 weeks.
Our initial place-based pilot is showing results after only five weeks, not through an injection of resource, or through some transformation programme, but just by organising people around a place rather than a problem, by connecting them, and giving them a little more autonomy.
We don’t need more resource, we need more connectors, brokers and bridge builders. And we already have them , we just to need let them get on with it.