1. Analogy 1
A city is made piece by piece, first by laying out the roads.
If someone thinks predicting future value is impossible or too hard, and decides that planning the roads in a city plan is unnecessary or impossible,
that isn't a problem of method — it's a problem of that person's capacity.
2. The Main Point
Just as a city, once built, grows and changes like a living thing, so too does an organization and its culture.
So the design process for running an organization is no different from city planning. As the cost and effort of redeveloping an already-built city is far greater than planning a new one,
trying to later change an organizational culture that has already formed runs into far more problems than the resistance you face at the original design stage.
Fast moves (small openings) must always rest on a view of the whole flow (big vision).
Drunk on achievement, one must not let the direction of motivation drift.
3. Analogy 2
When developing a program, it's like having to define exception handling in advance for major issues users may run into. Building it up front, versus slowly patching it every time a question comes in, is like retrofitting the streets of a neighborhood where people already live — it induces the same kind of fatigue as the traffic jams and pollution that come along with it.
Wouldn't you say it's a lot like peeing on a frozen foot?
4. Conclusion
The moment you sense a problem, rather than rushing to grab an answer, you should take the stance of crafting one. It's so common-sense that it looks worn out, and that very worn-out feel is why people, hoping to break out of it, keep avoiding the obvious path.
What this is saying is: if you keep solving problems as stopgaps or patchwork without knowing the root cause, you eventually create a situation where "there's nothing you can do" — and that cornered state can only push you toward choices you also "have no choice" about.
5. Epilogue
If you don't dig the channels while the weather is fair,
if you don't dig the channels while the sweet rain is falling,
then even that grateful rain, and even tomorrow's shining sun
will just be swallowed, ungraspable and unseen, into a single sigh.
