Complexity is usually a decision we didn’t make earlier.

Every system I’ve regretted building had something like this behind it. There was a decision we kept putting off, and the system eventually grew around it.

I’ve seen the same thing in two very different places.

In warehouse operations, it was often deciding which SKUs actually moved fast enough to justify their shelf space. Skip that decision and the warehouse slowly fills up with a layout nobody really chose.

In HealthFirstAI, it was deciding whether a piece of clinical information belonged in the patient timeline or in a form. Skip that decision and you end up with a schema nobody really chose either.