I like orchids, and when I was younger I tried several times to grow one, without any success: after a couple of weeks they were all gone.
Fast forward to July 2022 when our neighbour, who is the proud owner of a dozen orchids that are in constant bloom, gifted me one for my birthday. I was like “Oh no, here we go again”, but three months have passed and it is still with us, as beautiful as it was the day it entered our house.

What am I doing differently?

I am leaving it alone!

All the others died because of too much misguided care: I was constantly watering them, and trying to enrich the soil. This time, it’s just a few drops of water now and then, and it is working.

Sometimes the same happens in our organisations: when we see a problem, the first thing we tend to do is go and fix it.

My orchid is teaching me that sometimes it is best to resist the temptation to do ‘something’, and do nothing instead…it may be that what we think is a problem exists only in our head.
It may also be that there is indeed a problem…which the people suffering from it will be able to solve without that much of an external intervention.

And if we cannot stay still?

What about directing our energies to trying to understand what is really the problem we are solving for?

Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential.

Update 12 Feb 2023
Today I received the ‘Brain Food’ newsletter from Farnam Street, where the first link was to a blog post about iatrogenics: there is some sound philosophy I wasn’t aware of behind the realisation I described above, and the authors pulled together a very insightful read about it!

Photo by John Wiesenfeld on Unsplash