Butterfield: Organizational problems only appear simple when they are misunderstood
Stewart Butterfield · Mental models for building products people love ft. Stewart Butterfield · Nov 20, 2025 · at 57:34
Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield shares a mental model regarding the hidden complexity of large organizations and societal systems.
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“Everything is simple if you have no idea what you're talking about. So the other side of that is like, if something seems simple, probably you don't understand it. And You know, there's obvious exceptions to that, but for anything that involves a large organization or a lot of human beings, if the problem seems simple, you don't get it.”
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