Last weekend I went kayaking on the Ardèche river, in southern France. I had kayaked a couple of times before, but never in tandem over a two-day trip. It was a terrific experience, with wonderful people in mesmerizing nature.

As it often happens when I do outdoor sports, my mind put together a few thoughts. This time, about systems, their delays, and lagging indicators. I think they generalize to more than kayaks 🛶, so I wrote about them here.

The Ardèche river, its rocky borders, four kayaks navigating it and an angle of sky.

For most of day one (out of two), my kayak partner and I struggled to navigate in a straight line. We often found the kayak pointing at the wrong angle and had to bring it back on route. Then, we would find it pointing wrongly in the other direction. Unsurprisingly, we reached camp for the night tired and with low morale.

Why were we doing such a bad job? Because of delays!

A diagram of a kayak showing the effect of paddling (forward and to the side)

A kayak:

  1. Gains forward speed when pushed by the paddle, backwards, on either side.
  2. Turns in the opposite direction of the paddle in the water.

These forces complement each other. Paddling on the right side will move the kayak forward and point it slightly to the left. Paddling on the left will offset the change in direction while maintaining the speed. This is why you typically alternate paddling on each side: to maintain momentum and balance the forces that would rotate the kayak.

Occasionally, things did not work that way for us. When the kayak leaned one way, we paddled “harder” on that side to turn in the opposite direction. But, by then, it was too late already! Due to the delay between the energy we transmitted to the water and the kayak rotating, the kayak’s direction was a lagging indicator of the quality of our efforts.

The kayak in the water is a system we can model, reason about, and predict. Because no reaction is truly instantaneous, all systems have delays. Knowing where they are and how to shorten (or lengthen) them means finding a leverage point that can affect the whole system. Therefore, learning how to operate in the absence of timely information is key: both to having fun on a kayak and to making better decisions in business and life. When I realized that, the task of controlling a kayak looked a lot like a scaled-down version of the challenges we face daily and I saw an opportunity for thinking about it and connecting the dots.

We can’t begin to understand the dynamic behavior of systems unless we know where and how long the delays are. And we are aware that some delays can be powerful policy levers. Lengthening or shortening them can produce major changes in the behavior of systems.

Thinking in Systems, A Primer. By Donella H. Meadows

On the kayak, we went through phases of observation and experimentation. At first, we suspected that an asymmetry in our paddling (left/right or front/back) was at fault. We thought that if we could have perfectly symmetric strokes, then the kayak would go straight. But then, how would we account for the remaining factors, e.g. the water currents? We wanted to build a mental model of the kayak so that we could diagnose our troubles and figure out how to fix them. But we were failing, because delays were muddling the effects of our inputs and revealing them only after some time (when the kayak turned).

A diagram of a kayak showing how delays and other forces make it harder to predict the effect of paddling.

To get better, we had to first acknowledge that the system was messier than what we were trying to picture in our minds. Both delays and external forces were contributing to the outcome. Once we learned that, we started to master our waters. We started looking at weaker observations that were more readily available: e.g., our bow just hinting at a direction after a paddle stroke. This way, we shortened the feedback loop of actions, measurements, and reactions and we stopped over-correcting our angle when it was too late. With experience, we even started seeing how each paddle stroke would slightly turn the kayak while pushing it forward and we learned how to naturally balance for that in the next stroke. We could “point” the kayak more effectively, control our route and pick between more options in how to face the rapids. And, obviously, have a ton more fun!

So, what did we learn?

  1. The map is not the territory. We have a natural tendency to build tidy mental models, but the world is sometimes messier than that. Acknowledge that to iteratively build a useful model.
  2. All systems have delays, since no reaction is truly instantaneous. Delays lead to oscillations and longer feedback loops, which make systems harder to “hold in the head”.
  3. Delays are powerful leverage points. Controlling them can result in significant (sometimes surprising) changes to the system’s behavior.
  4. A faster loop reduces the effect of delays, which makes it easier to understand the system.
  5. The shorter the loop, the faster we iteratively build system models. Strive for simplicity, get it working, then improve it through experience and insights.
  6. If something is hard to predict (or correct), you might be only looking at lagging indicators. They are more visible but less useful than leading indicators. A weaker signal earlier on is useful: try looking for those leads.

These lessons apply across disciplines. Software development, for instance, combines different loops (write, review, bugfix, or release, deploy, rollback) and leading and lagging indicators (number of developers vs number of bugs released). There are delays: it takes time for a developer to onboard and become an effective contributor; sometimes, bugs only surface years after they have been coded. It is also messy: we measure team velocity and story points, but need to acknowledge how reality changes around us and the humans that compose the team. Endurance training can be another example. It takes weeks to build the aerobic skills required to compete and training and recovery interact in loops (with form and fitness). The heart rate on race day is a leading indicator, while VO₂ max lags behind.

I hope that while reading about delays and indicators you started picturing examples from your own fields where these thoughts apply. Reach out through the contacts in the footer; I would love to hear all about it!

Thank you for reading, and until next time! 👋