The Law of Requisite Variety, also known as Ashby’s Law, states that any control system must be capable of variety that’s greater than or equal to the variety in the system to be controlled. There are two ways to deal with variety. You can reduce variety by standardizing inputs and controlling the environment as much as possible (fewer balls), or you can design a system that’s capable of absorbing more variety. Reducing variety is a machine-like, factory approach to company design. This works when you can successfully constrain your inputs to a small number of possible states and control the environment where the service is delivered. The real world throws a lot of variety at you. It’s bound to throw things at you that you didn’t prepare for, plan for, or anticipate. In most cases, service providers must reorganize to absorb variety rather than reduce or contain it.
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