What we don't see is often the most important thing
Just consider real estate:
We often talk about real estate as if they were buildings. But real estate is real estate and real estate is the land on which the building stands.
(Land Code Chapter 1 §1): Real estate is land. This is divided into properties. A property is bounded either horizontally or both horizontally and vertically.
Especially when it comes to large construction projects, the land is crucial - its location, its price, etc. The availability of land and its exploitation is a very limiting factor for construction. However, for most of us this is not obvious. We think that real estate is a house and that it is the house that is the most important. But even architectural firms today have employees who work only strategically with land issues. For example, Skanska and NCC are projects that Passing Stockholm important in the first place because it allows them to exploit strategically important real estate adjacent to the road. The road project itself has very tight margins.
Or think epicenter: often used as a metaphor and considered the centerpiece ("the core") of an earthquake - where everything happens. But in fact, the epicenter is just the point reaction on the surface. The center of the earthquake itself, which causes the reaction to the surface, is located below the earth's crust and is called hypocentre. This concept is so uncommon in Swedish that it is highlighted in Word as I now write it.
Cars, what is it? For the most part, the car is a bbed base plate - powertrain, wheels, engine, steering, transmission, etc. In terms of development, it takes about 4 years to develop a base plate and about 70 % of the car's components are located here. body and interiors take no more than half the time to develop. But for most of us, the body is the car. "Volvo releases a new car", it can be called from our local car manufacturer. But often it is a new body on the same base plate that was used before - both in Volvo cars and other cars. Volvo XC60 and Ford Kuga is, for example, largely the same car. What is different is in the superstructure. New Volvo XC90 which was launched a few months ago, however, is a new car (for real). That base plate has never been used before. Then there will be many "new" cars, which look completely different. But to about 70 % they are the same as the XC90.
What is an IT system? Is it the icons and paths? No, for the most part is an IT system architecture, algorithms and database. What we see and what we think of as a program is, in fact, just the happy surface that allows us ordinary users to use the advanced technology. Think Google: A search box that answers all of our questions - as simple as that. But it is not. It took over a decade for Google's competitors to understand how the logic and algorithms underlying the search box work.
When we mix up what we see with the underlying structure, which is what actually underlies how everything works - then frustration easily arises. To be successful, we must understand the complexity - then we understand, for example, how our business works, how the relationships in our business look and why our employees react as they do.