Second systems and second servings of passionfruit

It doesn’t matter if it’s an IT system, a logistic system, a scheduling system, or an educational system, once you get to experience the down sides it’s tempting to throw everything away and start again. The prevailing wisdom in IT is to never do that, don’t throw away what you have as the new shiny thing you’ll build will take too long and you’ll fall behind before you finish (if you ever finish) [1,2]. I was reminded of that a few times while growing a passionfruit vine.

I’ve spent hours and hours working on and thinking about my passionfruit. There were many times I was tempted to throw the whole thing away but some advice from my far more green-thumb family encouraged me to just change a few things here or there and now I’ve got a very happy and fruitful vine.

The first issue was my placement, I placed it against a retaining wall thinking that it would cool the area and hide some ugly bricks. Unfortunately the bricks provided a rather fertile weed growing ground [3], those weeds could out compete my poor vine as they could just spring up and push out while the vine had to grow all the way from the ground. In the end I had to half destroy the vine to clear them all out!

I’m glad I kept the remnant of the vine though as it taught me a very important lesson that summer: plants need water. Shocking I know. My second error was not understanding how hot the Queensland summer got and how much water the vine required. After it had died back to a few sad stems and a leaf or two I was about ready to throw it out and start again. A family member though encouraged me, showing me that it was still alive and that it could grow back again.

For attempt three, I let the vine grow up above the retaining wall, on some wires. It grew fast as the root system was already well established, quickly taking over the wires set up for the plant. The 1mm thick wires strung across a 4 metre gap. The wires now sagging under the weight of all that mass. Another family member suggested adding another picket and some stronger wire and we had a vine that was more supported.

The vines have since exploded in fruit and I’m glad we just added a few supports instead of trying to thread wire through the thick foliage, I would have had to kill a whole lot of branches and drop a lot of fruit to get that wire through.

It can be tempting to throw away a whole system if it’s not performing, or it can be tempting to just let it go. Finding the parts to keep and the parts to replace can be tricky sometimes. I’m glad I had some help from family, now I can get back to assessing logistic systems, finding  the good roots to retain and the doomed branches that need to be trimmed.

If you’d like me to look at your complex systems, get in contact at Hello@NorthCardinal.com.au. We can assess which parts are performing and which parts need a hand to debottleneck your processes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect
[2] https://www.neilgunton.com/doc/?o=1mr&doc_id=8583