I have a perhaps (at times) unfortunate habit. If I have a new shirt and it has a tag on the inside, I will usually yank hard on that tag to tear it out. If that rips a hole into the fabric of the shirt, then the tag was part of the supporting structure. To me that is an immediate red flag.
This has cost me a few shirts, but it has also never felt like a mistake. I don’t think those were good shirts.
When we think of load-bearing, we generally think of it in the context of a wall or some other physical structure, such that what is load-bearing is carrying the load; it is supporting (much of) the weight of the overlying parts, those that are weighing down on it.
In the case of a wall, if it is load-bearing, then the stability of the ceiling depends on it. Were that wall to collapse, then that area of the building is likely to also break down.
If you have played a game of Jenga or Mikado, you will have experienced the consequences of removing the wrong block or stick. The weight has to go somewhere. If the thing holding up the weight is gone, then the weight moves down to fill the space.
The structure that is load-bearing can bear only so much weight – that is its capacity. In that sense, you care about what is load-bearing and probably also how much it can take.
You see the load-bearing property in action in lots of places and as a metaphor and a mental model, load-bearing transfers well and far.
- Computer Systems. In software and computer systems, load-bearing parts are those that experience use across the stack, from interfaces and server code down to the operating system and physical hardware. The load-bearing parts are those that enable the system to function. Due to compounding complexity of modern software, load-bearing paths often evolve and change over time and are at times revealed as surprises.
- Organizations and teams. In organizations and teams, load-bearing elements are those that enable coordination or get needed work done. The org chart rarely provides an accurate picture of where work actually happens or how information flows. Instead, informal communication paths, trust relationships and shared context matter a lot. Often specific individuals carry the real load. This becomes visible when progress stalls because someone takes vacation days, changes teams or becomes otherwise unavailable.
- Knowledge and thinking. Load-bearing ideas are those that are foundational to other thinking. Those foundations are rarely explicit and often feel unquestionable and so easily go unquestioned. They are so assumed in their obviousness so as to be virtually invisible. If a load-bearing belief is removed too quickly and without adequate replacing support, overlying thinking has nowhere to go and will essentially collapse downward.
Each of those (and many more!) deserve their own deep-dives to explore load-bearing aspects in their context. They are merely mentioned here as examples to illustrate the larger point.
Dependency is universal. Such is the applicability of load-bearing as a concept.
Looking for and paying attention to the load-bearing helps you identify critical foundations and structures (physical or otherwise) and examine or perhaps interrogate how strong they are.
The term load-bearing implies weight to be borne and as such hopefully reminds of the importance, the relative gravity, associated with this.