Dealing with Complexity - Wicked and Tame Problems
Problems not Puzzles
Can we think our way into new ways of behaving in our roles so that we achieve a state collectively in our leadership, management and partnership work where shared outcomes, pooled budgets, joint accountability, meaningful performance management all become possible?
N.B. Wicked questions = provocative questions!
Simple Zone (high level of professional agreement/high degree of certainty of outcome)
E.g. simple surgical procedures – hip replacements, cataracts operation, hernia OR setting up a community recycling scheme, or a policing process for a neighbourhood, making a cup of tea. Characterised by:
Predictability of outcome based on previous experience. We can plan for the future.
- We experience a comforting level of control
Complex Zone (medium to low levels both of certainty of outcome and professional agreement)
E.g. delivering on indicators of social deprivation, managing a diabetic patient’s insulin regime, persuading people to use less energy and drive their cars less. Characterised by:
- Dynamic situations with a large number of interconnected variables
- Past data or experience not being a reliable predictor of future outcome
- Feelings of frustration, ‘stuckness’ and a lack of control. We might crave the certainty of a solution or a directive leadership role
Chaotic Zone (low agreement and low certainty of outcomes)
E.g. ‘solving’ street crime, drug addiction, teenage pregnancy, low educational performance among some minority groups. Characterised by:
- Lots of good work which doesn’t always seem to make a significant impact
- People adopting moral positions
- Debate not dialogue
- Scanning for emerging patterns that might suggest an emerging level of organisation
Navigating Complexity
A colony of termites is a complex adaptive system (CAS). So is our immune system. The stock market, our brain, rush-hour traffic and just about any collection of human beings are all CASs. There are some things that are known to be true about complex adaptive systems:
- They are characterised by non-linear and unpredictable behaviour. Variation in blood sugar levels for example had been assumed to fluctuate in a predictable cause and effect relationship in response to physiological or emotional stimuli. In fact blood glucose levels can only be predicted for 15 days or so based on past patterns. Prescribing measured doses of insulin to a diabetic by itself is therefore an ineffective way of managing the condition.
- A CAS is a collection of individual agents that have the freedom to act in ways that are not always totally predictable, and whose actions are interconnected such that one agent’s actions will change the context for other agents.
- The behaviour of any individual or group is determined partly by a set of rules based on past experience and partly by unique and adaptive responses to new stimuli from the environment.
- The web of relationships, networks within which both individuals and groups exist contain many varied and powerful determinants of their beliefs, expectations and behaviour.
- Complex outcomes can emerge from a few simple rules. Computer simulations demonstrate how just a few instructions (like “fly to the center of the flock”; “stay only a certain distance,” etc.) produce the remarkably complex behaviour of flocking.
- Even tiny fluctuations in a CAS can erupt in sweeping, system-wide change (popularised by the concept of the butterfly effect.)
- Continual creativity is a natural state of the system. A hallmark of CASs is that they produce novelty. Novelty, whether in ideas, action, structure, agreement emerges when both diversity and relationship are privileged, and where tension and uncertainty are accepted as the natural order of things.
So, what does successful navigation of complex or chaotic conditions require?
Certainly not planning and controlling; nor regulating (although these tasks have their places)These more mechanisticprocesses work well in simple conditions characterised by high degrees of certainty and agreement.In his book ‘Leadership on the line’, Ronald Heifetz calls these technical solutions. He suggests at a minimum the behaviours of leaders in complex situations might include:
- Usingintuition and muddling through
- Only doing ‘ good enough’ planning with minimum specification.
- Chunking problems
- Using metaphors to describe the indescribable
- Using provocative questioning
- Recognising the need for a range of mind-sets and to ‘mind-set bust’ when necessary
- Being a reflective practitioner and learn, learn, learn
The leader does not exist outside of the system like a puppeteer. Instead, the leader is part of the system. The leader can change the system by changing herself or himself.
References
Stacey, Ralph D. Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics: the challenge of complexity. 3rd ed London: Financial Times, 1999
Zimmerman B, Lindberg B, Pisek P. Edgeware: insights from complexity science for health care leaders. Irving, TX: VHGA Press, 1998.
Heifetz R and Linsky, M Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of LeadingHarvardBusinessSchool Press, 2002