A simple framework; understand, and manage complexity in organisations

Complexity to manage and design organisations. An simpler alternative to the Cynefin framework

(derived from Keith Grint, and Rittel & Webbers work, and many people who I have had the pleasure to work with over the years)

complexity framework

Definition of complexity

Let’s start to look at what complexity actually is. It has to be experienced to understand it. So we need to put aside our scientific mind for a moment and look at your actual life;

• What did you do when you left school?
• Did you know what employment you were going to do from that moment onwards?

no…

You were living with your parents, wondering how to get out and live somewhere else. Finding work to pay the rent. A friend invites you to share their apartment and you begin a job. You think you might like to work in a business some day. So you begin to look for other work, and a friend has a vacancy in their office. And you agree to try that. After six months, you find you are good at the work in the office, and they promote you. Your life in working in banking has begun!

Almost all of our life experiences happen according to wilful intent and seeming chance events that conspire together to create the outcome that then occurred into your life. Change one thing and the sequence and outcome changes. You happen to read a job advert at a friend’s house, that results in the job you have today. You might walk into a cafe and meet your future partner. These events rarely happen when we just wait.

In most cases where we are in our lives today, has been arrived at by applying intents in a general direction. But none of this was predictable or under our direct control. Our experiences are based on those that others contribute to; perhaps family, colleagues, friends, that are also out of our control.

Complexity in organizations

What is working and managing in organisations today REALLY like?
A large part of the work we as managers do in organisations is about how we do things; applying rules, making decisions designing better ways of working. We are usually relying to do this through:

​Designing and improving our services,

& managing unruly operational teams,

We are constantly dealing with situations and resolving problems in the workplace. And all while we are trying to reduce the long list of to-do items we have to deal with.

​However, if we are really honest with ourselves, we often find that what we actually do is often more about;​​

- fire-fighting urgent actions, and fixing them with the first solution that comes to us,
- dealing with awkward situations, that seem intractable, and
- dealing with issues that seem to keep repeating — a ‘whack a mole’ effect.

It is what we all do every day, and it sometimes feels like it is getting worse, not better!
Perhaps we are just too busy to have the time to actually stand back and question how these apparent situations occur?
Here, we are going to look at how we really behave and our decision-making in our work. And we will discover how painless successful decision-making works.

This is a framework that is an alternative to Cynefin, that will help us to deal with work situations in far more effective and better ways. That framework works around three concepts;

• logical situations,
• complex situations, and
• critical situations.

logical, complex, and critical situations

Logical situations.

Definition — A logical situation is one that when we observe it, we can understand that it follows a rational logic; we know how it was created and therefore its outcome is possible to determine. Our actions are often based on thinking that our organisation run like a well oiled machine: a machine paradigm. A mechanical way of thinking. So when the organisation machine is broken we go and fix it. A ‘one size fits all’ approach. These situations consist of cause and effect relationships that we can understand. We find facts, and use data to inform us.
As an example, the design of a business process that describes a service like online shopping, is logical by its design. The way that we document it and train people follows a logical flow. Logical operational processes are based on how we generally understand how organisations are designed, and how we should work within them.

​
Examples of Logical situations or services of organisations are;

• An online shopping service.
• Dealing with an employee being late to work, using an HR process
• Dealing with a customer complaint.
• A standard surgical operation.​

- Simple situations are easily understood.
​- Complicated situations, are logical ones, that are not immediately understood. So they require further expertise, time and understanding to resolve. Manufacturing an aircraft is a complicated situation, because every part of an aircraft is measured and known, but no one person can understand it all.

Characteristics of logical design in organisations are;

• Processes and services that are seen as designed like a logical flow; defined as transactional services.
• Control is through fixed hierarchical decision-making structures.
• The use of procedures and standards that are designed to be followed.
• Audits that are used to assess compliance with the standards.
• Measures are used for data collection, control and planning.
• Change that occurs through planned project management.

How we deal with a logical situation
Identifying and resolving a problem is usually based around a logical analysis;

1. Assess the situation, define an outcome, and plan for that outcome.
2. Analyse the cause and effects inherent in the situation.
3. We apply our experience and solve the solution.

Logical method = define — analyse — solve

Simple problems are generally easy to fix, in that they follow the typical logical problem solving methods that we are all familiar with. As busy managers and designers, we can apply these methods quite easily and quickly.

With a more complicated situation, we need to include planning and design into this method.

Logical complicated method = define — plan — analyse — design — implement

​Logical change in organisations
In organisations change most often happens through projects, by design, maybe a reorganisation, or a process improvement. Or just by a decision by a manager to change something themselves. These activities consist of rational analysis and decision-making.

The more we understand a logical linear system, the more control we can have over it.

​Also, the more we understand how it works, then its workings and outcomes become more predictable. Business analysis is based on this logic.

Change within a logical situation is to plan and ensure everyone understands what they need to do. Monitoring becomes the measure of variance to that plan. Planning becomes a key competence of managers in this logical process.

Service design and Project management are methods for organisational change that has found great success in redesigning highly transactional services, and implementing change projects.

Complex situations

What is complexity? Complexity is unlike logic in that complexity is not logical;
- illogic, a complex issue cannot simply be directly linked to a cause.
​- ambiguous, and therefore illogical and unpredictable.

Lets start by defining this relationship;

Complexity = uncertainty.

What does that mean?​

So, if most things in my organisation are uncertain are they then complex? Not necessarily.

Remember the example at the start of this article? Complex situations can also be characterised as ‘messes’ that are ambiguous or uncertain — very difficult to deal with!

Characteristics of complexity and how they might manifest in an organisation.

1. Ambiguous or new. We come up against something that neither we, nor anyone else that we know has come across before.
2. It cannot be understood or solved in isolation. We can change one part of an organisation, maybe in a department, but the impact of that change then creates a new problem somewhere else in the organisation. (like ‘Whack a mole’)
3. Partial view. We can only get a partial perspective of the situation.
4. Bigger than our individual ability to control. It sits outside a single hierarchy and across systems that are not under single control. An example is how Social media is not controllable, but can only be influenced.
5. It is dynamic. This is when an aspect of what we are involved in simply keeps changing according to patterns that we simply cannot predict.
6. Uncertain outcomes. Because of the uncertainty listed above we cannot easily extrapolate future events from past data. We cannot predict what is going to happen. Therefore we really don’t know what the outcome might look like. So defining the outcome at the start of a complex project might be inaccurate.
7. We cannot solve it. Often there is no clear solution or final result to a complex situation.This makes a definition of success difficult or nearly impossible to define, and the complex situation may change but actually remain unresolved.

Let’s look at an organisation, and look for what is complex in operating and managing it. We might prefer to use the word messy as another term that is sometimes used to characterise complexity.

• Is there not an apparent messiness, or complexity in how a manager makes decisions?
• Is there no complexity in the real behaviours of individuals and groups of employees?
• Is there no apparent complexity in the practical creation of a redesign of a service, or of the actions of customers over time?
• How much of what we see and do in an organisation is actually complex?

For a very long time I believed that we should be working and thinking in the workplace logically, and when I saw that this did not often happen, that it was a problem with me. I felt I had to try harder to be logical and controlled. However, after looking at those situations using the concept of complexity, I realised that I was immersed in complexity active all around me. I realise that we as individuals and groups of people are perhaps far more complex than we think they are. And that much of what goes on in an organisation is actually complex rather than logical. What we are showing here is that the way we deal with logical situations should be very different to how we deal with complex ones.

At this point, as a reader, it might be helpful to think about and explore these complex concepts yourself; with regard to your life, and your experiences working in organisations. It took me many weeks, perhaps months of thinking about complexity, to link complexity to elements of an organisation and my work.

I found complexity scary, because I was used to knowing how things worked, and how to plan. And complexity pushed that way of thinking aside. This irrationalism also extends to organisational change and redesigning work within an organisation. I began to see that the fact that change programmes were less about following a logical method, and more about a set of human interactive activities that leads to positive change. When we “engineer” only with logic in mind, it does then explain why so many change projects fail to meet their objectives. What if we replace that planning by explorative Design that is more human, more about adapting and developing emergent outcomes?

In today’s business world, we recognise, far more than we used to, the uncertain nature of business and the ever changing business environment it resides in. This is not because there is something wrong, but because it is inherently complex. Complexity challenges the fundamental assumption that we fundamentally operate in logical scientific ways, by recognising exactly the opposite; that uncertainty and a lack of cause and effect, are valid. And in many cases complexity might be the dominant principle.

Examples of complexity

• The reasons why families fall into debt, and therefore their way out of their situation is often complex.
• Employees working together in teams; their complex and adaptive interactions and behaviour.
• Designing and operating a non-transactional service within an organisation, will often have complex elements from customers to deal with and their varied requirements.
• Booking a flight is logical, but missing a flight and then having to rebook, is often complex, because the intended solution may not be to simply repeat the booking to the same destination. It depends entirely on the situation with the customer and their changed needs.
• Transforming an organisation.

​At this point, as a reader, it might be helpful to think about and explore these complex concepts yourself; with regard to your life, and your experiences working in organisations. It took me many weeks, perhaps months of thinking about complexity, to link complexity to elements of an organisation and my work.

Dealing with complexity

The most important point about complex and logical situations, is that we need to deal with each differently

complex situations cannot be resolved using logical methods

​The complex approach is not to resolve things through looking at the individual parts on their own, but to do the opposite. Attempt to stand back and observe what is happening in as wide a perspective as possible. And also to dive in and make sense of what is going on from this systemic frame of mind.

Identifying a complex situation.
When we are confronted with a situation in an organisation, before we begin, the first question we can ask ourselves is;

Are the underlying concepts in this situation critical, logical or complex?

As an example, we can take the payment element of a service;
​1. Is it critical, logical or complex?
Answer; The bulk of how we pay for a service, especially online, is transactional and logical. The underlying concept is logical.

2. What about the customers, what payment method can be used?
Answer; Payment is inherently a transactional process and logical. The underlying concept is logical.
​
3. Some parts of the service may be complex, what about those who cannot pay?
​Answer; When we understand these customers, in many cases the causes of why they cannot pay is out of their and our control. The underlying concept is often complex.

Therefore 3 above, needs to be approached very differently compared to the 1 & 2 elements of the service.

Dealing with complexity

A method to deal with complexity

1. Immerse yourself into the situation, rather than asking for data, or a report. We do this to view it from different perspectives, and as a system as a whole.

1. When we are immersed in that situation, our task is to make sense; to find out what is going on. We are interested in learning as much as we can. Putting aside our own views and solutions. We might talk to a group of front line people in their workplace, where we ask open questions, observe and listen. We ask people to take us through the workflow, and we see what they see. We understand what it is like to be them, and we pay attention to their behaviours and concepts they hold. We are co-constructing a picture of how things work from different perspectives.
2. At this point we might change something or try something out. And at the same time keep understanding the unfolding picture of what is occurring through sensemaking. We do this, not to solve the problem, but iteratively to further understand and learn what happens when we change something. As we observe the impact of any changes, this activity often leads to emerging further insights. I like to call this process synthesis rather than analysis.
3. When we have understood to a point of whole understanding that we believe is sufficient, we might be in a position to co-design with others to decide what to change or adapt.
4. Often, we need to keep connected so that we can continue to learn and deepen our understanding. So we repeat the loop iteratively.

Complex method = Immerse — make sense — try-out & adjust

Understanding the whole

​Synthesis is integrating; it is less about focusing on a specific area, and more about pulling back and understanding how each element interacts with each other. When we immerse ourselves, our intent has to be one of learning and synthesis is about understanding the whole, including all the hidden aspects that we cannot see or have data on. The outcome of synthesis is more clarity and understanding, and because this understanding is complex, it is often difficult to put into facts and data. It might be helpful to seethe concept of;

Synthesis as being the opposite to the concept behind analysis;
synthesis is integrating, analysis is reductionist​

We often have to reflect before we act.
Look at relationships rather than just facts.
We cannot define outcomes at the start of the process, because we don’t know what those outcomes might be.
We cannot have targets, and we might not know costs and timescales.

These are quite different to logical situations.

Characteristics of complexity
​These are some of the characteristics of dealing with complexity, it requires;

• A specific leadership style to foster teamwork, rather than management, to bring people and insights together.
• Synthesis more than analysis, where the primary purpose is not to ‘fix’, but to learn.
• Embrace order and disorder as both being valid, and allow space for innovation and curiosity.
• Accept messy situations that we cannot control. We need to accept that we do not know all the answers.
• Collaborate and ask appropriate questions.
• Value knowledge & understanding, rather than data.
• Understanding that decisions are best made closest to the engagement with the work or the customer
• Succeed by collaborating with others in the whole system, rather than decisions in isolation.

When we are implementing change, complexity points to;

• Non-linear design methods
• An emergent design, where outcomes cannot be predefined
• Co-designing with employees and customers, learning and creating together.

Experimentation and learning should be fundamental to the method used.

Structure for dealing with complexity
In a complex situation, the understanding of the real context, is not with data or with a group of people in a room in the organisation, but almost always occurs at the place in the work where that complexity occurs.

So, if we have a front line employee whose job it is do deal with complexity, then they are at the place where we need to pinpoint that can best deal with that complexity, not the manager, or the expert, but that employee. We go to where the greatest understanding of it occurs and how it manifests.

The structure of decision-making for logical situations may well be the hierarchy. Conversely, the operating structure for complex situations is often best understood as a network of people, with the one who has the most understanding of that situation at the centre of that network. That diagram of a network looks like a spiders web, the links changing as the information in the centre changes. The network shifts in response to change, because it senses, understands and reacts to that change. We can call this a self-organising network. A network of knowledge, responsibility and decision-making.​

structure within logical and complex approaches

Understanding with Sensemaking

Facts, Data and Reality
Data are discrete pieces of facts that have been converted into numbers. Data is a representation of reality that has been reduced to categories, and values. Logical situations lend themselves to categorisation to help to make sense of it. They rely on the accuracy of facts to understand and measure. Therefore logical situations can use the mechanisms of analysis, like data and categorisation very successfully.

The information we acquire about complex situations through sensemaking, follows illogic characteristics. It is multi-layered, and connected in various ways. When we examine a part, each element merges into the next. We can understand a complex situation as a systemic picture in our minds. A picture in the mind is rich, expressive, and connected in ways that transcend description and categorisation. This is the processing of sensemaking.
​
How do we put this complex picture into data? The answer I have found is that we cannot do this easily. So, I resist the temptation, and alternatively I keep the complex picture of sensemaking in the mind as a primary repository of understanding. Where I engage and transmit this with others, we do this as a rich picture or a story.

Complexity & Digital

Lastly, what about the role of technology like Digital? This is such an interesting and important subject,
Firstly, Digital is not just a technology, it also comes with its own set of principles and paradigm that reside in our minds when we consider Digital. The model of how Amazon works, for instance, gives up a simple input — output machine model.
Secondly, Digital is inherently logical, and complexity is not, therefore digital struggles to deal with any type of complexity.

I like to think that there are two main types of processing technology.
— One of these is Digital, great for dealing with logic.
And what is the technology that is best suited to deal with complexity?
— It has to be the human mind.
And it comes free with every person!

​And what is the technology that is best suited to deal with complexity?
It has to be the human mind.

Using the framework in organisations

This article is highlighting the point that there are different types of situations in organisations, and this framework highlights different conceptual characteristics that can help us deal appropriately with each different situation we come across.
Whilst working within organisations, perhaps what I have learned the most, are two aspects of complexity.

​#1 By what method.
Generally in our work, each of us seeks to make things simpler, to make our work easier. As we simplify, we use the same methods that we trust, again and again.

It’s quite natural. It is like the quote:

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail
Abraham Maslow

Use the wrong method, and the outcome will not address the situation, and in fact may make it worse. The danger is that we fail to recognise this difference.

In my observation, one of the causes of the rise in ‘complexity’ in the business world that we see today, is because we fail to recognise complexity and how to deal with it appropriately.

#2 It’s a mixture.
What we realistically find in the business and design of organisations, is that real situations are a mix of complex and logical, and sometimes critical. A situation is not only one or the other, one characteristic will be more dominant than others.

Critical Situations

There is one more situation that we have to mention, and it is one that is so pervasive. If you ever go and watch a manager in a modern organisation, that are they doing. Are they looking to solve situations from a logical or complex perspective? Often, no, they are simply trying to deal with issues as quickly as they can. They firefight. So let us look at critical situations.

critical situations

Definition — Critical situations are situations that are immediate or urgent, and we need to deal with them quickly. Consequently, the ability to analyse and plan is reduced. Once we have acted and the urgency is over, we can review the situation and understand any consequences. ​

Critical Situations in organisations

• Managers in any organisation who feel pressure to deal with an action list that they have to get through. Our primary intent is to get through our action list quickly, which results in a behaviour that is based on panic. We find ourselves in a crisis or ‘fire-fighting’. It appears that when we work like this, we have little time to think about the method we are following, or the impact of acting in this critical mode. In firefighting mode, the true nature of the causes of issues are rarely addressed, and problems often re-occur at a later time. This situation is endemic in so many organisations. The Hero manager in action!

a situation is not chaotic, the chaos it is in the way we deal with the situation

How we can deal with chaotic situations
Chaotic situations. If we are looking at a chaotic situation, perhaps the best way to begin is to attempt to move from chaos, to one where we feel we have some control. So, if you are a manager operating in this state, you can take steps to calm that immediate response.
- First pacify the crisis, by “buying time” to deal with the chaos now, to make some space to think.
- Deal with the underlying reasons, so that we can decide how to keep the chaos under control.

Current Chaotic method = act without much thought

Try to move to

Calm thinking = clear the crisis, reflect — re-evaluate the situation — decide​

​​​I am reminded of the quote;

If there is a fire in the kitchen, don’t sit in the living room discussing what colour the walls should be. Put the fire out first!

​When I see a manager acting in crisis mode, I cannot really engage with them rationally, until the crisis is over.

I have also learned a very interesting deeper aspect to this that explains the reactions we have. We are human after all…

• We prefer to find the easiest solution, rather than the real one.
• We prefer to have an easier time, rather than do more work.
• We react to our fears and work within the culture of the organisation.
• Many of us seem to prefer and even enjoy ‘firefighting’.

The situation often controls our behaviour

The complete framework

If we put all the above into the framework, we come up with this diagram.

complexity in organisations, an alternative to Cynefin

Complexity in organisations made simple

This is an 17 minute video that I created to describe this. Please feel free to use this to learn and share if you prefer a video.

COMPLEXITY IN ORGANISATIONS, MADE SIMPLE

The Complex Adaptive System

Merging the self-organising network, with systems leadership, flow based operations, and network decision making, in a big pot of complexity, begins to move us into a new paradigm of how we might design and work within an organisation. We might describe this, not as a logical machine, but a complex adaptive system (CAS). This term is often used to describe alternative ways of understanding an organisation that focuses on the organisation as a system that contains complex characteristics. This alternative paradigm is systemic, it lies in the realms of understanding through systems thinking, rather than machine thinking.
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Our understanding of an organisation then includes the quality of relationships and interactions. It is these interactions that actually make the organisation work and thrive.
​
We are familiar with the diagram of a logical organisation, but there is no equivalent diagram that describes a CAS. The reason is that a CAS looks different to different people in the organisation, depending on the reason of interest. A diagram of knowledge is different to the diagram describing the operations, and it is different to the diagram that reflects authority. These differences are a characteristic of how we understand and view organisations as systems, in that they are shaped by us as individuals.

This lands us in an awkward place, unless we simply accept that this lack of clarity is how it should be. Let us accept that there is no one model of an organisation. So let’s not try and create one right now. This situation is not a problem, we will sort that out another time. First let’s Understand the workplace and our services, then we will worry about what might it look like as a diagram.

• We tend to seek simple solutions, but human organisations are inherently complex.
• It is natural for us to simplify that which we do not understand.
• We like to fix, but often we need to understand first.

​This framework is derived from Keith Grint, and Rittel & Webbers work, and many front line people who I have had the pleasure to work with over the years.

Would you like to learn how to use this in your work? https://www.improconsult.co.uk/service-design-workshop-systemic.html

complex change in the public sector

Cynefin

A note on Cynefin, as so many have been asking me. Whenever I have tried to use Cynefin, I find it is designed for many different types of scenarios, not just organisations. Therefore its relevance is not as specific for my use. More importantly, I am interested in complexity within systems thinking, rather than just working within a reductionist scientific perspective that is based on conventional management principles that I have let go awhile back. I found I was constantly adjusting Cynefin to fit my needs.
The third point that I found when using Cynefin with my work audience, is that they very quickly get into confusion with having to learn new words and meanings. It is a massive learning exercise for them, to understand that which should be simple. So I designed something for my work that I find designed for organisations, and more straightforward to work with.

And here is a further complexity write up, on my website https://www.improconsult.co.uk/blog/organisation-complexity-framework

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