Complexity and Complication
I was very struck a year ago hearing Brenda Zimmerman (author of Getting to Maybe) make the distinctions between simple, complicated and complex. Making a soup is simple-you follow a recipe. Building a rocket is complicated; there are lots of interrelated recipes so there is a lot to manage, but the outcome is predictable if the recipes are followed. Raising a child is complex; there are no guaranteed recipes; there are lots of factors involved beyond your control or even knowledge; the results of actions may not be evident for a long time, and your own actions shift the situation. This is true of the living elements of any situation.
When complicated or complex situations are deviating from our plan for them, the emotional reaction can be similar--overwhelm with perhaps fear and and/or anger. The default is to try to reestablish control or narrow the focus down to those bits you can control to begin. Maybe the right instinct for complicated situations; dead wrong for complex. Its seems to me that ignorance about the distinction between the two is a key funnel into a host of counter-productive behaviours in leadership.
Is this as useful a distinction for others as it is for me?
When complicated or complex situations are deviating from our plan for them, the emotional reaction can be similar--overwhelm with perhaps fear and and/or anger. The default is to try to reestablish control or narrow the focus down to those bits you can control to begin. Maybe the right instinct for complicated situations; dead wrong for complex. Its seems to me that ignorance about the distinction between the two is a key funnel into a host of counter-productive behaviours in leadership.
Is this as useful a distinction for others as it is for me?
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Stephan R. Sengupta on -
Hi Everyone,
Hi Michael,
About patterns and less more ...
The head of a very common animal...
From Chaos to "Gestalt"...
Michael Chender said:Glenda makes the provocative point that “The distinction between chaotic and complex is trivial because the only distinction is whether or not a pattern is discernible to me. (If there are so many relevant variables that I can't discern a pattern, I call it chaotic.)”
This conforms to my understanding, and suggest two further lines of questioning for me:
1. The fact that a pattern is or isn’t discernable to me doesn’t mean that my perception is either penetrating or accurate. What we call chaos may be (and I would guess always is) full of patterns. “Chaos” and “complexity” are both terms that describe experience relative to an observer’s frame or expectations. So one person’s chaos can be another’s simplicity.
Is there a less subjective language to describe the immediate state of a social pattern, or might the notions of chaos and complexity be more useful if framed as relative to an articulated state or expectation? (“I thought I’d have a peaceful weekend but it was pure chaos.”)
2. Discussions of chaos and complexity in social systems largely come to us as applications of discoveries in the sciences. Isn’t the study of the histories of the type of systems we are examining equally or even more to the point? Generally speaking, wouldn’t a good knowledge of history, of the I Ching, or of Shakespeare, provide a valuable pattern language?
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Permalink Reply by Susan Szpakowski on -
I'm finally reading through this thread and finding the diverse lenses and subtle distinctions to be both rich and humbling.
I am also getting dizzy from time to time. I'm not a philosopher or a logician, but it seems there is a moving back and forth between seeing complex-complicated-simple as a practical framework that informs how best to approach a particular problem and assuming that there are different situations existing "out there"which are by nature simple, complicated or complex.
For example, Glenda when you say that the distinction between complicated and simple is trivial because complicated can be decomposed into multiple simples.... isn't that circular thinking? Or am I just not getting it?
I enjoyed Bob's reminder that complexity constantly arises as the nature of things, and we either arise with it (and act from there, with some level of synchronicity or "elegant minimal step") or miss it and then try to figure it out...too late. So then everything gets complicated.
So then, picking up the various threads, is this authentic leadership...
• being fully grounded and immersed in one's context while "being with" complexity as it arises, which means having all channels or intelligences (body, heart, mind), open, aligned, and present. At the Institute we sometimes call this joining heaven and earth.
• being fluent in the pattern language of interdependence--being familiar with how situations develop and unfold, how energy gathers and releases, and how minimal moves can have maximum impact. The Art of War is an ancient version of this language, complexity science a more contemporary version.
• focusing intention and energy into action that is naturally synchronized and effective (because of the first two sets of conditions)
I think the most exciting thing about this conversation and these lenses is the way everything gets more slippery--in the positive sense. The complexity lens invites us into a more dynamic, fluid conversation with our world, and inner and outer become naturally more aligned. We get closer to a nondualistic view, so nature and the ancestors can begin to speak to us more intimately, whisper in our ear.
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Permalink Reply by Peter Goldsbury on -
I mentioned earlier in this discussion the real case study we have currently re the creation of a supercity in Auckland. Some may be interested in the submission I with the help of a few others made. This threw some Cynefin Framework, Tipu Ake Leadership and Living Systems Thinking into our national decision-making arena.
Perhaps it reminds us Susan of the slippery nature of reality which is always inter-dependent and highly multi-cyclic so we might find we need to be working in all Cynefin domains / Tipu Ake levels symaltaneously.
Thanks for the sounding board this forum was - it has helped us hone our thinking and I hope will provide some information that will "distrurb" some of the assumptions that government "decision-makers" have applied to date. - Attachments:
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Permalink Reply by George Pór on -
I've just discovered that the origin of the "dynamic -> social -> generative" model of complexity that I wrote about and attributed to Otto Scharmer--because I heard about it, first, from him--is "Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities" by Adam Kahane. I still find it a framework very useful in responding to situations that we term "complex."
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Permalink Reply by Jane Kelly on -
I enjoy this posting, especially the questions. It's interesting to contemplate 4 of the words in these questions: evidence, assumption, engage and relationships. Another interesting point from reading different postings, it seems a different kind of language is needed for each type of situation - chaos, complicated or complex. Very rich postings - much appreciated.
Glenda Eoyang said:Thanks, all, for the delightful conversation and useful resources. I've particularly enjoyed the rich texture and variety of perspectives, especially because my own is so simple (hopefully not simplistic). Based on my work in physical sciences and mathematics, this is the distinction I see between complex/chaotic and complicated/simple:
Complex/chaotic is open, nonlinear, high dimension (having lots of relevant variables)
Simple/complicated is closed, linear, low dimension (having few relevant variables)
This implies:
- The distinction between complicated and simple is trivial because the complicated can simply be decomposed into multiple simples.
- The distinction between chaotic and complex is trivial because the only distinction is whether or not a pattern is discernible to me. (If there are so many relevant variables that I can't discern a pattern, I call it chaotic.)
- Any interesting problem/situation includes both complex/chaotic and simple/complicated dynamics at the same time.
- The distinction between simple and complex is a difference in degree, not kind. More or less closed, more or less linear, more or less low dimension build a continuum in reality. (While the stark distinction is useful for us as we think and talk, it may be detrimental to us as we perceive and act.)
The more interesting questions for me--those framed by Michael initially and others throughout--are full of richness and challenge:
- How does an authentic leader identify and respond to each dynamic?
- What are effective ways to think, act, and lead in each of the dynamics?
- What evidence (physical, narrative, emotional, etc.) is accessible to one who must act?
- What are our working assumptions that limit our capacity to see and influence dynamics around us?
- What happened (happens) to uncertainty? power? freedom? beauty? life?
- How can we engage, with discipline and efficacy, with the people and institutions that surroud us, whether simple or complex?
- What is the relationship (are. . . relationships) between individual and group? group and individual? in each of the dynamics?
- What can/should I do?
Your lovely stories and multiple intelligences are shedding light on those questions for me. Thanks.
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Permalink Reply by Stephan R. Sengupta on
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Googling about simplexity I found, the following that I'd like to share.
Professor Petter Wipperman about simplexity :
"We long for simplicity and satisfaction. Simplexity therefore stands for a balance between the growing complexity of daily life and our own personal satisfaction. In order to attain this state, we have to stop always striving to make optimal decisions. In the future, it will be more important to make judgments that are just good enough."
And came accross this page :
http://multispective.wordpress.com/2007/04/30/simplexity-simple-and...
From the four domains of Snowden's framework, would simplexity be the fith one like the "Quinta Essentia" ?
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Permalink Reply by Peter Goldsbury on
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Hi Michael , I was yesterday alerted to some more video this toime from the lindon School of Economics that takes the Cynefin Model thinking a bit further in the Linked in site, discussion on Chaotic Change.
http://www.linkedin.com/news?viewArticle=&articleID=114724751&a...
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