…well, it isn’t according to the Harvard Business Review article – A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making – by David Snowden and Mary Boone that, deservedly, has just won an award from Emerald (a publisher of research work).
The article explains a set of organisational situations – termed Simple, Complicated, Complex and Chaotic – and how to manage them. It is excellent and well worth the $6.95 HBR will want from you for the pleasure of reading it.
There is a lot of good stuff in the article but, for me, its exposition of the difference between Complicated situations and Complex ones is the important bit. I think that plenty of stuff goes wrong (not least in Government IT) because folks try to deal with Complex situations using Complicated strategies. I won’t explain: you’ll need to read the article.
The article is based on David Snowden’s Cynefin Framework, the theory of which you can see him explain in this YouTube video. My earlier post about Wicked Problems also talks about the same ideas. But read the article.
Fantastic to see someone recognise this important issue and I can also recommend the article by Dave Snowden. By the way, if you want a simple example of complicated v complex try this. An Airbus A380 is complicated: with skill and a good handbook you can take it apart and put it back together repeatedly – the outcome will always be the same. By contrast mayonnaise is complex: if you’ve ever tried to make it from scratch you’ll know how uncertain it feels as the ingredients combine and the mayo gradually emerges. One slip and it will curdle, the end result is never the same and it can’t be reversed engineered.
Thanks Andrew. I love the mayonnaise example.
[...] explains his approach – called Transformative Scenario Planning – which is a way of tackling Complex (or Wicked problems). I am probably going to butcher things horribly here but the essence is… [...]