For various reasons, I’ve spent some time recently wondering why in a business environment getting things done can be so hard. What is it that creates stalemates to progress? Is there some underlying quality that no matter how much we ‘grease the wheels of progress’ only acts to turn such grease into glue? I was once naive enough to think that all that was required to make change happen was determination and authority, but have increasingly realised that such qualities – whilst helpful in ensuring progress – are often far from sufficient.
Though there are people that resist change in all forms almost as a matter a principle, most people will recognise that if something is broken then it needs fixing. The first problem arises when one person sees something they believe is broken and another says it isn’t. The next problem is that even if they both agree something is broken, how best to fix it is often another matter. In organisational terms, both of these problems are a matter of perspective; depending on the job, something may hinder you (and therefore be broken), but help me (and therefore be working fine). Who’s right? The answer is probably both and neither, which highlights just how much of a mess these situations are and can become.
Who was right in the example above depends from whose perspective you chose to look. Both of them are right from their own perspective, and both could be wrong from someone else’s. If we all operated in the same environment and did similar jobs then this would probably happen a lot less, but this isn’t the case and we do work in often complex organisations, doing role-specific jobs in an increasingly complicated and interconnected world. This complexity is often the cause of the biggest problems we face and also, ironically, the biggest reason we find it so hard to solve them.
So having said that, how can this post be titled ‘the complexity myth’? I’m not suggesting the world isn’t complex, or indeed that the problems we face aren’t complex; the reason I say it’s a myth is because this complexity is what often prevents change, not because actions can’t be taken but because people are caught trying to understand a problem that often defies such understanding before they act. The myth is that complex problems are not simple.
One of the most useful things I’ve found in dealing with complexity comes from the field of Systems Thinking. Simply put, complexity doesn’t exist outside of our minds: nothing in and of itself is inherently complex, it just ‘is’. We perceive it as complex, and this labelling makes us think in a certain way. As I have a background in ICT, the inside of a PC are not complex to me; to many of my friends, the inside of a computer is extremely complex indeed! When computers go wrong, I’m often asked to take a look because I’m completely comfortable with this and my friends aren’t. There are two important points here: firstly, complexity is a matter of individual perspective and NOT a property of an object or situation, and secondly, that perceiving complexity alters how people react to and deal with it – it is a label that puts people in a certain mindset. Complexity is difficult; that is the underlying message. Complexity is not simple. Complexity is hard.
This has significant implications for business because it can lead people to produce overly complex solutions (as clearly no obvious solution would work or it would already have been done), or lead to no solution at all because the problem is too complicated. This might be just because they have reacted a certain way to complexity. Trying to solve a so-called complex problem can lead to a kind of paralysis as people struggle to get to grips with everything that might be related to a situation. There seem to be endless possible avenues to explore and consider, and these only increase exponentially as more people get involved and they see additional layers of complexity. At some point, problem solving simply drowns under the burden of over-thinking a situation. The resources expended in these kinds of situations can be truly staggering for remarkably little return; in fact, you might even find that after significant effort people can’t explain why the solution is so evasive. When asked, you might simply hear back “It’s complicated” (I know, I’ve said it like everyone else!)
There is, regrettably, no easy solution to this. Although complexity might not exist outside of our minds, that doesn’t really make that much difference to all of us who have to work with our minds! What can help, however, is not falling into the complexity myth trap: just because something looks complex, try thinking about how it might actually be simple. Ask someone who knows nothing about it to look at a problem or situation; their perspective might help break the myth. Don’t get a committee together, though – more than three people of leads to more complexity than it solves!
Above all else, just because something looks complex don’t accept that it really is; you might just miss out on a very simple solution.
