I feel like a small child manipulating worn-out concepts (or ones too big for me) when I talk to you about complex or simple. However, in this objective of cataloging my convictions and my small management approaches, I’m putting it on paper to fix it in place.
In a complex situation, to help me manage it, to bring it back to something controllable, I simplify it.
In a simple situation, to help me enrich it, to pull it out of already observed causes and effects, to find new alternatives, I make it more complex.
From complex to simple
For the first, from complex to fine simple, it’s something learned through the use of agile approaches. How do I simplify the complex? I apply one or more constraints. I thus increase predictability, or at minimum I bring things back to an observable status. Example: I absolutely don’t know how this product we’re making will end up? Simplify to make it observable, controllable, manipulable: let’s deliver what we have every two weeks. This constraint brings me back to a dimension I can manage because it limits (constrains) the possibilities.
The constraint I apply is a framework. A framework limits. And not a “how,” what I like to call a “gesture.” I don’t say “let’s make this product this way” which doesn’t limit the possibilities at all and keeps all the complexity open. I propose: show me what we have finished every two weeks (no matter “how” and “what”). This way I capture the complexity.
You can’t manage what you can’t represent, said, I believe, Peter Drucker. As long as anything can happen, I can’t represent what will happen and when. I need to define this space in which I’ll have an image, a representation of what happens. I define a framework and I see what it captures. What it captures I can handle, manage.
Like any framework, I’m careful to leave space: without space nothing happens. I could ask to produce nothing at all concerning this product. I thus apply an enormous constraint that gives me enormous predictability: I will very probably have nothing. And conversely, without a framework, anything can happen, and “anything” is often too much.
This is often a strong principle I use to empower: “do what you want as long as.” As long as? for example: “as long as the consolidated figures are good at the end of each week,” or “as long as the budget remains the same every month,” “as long as no one complains about you,” “as long as we have something to demonstrate at the end of each iteration,” etc., etc.
If the constraint is too strong, you may get nothing, emptiness, you’ll need to adjust it.
From simple to complex
Conversely, situations seem to unfold imperturbably always the same way. An incessant déjà-vu. It’s simple: when you do this you get that. Here I seek to get out of this framework. To think outside the box says the saying. To produce something new you need to add complexity. Adding complexity means making something new, unexpected, happen.
You can add complexity by introducing one more element. By increasing the possible combinations, until something new emerges.
“To resolve this situation, we should introduce one more person into the conversation” had subtly suggested Élisabeth Georges during an intervention at our place. This solution for adding complexity had struck me like an “aha” moment, an epiphany. It had made tangible this concept that I had been manipulating intuitively in reverse (simplify) until then.
That’s the whole idea of collective intelligence: let’s cross-pollinate them and we’ll see what happens. It’s the solution supported by Dave Snowden’s Cynefin model: in the complex domain, trigger several teams in parallel, you’ll accelerate and increase the chances of seeing something emerge. “Try to maximize interactions to increase the chances of seeing something emerge.”
You add something that makes the combinations allow you to get out of the framework, bring new things. Introducing a third person in an annual review for example brings different perspectives.
From chaos
I’ve observed a third way that can be used to make new combinations emerge. It’s an assembly of the two approaches mentioned above, but it can prove frustrating, painful, because you generate chaos. And chaos demands a reaction, but it is suffered. It involves applying constraints to prevent the same combinations from coming out. Randomly swapping team members will bring different perspectives (I didn’t say necessarily better). Forcing people to create the product with a different tool (a different language for example). In a word: anything you want except what you’ve been doing so far.
Here again: if the constraint is too strong, you may get nothing, emptiness, you’ll need to adjust it.
Conclusion
Two movements for managing according to your needs: toward the simple, toward the complex.
If people can give me pointers to the theoretical sources of this experience, if I’m not saying too much nonsense, I’m interested. Thank you.