"Keep it Simple!" How often have you heard this phrase used to signal the need for a change in the way that business is carried out or that organizations function?
Recently, it appeared on the cover of the Chartered Management Institute's journal, Management Today. This featured two articles about, as the MT put it, "managing complexity". The first, How to Survive Complexity, charted a round-table discussion on the subject between a number of senior executives and advisory specialists. The second, Simplicity: Not as Easy as it Looks by journalist John Morrish, suggested that although "simplicity has become the modern mantra of business ... it's easier said than done."
The call for greater simplicity in organizational design, management and operation is a natural, commonsense reaction to the overly complicated nature of many modern-day organizations. However, it is misleading and unhelpful to talk of this in terms of "managing complexity".
The dynamics of social complexity are embedded in the everyday conversations and interactions of all organizations. These dynamics are affected by – but do not depend on - how simple or how complicated an organization might be in terms, say, of its structure, systems, processes, interconnections or whatever. The desire to simplify organizations and their management is a worthy aspiration. But, however successful managers might be in this, the socially complex dynamics of day-to-day organizational life will continue. In terms of everyday organizational dynamics, the word "simple" means not complicated; it is not the opposite of complex.
Ironically, of course, it is often managers’ own felt need for control that gives rise to the very complications that later fuel the "keep it simple" calls. This is inevitably the case if leadership is viewed solely in terms of mission statements, performance targets, competency frameworks, reporting regimes, control procedures and other such impersonal mechanisms.
The more systems, processes and procedures that are introduced into organizations, the more complicated these become. Despite this, the drive appears to be inexorably towards even more monitoring and measurement, fuelled by the illusion of control that these provide. We see this now not only in commercial enterprise but increasingly in the management of the public sector. This trend has been enabled - if not driven - by the development of ever more powerful and sophisticated information technology, which promises to deliver the ultimate level of ‘totally integrated’, ‘real-time’ control.
So, reducing the clutter of unnecessary or overly complicated structures, systems and procedures would certainly make organizations simpler. But the socially complex nature of the underlying dynamics of those organizations would remain. All organizations are inherently and unavoidably complex. It is not a matter – as some complexity theorists argue - of the nature of the work that they carry out or of the characteristics of their ‘environment’.
The complex social dynamics of self-organization, emergence, non-linearity and paradox are present in all organizational conversations. These operate continuously; and they cannot be ‘designed out’ in response to a call to "keep it simple". Nor are these dynamics within the gift of managers to control, however sophisticated the techniques that they might introduce. The challenge instead is to actively engage with the complex social process of organization; seeking to shift the patterns of interaction, conversation and resulting behaviours in organizationally beneficial ways.
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