When American astronauts first set foot on the Moon, in July 1969, tribute was quite rightly paid to the advances that NASA scientists had made in aerospace engineering and astrodynamics, which had enabled them to make the “giant leap for mankind”, as Commander Neil Armstrong described it. Landing on the Moon, and returning the crew safely to Earth was a complicated technical challenge of the highest order. It was enabled by multiple systems and procedures that were designed to facilitate the safe and effective organization and control of all aspects of the design, development and delivery of “the mission”. As such, success was seen as having arisen from the availability of appropriate scientific and technological expertise; coupled with the development and skilled application of structured approaches to direct and control the practice and performance of those involved. In short, this appeared to 'tick all of the boxes' of a well-designed, and expertly executed, response to a highly complicated management challenge.
As such, the whole of the period from inception to completion of the Apollo 11 project would have been infused with myriad small-group and one-to-one interactions. These would have varied between formal and informal; structured and unstructured; planned and spontaneous; and so on. Importantly, too, participation in this process would have extended well beyond those who were officially involved. That is to say, what happened in practice would also have been influenced by team members' interactions with myriad other people – whether helpfully or otherwise. In many cases, these would have resulted from their everyday exchanges with members of their wider relationship networks – even if these had nothing at all to do with the project itself. Chance encounters with other people, both real and virtual, might also have affected their approach to the task. In other instances still, some people's earlier contributions would have shaped many of the formal and informal structures, systems, procedures, rituals, routines and so on, that were later used by those directly involved. These remained as 'imprints' of those past conversations within which they had been conceived, developed, adopted, and modified over time. Many of these would have involved people who were no longer around at the time of the Moon landing itself. Some long gone. However, such artefacts continued to exist, and affect what happened, to the extent and in the ways that these were taken up by people who were formally involved in the Apollo 11 mission itself.
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“… as soon as people become involved, technologies, systems, and procedures become inextricably interwoven with the complexities of everyday human interaction. Or, to put it another way, the complex reality of everyday life…. It is therefore important not to confuse a description of the unavoidably complex dynamics of everyday human interaction, which exist regardless of context, with the diverse range of responses that one might deliberately seek to make according to context.”
The Wiggly World of Organization
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An individual's participation in particular roles, activities, and life more generally, is always enabled and constrained by the actions, inactions and interactions of other people. It is a wholly social endeavour. Of course, as part of this ongoing, interactional process, people are capable of designing, developing and using systems and technologies to facilitate their own human being and human doing; whether alone or in concert with others. But, however simple or complicated these might be, they are all circumscribed by, and inextricably interwoven with, the complex social dynamics of human interaction. It is out of this process that the world (including the above systems and technologies) is continuously (re-)emerging. And, unlike the specific technical challenges involved in sending people into space and returning them safely to Earth, the dynamics and outcomes of human interaction are never fully knowable. What is more, the practical realization of the technical certainties of rocket science, in relation to particular missions, ultimately depends on the behaviour of people – with all of their skill (e.g. Apollo 11 and later Moon landings); fallibility (e.g. the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters); and ingenuity (e.g. Apollo 13). So, it is true that organizational management is not rocket science. It is not merely technically complicated. As with all aspects of human life, it is socially – and irreducibly – complex.
As a final point, since the dynamics of complexity manifest themselves in people’s ’local’ (i.e. small-group and one-to-one) interactions, there are not different ‘levels’ of complexity. That is to say, local interaction is the only level at which people – including those in formal management roles (from CEO or equivalent to the front line) – can operate. This means that, in the context of organizational dynamics, things cannot be said to be "more complex" or "less complex". At different times, and in different contexts, the nature and content of the situations within which people are immersed, and the related interactions that these involve, might be extremely complicated. Perhaps impenetrably so. But they are not operating at different levels of complexity. Every conversation is an in-the-moment expression of the complex social process of human interaction; a co-creation forum, in which people are perpetually creating the future together. It is through the widespread interplay of these small-group and one-to-one interactions that whatever happens, happens. This means that all anyone can do is to act forwards, moment to moment, into the continuously emerging and unknowable future - or, as I describe it in The Wiggly World of Organization, muddle through this complex social reality, whist seeking to do so with purpose, courage and skill. For those in charge of specific aspects of organizational practice and performance, the question is how they might influence the content and patterning of those interactions, in ways that they judge to be organizationally beneficial; working, alone and with others, to enable and constrain people's ongoing (inter)actions, through the quality of their own participation in this ongoing process of communicative interaction.
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