4 Strategies for Managing Complexity in Your Organization

It's confusing when you try to process conflicting information. It makes decision-making seemingly impossible at times. You don't have to like the unpredictable, unstable, non-linear, and fast-paced nature of complexity to cope with it effectively. Most don’t, but we have little choice but to accept and cope with it.

Ambiguities, confusion, and contradictions are to be expected instead of rejected. Instead of thinking "either/or," embrace "and." Modern organizational life has few absolutes and many relatives. For instance, it's not about hard or soft data. It's both. It's not the short-term or the long-term, it's both. It's not about creativity or productivity. It's both, and so on. You get the idea.

Diversity can be challenging. From employees, customers, suppliers, sociopolitical systems, diverse demands and expectations can plague business leaders in their journey to adapting to the ever-changing world.

Running a business isn't easy, and it's better to expect things to be hard. Today's world isn't about hard data. It's about both hard and soft data, short and long term, relatives and absolutes. Paradoxes create energy and encourage flexibility. It will help if you handle complexity. 

You may not always see the entire picture and may have to settle for a partial perspective. This is OK. Of course, the importance of information varies based on how important the story is.

We’re in control less often than we would like to admit. It would help if you controlled what you can, let go of what you can't, and know the difference. There's nothing wrong with planning. It's an essential part of the process. 

Thinking through your options, resources, priorities, and expectations is valuable, but don't set your plans in stone. Stay flexible and allow yourself to change your point of view. This mindset works well in complex conditions as you stay open to new information, different perspectives, and opposing points of view. If understanding is an ongoing process rather than an outcome, you can work more effectively.

Musicians use improvisation as a tool for creating something unique. It allows creativity to take more control than when a musician is merely reading the notes on a page. The melody serves as a minimal structure for the musician to improvise around. If you understand your company's processes and strategy, you can pare them down to their minimal structures. Then you can operate with these minimal structures to make your business more agile.

Companies often get bogged down with a lot of outdated procedures, routines, and bureaucracy. Improvisers have learned how to deal with ambiguity, diversity, interconnectedness, and flux and are masters at dealing with complexity. Your organization needs to learn and improvise if you want employees to exercise the necessary creativity and adaptability to deal with complexity.

Your leadership team should design and nurture a culture that enables learning through experimentation and improvisation. Learn to improvise with openness to trial and error. Employees need to feel they can make mistakes while experimenting. You need to foster a psychologically safe environment, particularly when things are challenging or complex.

High-performance requires flexibility, openness, and interdependence that can only develop in a psychologically safe environment. Once employees feel safe, they will start to explore new ideas that could lead to a breakthrough for your company.

No one has the ability or energy to fully understand everything or find 100% of the solutions they need all the time. You need to find a zone for routine and simplicity in your work. There's the 20/80 rule, where 20% of work situations or assignments may bear 80% of your job's complexity. If they do, then chances are simplicity will apply in 80% of your daily work.

Tools like metaphors, stories, analogies, symbols, and archetypes have been used for ages to simplify complicated concepts. They are useful shortcuts to describe and help people understand complex matters.

Another way we can make things simpler for ourselves is to branch out. Use socialization as a way to gather multiple perspectives and pieces of information all at once. This type of kaleidoscope thinking can help with high complexity situations. 

Allow for multiple people to have the information, instead of one person understanding the entire picture. Don't leave one person to figure all of it out. Get a team of people creating puzzles as a whole of information, perspectives, and solutions.

Our linear cultures are deeply rooted in the process of analyzing information. Although this can be valuable, it can also get us stuck when we don't need to be. We want clear answers to everything when one may not always be available. Sometimes taking action with trial and error is more effective.

Getting stuck otherwise can create clusters of information that get mixed up, and nothing gets resolved. Working through them by taking action can solve the issues and create an effective routine. Once that routine gets implemented, the rest can take care of itself.