Simplexity is the prefect marriage of simple and complex. It’s accomplished by creating many simple parts, that create a larger complex system. Miguel Cunha is golden if you don't know. He has a fascinating, although rough draft, article on Simplexity. There are many parallels for business, software, and life in the idea of simplexity, but he focuses on Business. It’s worth a read if you can find the time, otherwise, here are my notes:
- Ashby’s Law: only complex organizing – rather than complicated organizations – provides enough complexity to cope with environmental turbulence.
- Basically, only complexity can cope with complexity
- Unintentional Complexity : Complexity is the cumulative by-product of organizational changes, big and small, that over the years weave complications (often invisibly) into the way work is done. pg 7
- It is fought with intentional simplicity. Jack Welch turned around GE with his simplification process.
- Unintentional simplicity is a problem also. It encourages exploitation over exploration. pg 8
- Loosely coupled organizations can better handle the unexpected. pg 17
- Only the complex organizing provided by simple structures – rather than complicated organizations – is flexible enough to cope with environmental complexity. pg 18
- Complexity, top-down hierarchy, overdeveloped systems and processes seem to turn workers into machines. A hive-mind mentality should foster creativity.
- Organizations need to create designs that favor alertness and capacity of response, triggered wherever the information is. pg 19
- Although the behavior that emerges is complex, the rules that guide it are necessarily simple. In fact it is their simplicity that creates the freedom to behave in complicated adaptive, and surprising ways. pg 20
- One of the potential results of deliberately simple organizing is the creation of a developed collective mind, or what Weick and Roberts (1993) described as heedful interrelating. The concept refers to a developed attentiveness and caring about the actions of the other organizational members, in such a way that individual know-how is made subservient to group processes. pg 22
- Simple infrastructures may result in complex behaviors because they support and facilitate a number of processes that encourage rich and mindful interactions. pg 22
- in his Mann Gulch study, which showed that training and specialization may actually hamper the variety of behavioral repertoire. Again, complexity may block learning and adaptation. pg 25
This read was particularly reassuring for me. It’s the collective intelligence of the company that can really make a great company, not just mine. That’s great! Now the leader’s role is to facilitate such an atmosphere.
Well, ok, let's get into it then. I am in the process of relating this concept to my company in a practical way. There are my helpful folks at work that have plenty of plans that I find myself rejecting because they don't seem to compute with the idea of simplicity, or simplexity. Here's a work in progress, that I hope can be a filter for any proposed change to the company. We would discuss these talking points when considering a change:
- are you solving a problem that many people care about?
- is it necessary, and/or does it greatly improve the situation?
- are you are prepared to discipline those who ignore it?
- does this hurt creativity?
- what would this take to work perfectly?
- if this were to work perfectly, would the extra effort outweigh the benefits?
- how many of your past changes are still in play and useful?
- are you doing this in place of firing a bad employee?
It's not elegant yet, but it's a starting place. I had to write this down because nearly every meeting I am a part of these days, because of the growth of the company, someone wants to change things. Planning a change is so simple. It's like an idea, those are cheap and mean very little. The hard part is the rest. Translating a plan into a perfect implementation, and THEN getting perfect adoption, and THEN keeping perfect adoption, that's a trick. So I am not afraid of change, I am afraid of the wrong kind of change. The kind that cripples the company, and steers us towards the bureaucratic mess some of our big competitors are slogged down with.
Resources
- http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/28/ge.html
- http://www.complexityandeducation.ualberta.ca/COMPLICITY1/pdfs/Complicity11b_Intro.pdf
- http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=350654#show1032599
