“It’s Complicated” in Sunday’s New York Times Week in Review suggests that it is essential to distinguish between complexity and complication because each requires a different management approach.  In making this distinction, the author (David Segal) is not supported by dictionary definitions which do not distinguish one from the other.

See for yourself.  The only way to know that one definition is for complex and the other is for complicated is that no self-respecting dictionary would reference the word it is defining in its own definition.

Composed of many interconnected parts, compound, composite, so complicated or intricate as to be hard to understand or deal with. (Complex)

Composed of elaborately interconnected parts, complex, difficult to analyze, explain or understand. (Complicated)

Dictionary definitions notwithstanding, Segal lists a depressing litany of complex and complicated scenarios (Roman civilization, US accounting standards, possibly contemporary US civilization) which either have resulted or seem likely to result in failure.  He then introduces us to Brenda Zimmerman of the Schulich School of Business in Ontario who views both the complicated and the complex as capable of being dealt with successfully, but requiring different approaches.

Complicated challenges are those that can be solved through engineering – good process, sound tools, and capable people.

Complex challenges are those that can be managed through a set of shared, explicit beliefs and values (what Zimmerman calls simple guiding principles).

An example of a complicated challenge might be creating energy from wind.  A complex challenge might be enacting a national energy agenda.  In the latter example, good process, sound tools and capable people are not enough.   Asking a set of basic, principled questions, is essential:  Is this good for the country?  What are the risks of acting?  Of not acting?  Are there other options?  What do we think is important?  What do we believe will happen if we act or if we don’t act?, etc.

In my experience, we like to approach our challenges as complicated ones because the solutions, even if difficult, are tactical and we can do something.   Complexity requires first, not doing anything until it’s clear to those who will take action what will bound their activities.  Then, we can apply all the good process, sound tools, and capable people we have to tackling the challenge.  In effect, complexity gives way to complication.

My last blog post was about the challenges of decision-making when confronted with an overwhelming set of options and lack of clarity about which goals were truly important to achieve.  Frameworks and alignment were the critical factors that improved decision-making under conditions of uncertainty.   We see these themes reflected in Segal’s piece.  Simple guiding principles support a framework that makes it possible to see the boundaries of the challenge that is being faced and create a rubric that aligns actions. 

As organizations look for ways to remain vital and viable, they turn to innovation for answers.  However, innovation in most organizations has been developed to solve complicated problems, not complex ones.  Like most solution sets, innovation is now viewed primarily as an engineering problem that can be solved through process, people and technology.   However, when innovation fails, perhaps it is because the challenge was complex and the framework and alignment that emerge from managing complexity were not sufficiently developed to inform the engineering approach that solves complicated problems.  

While the dictionary does not distinguish between complicated and complex, perhaps, innovation efforts would benefit if organizations did.

“It’s Complicated,” David Segal, The New York Times, May 2, 2010, Week in Review, p. 1.

More is better.  In the world of innovation, especially at the front end (ideation), that seems to be the prevailing notion.   Ideation typically involves behavioral techniques and social network technologies that are deployed to unleash powers of association that generate large numbers of new ideas and then winnow them down to a more manageable amount.  Open innovation casts a problem out into a vast sea of potential problem solvers.  Radical collaboration invites large networks of individuals and groups to band together to collectively get things done.   But, while more might be better, it also seems to be a difficult state in which to make effective decisions.

 ”The Art of Choosing” by Sheena Iyengar was reviewed this past Sunday in the NY Times Book Review.*   Iyengar, a psychologist and professor at the Columbia Business School, is the designer of an experiment that is often cited when people want to preach the benefits of moderation.   The “jam experiment” gave one group of grocery shoppers a large set of jams (24) and another group a smaller set (10)  to taste and then monitored their decisions to purchase or not.  The group with the smaller choice set was much more likely to actually purchase jam than those with the larger choice set (ten times more likely).   Is it simply too overwhelming to make a decision and act when there are so many options?  This is one conclusion that might be drawn from the experiment.   It also points to the reason that simple frameworks are often useful when making a decision among many options.  Frameworks place large sets of options in bigger buckets, creating a meta-set of options, effectively reducing the number of options at a higher level to facilitate the decision-making process.  In situations where a large number of options are likely to be generated, having a framework that everyone buys into as valid for winnowing down the options might be the key that leads to effective decision-making and subsequent action. 

Which brings us to the question of what factors contribute to group buy-in of frameworks which are essentially a set of constraints or boundary conditions?  In her book, Iyengar also explores the cultural context that appears to influence how we feel about constraints on our choices.  The reviewer notes another Iyengar experiment that involved children, word puzzles, and colored markers.  Some children were allowed to choose any puzzle or marker they wanted, others were told by the person running the experiment which puzzle and marker they were to use, and the last group was told by the person running the experiment that their mothers had specific instructions for them regarding the puzzles and markers.  In the cases where the children were given direct or indirect instructions, they tended to follow the instructions in their choices.   But the experiment had another dimension, the children came from two different ethnic groups – Anglo American and Asian American – and their performance on the word puzzles and length of play was evaluated.  The Anglo children performed best on the word puzzles and played longest when they were able to choose freely.  The Asian children performed best when they allowed their choices to be influenced by what they believed to be their mother’s preferences.  Apparently Asian children experience their identities as highly aligned with their maternal relationships while Anglo children do not.  Neither group of children performed well when the guidance came from a person they perceived as an outsider.    

While there are many intriguing dimensions to this experiment, the one that stood out for me was the alignment factor.  If you think of alignment as a vector, a quantity that has both magnitude and direction, the degree to which individuals or groups experience alignment with a given framework seems to be directly proportional to the degree of buy-in and validation they ascribe to it.  For some groups, having a hand in developing the framework might increase alignment; for others being aligned with the person or group that has developed the framework may increase alignment. Clearly, one size does not fit all, but alignment seems to be essential.  One obvious conclusion that can be drawn from Iyengar’s experiment is that nobody is likely to feel aligned with a framework that comes from what is perceived as a disconnected outsider. 

The organizations in which we work exist in an information rich world that presents us with many options, the sum total of which can short circuit our ability to choose and act.  At the same time, being able to make decisions and execute quickly is increasingly essential for organizational viability.   The power of frameworks and the impact of alignment to improve decision-making and group commitment to implementation are two keys to effectively dealing with an option-intensive world.

 *”Indecision-making,” Virginia Postrel, The New York Times Book Review, p. 16, April 18, 2010