Via Business Insider:
the world is a complex place and it’s only getting more so, which is why many management thinkers have been urging businesses to embrace complexity, to become, in effect, system thinkers rather than reductionists.
As Richard Straub noted in a recent article in HBR, that effort has largely failed and we shouldn’t be surprised. Executives are paid to be accountable and are understandably reluctant to give themselves up to the complexity Gods. In truth, complexity is not something we need to embrace, merely something we need to accept and manage.
Points:
- Types of complexity:
- Of an entity.
- Nonlinearity.
- Emergent.
- “To manage effectively, you need to account for that which is beyond your understanding.”
- “Until you are ready to take responsibility for that which you cannot control, you are just someone with a title, not a leader.”
- “…another thing that managers will have to accept is that their job is not about nodes, but about networks.”
- “…instead of assuming that we have the answers, we strive to become less wrong over time.”
- “…seek simplicity, but distrust it.”