2017 Bernhard Sterchi

Navigating Complexityin teams and organisations

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It’s inadequate, but it’s all you’ve got.

Is this Complexity I’m Dealing With?

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Today, complexity is at the base of everything - and expanding fast! For example…

• Digitalisation has lead to an explosion of information. Not availability, but relevance filters are the prime constraint now.

• Industry 4.0: the combination of sensors, the industrial internet, and big data, push the limits of efficient production. Mass customisation, the reduction of batch sizes, decentralised production and the combination of product and service make it nigh impossible to keep an overview.

• Even at a small level, complexity is the currency of the day: the behaviour of a team in a shop or a project, the way processes and prescriptions are being interpreted, or the impact of an abundance of possibilities on our own daily productivity - it’s complex.

Complexity as the connectedness and co-evolution of everything makes change affect us quickly and easily. At the same time it is almost impossible to effectively impose a desired direction. We are victims of our habits. As such, we underestimate how fundamentally different our approach needs to be when we move from order to complexity. Whoever produces results with an organisation feels that pressure every day. First attempts at adequate responses, such as Agile software development, and experiments with new forms of decentralised organisation, incorporate some methods based on understanding complexity. But they are often linked to specific environments, and while the methods may be effective, people often lack to customise them, and integrate them into their own approach.

Complex is the new SMART

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Remember SMART objectives? They are one of many practical approaches that we’ve come to rely on as the common toolset of management. They are easy to learn, give good guidance, and produce results – as long as the world is sufficiently predictable.

Now, with the world gone VUCA, we need to change fundamentally. If we cannot know today what outcome will be the most relevant at the

end of the next period, smart objectives are no longer accurate.

The science of complexity has come up with a number of approaches to understand complex systems and act in them - but their focus is theory, not practice. People like Stafford Beer and Dave Snowden have developed more practice oriented approaches - but often their focus are large, anonymous systems which justify elaborate methodologies.

Palladio are taking these approaches one step further for the use of everyday management across the organisation: in the form of the Complexity Manager's Compass, a set of principles, activities and tools.

The approach is novel, and the underlying mindset needs getting used to. But it can be learned, and put to practice without further assistance. As easy as smart objectives.

The Nature of Complexity - If you kick a ball, it is complicated to calculate it’s trajectory. If you kick a dog - it’s complex…

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Stable cause-effect relations

Under same conditions, things repeat the same way

Many drivers affect the system

without being affected by it

Evidence can be traced back to one explanation

Models and simulations can predict system behavior

ORDER

Shifting dispositions and patterns, messy coherence

Nothing happens the same way twice except by accident Agent-system coevolution: Most things that affect the system, are heavily influenced by it

Evidence supports contradiction

No prediction is certain

Complexity

Contextual Management in ordered vs. complex environments

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Define the desired outcome

Listen to expertise in order to find what’s true

Plan from the end point

backwards

Make happen what you know to be successful

Understand the big picture and exhaustively manage everything

Make sure nothing goes wrong

ORDER

Define the desired orientation

Listen to diversity in order to find what’s worth trying Respond to the present environment

Let happen what you assume to be promising Have an idea of the big picture and selectively manage the next possible step

Make sure it’s not bad when something goes wrong

Complexity

Management as a Profession

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Principles, tasks and tools of management, by Fredmund Malik based on Peter Drucker

Seeing management as a profession, as Peter Drucker has

done, has a substantial pragmatic advantage. A profession

contains a set of principles, practices and tools, that can

be learned. Management is the profession of creating

results with an organisation. This approach makes the

concept of management less threatening (”What do I

have to know? What do I have to do?”), and clarifies

substantial disorientation (e.g. taking management

for business administration, or reducing leadership

to talent, traits and buzzwords).

Here’s the classical management wheel by Fredmund

Malik, based on Peter Drucker. However, it

insufficiently covers the complex domain. We therefore

propose a Complexity Manager's Compass as part

addition, part replacement. Since the complex domain is

less well known, we would add an underlying framework, and

we change practices to activities, for management is no longer

what the manager does, but what happens in the system.

The Complexity Manager’s Compass

8FrameworkActivities Principles

Obvious

Complicated

ComplexChaotic

Distributedintelligence

Resilience

Small objects

Alignedautonomy

Remove filters

Nudge foremergence

Explore complexity- exploit order

Make sense

Manage constraints

Experiment

Manage by vectors

Facilitaterecovery

Principles Activities

The Compass represents the essential of what one

needs in order to navigate the complex domain. Behind

it are over 60 practices, together with appropriate

didactical support, to help managers address complex

challenges. The end user of the Compass is anybody

who wants to produce results with an organisation (e.g.

line manager, supervisor, project manager, scrum

master), as well as people who consult and coach

these end users.

Using the Compass

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3 Days Agenda

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Day 1: Understanding Complexity

Day 2: Making Sense and Orientation

Day 3: Developing the Organisation

Where proven practices fail:

The nature of today’s management challenges

The Manager’s Compass:

Explore the principles of navigating complexity

Decision making, ordered and complex

Elaborate context-based decision making methods

What is complexity?

Explore and understand the complex domain

Scan the present, expand the possible Sense for the evolutionary potential of the present

When objectives don't work, try heuristics

Manage by vectors and rules of thumb

Dive into the Cynefin framework

Map participant’s contexts on the framework. Identify fields of action.

Aligned autonomy The emergent power of orientation in step by step problem solving

Absorb complexity

Translate between order and complexity along your value chain

Date June 6-8, 2017

Time 9 a.m. - 4.30 p.m.

Location 1100 Chemin du Malvan 06570 Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France

Faculty Bernhard Sterchi, Palladio

Price CHF 1650.-, excl. VATDiscount for self-payers.

Included Location, coffee, lunch.

Register through www.palladio.net

Course Details

Bernhard Sterchi, Palladio Trusted Advisers, Gerbergasse 30, Postfach, CH-4001 Basel, +41 78 783 72 44, bernhard.sterchi@palladio.net, www.palladio.net