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Emerging Principles of Complexity Theory In the late 1990s, David Hutchens began working with Volunteer Hospitals of America (VHA). Curt Lindberg, a Vice President of that organization, was a pioneer work in exploring the emerging world of complexity theory, and applying those learnings to the health care industry. David helped Curt (now principal of of the extraordinary Plexus Institute) to develop and produce Edgeware: Complexity Insights for Health Care Professionals, as well as its companion web site www.Edgeplace.com. As part of that work, he articulated these eight principles for organizing in a complex environment. The principles themselves were developed by Curt Lindberg, VHA, Inc.; Paul Plsek of Paul Plsek & Associates; and Brenda Zimmerman, York University. Feel free to explore any of the principles by clicking the links below... or read all of them by starting at the top and simply scrolling down.
1. View Your System Complexity science brings a whole new set of metaphors to the organizational practitioner that help to open up new mental models and, by extension, create the possibility for new actions. But before we take a look at the metaphors of complexity, it is helpful to better understand why metaphor is important. When we use a metaphor, we say "A is B." For example, "our project work group was like the Olympic hockey team" Of course, there are many ways your work group may not have been like the Olympic hockey team - you probably didn't wear ice skates and carry hockey sticks, for example. But we are hopefully able to disregard the limitations of the metaphor and instead use it to illuminate truths about the work team: they were underdogs; they achieved excellence; they came through against heavy odds.
Metaphors hold real power over us when we are unaware of the role they play in informing our world views. We forget the metaphor, but it still governs how we act and limits our ability to see.
The metaphor of machine has been predominant for much of the history of organizations. This is known as the "Newtonian" view, since Isaac Newton first suggested that the universe was like a great machine, or clock. By understanding the individual parts of the machine, we gain insight into the whole. You may not be aware of Newton's contributions to your mental models, but the machine metaphor helped to birth organizational charts, finely defined role descriptions, top-down decision making and more. Complexity offers a new set of metaphors that can illuminate and aid in the discovery of new possibilities for the organization. "What if an organization were less like a machine and more like a living system?" complexity asks us. "What if it can learn, grow and adapt... not unlike a forest, or a school of fish, or even the human brain?"
Viewing your system through a lens of complexity, then, is really a new metaphor designed to reveal new elements of the world - elements we may not have considered before. When you become a student of complexity theory, a whole new language is opened to you. Ideas like emergence and self-organizations and attractors can become the catalyst for some strikingly new behaviors in the organization... and in your life.
2. Build a "Good Enough" Vision. Simple rules produce complex behaviors. This is one of the fundamental learnings that complexity science illustrates for us, time and again. This principle is displayed dramatically in the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist Edward O. Wilson. In his work with ant colonies, Wilson demonstrated that dazzlingly intricate networks of behavior are set off by the simple release of pheromones by individual ants in the colony. Simply by releasing pheromones in varying quantities and combinations, any given ant can send specific messages that ricochet throughout the colony - messages like "danger, come quickly; or danger, disperse; or food, follow me; or there is a better nest site, follow me; or I am a nestmate, not an alien; or I am a larva." Simple ant pheromones, released in varying quantities, are the building blocks of an extremely complex system of communication and organization. Simple rules produce complex systems. The principle can be observed again in the growth of a tree. Over time, the trunk splits into limbs; the limbs into branches; the branches into smaller branches; and finally into leaves with a similar repeating pattern in their veins. Obviously, a tree is a very complex organism... yet, this pattern of growth can be represented with a very simple algebraic equation. (That's why it's possible to simulate very complex trees very easily on a computer.) Again, simple rules produce complex systems. This concept of simple rules translates to our principle of a "good enough vision" in organizations (or "min specs" as Gareth Morgan refers to it.) The principle suggests, for example, that intricate strategic plans ("max specs") be replaced by a few short, simple statements ("min specs") that describe the general direction that the organization is pursuing and perhaps a few basic boundaries. The rest is left to the flexibility, adaptability, and creativity of the system as the context continually changes. Indeed, complexity science suggests that trying to control every aspect of a system through intricate rules can lead to breakdown and dysfunction - and that detailed, long-term predictions about the future behavior of a complex system are fruitless. As this simple principle is increasingly being shared and put into practice in the health care industry, the anecdotal evidence of its success is compelling. For example, one hospital charged its nurses with speeding up patient admissions with just one min-spec: that "all admissions be done within one hour of the patient entering the hospital." Despite the strong temptation among some leaders to exert a greater degree of control, no other limitations were imposed. Ultimately, the effort produced such creative alternatives, over 400 other hospitals have since used their process as a model. Similarly, some are coming to believe that a new set of min specs are needed for the health care industry as a whole. As one VP put it: "The current system's emphasis is on the old model of health care... repairing illness." A new min spec is needed: "We need to engage a partnership with our fellow human beings and improve health, prevent illness and provide comfort. " Such simple rules may confound those who desire a more detailed map of the future. But no such maps exist. Today, a "good enough vision" may be our greatest leverage in creating a future that is viable and rich in possibility.
3. Lead with Clockware and Swarmware You may have noticed that complexity science introduces a new and ever-expanding lexicon of invented terms. And whereas freshly coined words like clockware and swarmware may carry a hint of whimsy, they are more than an exercise in clever semantics. Such language opens the possibility for new perceptions of the world. This newly emerging language is important, because we perceive the world based upon the language that is available to us. Thus, "snow" is always "snow," and we have no reason to perceive snow any other way. But, as theorist Edward de Bono illustrates, if we were members of the Innuit Eskimo culture, we would have in our vocabulary over 20 different words to describe snow, each communicating differences in context and meaning. Indeed, survival on a frozen landscape would necessitate such degrees of distinction. But can you think of 20 different kinds of snow? Probably not. (At best, if you are an avid skier, perhaps you can think of six or seven.) That's because we put all snow that we see into our one available category of "snow." Our language constrains our perception. That's why there is value in adding to the language. Which brings us back to clockware and swarmware. These are new terms, coined by Kevin Kelly, that open our perception and enable us to consider new patterns of activity - and to be deliberate in considering other approaches. Let's take a closer look at these terms. Clockware are processes or activities consistent with a predictable and regular system. Training all McDonald's franchisees to cook french fries in the exact same, carefully controlled fashion is an example of clockware. So is much military activity, with its emphasis on rules, hierarchy and compliance. Swarmware are processes and activities that are consistent with an unpredictable world, where control is elusive, and spontaneous, creative behavior is desired. The 3M company has a famous policy in which all researchers are encouraged to spend 10% of their time exploring, through free trial-and-error, any topics or ideas that are interesting to them. This is a swarmware approach that helps to produce remarkable innovation at 3M, year after year after year. So which is correct - clockware, or swarmware? The answer is both! Healthy, adaptable systems are ones that display both order and disorder; regularity and randomness, clockware and swarmware approaches. The challenge to the organizational leader is knowing which to apply, and when. One anonymous HMO executive has said "doctors are workers on an assembly line. If one quits, we'll just plug in a new one." Such a bombastic statement is sure to arouse strong feelings... and it illustrates the ugly results of force-fitting clockware approaches in a system hungry for the creative opportunities that swarmware can generate. Conversely, imagine a manager at a car production facility encouraging assembly line workers to freely explore new alternatives to assembling the braking system as the parts go by. Such a scenario may evoke images of Lucy Ricardo on a chocolate assembly line... only with much more dire consequences. In this case we can see how force-fitting swarmware approaches in a clockware-friendly context leads to dysfunction or even breakdown. Applying a mixture of clock and swarm processes is at the heart of the challenge facing the leader in the complex environment. It is both a science and an art; analysis and intuition. But you are at an advantage: equipped with this principle, you now can begin to consider and explore new approaches that, perhaps, initially laid outside your radar screen of perception.
4. Tune to the Edge of Chaos (Foster the Right Degree of Information Flow, Diversity, Connectedness, Power Differential, Anxiety) Our instincts drive us to find a place of comfort while eliminating threats and sources of anxiety. Here again, the complexity approach asks us to do the counter-intuitive: to actually push ourselves and our organizations towards that unsettling realm of uncertainty and anxiety. It is at this place that the system's potential energy turns kinetic, and real creativity and novelty can take place. Again, we can look to biological sciences for dramatic illustration of this principle. Dr. Ary Goldberger is a cardiac specialist at Harvard Medical School who has done much research in the role of complexity in living systems. He illustrates a beat-to-beat record of a healthy heart. It shows an irregular, wrinkly appearance - not a smooth, regular tracing. Furthermore, when we magnify this irregular heartbeat time-line, we observe more wrinkly detail. This complex pattern of irregular fluctuations is a fractal. Surprisingly, if you were to view an equally detailed heart rate time trace of a patient before cardiac arrest, you would probably not see more chaotic activity, as you might expect... but instead virtual consistency and regularity. Thus, predictable and regular activity lead to heart attack; unpredictability and fractal (chaotic-like) variability are associated with health and stability. (Note that this pattern can also be observed in other biological systems: in sleep, where chaotic patterns have been shown to produce restful sleep and extreme regularity may indicate a coma; and in muscles where chaos indicates healthy functioning and stability indicates seizure or degenerative disease.) Likewise, if you're a leader interested in building a naturally innovative and adaptable organization you must help it find "the edge." By introducing a level of "noise" or "chaos" into the system, you can actually create the possibility for generative and creative behaviors. Your control knobs are information flow, diversity, connectedness, power differential and anxiety. For example, one hospital physician leader "tuned to the edge" by convening a group of doctors from three specialties for the implementation of a new procedure. These doctors had, in the past, been competitive with one another, but now were being asked to work together (an example of increasing diversity, connections among agents, and anxiety); The physician executive gave them honest information about the hospital's resources and requirements (increasing information flow and tuning the power differential); He asked them to develop a plan (in the end, decreasing diversity and power differential); and told them that the hospital wouldn't invest in the procedure until they have come up with such a plan (increasing power differential and anxiety). The approach led to many, creative, successful, collaborative relationships with physician specialists at a time when many health care organizations were reporting nothing but contention over this new procedure. Reflection is a key skill in this process of "fine tuning." As you first set the water temperature after stepping into the shower, you continually observe feedback (e.g., "Ouch! Too hot!") as you readjust up and down. Likewise, as you "tune" the information flow, diversity, anxiety, etc. up and down, reflect upon what worked and what didn't. Tuning to the edge is an art; a balance that can be achieved only through trial and error - and a healthy dose of intuition. (Note that many organizations today have too little information flow and diversity, and too much power differential. The degree of connectivity and anxiety can go either way.) In fact, it may not be necessary for you to tune to the edge, because you may already be there! Your challenge, in this case, is to recognize that this is where you are... and then help the system stay on the edge until creative solutions emerge. So where does your organization stand? And what actions can you take to "tune to the edge?"
5. Embrace Paradox and Tension Life on the edge of chaos sometimes feels like a trip though Alice's looking glass; it's a disorienting experience where small is big, control leads to randomness, failure brings success, and actions create the opposite intended effect. One such paradox is illustrated in the previous principle: the idea that a chaotic-like variability within the rhythm of a heartbeat leads to stability, whereas total regularity may precede cardiac arrest. It's a counter-intuitive idea that has led some researchers to ask questions such as "can we facilitate cardiac health by actually introducing a degree of randomness into the heartbeat?" It's a radical idea, full both of promise and controversy. And so goes life on the edge of chaos. The idea of working with or even introducing paradox and tension goes against our very nature. Science teaches us the concept of homeostasis - the idea that systems seek to maintain equilibrium, much like your body maintaining a temperature of 98.6º F. If it's good enough for my body, we reason, then this must be a noble goal for the organization. But the metaphor of homeostasis reveals weaknesses when viewed through the complexity lens: an organism that has achieved true and absolute homeostasis is a dead one. Our language offers us the words "stress" and "distress." Thus, all tension we perceive gets channeled to these "bad" categories. (We complain of being "stressed out," and pain relievers have built a hefty business around alleviating "stress headaches.") Perhaps a word that is worth admitting into our daily lexicon is "eustress," which captures the connotation of a "valuable tension." You experience eustress when your muscles ache the morning after a good workout, or when you and your spouse work through a difficult disagreement and emerge stronger and more appreciative of your differences. An organization in which tension and stresses are quickly "smoothed over" or even denied is one that isn't learning or adapting very efficiently. Consider an organization that is embroiled in internal conflict over some kind of change, where one group wants radical change and the other is holding steadfastly to the status quo. There may be a temptation for leaders to compromise, try to deliver to both groups, or prematurely stand by one position while discounting the other. How might you "work with paradox and tension" in this case? The approach one leader took was to mix the two warring factions (the "radical change" people and the "status quo" people) into a single group and task them with the challenge of finding a "radical way to hold on to the status quo." This is a statement of a paradox; it makes no sense according to the prevailing mental models. However, working on it placed the group at the "edge of chaos" and increased the likelihood that creative approaches would emerge. Here are some other paradoxical questions to consider. Can you think of others that are relevant to your context?
Another way to uncover paradox is to ask "wicked questions." These are questions that have no obvious answers, but expose our assumptions. For example, in an organization that was trying to build a more enabled environment, one leader asked "are we really ready to put responsibility for the work on the shoulders of the people who do the work?" Perhaps you can sense the discomfort in such a question. But challenging the sacred cows is an activity that can put you at the edge of chaos, and begin to reveal the hidden assumptions.
6. Let Direction Arise. How do you control a forest fire that is out of control? The conventional approach has been to suffocate the fire with chemicals, dropped from planes from above... and to douse the perimeter of the fire with water in hopes of at least preventing the fire from spreading. It is, admittedly, a sub-par solution that rarely prevents the mass destruction that a forest fire can cause. But it's the most intuitive approach, and for something as uncontrollable as a forest fire, perhaps it's the best we can hope for. Or is it? If there's one thing complexity science teaches us, it is that the intuitive approach is not always the best one. And in systems that are largely uncontrollable - be it a forest fire or the happenings within your industry - perhaps there is a better way to influence direction. And a team of maverick California forest fire fighters are doing just that. They are experimenting with actually lighting fires for the purpose of preventing fires. They work their way around and through the forest, setting many small and carefully-controlled fires that consume dried brush and other fuel that would otherwise feed larger fires. Thus, when a forest fire does break out, some boundaries are in place that can help to control its spread. The small fires set throughout the year do not guarantee control of larger forest fires, but it at least provides some measure of influence that, to date, has saved many thousands of acres. Gareth Morgan's principle of 15% suggests that leaders have direct influence over no more than 15% of activity with an organization, with the rest being controlled by other factors. So quit agonizing over what you don't know, or trying to drive towards certainty. You can't. Instead, try several small experiments, reflect carefully on what happens, and gradually shift time and attention toward those things that seem to be working the best (that is, "let direction arise"). If the future is unknown (which is certainly the case in the health care industry), and if it is hard to predict what your organization will be capable of doing down the road, you might want to consider taking a "multiple actions approach." For example, many groups face the challenge of developing a new financial incentive plan for associated physicians. There are many options, with success and failure stories in the industry for each one. This is a subject upon which we are far from certainty and agreement. Rather than meeting endlessly over it trying to pick the "right" approach, it may be wiser to experiment with several approaches. Over time as we observe what happens, we learn what seems to work and in what context. Over time, you may find a "right" way for you, or you may even find several "right" ways. Never push. Instead, put your ideas, projects and initiatives "out there." Then watch to see if they are accepted and put to work by the system, or whether they languish. Trust the emergent property of systems and the law of natural selection to "choose" the right way to go. Note that the emerging direction may not be in line with your agenda... another opportunity for you to relinquish some control! Finally, make sure you take time to reflect. These multiple actions at the fringes also serve the purpose of providing you with additional insights about the larger systems that every system is inevitably buried within.
7. Listen to the Shadow System Every few years, science produces a new discovery that forces a reexamination of current beliefs and assumptions. One such discovery took place just as this chapter of Edgeware was being developed, in which scientists found that the smallest subatomic particle, called a neutrino, has a measurable weight and mass. This is hugely significant, since it was always widely accepted that neutrinos had no weight or mass. This stunning revelation has scientists scrambling to reconsider the fundamental nature of matter... and even reconsider whether the Big Bang theory was even possible. The point of this illustration is that all science is metaphor - a mental model that allows us to make sense of the world, even though our understanding is limited. Thus, when we impose structure on a system (be it a scientific belief system or something more tangible, like an organization,) we must not make the mistake of assuming that structure is the system. Systems have life and truth beyond any construct we can impose upon them. This is true in organizations and can be observed in the phenomenon of the "shadow system." Every organization has, in a sense, a split personality. The "legitimate" organization is described in policies, systems and organization charts. Then there is the "shadow system" - an unofficial system of activity, water-cooler talk, grapevines, "unofficial" relationships and informal shortcuts for getting things done. Organizational charts and role descriptions may be useful just as our prevailing scientific assumptions are... but they are just metaphors, and not the complete and de facto road map of the territory. One health care executive entered the shadow system when he joined a group of doctors and nurses talking in the cafeteria one day. He was so fascinated by their discussion of improving the process for delivering anti-coagulants, he soon became part of this "underground" ad-hoc team. In doing so, he quietly sidestepped the difficult, formal process for approving quality improvement projects instituted by the hospital. The resulting work was so successful, it led to a closer reexamination of the approval process which had been unintentionally discouraging such innovation. The shadow system represents a whole different structure of interconnectivity among agents than the traditional structure. If you are seeking to "tune to the edge," the shadow system may be a place to begin. You may even find that the "official" policies and shadow system's approach are in conflict. When this is the case, allow the two to coexist, and seek to leverage that tension. The shadow system represents another avenue for tuning information flow, diversity of opinion, anxiety, and power differential. Do not make the mistake of trying to eliminate activity that can't be justified by policies, rules or existing organizational schemas. Instead, realize that informal relationships, gossip, rumor, and hallway conversations contribute significantly to agents' mental models and subsequent actions. So nurture the shadow system. This is rich soil, full of creativity, interconnectivity and possibilities.
8. Build Complex Systems by Chunking Question: Who built the Internet? That's an easy one. The answer, we all know, is no one. Not Bill Gates, not Al Gore, nor any other individual human being. The Internet is our most visible and oft-cited example of emergent phenomena, an elegant case-study of how a complicated and vastly diverse system can self-organize... in this case, remarkably quickly. But the real story is in the details. How did the internet organize? If we were to track its growth, would we see a smooth evolution of integrated technologies that, over time, improved in an incremental, Darwinian fashion? Could we track it in a linear fashion, just as one might mark her child's height every year with a new black mark on the refrigerator? Probably not. Instead, we would discover thousands of stories of individuals and companies clustering in a community fashion around differing ideas, components and approaches. We would hear many, many stories of failure (as in modem protocols that never caught on, or languishing 3D rendering approaches) and a few success stories (like Java or Quicktime.) We would see that the Internet evolved in chunks - like a set of building blocks - with components being integrated into the system only after they had been individually refined, proven and accepted by a collective, systemic jury. In this case, we could say the "building blocks" were servers, web sites, code and language conventions and even phone and ISDN technologies. As each building block evolved, it formed a rich "web" of connections with the others. In fact, the computer sciences are rich with case studies of this chunking approach to self organization. The UNIX computer operating system is a good example of an ever-evolving complex system that was built up from chunks. The basic-and at the time it was introduced, revolutionary-principle behind the UNIX system is that software functions should be small, simple, stand-alone bits of code that do only one thing well, embedded in an environment that makes it very easy for each such function to pass its output on to another function for further processing. Chunking means, simply, that complex systems can be nurtured by starting small. Experiment to find pieces that work and then link those pieces together. Nurture all productive efforts even if you don't perceive them to be significant today. Instead of developing an overall community health program, for example, one hospital provides opportunities for small groups of hospital staff and community members to come together where mutual interests lie (that is, in generative relationships). The senior leaders then actively nurture these small efforts. Some thrive, some fizzle. But the ones that prove their value are linked flexibly with other such efforts. This pattern, repeated many times, is producing a very flexible, adaptive and creative organization... and one whose future direction is largely unpredictable. And therein lies the challenge and the joy of facilitating emergent behavior through chunking. You want the creativity? Then you gotta take the uncertainty that goes with it.
end
Copyright (c) David Hutchens, 2007 |
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