Manage in complexity don’t simplify it
Complexity can’t be simplified it should be managed.
In Dave Snowden’s Cynefin framework (1) there are four quadrants: clear (used to be “simple” until recently), complicated, complex and chaos.
The purpose of Cynefin is to help decision makers make sense of their surroundings in order to operate and make decisions in a more optimal way.
e.g. don’t make decisions fit for a simple context if you are in a complex one
Each of the four quadrants of cynefin represent a different context for decision making.
E.g. in Simple (clear) you use best practice. In complicated there might be several good answers so you apply analysis and good practice. In complexity there is too many unknowns and change so you experiment and learn continuously through probe-sense-respond and in chaos you try to get out.
When people say simplify complexity they might mean:
- Bring best practice into a complex environment. This breaks with the whole understanding of what complexity is. Complexity doesn’t have one best answer, it has none or many. Also in complexity a best practice will keep changing. Something that works one week might change the next.
- Or it might mean take away all the noise so that you only have the clearest, simplest signals to act on. Again this breaks with the notion of what complexity is. You are then only artificially turning a complex environment into a simple one by only focusing on a few of the influencing factors and ignoring the rest. This could lead to solving problems that only exist in the artificial environment (e.g. one can easily end up in this situation when using a customer journey or persona).
There is a tendency to use data and analytics to solve for #2 which means: filter out the noise pretending it has no influence. The goal being to use the amazing power of the machine to most efficiently look at the world through the smallest number of variables.
Instead of saying that the beauty of advanced analytics is not to filter out the noise, but to manage it. Not to remove it, but to include it.
A human being is not capable of handling the torrent of signals and events coming into play in a complex environment. But a computer can handle it. It can include all the noise and from the noise find constantly emerging patterns that could serve the human decision makers.
It means leaning into the complex using advanced analytics to understand and manage in the environment with the highest possible fidelity. In a complex environment you never know what the influencing factor might be, so you need to keep an open mind at finding it (and following it as it keeps changing).
This is not simplifying complexity it is managing in complexity.
Sources:
(1). Cynefin framework, https://cynefin.io/wiki/Cynefin
(2). Cynefin framework, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework
