Managing the Unknown

We've become experts at managing what we know. To achieve our goals, we break down the work and carefully measure our progress. We squeeze out efficient business practices and powerful system architecture through rigorous planning, testing and execution. But it's not good enough. Are we not often blindsided by the unforeseen? And isn't it true that most of the really valuable discoveries seem to be things we inadvertently trip over, almost by happenstance?

Managing Complexity

Rather than relegating these circumstances to luck or fate, complexity science offers us some insights into how to manage the unknown. This is the premise of the recent HBR article published by Dave Snowden and Mary Boone, entitled "A Leader's Framework for Decision Making". The authors suggest that by identifying the context of a business situation, leaders can consciously choose an appropriate management approach:
  • Simple, in which the relationship between cause and effect is obvious to all, the approach is to Sense - Categorise - Respond and we can apply best practice.
  • Complicated, in which the relationship between cause and effect requires analysis or some other form of investigation and/or the application of expert knowledge, the approach is to Sense - Analyze - Respond and we can apply good practice.
  • Complex, in which the relationship between cause and effect can only be perceived in retrospect, but not in advance, the approach is to Probe - Sense - Respond and we can sense emergent practice.
  • Chaotic, in which there is no relationship between cause and effect at systems level, the approach is to Act - Sense - Respond and we can discover novel practice.
graphic and descriptions from the Cynefin article on Wikipedia
Don't have access the HBR article? Read this review by John Caddell or the original white paper published in the IBM Systems Journal.

Bottom Line

Evaluate your business challenges relevant to its complexity. Are you applying the appropriate management disciplines in each situation? We'll take a further look at some emergent practices for handling complexity in upcoming articles...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Knowledge Factory

Image
SECI Model at Fuji Xerox - from the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology A Model for Learning When researching knowledge management and organizational learning you're bound to come across the SECI model and the work of the Nonaka and Takeuchi. Appreciating the value of tacit knowledge (carried in people's minds) and explicit knowledge (codified or articulated) is paramount for the knowledge based industries. The authors of the SECI model emphasize that as valuable as the knowledge assets may be, the process of creating knowledge and how it is transformed is where the real potential lies. Simply managing existing knowledge is not enough . The Heart of the Machine Intuitively we know that human talent is the critical success factor in hi-tech and other knowledge based contexts. Creativity and innovation are primarily human functions and are hard to systematize but are essential for ongoing success. Additionally, the picture below demonstrates how all significa
Read more

The 90-9-1 Rule

Image
What does successful collaboration look like? Understanding how communities and people interact online is essential for setting the right expectations. Often people misinterpret metrics or focus their energy in the wrong direction because they do not have a reasonable benchmark to assess how well their on-line communities are functioning. All Things Are Not Equal In any team or community you can expect to find a variety of expertise and strengths. We usually don't expect everyone to do the exact same thing, or to have the same skill sets and strengths. In fact, the complementary nature of individual strengths is essential to creating strong teams and vibrant communities. Knowing this, it is surprising that the default expectation for online interaction is identical contribution, with performance metrics that reinforce this unhealthy view. Not only is this unrealistic, it's a sure recipe for failure! Setting Expectations Most everyone is familiar with the Pareto principle
Read more

Superstar Productivity in the Cloud

Image
I've been a Getting Things Done © disciple for a few years. Over that time I learned a couple of secrets to leverage David Allen's principles in my day to day work environment: Work context is everything - physical context is becoming less important Keep it simple - use the parts that make sense for you Work Context I spend 80% of my day online.  Either on my computer, or my Android phone.  A large portion of that time is spent communicating with people ... and Gmail does most of the heavy lifting.  Since this is where I work from, this is where my GTD experiments were honed.  If you have a similar work profile, perhaps you'll find something useful in my experience. Getting Organized 1. Collection The Gmail Inbox is a natural collector.  Don't fight it ... feed it! Stuff all ideas, tasks and loose ends into your inbox.  How?  Simply email yourself. I've added a little twist to boost this process.  First, I added a contact with the email address of my_email+ac
Read more