ManagingComplexity

National Not for Profit Sector Conference

Auckland | Feb 14, 2017

9540-145 Street Edmonton, Alberta, CA

T5N 2W8P: 780-451-8984 F: 780-447-4246

E: Mark@here2there.ca

2

The Best: Brenda Zimmerman

Five Ideas

1. A (super) brief history of acknowledging complexity.

2. People’s uneven levels of tolerance of complexity.

3. Its important to get people to embrace complexity and be prepared for adaptive (rather than linear) responses.

4. There are emerging principles of adaptive leadership and management.

5. The stakes of getting this all right are high.

Why did you come to this session?

#1

A (super) brief history of complexity.

A Brief History

• 1973: Horst & Rittel introduce the idea of wicked problems for social issues: we don’t pay attention but business and the military does.

• 1974: Russell Ackoff argues that some challenges are interdependent social messes.

• 2000s: complexity language popularized by David Snowden, Ralph Stacey, and Zimmerman

• 2006: Ronald Heifetz simplifies further with technical versus adaptive problems.

Wicked Challenges(1973: Horst & Webber)

A Question

Technical Problems Adaptive Challenges

•Problem is well defined

•Answer is known

•Implementation is clear

•Solution can be imposed by a single

organization

•Challenge is complex

•Answers are not known

•Implementation requires learning

•No single entity has the authority to

impose solution on the stakeholder

Examples Examples

•Funding scholarships

•Building hospitals

•Installing inventory controls for a food

bank

•Developing a malaria vaccine

•Reforming public education

•Providing affordable healthcare

•Increasing organizational effectiveness

•Achieving 80% vaccination rates

Heiftetz, et al. Leading Boldly.

#2

People have uneven levels of tolerance of complexity.

Grumpy or Practical?

Grumpy

Dealing with complexity is an inefficient and unnecessary waste of time, attention and mental energy. There is never any justification for things being complex when they could be simple. Edward de Bono

Practical

Stop trying to change reality by attempting to eliminate complexity. David Whyte.

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” H. L. Mencken

Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it. Alan Perlis

Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.-Laurence J. Peter

Take a Breath

Abandon the urge to simplify everything, to look for formulas and easy answers, and to begin to think multi-dimensionally, to glory in the mystery and

paradoxes of life, not to be dismayed by the multitude of causes and consequences that are inherent in each experience -- to appreciate the

fact that life is complex.― M. Scott Peck

… take another breath

The capacity to tolerate complexity and welcome contradiction, not the need for simplicity and

certainty, is the attribute of an explorer. Centuries ago, when some people suspended their search for absolute truth and began instead to ask how things worked, modern science was born. Curiously, it is by

abandoning the search for absolute truth that science has began to make progress, opening the

material universe to human exploration.H. Pagels

Our Challenge

Any darn fool can make something complex; it takes a genius to make something simple.

Pete Seeger

I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

We often need to "complexify before we simplify" because the simplicity that comes before knowing all of the varying in sundry

complicating factors in a situation is really worthless, inane and naive. But, often times, the true answer is also remarkably simple: you just

have to be on the far side of complexity in order to see it clearly.Paul Leaderach

#3

The importance of getting people to acknowledge complexity and be

prepared for non-traditional responses.

#1: An Example

• “Every problem magnifies the impact of the others, and all are so tightly interlocked that one reversal can produce a chain reaction with results far distant from the original causes. A rundown apartment can exacerbate a child’s asthma, which leads to a call for an ambulance, which generates a medical bill that cannot be paid, which ruins a credit record, which hikes the interest rate on an auto loan, which forces the purchase of an unreliable used car, which jeopardizes a mother’s punctuality at work, which limits her promotions and earning capacity, which confines her to poor housing.”

• “If problems are interlocking then so too solutions must be […]: a job alone is not enough. Medical insurance alone is not enough. Good housing alone is not enough. Reliable transportation, careful family budgeting, effective parenting, effective schooling are not enough when each is achieved in isolation from the rest.”

David ShiplerThe Working Poor: Invisible In America

#2 Metaphors

What is the difference between:

– baking a cake;

– sending a rocket to the moon;

– raising a child?

Develop common ground,

compromise or compete.

Follow the ‘best practice’

recipe.

Use expertise, experiment and build knowledge.

Engage, thinksystemically,experiment.

Create stability, look for

opportunities to innovate.

#3: Exercises

What type of challenge are we facing(The Power of Liberating Structures)

#4: An Experience

The Poverty Game Sleeping Rough

What techniques have you used to sensitize people to get people to acknowledge that something is complex?

#4There are emerging principles of

adaptive leadership & management.

Adaptive Management

Experimental

Adapted from:

Participatory

Systemic Thinking& Action

Examples

Emergent Strategy Day Laborers in Surrey

90 Day Campaigns for Crisis Diversion in Edmonton

Adaptive Leadership

Grab Attention

Frame Issues

Court & Mediate Conflict

Maintain Productive

Distress

Adapted from:

Heifetz. 2006. Leading Boldly, SSIR.

Examples

Framing & Mediating Conflict in The Energy Futures Lab in

Alberta

Framing & Maintaining Productive Distress for Social

Outcomes in Strathcona County

These tensions combine to create a pressure cooker of change

• The job of adaptive leadership is not to eliminate tensions & stress – and thus reduce the impetus for adaptive solutions – but to harness it, keeping it at a level that motivates change without overwhelming participants.

• Think of an atmosphere of productive distress as a pressure cooker. The cook regulates the pressure by turning the heat up or down, while the relief valve lets off steam to keep the pressure within a safe limit. If the pressure goes beyond the carrying capacity of the vessel, the pressure cooker can blow up. On the other hand, with no heat, nothing cooks.

Some Classic Tensions in System & Community Change Efforts

The Product-Process Tension

The Long Term – Short Term

The Inside – Outside Tension

#1 The Product-Process Tension

• One the one hand, we know that the success of our efforts will depend on the sustained inclusion, participation and investment of a broad cross-section of stakeholders

• On the other hand, we know that people will get frustrated by excessive talk, meetings, committees, planning and will drop out if they don’t see action, product or outcomes.

The Adaptive Leadership Challenge

How do we gain and keep maximum stakeholder engagement and commitment while also being efficient moving to outcomes?

#2 The Inside-Outside Tension

• One the one hand, we know that stakeholders in our ‘systems’ (e.g., neighborhood, education, human services) must lead and “own” the work of the change effort.

• On the other hand, we know that the systemic nature of these problems means that we need stimulus, political support, technical assistance and other resources from other sectors.

The Adaptive Leadership Challenge

How can we strategically include people, institutions and other resources that are beyond our system, to help move us toward

our goal, without losing local commitment, knowledge and commitment? How do we align insiders and outsiders for

maximum impact?

#3 The Long-Term, Short-Term Tension

• One the one hand, we recognize that the problems of poverty, poor education, low or lousy employment, and race have deep roots, and it will take along time for our efforts to make significant progress on them.

• On the other hand, we want to see some change as soon as possible, both because each life is precious and because we want to demonstrate to the community that change is possible.

The Adaptive Leadership ChallengeHow do we simultaneously tackle the entrenched structural

and institutional problems in our education and employment systems while also achieving some early wins?

Small Group

• What other leadership & management principles would you add?

#5The high stakes of getting it right.

The Effects of Poor Fit to Complex Issues

APPROACH ACTIVITIES

Simple Serial consumer of “best

practice”; fragmented and

cookie cutter approaches.

Complicated Not enough data, time,

resources or expertise;

perpetual planning; elaborate

plans that have to be sold and

unevenly implemented.

Political Demonize the “other”

stakeholders; low leverage

compromises.

Chaotic Avoid the problem altogether;

try to “impose” solution

South Africa

World Bank

(Complicated Lens)

Meaningful solutions require sophisticated integrated national

health care systems.

Brazilian Health Leaders

(Complexity Lens)

How do we build on what works already and ‘break some simple

rules’ to get the outcome we want?

BrazilCase

Study

Similar

HIV Rates

Roughly

same per

capita

income,

HIV rates,

health

infrastructure,

rural-urban

split

South Africa

• Our sophisticated, integrated national health care systems is our major tool.

• We cannot provide treatment to all when the drug costs are so high.

• We cannot afford resource to manage treatment compliance.

• With limited resources, focus more on prevention than treatment.

• It will therefore take a long time for the problem to work itself through.

Brazil

• We need to find ways to use the resources we have – including those most affected and non-traditional stakeholders - to respond to the problem.

• How can we provide drugs to all by finding ways to reduce drug costs?

• What are some of the `rules` that prevent innovative solutions.

• Lets ensure that prevention will be part of the treatment.

• We need to focus on short and long term results.

Adaptive Responses in Brazil

• SYSTEMIC: declared HIV a crisis, produced – and distributed for free -- “generic drugs” (cost reduced by 90%).

• PARTICIPATORY: worked with Church clergy and alternative media to educate people about HIV and promote “safe sex”.

• PARTICIPATORY & EXPERIMENTAL: created easy-to-follow drug protocols with citizen groups that allowed illiterate patients to administer own treatment with help with “local” and “trustworthy” hubs (e.g. NGO’s, etc.)

Brazil

South Africa

1980 20000.6%

25%

HIV Infection Rates

Five Ideas

1. A (super) brief history of complexity.

2. People’s uneven levels of tolerance of complexity.

3. Its import to get people to acknowledge complexity and be prepared for non-traditional responses.

4. There are emerging principles of adaptive leadership and management.

5. The stakes of getting it right are high.

Websites: Search Them Up

What is most alive for you after today’s session (e.g., a thought, a

feeling, a question)?