Managing Complex Adaptive
Systems
Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying
and Love Chaos
Picher Allan Associates LLC
Self Organizing Groups
Leadership Lessons in Three Minutes
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Complex Adaptive Systems
Simple
Complicated
Complex
Baking a Cake
Sending a Rocket
to the Moon
Raising a Child
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Command and Control vs.
Decentralized Management
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Management by:
Instruction
Objectives
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Values
Why Manage Networks
• Most social problems are complex
• Networks and Partnerships are necessary
• Command and control doesn’t work with
networked people and projects
• It doesn’t adapt well to changing
circumstances and local initiative
• Decentralized management allows flexibility
and creativity
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Hybrid Form of Organization
• Hierarchical in some places, chaotic in
others
• Always shifting, evolving
• Must be stable in spots with closely
monitored deliverables
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Leadership in Complex Organizations
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Skills Needed to Manage this Kind of
Structure
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Influence rather than control
Ability to generate shared values
Build relationships
Comfort with a balance of stability and disorder
High level of autonomy
High level of responsibility
Freedom to innovate from any part of the network
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In the Non-profit sector
we tend to believe that
we measure what we
value.
But instead we often
value only what we can
measure.
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“Not everything that can be
counted counts,
and not everything that
counts can be counted.”
-- A sign on the wall of
Albert Einstein’s office
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Intuition
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Rapid
Adaptive
Subtle
Experiential
Resourceful
Inexpensive
Sensitive
Insightful
Perceptive to semiconscious & unconscious
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Intuition
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Uncertain
Inexact
Unprovable
Unexplainable
Unteachable (?)
Conducive to generalization & stereotypes
Self-validating
Sometimes (often?) wrong
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Intuition Works Best…
• To decide what to do when you don’t know
what to do
• When you have incomplete information
• When the consequences of being wrong are
less than the consequences of not acting
while waiting for complete information
• When rapid decisions are required
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And…
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In highly complex situations
In rapidly changing circumstances
In confusing, ambiguous or vague situations
When confronting uncertain risk
In the absence of scientific proof
When cheap, simple solutions are preferred
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Networks Require Communications
The Right Kinds in the Right Amounts
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Principles for Managing Complex
Adaptive Systems
From Curt Lindberg, VHA, Inc.; Paul Plsek of Paul Plsek & Associates; and Brenda
Zimmerman, York University.
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Principles for Managing Complex
Adaptive Systems
1. Complexity lens
View your system
through the lens of
complexity...
rather than the metaphor
of a machine or a military
organization.
Picher Allan Associates LLC
Principles for Managing Complex
Adaptive Systems
2. Good enough vision
• Build a good enough
vision and provide
minimum
specifications...
• rather than trying to
plan out every little
detail.
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Principles for Managing Complex
Adaptive Systems
3. Clockware/swarmware
• When life is far from
certain, lead from the
edge, with clockware
and swarmware in
tandem...
• that is, balance data
and intuition, planning
and acting, safety and
risk, giving due honor to
each.
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Principles for Managing Complex
Adaptive Systems
4. Tune to the edge
• Fostering the "right" degree of: information
flow, diversity and difference, connections
inside and outside the organization, power
differential, and anxiety...
• instead of controlling information, forcing
agreement, dealing separately with
contentious groups, working systematically
down all the layers of the hierarchy in
sequence, and seeking comfort.
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Principles for Managing Complex
Adaptive Systems
5. Paradox
• Uncover and work
paradox and tension...
• rather than shying away
from them as if they
were unnatural.
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Principles for Managing Complex
Adaptive Systems
6. Multiple actions
• Go for multiple actions
at the fringes, let
direction arise...
• rather than believing
that you must be "sure”
before you proceed
with anything.
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Principles for Managing Complex
Adaptive Systems
7. Shadow system
• Listen to the shadow
system..
• that is, realize that
informal relationships,
gossip, rumor, and
hallway conversations,
contribute significantly
to agents' mental
models and subsequent
actions.
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Principles for Managing Complex
Adaptive Systems
8. Chunking
• Grow complex systems
by chunking...
• that is, allow complex
systems to emerge out
of the links among
simple systems that
work well and are
capable of operating
independently.
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So What’s It All About
• Traditional management methods don’t seem
to fit well in networks
• Self organizing teams
• Manage by values
• High level of communication required to share
values and agree on work
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Managing Complex Adaptive
Systems
Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying
and Love Chaos
Chris Allan, Picher Allan Associates LLC
www.chrisallan.info
Chet Tchozewski, chet@tchozewski.com
Picher Allan Associates LLC