| THE LAWS OF COMPLEXITY ALSO REFERRED TO AS THE LAWS OF THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE (UNDERSTANDING COMPLEXITY) Abstracted from the Fifth Discipline, Dr Peter Senge, pg 57-67 (Chap 4, 1st Ed.) The laws answer the questions:
1. TODAY’S PROBLEMS COME FROM YESTERDAY’S SOLUTION Solutions that merely shift problems from part of a system to another often go undetected because, often those who “solved” the first problem are different from those who influence the new problem. 2. THE HARDER YOU PUSH, THE HARDER THE SYSTEM PUSHES BACK Pushing harder, whether through an increasingly aggressive intervention or through increasingly stressful withholding of natural instincts, is exhausting. Yet, as individuals and organizations, we not only get drawn into compensating feedback, we often glorify the suffering that ensues. When our initial efforts fail to produce improvements, we “push harder”, to the creed that hard work will overcome all obstacles, all the while blinding ourselves to how we are contributing to the obstacles ourselves. 3. BEHAVIOUR GROWS BETTER BEFORE IT GROWS WORSE Low-leverage intervention would be much less alluring if it were not for the fact that many actually work, in the short term. A typical solution feels wonderful, when it first cures the symptoms. In complex human systems, there are always many ways to make things look better in the short run. Only eventually does the compensating feedback come back to haunt you. The key word is “eventually”. It may be two, three or four years before the problem returns, or some new, worse problem arrives. By that time, given how rapidly most people move from job to job, someone new is sitting in the chair. 4. THE EASY WAY OUT USUALLY LEADS BACK IN We all find comfort applying familiar solutions to problems, sticking to what we know best. Pushing harder and harder on familiar solutions, while fundamental problems persist or worsen, is a reliable indicator of non-systemic thinking. 5. THE CURE CAN BE WORSE THAN THE DISEASE Sometimes the easy or familiar solution is not only ineffective: sometimes it is addictive and dangerous. 6. FASTER IS SLOWER For most business people the best rate of growth is fast, faster, fastest. Yet, virtually, all natural systems, from ecosystems to animals to organizations, have intrinsically optimal rates of growth. The optimal rate is far less that the fastest possible growth. When growth becomes excessive, the system itself will seek to compensate by slowing down; perhaps putting the organization’s survival at risk in the process. When managers first start to thwart many of their own favourite interventions, they can be discouraged and disheartened. For the real implications of the systems perspective are not inaction but a new type of action rooted in a new of thinking – systems thinking is both more challenging and more promising than our normal ways of dealing with problems. 7. CAUSE AND EFFECT ARE NOT CLOSELY RELATED IN TIME AND SPACEWhen we play as children, problems are never far away from their solutions – as long, at least, as we confine our play to one group of toys. Years later as managers, we tend to believe the world works in the same way. There is a fundamental mismatch between the nature of reality in complex systems and our predominant ways of thinking about that reality. The first step in correcting that mismatch is to let go of the notion that cause and effect are close in time and space. 8. SMALL CHANGES CAN PRODUCE BIG RESULTS – BUT THE AREAS OF HIGHEST LEVERAGE ARE OFTEN THE LEAST OBVIOUS Systems thinking shows that a change, small, well-focused (trim-tab) actions are in the right place, they produce significant, enduring improvements. Tackling a difficult problem is often a matter of seeing where the high-leverage lies. However, the high- leverage changes in human systems are non-obvious until we understand the forces at play in those systems. There are no rules of finding these high-leverage changes, but there are ways of thinking that make it more likely. Learning to see underlying “structures” rather than “events” is a starting point. Each of the “system archetypes” develop suggests areas of high- and low-leverage change. Thinking in terms of change rather than snapshots is another. 9. YOU CAN HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO – BUT NOT AT ONCE Sometimes the knottiest dilemmas, when seen from the systems point of view, aren’t dilemmas at all. They are artifacts of “snapshot” rather than “process” thinking, and appear in a whole new light once you think consciously over time. 10. DIVIDING AN ELEPHANT IN HALF DOES NOT PRODUCE TWO SMALL ELEPHANTS Living systems have integrity. Their character depends on the whole. The same is true for organizations; to understand the most challenging managerial issues requires seeing the whole system that generates the issue. 11. THERE IS NO BLAME Systems thinking shows us that there is no outside; that we and the cause of our problems are part of a single system. The cure lies in our relationship with our “enemy”. |
Examples Population Control Policies Use of global positioning systems (GPS) to monitor team / officer deployments - Charity Gala Shows Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Engaging consultants in personnel issues Metamorphosis of the caterpillar and drawing parallels to the Industrial Age model. Snowballing to working against the pendulum. The puddle on the floor and the leaking ceiling. Trim-tabs on liners Merger of organizations Metaphor of cutting a part of our body and seeing the part function as the same. In a circle, where does it start or end? |