I am following up on the themes of the last days and, in particular, yesterday’s Thought
The organization? It may be complex but it does not have to be complicated.
Also
I have just seen again this ubiquitous quote by Sir Richard Branson: ‘Complexity is your enemy. Any fool can make something complicated. It is hard to make something simple’.
Coming from Mr Branson, these quotes get a lot of laudatory ‘likes’. However
(1) He gets wrong the difference between complex and complicated. In fact he seems to imply that it is the same
(2) ‘Complexity is your enemy’. Complexity should NOT be your enemy. In fact we need to learn to manage and lead complexity.
(3) ‘It is hard to make something simple’: Actually it was Steve Jobs who said that.
This version of reduction ‘from complexity to simplicity’ as a way to ‘understand’ and get things manageable, drives me nuts. We are kidding ourselves if we think that things such as climate change, health epidemics, terrorism and fundamentalism, or inequality, can be ‘made simple’. Mr Branson says that ‘any fool can make something complicated’. I think that what we actually have are many fools who pretend that those issues are ‘simple’ or can be ‘simplified’. Maybe because they have a ready-made answer.
Actually my list of issues above, deliberately belong to what is called Wicked Problems. These are complex problems, with, amongst other things not a true/false solution but a good/bad. Also ‘The problem is not understood until after the formulation of a solution (…)Every solution to a wicked problem is a ‘one shot operation’, and others (see the good Wikipedia summary).
In organizations we don’t encounter wicked problems all the time, but complexity is not in short supply.
My message is don’t fight complexity with simplification; don’t make complexity your enemy. Instead, find out, learn, and equip yourself with the approach and tools to deal with it.
As I commented here once before, I am reminded of the quote, often attributed to Albert Einstein: ““Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”
So I think you are using the term “complexity” to mean the complexity inherent in the problem. You can’t just wish it away, and if you try to ignore it, it may bite you. To solve many problems, you need to first consider a simpler, more abstract version — the laws of motion were first developed for systems such as billiard tables, where friction could be ignored — but once you understand that simple system it is essential to go back and see how it works for messy reality.
And by “complication”, you mean the added layers or unnecessary complication that we introduce by not thinking critically and clearly about the problem — introducing lots of unnecessary assumptions and so on. Ironically, sometimes “complication” comes from attempts to over-simplify a situation.
I’m not sure that’s the standard usage of those words — Richard Branson apparently doesn’t think so — but it is a very important distinction to make, so I hope your terminology catches on.