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An executive summary of complexity theory

January 6, 2011 5 comments

A system with high adaptive capacity exerts co...
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An executive summary of complexity theory

Johnson, N. (2007). Simply complexity: A clear guide to complexity theory. OneWorld Publications, Oxford.

Futurists are in the business of providing a structured vision of the future that includes variables, dynamics, processes, themes and values by which the future will unfold and how we can be successful getting there in our  journey along the way.

Every futurist I’ve encountered describes the increasing complexity of today’s world and the certainty that the complexity will only increase going forward. I thought it would be useful to summarize the best book I’ve found so far that describes complexity theory in a useful way.

Complexity theory is a discipline that ties together phenomenon like: traffic congestion, the collapse of financial markets, avalanches, terrorist attacks and networks, pandemic viruses and cancer.

There is understandably senses definition for a theory which proposes to manage the unmanageable, or cleanly defined the undefinable.  Neil Johnson offers the following working definition which is a reasonable start point for approaching this topic:

[complexity theory is ] “…the study of the phenomenon which emerged from a collection of interacting objects.” (Johnson, 2007, p.3)

The theory is especially concerned with groups of actors that are interacting by competing for resources.

It’s fair to ask of the theory of complexity: will it help us understand, predict and control complex situations?

Emergence is an important topic: it deals with behaviors and or qualities that arise without warning, without apparent central control and are properties of the entire system and environment and not of individual components. The wetness of water can be considered an emergent property or the flocking behavior of a large group of birds. Both have qualities and properties that cannot be found in individual agents.

The idea of emergence includes the idea of emergent design through adaptation to dynamic conditions. Consider the case of DNA versus intelligent design. Evolution by adaptive DNA is without apparent central control and develops without warning and usually in unpredictable ways with unforeseeable magnitudes of outcomes;  intelligent design takes the opposite position in every way: central control according to a pre-established plan that goes according to design with foreseeable and specified outcomes.

Johnson offers the following components and behaviors that seem to apply to most complex systems and situations.

Components:

  1. The system contains a collection of many interacting objects.
  2. The behavior of agents/objects is affected by memory or feedback.
  3. Objects/agents can adapt their strategies based on memory or feedback.
  4. Exists in an open system, affected by the environment.

Behaviors:

  1. the system appears to be alive.
  2. Filled with emergent phenomenon that are surprising and can be extreme.
  3. Absence of an invisible hand or central controller.
  4. There is a mix of orderly and disorderly behavior.
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Systems dynamics meets the Afghan war via Powerpoint

April 29, 2010 2 comments

It is becoming a common practice to laugh at that slide, but try on this thought experiment:

what if someone made a slide of a zoom in on the surface of a semi-conductor chip?

Wouldn’t that seem as incomprehensible and “foolish”? and yet by the slow process of developing knowledge we have become capable of extraordinary things enabled by semiconductors and information theory

In 2005 or so, MIT Systems Dynamics lab came by Bell Hall to demonstrate their model of COIN in Iraq which had many thousands of nodes and relationships between nodes.

It was much busier than that slide. And yet somehow that very complex model yielded important insights related to the management of complexity in a way that transcended simple rules of cause and effect.

Complexity requires new forms of building and communicating understanding and appreciation, which cannot be easily transmitted through the linear text modes favored by those who want to see a return to management by info papers only.

It would take many books to flesh out a detailed description of what that one slide is already able to represent in a single image, admittedly busy.

Does anyone think war in Afghanistan is any less complex than the slide indicates? If anything, it’s absurdly simplistic.

In any event, developing models of complexity is exactly how you go about making the unknown a little more knowable.

A systems dynamics model is the first step towards building collaborative understanding of complexity.

We laugh about the 6 blind men trying to describe the elephant, but we forget that after each has shared his limited experience of the elephant, we are left with a pretty good list of what qualities the elephant actually has, and those 6 blindmen collectively know more about elephants together than they did individually.

that’s what that slide says to me.

And those who would eliminate Powerpoint on principle are apparently making the argument that visual learning and graphics degrade communication.

Like any other tool (Powerpoint, not me) I am against the misuse of Powerpoint in the classroom or in decision making.

I acknowledge that it is all too easy to confuse activity (including “busy” slides) with results

But I also know of excellent resources broadly available that make visual display of information a communication multiplier:

Garr Reynolds: Presentation Zen

Cliff Atkinson: Beyond Bullet Points

Edward Tufte: everything he has ever written

Seth Groden: many things he has written

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Complexity in process consulting: a good thing?

April 22, 2010 4 comments

The Lorenz attractor is an example of a non-li...
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A colleague used the word “simplistic” in describing the 10 principles of process consulting offered by Ed Schein.

I interpreted his use of the word simplistic in describing shines 10 principles as a negative thing. There’s a part of me that remembers the 10 Commandments are simplistic too.

In my studies of complexity and chaos theory there is a belief among practitioners that to successfully adapt to or manage complexity requires an equivalent degree of complexity in the manager or leader or organization’s processes themselves. There is rarely if ever evidence offered to support this contention, but it seems to be intuitive. It is the very intuitive attractiveness of that idea that causes me to be skeptical and wonder what the evidence really shows about the need to be complex in order to manage complexity.

The other side of the argument is that a combination of very simple rules in a dynamic environment can cause very complex results, and so I’m not sure that complexity needs complexity to be managed.

If you believe the 10 principles are overly simplistic where would you add some additional nuance to his general advice?

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