A633.2.3.RB- Time for the butter to meet the fly

First off I’d like to reflect in my own words/interpretations about the major points that are going to be discussed.

Obolensky (2014)

Complexity theory- “Complex systems seem to be on the ‘edge of chaos’ & exhibit simple ‘emergent’ behavior.” This differentiates the main points between Chaos and Complexity theories. When chaos has its full potential, it is known to be in a complexity state. The overt actions of this potential is when you’d be in the chaotic phase. The complex theory has four major factors, as listed below:

• Self-organization- starts to occur when catalysts create cause and effect which start to blur, making the resulting factors to become hard to identify, map, and calculate/predict. What positions in organizations will naturally bind together to create one entity that hinges on the other? This process makes it difficult to separate many distinctions.

• Inter-relatedness- constituent parts have many connections (all networked together, hence being more complex). This can be viewed as all the different human interactions that are byproducts of organizing. Relationships can either create newly fostered partnerships, or close others at the same time. Nonverbal communication is a huge area that can bridge the gap, or create oceans between. Most interesting is the fact that none of this is predictable, and is even harder to control. My take is to acknowledge that it will certainly be there.

• Adaptive nature- being able to read the white noise, decipher the matrix code, put many external factors together in order to make preemptive strategic moves. Company actions should emulate amebic movements because without complex behavior in a complex world, your company will become basic, and we all know what happens when you become basic. Basically, you’ll be back to the basics without even having a basic job.

• Emergence- through evolution, importance is noticed independently creating a convergence on the same importance simultaneously, thus creating several interdependencies.

Butterfly effect- “the effort you put in will dictate the result you get out. Yet within complex organizations, small changes can yield large results.” Normally effort in equal’s effort out, and in the Army we have a similar saying that is “piss poor planning provides piss poor results” (6PR). This isn’t always the case especially when dealing with complex systems, where the smallest change can have dramatic results.

Identify 2 examples where “small changes yield large results” in your organization-

            Frist one that I’ve seen recently is the presence of me to my new organization. The former Standards Pilot (SP) was exiting the Army and his attitude towards the company mission didn’t present a lot of effort or care. On my arrival I noticed a dereliction in many lower level operations and initially couldn’t put my finger on the problem, especially since I was good friends with the SP and knew he had been a great performer in our previous assignments. I had to care and put forth so much effort initially because if I didn’t I probably wouldn’t be promoted, a common motivator that we all share. My individual actions had so many effects even I didn’t have to be very vocal about my disgust with the performance of many others. I didn’t want to drive down the morale within the organization, because it was unusually high.  I reluctantly decided to be more passive than usual, and the results I achieved were remarkable. Performance was back up to par, and morale stayed at the same level, a win/win in my book!

            Second was enacting an incentive program that allowed for those who excel to get rewarded for it openly. A lot of the time in the military, you are stuck focusing a majority of your time with those who are poor performers, causing those who excel to do a bulk of the work and not really get rewarded for it. It's forbidden to just promote anybody at specific times when they are performing at a higher level; we just have to wait a majority of the time… However, with our new incentive program, those who excel aren't stuck doing the same basic training with everybody else, for a simple example physical training (PT). There is really no better motivator when a poor performer is the only one stuck doing basic training alone with a supervisor, and the rest of the team has pressed on to better quality of life. Trust me, these hits hard to many! Incentives do need to be managed carefully as to not “split” the team per se, they take a lot of time from leadership, but I find such a simple program allows productivity to reach its full potential.

What are the implications of complexity theory for you and your organization and how can you use this to drive improvements-

Having an understanding that a system is constantly on the verge of being chaotic really is the alarm for attentiveness, which helps drive leaders to stay sharp. In the mud of the chaos is usually a solution to the inherent problem, and knowing that the potential is there, is the first step in cutting the error chain. A lot of the time when I witness chaos, I also see what I’d like to call Band-Aid leadership, which is really the root cause of the problem. This type of leadership is really no leadership at all; I also refer to it as kicking the ball down the road leadership. Putting Band-Aids on problems just cause it to heal up temporarily, but will ultimately rear its ugly head or manifest multiple heads down the road causing chaos to grow exponentially. This eventuality can quickly get very out of hand. Keeping a lid on complexity theory is really the key to success. Be adaptive in both your strategic planning process, and leadership style. Currently we are living in interconnected web of complexity that is suffocated by a culture that begs for adaptive change. Having the right metrics in place that allow individuals and large scale operations to identify, digest, absorb, implement, and execute change seamlessly won’t become stuck in my aforementioned “basic” status.

References

Obolensky, M. N. (2014). Complex Adaptive Leadership, 2nd Edition. [Bookshelf Online]. Retrieved from https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781472447937/