Our organizations have a difficult relationship with complexity. Sometimes we choose to ignore it. Other times, we stubbornly fight it, regardless of the outcome.
Many of our systems and processes are not designed to support or serve the complexity in our organizations—or our world. Yet complex organizations must survive situations that are unpredictable and unforeseen. They must grow variables and results that can’t always be named while still maintaining their purpose and function.
We struggle to adapt to this reality, despite the fact that there is complexity in and around us.
As I consider this challenge, I realized we’ve been living within a complex, dynamic system our entire lives–Nature! Nature is the perfect teacher for learning how to navigate complexity in our work. That’s because we’ve already learned how to navigate Nature-based complexity in our personal lives.
We are generally comfortable with the ongoing changes that Nature presents every day. We’re comfortable with the lack of predictability. Even though we like weather forecasts, we aren’t entirely disrupted when they’re wrong.
Unconsciously, we accept that everything in Nature is dynamic. The sun rises and sets at a different time each day. The exact date when summer tips into fall isn’t known, even though we have a seasonal calendar. During each day and as the seasons change, we see things shift in ways that often seem to move forward, then backward. Here in Minnesota, we had our heat on last week—but it’s going to be in the 80s this weekend! We adapt to these events, just as we adapt to major storms and other natural disruptions.
Applying Nature’s lessons about complexity to our organizations
When disruption in our organizations occurs and we experience complexity, we ask our leaders to manage, problem-solve, and control the situation. This causes frustration, stress, and a host of other problems. Our experience with Nature, however, is proof that as humans we can learn to shift and adapt much more easily. It seems intuitive, but we can focus our professional approach to complexity in much the same way.
How do we do that? To model our leadership practices and processes from Nature, we have to remember four key lessons.
1. Accept dynamic change as normal.
We like to think of our organizations as being static, and traditional management theory does work best in stable environments. But this is a fallacy, particularly in today’s business climate. Humans and their systems are always moving dynamically, just like Nature. Accepting that things are constantly changing in and around our organizations is the first step to creating a new relationship with complexity.
2. Hold prediction loosely.
We pride ourselves on being able to predict what is coming, and we like to think we’re in control through planning and goal-setting. But Nature demonstrates that complex systems have numerous variables, with new ones emerging all the time. We need to embrace the fact that we may have a general understanding of what is probable, but that the timing and the accuracy of that prediction are changeable.
Nature teaches us to hold our expectations of predictability loosely.
3. Focus on adaptation, not control.
We know we can’t influence the weather. If we have bad weather heading our way, we change our clothes and sometimes our plans. We don’t go outside and shout at the skies, demanding a nicer day. Nature tells us to observe what we can and can’t control. In our organizations, we regularly experience unexpected “weather.” Being flexible and adaptable helps us respond to complex variables much more easily, and with much less stress.
People have a huge, unseen capacity for adaptation. Creating the right conditions for systems and organizations to adapt and evolve is much more important than building restrictive processes that increase brittleness.
4. Learn to be comfortable with complexity.
Unless we’re faced with major events like hurricanes or wildfires, Nature’s day-to-day complexity doesn’t create fear of the unknown in our lives. It’s familiar.
Yet organizations actively deny complexity because the unknown makes leaders nervous. The lack of control and difficult-to-manage connections within and outside the organization clash with our desire to make everything efficient. We know from our experiences that rallying against—or trying to control—complexity doesn’t make it go away. Instead, it creates unintended consequences that ripple into our future decisions and shape the challenges we will face in the next quarter, year, or decade.
Remind yourself how well we tolerate the complex natural world, and it will become easier to lead more confidently through complexity.
I’m curious, how do you approach organizational complexity? What leadership lessons from Nature can you lean on in our ever-changing world?
