10/7: Leaders organize complexity

Complexity, I have learned over the years, is nothing more than a significant number of simple and sometimes conflicting actions that must work together. Understand, and effectively organize, the simple actions and their interactions, and a seemingly complex problem is resolved.

These actions are like threads, with each thread contributing to the overall fabric of the solution to a complex problem. True leaders are multi-threaded thinkers.

The threads woven by the true leaders are described well in the book Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership. Bolam and Deal characterize organizational thinking in terms of four frames: structural, human resources, political, and symbolic. Not to grossly oversimplify their work, but each is:

Structural: Clear and well-understood rules and regulations regarding organizational responsibilities by everyone within the organization

Human Resources: The relationship between the organization and the people who execute within the rules and regulations which govern their responsibilities

Political: Bolam and Deal use the term “arena” to describe this frame, which acknowledges that decisions are made with sometimes hidden agendas, a drama carried out sometimes in the back room where personal interests and organizational interests collide

Symbolic: The ritual, ceremony, myths and stories of the organization, along with its customs and culture and the heroes and heroines who have created those customs and culture throughout the organization’s history

Leaders exercise a method of organized thinking that accommodates a continuum from the scientific, concrete, unambiguous, and tangible to the artistic, abstract, ambiguous, and intangible. These frames are one representation of that continuum, moving from the science of structure to the magic of symbols to govern decision and direction.

In his essay “The Metaphysical Poets,” the poet T. S. Eliot refers to an unfortunate “dissociation of sensibility” of art and science that took place during the English Restoration. True leaders have re-associated their sensibilities.

I was mentored once in the game of pocket billiards of a similar requirement for organized thinking to understand complexity. Though certainly not as complex as charting the strategic direction of a Fortune 500 company, the game has its subtleties and complexities with the most common being the positioning of the cue ball in proximity to the next object ball after striking the initial object ball. Shooting shape, as this is called, sets up not only the next shot but subsequent shots while considering the possibility of positioning your opponent in a difficult spot in the event that you miss your initial shot. Perhaps not rocket science, but a skill nevertheless.

As a very fine player was watching me shoot once, he commented:

You have a fine shot, and you make a lot of balls. The problem is that you are trying to shoot shape and missing the ball you are shooting at entirely too much. This is what you need to do: instead of trying to position the cue on a dime, start thinking in quarters of the table. Your shot is good enough that if you get it in the right quarter of the table, you’ll make your shot. When you get good enough at that, start shooting in eighths of the table, and go from there.

The pocket billiards expert and the authors of Good to Great give us the same lesson: categorize, simplify, and approach decision-making by moving fluidly between frames, both scientific and artistic.