Complexity. The new world between chance and choice
April 10, 2010
Nonlinear dynamics are concerned with complex, messy systems. Examples for these systems are the human brain, the evolution of life itself and the weather. There is not a single science of non-linearity, but there are different streams of research such as chaos theory or the theory of complex adaptive systems. The latter strand takes up an agent- and rules of interaction-based approach to modeling complexity. The first explains the behavior of systems that can be modeled by complex equations where the output of one calculation is taken as the input for the next. These equations are repetitive and iterative.
Chaos theory explains how the parameters in the equations cause patterns in time. These patterns are called attractors. A parameter might be the flow of information or the amount of energy in the system. At low rates the system moves forward displaying a repetitive, stuck behavior. This pattern is called a point attractor. At higher rates the pattern changes. At very high rates of, for example information flow, the system displays a totally random behavior. The pattern is highly unstable. However, there is a level between repetition/stability and randomness/instability. This level is called the edge of chaos. The pattern in time is called a strange attractor. The strange thing with a strange attractor is that the ongoing movement is never the same but always recognizable. The pattern is paradoxically stable and unstable, predictable and unpredictable at the same time. These patterns are spatially called fractals.
Chaos describes a dynamic that is not a synthesis of order and disorder. It is about orderly disorder or disorderly order. The very meaning of these words is transformed.
The weather is normally used as an example of a system that displays this pattern. The overall weather patterns can be (almost) predicted over short periods of time. Over long periods, the behavior cannot be predicted. The long-term behavior of a system like this is determined as much by the smallest changes in the smallest of parts of the system, as it is determined by the laws governing it. The conclusion is very clear. Predictability is always short-term. Long-term predictions would only be possible if absolutely all the variables in the system could be measured with absolutely infinite accuracy. But it is impossible to know all the variables and it is totally impossible to measure all the variables with the accuracy needed.
The smallest overlooked variable or the most minute change can escalate up by non-linear iterations into a major transformative change in the later life of the system. Another conclusion is that from a chaos theory perspective, movement towards equilibrium is always movement towards death. If a system is healthy, successful and alive, it is “at the edge of chaos” where the long-term cannot be seen.
Classical physics took individual entities and their movement (trajectories) as the unit of analysis. Chaos theorists such as Ilya Prigogine, claimed that these trajectories cannot be calculated because of the impossibility of measuring with the precision needed. But there was something even far more exciting going on. Henri Poincaré was the first scientist to identify two distinct kinds of energy. The first was the (kinetic) energy in the movement of the particle itself. The second was the energy arising from the interaction between particles. When this second energy is not there, the system is in a state of non-dynamism. When there is interactive energy, the system is dynamic and capable of novelty and renewal. Interaction creates resonance between the particles. Resonance is the result of coupling the frequencies of particles leading to an increase in the amplitude of motion. Resonance makes it impossible to identify individual movement in interactive environments because the individual’s trajectory depends more on the resonance with others than on the kinetic energy contained by the individual itself.
Every interaction of any particles is thus potentially meaningful and can lead to amplification of the slightest variation. Interactive systems with even the smallest variations take on a life of their own that is under continuous construction. The future form and direction of the system is not visible in the system at any given time. The future is not in the system and it cannot be chosen or planned by anyone.
The scientists at the Santa Fe Institute developed the other strand of research: the complex adaptive systems approach. A CAS consists of a large number of agents. Each agent behaves according to its own intentions and rules for local interaction. Local here means that no agent can interact with the whole population of agents at the same time. No individual agent can determine the pattern of behavior that the system as a whole displays. These adaptive systems display the same dynamics as the chaos theorists found: stable equilibrium at one end of the spectrum, random chaos at the other, and in-between the newly found complex dynamic of stability and instability, predictability and unpredictability, paradoxically at the same time: the edge of chaos.
The conclusions are important for us. Firstly, novelty always emerges in a radically unpredictable way. Secondly, the patterns of healthy behavior are not caused by competitive selection or independent choices made by independent agents. Instead, what is happening, happens in interaction, not by chance or by choice, but as a result of the interaction itself.
The Internet changes the patterns of connectivity and makes possible new enriching variety in interaction. The changed dynamics we experience every day through social media have the very characteristics of the edge of chaos.
The sciences of complexity change our perspective and thinking. Perhaps, as a result we should, especially in management, focus more attention on what we are doing than what we should be doing. Following the thinking presented by the most advanced scientific researchers, the important question to answer is not what should happen in the future, but what is happening now?
Our focus should be on the communicative interaction creating the continuously developing pattern that is our life.
Thank you Stu Kauffman and W Brian Arthur. Based on Ralph Stacey and Doug Griffin.
Lessons from the early adopters of corporate social media
March 15, 2010
The mainstream approach to management places a heavy emphasis on the formulation of plans and intentions and then communicating them as actions to be implemented by the organization. The starting point for change involves conceiving a picture of the future that is somewhat different from the picture of the present. After the content side is taken care of, the focus is then on providing tools for the process of change.
The approach that is made possible through enterprise social media is very different. The question that is now asked is: “How can people participate in such a way that things develop and change over time?”
The strategic focus of the early adopters of corporate social media is an ongoing continuous movement that is open-ended, and always incomplete. The strategic logic has been temporal rather than spatial. When following a spatial metaphor, there is a territory that can be explored and understood, but here the territory is seen as being under continuous development and formation by the exploration itself. “It is impossible to map an area that changes with every step the explorer takes.” People inhabit a world of emergence, uncertainty and responsive change.
Themes such as communities, social network analysis and social graph underline a fairly strong sense of definable relationships and a sense of “us”. Our studies, however, show that social media create a dynamic and shifting sense of groups one belongs to. Conversations always follow from previous conversations and move on involving others, often as a result of responses from outside the corporate firewall. Work utilizing social media has much less clear and managed beginnings and endings. There is, typically, no pre-conceived design for the pattern of work: it evolves live.
Corporate life is improvising together
Physical meetings in organizations are often more or less orchestrated and planned in advance: “You should come prepared. There should be a clear goal for the meeting.” Following this thinking, there is no true sense of creating the future together. It is much more likely that people construct what they have always constructed. When people use social media to connect, they experience the potential inherent in communication, depending on how they express themselves, and how they respond. “Social media create the experience of acting into the unknown, creating the future together, improvising together.”
By linking improvisation to a group, like in theatrical improvisation, we get to what is in fact happening in social media. All of us with our differing intentions, hopes and fears, are acting in corporate plays that are very close to improvisational theater. We are self-organizing in shifting social configurations in the responsive interplay of different players.
We are fellow-improvisers in corporate ensembles constantly constructing the future, and our part in what is happening, in responsive interaction. The idea of improvisation is often associated with notions of unrehearsed, unintentional action. However, the more skilled we are, the better we can improvise. The better we have planned, the more flexible we can be. The more intensely we are present, the more responsive we can be.
The real time web is creating a real time company
The most important outcome is that social media focus attention more on what people are doing in the present than on what they intend to do in the future. The focus is on communicative interaction, the next tweet and the latest blog post.
The pattern of relating also becomes very clear: “We get to see who is talking and who is silent? Who is invited to join and who is excluded or opts out?” The focus of attention is on the processes of participation and the life stream as the narrative of progress.
A senior manager in a very large multinational corporation explained the impact of social media: “Since I moved away from thinking that what I do is manage the corporation through communicating with the whole corporation, I have started to pay attention to my own participation with the people I meet or should meet, and my responses in everyday interaction. Through asking different kinds of questions and through pointing to different kinds of issues, through changing my own participation, I have in fact changed my company.”
Thank you Keith Johnstone, Srikumar Rao, Patricia Shaw and Doug Griffin
Bridging the gap between knowing and acting
March 6, 2010
Bridging the gap between knowing and acting is one of the main challenges for knowledge management. Organizational reality is often seen in terms of processes and actions that are based on plans and designs. Acting should thus be based on this knowledge. Thinking is seen as preceding acting.
Databases and documents are usually thought of as stores of knowledge. From the mainstream Knowledge Management perspective, knowledge is understood to be stored in individual heads, largely in tacit form. It can become the asset of an organization when it is extracted from those individual heads and stored in documents as explicit knowledge.
But the everyday live interactions we experience do not exist in a meaningful way in any documents. What has happened can seldom be understood from the Excel sheets explaining the results of our actions. What really takes place is very rarely a predictable repetition of our plans.
The actions always vary, as those with whom we interact change and as the context of the interaction changes. In other words, there is normally always variation in processes, routines and actions. Actions are thus not based on knowledge that is separate from those actions. Accordingly actions are never fully explainable through documentation. Knowledge, in this sense, cannot be seen as residing in databases and attempts to store it in documents of some kind will capture only partial aspects of it.
Knowing cannot be separated from acting. Interaction is the process of knowing!
From the point of view taken here, knowledge is always a process of responsive contextual, live interaction as Ralph Stacey points out. It cannot simply be located in an individual head to be extracted as an organizational asset and then shared. Knowledge cannot be shared!
Knowledge is the act of interacting and new knowledge is created when ways of interaction, and therefore patterns of relationship, change. The knowledge assets of an organization are the patterns of interaction between its members and knowledge is destroyed when relationships are missing or are destroyed, as is happening widely in the corporate world today. Key corporate assets are lost through mismanagement!
Organizational change, learning and knowledge creation are the same as changes in communication. Enabling new habits of communication and improving the quality of the conversation are the most important processes of knowledge management, and management.
Thank you Ralph Stacey
Leadership in the time of Social Media
February 25, 2010
We are used to thinking that what happens in organizations is the realization of the choices of powerful people. They are supposed to know what is going on as they make those choices. However, the stories about decision making during wartime, or during the recent financial crises, make it very clear that politicians and executives are far from sure of what has been happening and they simply don’t know what is now happening.
Partially, it is because of corrupted communication. The results of failing communication can be catastrophic. In today’s FT Tim Harford quotes a study on communication and decision making during the Vietnam War: “The joint chiefs of staff were warned that Lyndon Johnson did not like split advice. Robert McNamara also argued that government would be inefficient if department chiefs were to express disagreement with the president.”
The leader who isolates himself from dissenting opinions is bound to make disastrous decisions. The failures in communication in Vietnam continued in Iraq. According to researchers, Donald Rumsfeld and his immediate subordinates made dissent extremely difficult during the first years of the war. It is normal, but costly in corporations and disastrous in politics to filter out information that contradicts preconceptions.
Failures of leadership are failures in communication.
All organizations are power and communication structures. Very often communication is corrupted just because of power. “If you deliver differing views to your boss, it is highly likely that you are not going to be listened to in the future.” For ambitious people, this is the worst possible fate. What social media try to achieve, is subordinates giving truthful information about what is going on, which they don’t do, and bosses listening attentively, which they don’t.
If this dynamic is taking place at every level of the organization, you are in big trouble. Each organizational level that creates a strong boss, ambitious subordinate relation is a distorting barrier to communication and informed decisions.
Business leaders try to know what is going on in the corporation through employee surveys and 360-degree appraisals. Organizations are full of local knowledge, but if bosses need to ask outsiders to tell them how their organization really works, there is trouble in store. If organizations want to be relevant and effective, they will need to incorporate elements of bottom-up, real-time information delivery and real-time listening into their management thinking. Be that pushing real-time updates or subscribing to people who matter.
The role of the effective leader during the time of social media is to widen and deepen communication. Leadership is participating and exercising skills of conversation which uncorrupts information, keeps the necessary paradoxes alive, and keeps on opening up the possibility of new meaning rather than closing down the further development of thought.
Thank you Tim Harford
The Google lesson for management
February 13, 2010
Eugene Garfield founded the Institute for Scientific Information in 1960. His pioneering work was in citation indexing. This allows a researcher to identify which articles have been cited most frequently and who has cited them. Garfield’s studies demonstrated that the number of citable items, i.e. the number of papers, together with the frequency of their citation, meaning how many scientists link to the paper, is a good measure of scientific success. Nobel laureates write more papers than other scientists and these papers are more linked to than other papers. The system effectively measures quantity and quality at the same time.
Links on the Web are also citations, or votes, as the founders of Google realized. The whole Web is a densely interconnected network of references. It is no different to the age-old practice of academic publishing and citation indexing.
The observation of Larry Page and Sergey Brin that links are citations seems commonplace today, but it was a breakthrough at the time Google started on September 7, 1998.
What Google did was essentially the same as had been done in academic publishing by Eugene Garfield. At this time, relevance and importance were measured through counting the number of other sites linking to a Web site, as well as the number of sites linking to those sites. The PageRank algorithm includes other variables as well, but the measurement of links is still the core functionality of the system.
What Google has proved to managers is that people’s individual actions, if those actions are performed in a transparent way, and if those actions can be linked, are capable of managing unmanageable tasks.
Collaboration and collective work are best expressed through transparency and emergent, responsive linking. The mainstream business approach to value creation is still a predictive process designed and controlled by the expert/manager. This is based on the presuppositions that we know (1) all the linkages that are needed beforehand, and (2) what the right sequential order in linking and acting is. Neither of these beliefs is correct any more. The variables of creative work have increased beyond systemic models of process design.
It is time to learn from the Web.
By relying on the uncoordinated actions of millions of people instead of experts/managers to classify content on the net, Google democratized scientific citation indexing. To be able to manage the increasingly complex organizations of today, the same kind of democratization needs to take place in the corporate world. Companies are transforming themselves from industrial mass production to creating value in wide area networks of mass communication. The transparency of tasks is the corporate equivalent of publishing academic articles. Responsive linking, rather than predictive linking, acts as a measure of relevance and is the guarantee of quality. This has served the academic community well. It made Sergey Brin and Larry Page billionaires. Now is the time to do the same in the corporate world. Complex, creative, knowledge-based work requires new approaches. The Google lesson for management is, that the more work is based on responsive processes of relating and the more organizing is an ongoing process in time, the more value we create!
Thank you Jeff Howe and Ralph Stacey
Complexity and uncertainty
February 9, 2010
Our lives are increasingly complex, whether we consider our private lives, our families, or the organizations we relate to. It is impossible to know for sure what will happen when we make changes in our lives. Whenever we make a decision or take some action, there will be consequences. These consequences are extremely seldom under our control, although we would like to think this is not so.
One of the most common practices in management is planning. Yet organizational reality often turns out to be different from the plans that are made. Unpredictability is a property of all complex, nonlinear interaction. As this corresponds with all human interaction, organizations could well be characterized by intrinsic unpredictability that cannot be removed.
And if that is the case, then it is perfectly understandable that our plans are never materialized exactly as we thought. Traditional management science has however tried to build on certainty through a strong belief in rationality and the capability for optimization.
Empirical evidence is making it very clear that this is not so, pointing to the conclusion that we can never know anything with certainty. Nonlinear interaction always yields unpredictable change. If we wanted to create an alternative to mainstream economic theory and leadership/management, it should then be based on “bounded rationality”, uncertainty and complexity.
When encountering a problem, or developmental challenge, we often ask the question: “What should we do?” But if plans seldom produce what is planned, creating a new plan, to substitute for the one that did not produce what was planned, might not be the cleverest thing to do. One of the things that people get asked to do in management development programmes is to identify the three new behaviors that they are going to adopt on Monday morning. If we really want to change things, we should instead ask the question: “What is it that we are doing here, now?”
Thank you Ralph Stacey, Doug Griffin, Herbert Simon and Henry Mintzberg
Complexity and the importance of links
February 4, 2010
The structures of the brain and the Internet look the same. In the brain there are neurons that link as a result of being active at the same time. This firing together creates a connection, “a wiring together“, that increases the strength of their connection. On the Internet there are servers and people that are linked in temporal interaction, sometimes as a result of being inspired and interested in the same topic, “firing together”. This short-term communication sometimes leads to a relationship increasing the strength of the connection. No neuron links with all the other neurons at the same time. No server links with all the servers at the same time, and no one interacts with all the other people at the same time. So all interaction is always local, whether in the brain, in an organization, or on the Internet. However, local here does not mean spatially local. The nodes in local interaction can be physically located in different parts of the world.
We often think of individuals as independent and self-contained. The view suggested here sees individuals as nodes of the complex networks they form when interacting with others, co-creating themselves and the reality in which they participate.
A complex system consists of a large number of agents/nodes behaving according to their own principles of local, self-organizing interaction. No one agent, or, a group of agents determines how the system as a whole behaves. Self-organization here means the agents interacting locally, following their own principles, rules and intentions, without any steering from outside that interaction. All influence takes place in the local interaction. No one agent in the brain or on the Internet, or in an organization, can be in control of the whole system and how it develops, as it develops as a global pattern.
There is control and there is development, all the time. Both control and development are emergent phenomena of local interaction. The interaction itself constrains and enables the people in the interaction. People cannot just do whatever they want in a relationship. Relationships create stability just because relationships always impose constraints. Relationships that are based on diversity and difference may enable development to take place without a plan for development. There cannot be novelty if people in a relationship are alike. Consensus leads to stagnation. What happens is a complex ongoing process of people relating to each other. This places links, or relationships, at the center of understanding life in organizations. The number of nodes comes third, if even that. The second most important thing is the diversity/quality of the nodes. The most important things are the links; the process of linking: wiring together as a result of firing together, in the brain, on the Internet, or in an organization.
One of the biggest promises of Internet-based work is the way it redefines local interaction, as Doug Griffin puts it. Global participation is possible, beyond anything we have experienced before. Mass production is giving away to short-term mass participation based on mass communication.
The human brain has more than 100 billion neurons. There are around 1.8 billion Internet users at the moment. So we are still far away from the potential of the brain when it comes to possible link combinations of local firing together. But it is high time to visit our beliefs. There can be control without somebody controlling. There can be development without a development goal and a plan as to how to reach the goal on a global level. This is how the brain works. And this is how we work!
Let’s fire together!
Thanks @venessamiemis for being the inspiration for this post. Thank you Doug Griffin for thinking together with me
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The individual and the social on the social web
December 26, 2009
There are two distinctly different approaches to understanding the individual and the social on the social web. Mainstream thinking sees the social as a platform or a community, on a different level from the individuals who form it. The social is separate from the individuals. A totally different approach to social media sees individuals as social. Both the individual and the social are then about interaction, where the individual is interaction “inside” and the social is interaction “outside”. The interaction inside is silent and private, while the interaction outside is vocal and more public. The main difference from the first approach is that the inside and outside cannot be separated or understood separately. Here I repeat my friend, Professor Ralph Stacey, and his work which builds on that of Norbert Elias and George Herbert Mead: here both the individual and the social are sides of the same process of communication. The individual is the singular of interdependence while the social is the plural.
Identities form in interaction
If we subscribe to the second approach, the main importance of social media is in the formation of who we are. An individual recognizes herself, as a self, in the recognition of those she follows and who follow her on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook etc. In this way of thinking, we leave behind the notion of the self-governing, independent individual for a different notion, of interdependent people whose identities are established in interaction with each other as Doug Griffin, my dear friend and teacher has put it. From this perspective, individual change cannot be separated from changes in the groups to which an individual belongs. And changes in the groups don’t take place without the individuals changing. We form our groups and our followerships and they form us at the same time, all the time. Identity is a pattern in time.
Patterns of communication predict viability
People in companies are often stuck in narrow, repetitive patterns of conversation that provide them with numbing, repressive and even neurotic experiences. We should look at communication as the most predictive group activity there is in forecasting viability and agility. The opportunity provided by social media lies in the widening and deepening of communication as the result of emergent organizing, leading to new voices taking part and new conversations that cross siloed organizational units and stale process charts.
The promise of social media is as much in connecting people inside the company with people outside, the buyers, the users, the customers in a rich variety of situations. Richer, more challenging, more exploratory conversations leave people feeling more alive, more inspired and capable of far more creative action. The challenge is that these conversations typically don’t take place on company sites or inside firewalls but on the social web.
A key management challenge today is to understand that the only way to guarantee an agile corporate identity is to actively and widely participate in the conversations that matter.
Thank you Doug Griffin and Ralph Stacey. I have followed you since 1996 and I always will!
Social Media requires us to see communication as a social act
December 11, 2009
In the sender-receiver model of communication a thought arising within one individual is translated into words, which are then transmitted to another individual. At the receiving end, the words translate into the same thought, if the formulation of the words and the transmission of those words are good enough. Then the receiver of the message selects a response and gives feedback. The meaning is in the words. Following this thinking, the most demanding task in communication ends with the transmission. The sender’s focus is on the best possible translation of thoughts into words and on choosing the best possible transmission channels.
There is however, a completely different approach to communication. The alternative view is based on the work of George Herbert Mead. This model does not see communication as messages/things/content that are transmitted or shared between senders and receivers, but as complex social action.
Communication as a social act
In the social act model, communication takes the form of a gesture made by an individual that evokes a response from someone else. The meaning of the gesture can only be known in the response. If I smile at you and you respond with a smile, the meaning of the gesture is friendly, but if you respond with a cold stare, the meaning of the gesture is contempt. Gestures and responses cannot be separated but constitute one social act, from which meaning emerges. Meaning is not in the words alone but also in the responses. Neither side can independently choose the meaning of the words or control the conversation. Thus you can never control communication.
When working with Social Media, we need to see communication as a social act in which actions evoke reactions. Gestures call forth responses. These responses are not selected independently. The responses are elicited at the same time as they are selected. It pays to be involved and it pays to try to keep conversations going. The really demanding task of communication only starts with the transmission!
Thank you Doug Griffin and Ralph Stacey
Miltä liikkeenjohtaminen näyttäisi jos se keksittäisiin tänään?
December 7, 2009
Liikkeenjohdon tematiikka, leadership/management, niin kuin me sen tunnemme tänään yritysten ja organisaatioiden maailmassa, syntyi 1800-luvun lopulla ja 1900-luvun alussa. Liikkeenjohto uutena tieteenä haki olemassa ololleen validiteetin tuon ajanjakson tieteellisestä paradigmasta. Erityisesti luonnontieteissä aika oli voimakkaasti kiinni valistuksen ajan ihanteissa ja Newtonilaisessa fysiikassa. Elettiin insinööritieteiden kulta-aikaa. Todellisuus ymmärrettiin objektiiviseksi, todeksi todennettavaksi maailmaksi havaitsijan ulkopuolella. Jos käytettiin oikeita havaitsemisvälineitä ja ajattelua, tuo, joskus hyvinkin monimutkainen maailma voitiin mallintaa ja siinä voitiin havaita rationaalisia syy- seuraussuhteita, jotka antoivat mahdollisuuden löytää oikeat tavat vaikuttaa.
Johtaja on tässä maailmassa rationaalinen toimija ja päätöksentekijä, jonka tehtävänä on tietää mitkä kausaliteettien ketjut tuovat organisaatiolle sen tavoitteleman menestyksen. Samalla tavalla kuin reduktionistinen tiede toimi, organisaatiot voitiin parhaiten ymmärtää niiden osittamisen kautta. Erilliset osat muodostivat puolestaan mekanistisen, systeemisen aktiviteettien kokonaisuuden, joka toimi johdon suunnittelemalla tavalla. Huomio johtamisessa tuli tämän ajattelutavan mukaisesti kohdistaa niihin olemassa oleviin ja tarvittaviin syy – seuraussuhteisiin, jotka toteuttavat organisaation menestyksen parhaalla mahdollisella tavalla.
Yhtä tärkeää oli motivoida mukana olevat ihmiset yhteisiin, johdon luomiin tavoitteisiin, sekä prosessien säätelemään vuorovaikutukseen. Organisaatioihanne jäljitteli konetta vaihdettavine osineen. Koneen toiminta taasen perustui tehokkaisiin input – output suhteisiin, joissa resurssit muuttuivat suoritteiksi. Työtä tekevät yksilöt olivat tässä maailmassa yksi resurssi muiden resurssien joukossa.
Organisaation rakenne ja prosessit kuvattiin tässä lähestymistavassa tavallisimmin yleistyksinä. Yleistäminen tarkoittaa, että rakenteet ja (vuorovaikutus)prosessit eivät ole tilanteesta, kontekstista, riippuvaisia, vaan yleisesti päteviä aikariippumattomalla ja tilanneriippumattomalla tavalla. Kontekstilla ei ole merkitystä. Yleistävästä ajattelusta seuraa myös, että tavallisesti voidaan löytää, usein organisaation ulkopuolelta uusi, paras tapa tehdä joku asia. Tämä uusi tapa voidaan sitten siirtää tilanteesta toiseen ilman, että historiasta tai paikasta tarvitsee välittää.
Epävarmuuden maailma
Arkikokemuksissamme korostuvat yllätykset, muutokset ja kehityskulut, joita ei ole voitu ennustaa tai joita ei ole edes suunniteltu kenenkään toimesta. Epävarmuus on elimellinen osa yritystoimintaa ja osa elämää. Epävarmuus ei liity pelkästään siihen mitä tapahtuu seuraavaksi, vaan myös siihen mitä juuri nyt tapahtuu tai hyvinkin erilaisiin tulkintoihin siitä mitä on tapahtunut. Yhteisten, ”ylempää annettujen” tavoitteiden ohella yksilöiden omat tavoitteet, omat agendat, arvot, tulkinnat ja suunnitelmat ohjaavat ennakoimattomalla tavalla sitä mitä tapahtuu. Rationaalisuuden ohella tunteet ja poliittiset päämäärät ohjaavat toimintaa ja päätöksiä. Väärinymmärrykset ja väärät tulkinnat vaikuttavat yhtä paljon kuin oikeatkin. Suunnitelmat toteutuvat hyvin harvoin juuri niin kuin oli tarkoitus tai kuten oli suunniteltu.
Johtamisen taustalla olevan rationaalisen, lineaarisen kausaliteetin ihanne on hyvin kaukana siitä arkitodellisuudesta, jonka tunnistamme. Näyttäisikö liikkeenjohtaminen erilaiselta jos se ottaisi lähtökohdaksi toimimisen epävarmuudessa ja jos sen tieteellinen maailmankuva päivittyisi tämän päivän tasolle?
Johtaminen kompleksisessa ympäristössä
Yritystoiminta on aina toisiaan tarvitsevien ihmisten vuorovaikutusta. Miltä johtaminen näyttäisi, jos lähtökohta olisi, että ihmisten välisessä vuorovaikutuksessa kausaalisuhteet ovat aina ei-lineaarisia: osittain tiedämme mitä tapahtuu seuraavaksi, osittain emme. Osittain voimme ennustaa, osittain emme. Toiminnassa on aina mukana epävarmuus, jota ei voida poistaa. Johtaja voi suunnitella mitä itse tekee seuraavaksi, mutta ei voi koskaan täysin tietää mitä muut tekevät seuraavaksi. Johtajan pyrkimykset kohtaavat kaikkien muiden, aina osittain samanlaiset, osittain erilaiset pyrkimykset. Mitä tapahtuu, on seurausta kaikista näistä toisiinsa vaikuttavista erilaisista pyrkimyksistä. Se, mikä on tulema kun erilaisten ihmisten erilaiset tulkinnat, pyrkimykset ja toiminta vaikuttavat toisiinsa on aina enemmän tai vähemmän piilossa ja epävarmaa. Kukaan yksittäinen toimija ei voi kontrolloida sitä, mitä lopulta tapahtuu, vaikka siihen voikin vaikuttaa.
Tästä seuraa että emme voi enää pitää erillään, eri vaiheina suunnittelua ja tekemistä, ajattelua ja ajattelun ”jalkautusta”. Suunnittelu ja toteutus eivät ole käsitteellisesti kaksi erillistä vaihetta ajassa, vaan saman asian kaksi puolta samanaikaisesti. Suunnitelma on suunnitelma, vain siinä määrin kuin se toteutuu. Tämä johtaa tilanteeseen, jossa suunnittelu on ehdottoman tärkeää, mutta joustavuutta vähentävät suunnitelmat eivät. Paradoksaalisesti, mitä paremmin suunnittelemme, sen paremmin voimme tarvittaessa toimia ketterästi muuttuneissa tilanteissa. Mitä paremmin osaamme ja tiedämme sen paremmin voimme improvisoida.
Koska emme voi perustaa toimiamme ja päätöksiämme täydelliseen tietämiseen, pitäisikö meidän paremmin ymmärtää miten toimimme silloin kun emme tiedä? Vaikka emme voi poistaa epävarmuutta, voimme varmuudella tietää miten toimimme, kun pyrimme elämään epävarmuudessa.
Jatkuu postissa: digitaalinen työ, tietoverkot ja johtaminen
