3.
COMPLICATED – COMPLEX – CHAOTIC
In February 2002, at a US Department of Defense news briefing on the absence of evidence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld, then US Secretary of Defence, famously quipped:
“There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don’t know.”
In the context of a dry military briefing, this philosophical comment was so surreal that it became part of the vernacular and won him the Plain English Campaign’s “Foot in the Mouth Award” in 2003. It is also a surprisingly accurate description of the challenges that we are facing in the modern world.
Welsh academic David Snowden’s work on the nature of complex systems and their inherent uncertainty, “The Cynefin framework,” is useful to look at here. Snowden distinguishes between four different domains:45
| Simple The domain of the “known knowns,” characterized by the familiar, certain, and well-worn pathways |
Example • The route I take to get to work • How to make a chocolate cake |
| Complicated The domain of the “known unknowns,” characterized by the ordered, predictable, forecastable; can be known by experts |
Example • Applying current accounting rules • Construction of a supertanker • Restructuring an organization |
| Complex The domain of the “unknown unknowns,” characterized by flux and unpredictability, no right answers, emergent instructive patterns, and many competing ideas |
Example • Parenting teenagers, • Developing a new product for a new market • Forecasting the global economy • Post-apartheid reconciliation • Addressing social disadvantage |
| Chaotic The domain of the “unknowable unknowns,” characterized by high turbulence and no patterns |
Example • The events of 11 September 2001 • Bush fires |
Snowden and fellow academic Mary Boone describe the difference between a complicated and a complex situation by comparing a Ferrari to a Brazilian rainforest. Ferraris are complicated machines, with many moving parts that are themselves static. Although it might be impossible for you or me, an expert mechanic could take apart then reassemble a Ferrari given enough time. In contrast, a rainforest isn’t made of static parts – the interplay between the tree canopy, the climate, the animals and insects, and the wider ecological and human social system is in constant flux. The whole is far more than the sum of its parts. While the Ferrari is complicated (ordered, predictable), the rainforest is complex (unpredictable, emergent).46
What trips us up in the world is not the “known knowns.” We are pretty good at dealing with what we know. The solutions are self-evident. If the problem is a “known unknown,” in the complicated domain, there is a solution that can eventually be found and the person with the best knowledge of the situation can sort it out. We can tackle the problems we know about by applying our expertise. If we don’t have the expertise, we can find someone who does. Father of scientific management FW Taylor proposed that managers could analyze a problem, break it down into the parts, and improve incrementally to solve the problem. This reductionist thinking of organizations as machines can still be heard in popular language with metaphors, such as “this part of the organization needs fixing.”
Traditional leadership thinking and practice, derived from Taylorism, that suggests that experts can solve the problem and leaders have the answers is not useful in the realm of “unknown unknowns.” The command and control approach of the 20th century, with its reliance on efficiency, logic, quick decision-making and competence is only useful for tackling simple or complicated problems. Unfortunately this approach is totally inadequate in complex contexts. Complex challenges are characterized by the unexpected, the inconsistent and the inexplicable.
It is difficult enough to work out what the problem or question is, let alone the answer.
When talking about what it was like to engage with Russia during the Second World War, Winston Churchill said in a radio broadcast in October 1939: “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” This is a wonderful way to describe a complex, adaptive challenge.
KNOWLEDGE INCREASES