4.
MISHANDLING COMPLEXITY
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.”
Adaptive leadership faculty at Harvard University Kennedy School of Government Marty Linsky and Ronald Heifetz argue that misdiagnosing the complex (what they call “adaptive”) elements of a challenge as complicated (“technical”) is a key failure in leadership. We are trained to think technically and miss the adaptive. We are tempted to look for a silver bullet; an easy answer that will solve the problem in one go.
We see these “quick fixes” in many aspects of daily organizational life, like the current trend to dramatically restructure when we are not getting the results we want, or removing the person at the top of an organization. Also, under fear and stress of uncertainty, our brain will default to the old way of doing things because we are wired for habits, as neuroscientist Srini Pillay points out.47
A good example of this is the rapid replacement of CEOs or leaders within an organization after any sign of failure, often for things that are not even in their control or sphere of knowledge. In Fortune 500 companies the average tenure of a CEO is only 4.6 years; fragile and transient, this certainly is not long enough to establish long-term organizational or cultural change.
Quick fixes applied to complex problems are temporary solutions that don’t engage with the issues deeply enough. They perpetuate the problem or aggravate it, and problems will keep coming round again and again.
Steven: When I was working at an American investment bank in the role of VP, Diversity and Inclusion, I worked as part of a team on one of the bank’s main challenges – to increase the number of women in senior management roles. This is a common challenge across many industries. Some companies respond to this by seeing it purely from a technical perspective. They provide communication skills or personal branding training, or change the recruitment process. The underlying issues that point to the adaptive nature of this challenge, such as the wider societal barriers to women rising to senior roles, or identifying the values and hidden assumptions held by different groups on this issue, are often not addressed.
We began treating the issue as a complex adaptive challenge. Technical approaches made in conjunction with more sophisticated strategies, such as partnering with schools to raise awareness of the diversity of roles available, encouraging girls choosing exam subjects towards science, technology, mathematics and engineering, or organizing work placements and providing on-ramping solutions such as coaching for those returning to work from maternity leave. Many of these strategies don’t provide an immediate solution but take on a more long-term approach by tackling the systemic issues at play at earlier or critical stages.
In complex contexts the effects of our actions are unpredictable and the consequences cannot be fully understood in advance.
In the 1920s the American government enacted The National Prohibition Act, a nationwide ban on the sale of alcoholic beverages, in an attempt to eradicate the perceived negative effects of alcohol abuse on public life. The intent of the prohibition was to lower the consumption of alcohol and to make it seen unacceptable. While the consumption of alcohol halved during the prohibition, it had the unintended consequences of fuelling the growth of organized crime groups and creating an illegal alcohol industry. The organized crime groups took advantage of the fact that the consumption of alcohol was still popular, and produced unregulated, bootleg supply, which sometimes caused health problems. The growth in the illegal alcohol industry also increased the organized crime groups’ business in other areas, leading to corruption and disregard of the law.
While the illegal alcohol industry flourished under the prohibition, the ban drove many small-time alcohol suppliers out of business and decimated the fledgling wine industry. Heavy drinkers and alcoholics found that support groups had withered away, and only found adequate support after the ban was lifted in 1933. Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in 1935. Also, before the prohibition era it was seen as socially unacceptable for women to drink in public, but with the newfound freedom after the prohibition ended, it became more common and bars opened catering for both men and women.
The prohibition is an example of how a law was passed to solve a complex social problem, and how there were many less-than-positive unintended consequences. This concept was popularized by American sociologist Robert K Merton, who argued that small, insignificant changes can have unintended, far-reaching and potentially devastating effects.
Not only do we not expect the unexpected, but we also tend to overestimate the control we will have in much more immediate or everyday actions. According to Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer, we suffer from an “illusion of control.”48
Langer’s research showed that we often think we have personal control in situations where there is none. For example, we may feel more confident that a car accident will not happen to us if we are the driver rather than the passenger. Also, where there is a “cue” of skill involved, we tend to behave as if we have control. For example, the gambler might feel his or her winning a game was influenced by his or her dexterity, where in fact the winning odds were no different, regardless of skill. Langer’s research showed that traders who believed that they had more control over the markets actually performed worse.
So what happens when we can no longer rely on what we know, when we are forced to come face to face with the unknown?