Good thoughts. When things get difficult, companies tend to stick with what they know, even though just because something has worked in the past, it doesn't guarantee it will work in future, especially if conditions change.

I have done quite a bit of work with businesses to get them thinking about complexity (complex responsive process) which is about people responding to events based on what is happening in the moment, and then other people responding to the responses etc. The result of complexity is unpredictable because complexity and people's response to it is also unpredictable. Businesses are reluctant to take it too seriously, because this sort of process doesn't fit conventional notions of businesses controlling, planning or accounting. For those that can work with complexity, it can (but not always) lead to innovation.

I think a lot of creativity in business or the arts is the result of accidental meeting, conversation, ideas, experiments, etc etc.... Not something you can predict, and if it was it wouldn't be creative. Difficult for businesses to cope with that, especially when they get too big. There was a company in Brazil (can't remember which) who did innovative work in that field: they had a rule that when any department got beyond a certain size it had to split into two.

At the moment we're faced with frightening levels of complexity and also the results of it can be very quick to propagate. In things like markets, these complex processes can happen in milliseconds, affecting other things which also respond in milliseconds. I find that pretty scary.

@Mark_the_Harp

complex processes can happen in milliseconds

You're talking about databases here- or rather their latest iteration: the expert system which handles medium levels of complexity (like staff rosters) quite nicely but when its algorythm is given free reign it can indeed become scary!

On the other hand, individuals continue to handle complexity badly; Parkinson's law goes on to say we can easily choose the best employee out of ten applications but when presented with a hundred applications we tend to choose the first application near the top of the pile and which seems OK, so we end up with a worse employee.

Can you imagine a modern company with a human, "first off the pile applicant choosing" CEO, who's dependant upon running quite inhuman system algorithms developed by human systems analysts whose advice the CEO can't understand?

I'd like to think this sort of thing doesn't happen but then I see that sort of thing in the news. (eg Murdoch)

creativity in business or the arts is the result of accidental meeting

Sounds like you might be interested in Disruption Theory.

Don't know for the "elite" agenda, but here in particular when you have to reduce complexity, you're facing a phenomenon known as "path dependency"* ; you can see that many times (if not always) : when one as to make a decision, he's partly dependent of past decisions even if they are completly irrelevant nowadays.

I do not completely get your point.
Yes, every complex system has big number of dependencies. Hence they are complex.

But if unmanageable complexity situation happens simple evolutional approaches, meeting and committee and other shit, won't work. It just follows from the name of situation - unmanageable. Normal managment approaches can't handle situation. Yet, look at corporations and political elites, it seems like each year they double number of meetings and conferencies.

Unmanageable complexity is a seed to chaos.

@Vitaliy_Kiselev

This is how I call my theory. :-) World now is in this stage. Complexity became unmanageable. You can fight it by improving managment, improve help factors or reducing complexity. Or rebuild the system so managment could cope with existing complexity. Best way to do all of this.

It's a good theory. Stafford Beer came up with something like this and the theory became known as management cybernetics.

Complexity is inherent in dynamic systems because their processes are often non-linear and therefore hard to observe and control. However, the only way to overcome complexity is to realise its existence in the first place. Knowledge about how regulation, control and communication function in every form of system needs to be applied – this knowledge is known as cybernetics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_cybernetics

In 1970, Stafford decided to work independently, consulting in North America, Europe, India and South America. His outstanding commission, from President Salvador Allende was to be named Scientific Director of a project to manage Chile’s social economy as a real-time information system. By the time of the CIA sponsored coup on September 11, 1973, seventy-five per cent of nationalized industry was brought into the system with economic information not more than a day out of date, Many critics at the time dismissed this claim as impossible, based on the assumption that project Cybersyn ran on a traditional massive data base. They did not reckon on the selectivity of cybernetic modeling, particularly the Viable System Model, that limited data reported to the next level to around a dozen indices. In total, the Chilean models encompassed eleven levels of recursion from the shop floor to the national economy...

After Suez, and even more after Chile, he became disenchanted with the ability of the so-called establishment to look honestly at the situations before them and respond according to its own stated principles. He analyzed and criticized both the absence of political and economic justice in the world and the poverty of public and political debate. He was especially frustrated at the insistence of authorities that complex situations could be resolved by simple means. In one paper, he coined a word ‘ culpabliss’ to stand for culpable and willful ignorance of the certainty of unintended outcomes to poorly thought out programmes. But he was also committed to action. He advised people trying to improve the political process in Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Uruguay. Many became personal friends.

He also worked to incorporate democracy into group decision making. His design of the Team Syntegrity process was based on the need to provide requisite variety to the discussion of common issues. Syntegration is a non-hierarchical process where everyone plays a unique and equivalent role. He believed that cascading Syntegrations of thirty people each could provide an effective answer to the lack of requisite variety and of participation in public debate. His insistence that Syntegrations begin with an unconstrained focus and that the participants themselves develop the agenda was testimony to his belief that we must make the road as we walk and that people of good will can come up with the best answers for their own problems.

http://www.vanillabeer.org/staffordbeer.htm

@agoltz

My approach is very different. He tried more traditional planning. You'll see my absolutely different approach to planning later.

How do you know if something is complex or simple?

How do you know if something is complex or simple?

Best thing with my approach is that you don't have to :-) State is bad if complexity can't be managed. And it can be exactly same thing and same managers, just with changed factors.

Like, bump oil price to, say $1000. And situation in many areas will become unmanageable :-)

@Vitality_Kiselev

We need a "Strong Man" to arise! Someone who can reassure us that they know how to get things done ...and can handle the complexity. We need someone who can restore order! Are there any failed art students from Vienna among us?

@Zeko i totally agree with you.!!

+4

@Mark_the_Harp

Idea of collective ruling has really one target only - stability of existing hierarchical system. Same for very short terms for elected people, plus strange and frequently moving of smaller guys.

If you need big changes you need someone not caring for existing system much, and you also need to give him credibility and time.

Plus ...They'd have to be at least a billionaire

Exactly in reverse. They will be forced by law as ANY other goverment clerk to be dog-poor.
Nor they or their families could own anything, only necessary, goverment owned things, are provided.

in time, the more simple the solution the best. To much complexity creates more errors than simple solutions. Also parity is needed for creating stable systems, this applay in all circustances. Imparity inside systems create evolution, but more prone to chaos.

T