Print this pageComplexity... the Greatest Challenge?
Context and complexity are related. If context has often been given short shrift because its significance is unappreciated, complexity has too often been ignored because it is -- well -- complex. And the context itself may be complex as well.
Complexity Challenges a "Keep-It-Simple" World
Complexity has long been largely ignored in the realm of strategic management. Complexity theory and its implications for management techniques are for the most part foreign to business leaders. Why should they care about complexity? After all, aren't business leaders called upon to "keep it simple"?
Mastering Complexity Produces Synergy and Advantage
The understanding of what is at the root of a competitive advantage has grown over the past couple of decades. One key factor is the unique and synergistic way the elements of the business interact. It is the complex interactions the elements of the organization that provide it with its advantage. When a Dell, Wal-Mart, Nucor, Southwest Airlines, or Google form a business design with an advantage, the advantage does not derive from any one element of the business, but by the synergy and optimization of many elements.
Understanding Complexity Theory -- A Management Discipline
Understanding how the parts make a whole much more powerful than the sum of the parts is the realm of systems and complexity theory. If in forming strategy business leaders intend to design a business with a competitive advantage, their understanding of business organizations as complex social systems is a competitive advantage. The application of systems theory enables understanding what is otherwise too complex to be addressed by other methods. Business leaders ignore complexity at their own peril. It is time for them to embrace and master complexity as a means to developing advantage.
Pragmatically Address Complexity
The BAi framework includes the techniques and methods to understand and design complex systems, i.e. the business organization.
