We Only Need to Be Good Enough
Complex Behaviour Governed By Simple Rules
In my post Dolphins, Not Whales I talked about the role projects have when implementing beneficial change. I argue that sustainable change is achievable when people are engaged and urgency is increased. Dolphins, Not Whales is about encouraging quick wins – breaking large scale change into smaller manageable chunks.
I’m engaged in a large scale endeavour that promises to deliver significant benefit to a number of organisations. It’s true that a lot of effort has gone into preparing the vision, strategic plans, business case, specifications, design documents and so on. This got me thinking… Should we take a good-enough approach or try to plan every little detail?
Organisations are often depicted as machines. For example, the surgical team within a hospital or firefighters responding to an emergency follow the machine metaphor. In these circumstances it’s right that they work like a well oiled machine. Failure of one part can be catastrophic!
However, the machine metaphor doesn’t fit the rapidly changing organisation where creativity and innovation are the norm. Business change is complex. Strategy emerges. Strategy evolves.
What the organisation needs is flexibility. The ability to adapt and flex as context changes.
Back to my question… Should detailed strategic plans be replaced by documents that simply describe the general direction an organisation is heading? And should this approach also apply to business planning?
I guess I’m thinking (or saying) that I’m no longer confident that detailed planning guarantees an outcome. That the modern organisation is significantly different to the traditional machine-metaphor organisation. It is a complex system.
Do organisations spend too much time analysing and over-specifying things when they design and plan business change? Maybe complexity is bested by simplicity? As I’ve said before, successful change requires momentum (or a sense of urgency) and the creation of short-term wins. Keeping things simple help us achieve this. What do you think?
Thanks for reading.
Image: antmoose.
Related articles
- Dolphins, Not Whales | Sustaining Change (martinwebster.eu)
- A Model of Change Management | Kotter’s 8-Steps Model (martinwebster.eu)
- Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning (pro2sell.com)
Your position is highly endorsable if one looks at the continuum of the connected factors (ie, interdependent reciprocities). If one end point of the scale is “simple” then I would argue that the opposite end point is “complex”. The mid-point is “complicated.” For example, an activity such as jumping up and down is relatively simple. Manufacturing a modern jet aeroplane however is very complicated. Mapping the human mind and neural network that generate innovation is truly complex. Perhaps then documenting what will become an As-Is state (eg, engineering drawings of the jet) should be thorough, but to document a snapshop in time of a complex and evolving condition or organization may not be worthwhile (eg, plans for the FAA to manage global air traffic).