Sherpa Alliance

We can easily default to simplicity this side of complexity, which is bad news and a dangerous detour with potentially tragic consequences.

There are 2 key Mental Modes to avoid this Dangerous Detour:

• Elegant Simplicty on the far Side of Complexity
• Detail Complexity and Dynamic Complexity

Elegant Simplicty on the far Side of Complexity

There are two types of simplicty - stupid simplicity, which ignores complexity and elegant simplicty, which embeds complexity (Simpicity & Complexity) and we must always be seeking elegant simplicity on the far side of complexity.  The old adage of Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) can be the kiss of death.  The problem is that the journey tthrough complexity to the mastery of elegant simplicity on the far side is constantly under assault from dabblers obsessives and hackers (Dabbler, Obsessive, Hacker or Master?).

 Detail Complexity and Dynamic Complexity

 The problem is further compounded by the fact that there are also two types of complexity - detail complexity and dynamic complexity:

• Detail Complexity is about:
  • Dotting the "i"s and crossing the "t"s
  • Many people applied to one product, project, client
  • Doing the datailed planning/figuring out the tactics
  • Clarifying roles and responsibilities
  • Determining the play-book/finalizing the plan
  • It’s like American Football (playing offence or defense) - there’s an offensive team or a defensive team on the field at any one time
  • It’s the kind of thing your learn from a book/in a classroom
  • As the saying goes, "the devil is in the details" 

• Dynamic Complexity is about:
  • The 24/7/365 blur of real-time/on-line-all-the-time flow of things these days
  • One person serving multiple products, projects, clients
  • Managing a portfolio of plans
  • The plan meeting the enemy/reality, needing to be doing re-planning all the time on the fly
  • Its like English Football/Soccer (playing offence and defense) - there’s one team on the field dynamically playing offence and defense all at the same time
  • Its the kind of thing you learn experientially/in the field
  • These days it’s also that "the devil is in the dynamics" (The Traffic of Dynamic Complexity)

We must be seeking elegant simplicity on the far side of both detail complexity and dynamic complexity.  Detail complexity is usually something we are more familiar with and comfortable with.  Dynamic complexity is a lot less familiar and a lot more uncomfortable and few of us have had any formal training in it.  We are left to figure it out, individually and collectively.

Early Warning Signs

Some of the early warning signs that we defaulting to stupid simplicity this side of detail complexity and dynamic complexity are: 

• Hearing things around the business like:
  • "Its too complicated, we’ll just … (fill in the blank)" - the word "just" is a tell-tale sign that we may be in danger of deafulting to stupid-simple
  • "We tried stategic planning and it didn’t work" - what level of effort did we really invest to move through complexity (The Financial Accounting vs "Strategic Accounting" of Your Business}?
  • "We don’t have time" -
• Things seem to be in a constant white-water mode
• Lots’s of half-started, half-finished strategic "initaitives" of different descriptions

Potentially Tragic Consequences

The trick is to be constantly seeking to move through detail complexity and dynamic complexity to the mastery of elegant simplicty on the far side.  If we detour off track, we face the dangers of a strategy tragedy which could cause a kind of Eastern Airlines tragedy (see the Eastern Airlines story in Divergence & Convergence)  with your business - our approach to the detail complexity and dynanic complexity of our business, and potentially defaulting to the stupid simplicity side of complexity, may already have put our business into an "imperceptible descent" - we just don’t know it yet.  Potentially the KISS of death.