Dr. Pravir Malik is the Chief Strategy Officer of Galaxiez. His expertise is in designing and building Complex Adaptive Systems.
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As the world becomes more uncertain and problems continue to repeat themselves regardless of area, it becomes more and more important to use a different lens to gain insight into why this may be happening. The lens I use and recommend is the field of complexity science.
Previously, I wrote a 10-part series on how HR can help with sustainable wealth creation through the creation of a complex adaptive system. Here I begin to take a deeper dive to focus on ways that complexity is created in organizations and ways to address it.
I will begin by introducing four key concepts instrumental to the creation of complexity: strange attractors, feedback loops, sensitivity to initial conditions and being far from equilibrium within the context of HR. I will also suggest why these are important and how HR professionals can begin to reduce complexity.
Strange Attractors
The primary driver of complexity is, in complexity science terms, a concept known as a strange attractor. The "attractor" portion implies a set of states that any organization will tend to move toward. Translating this into business terms, one may think of an attractor as being a driver. A driver, in turn, can be thought of as an imperative of central importance to an organization. Within the HR space, compliance may be a driver. Progression may be a driver. Diversity may be a driver. I will share more about the "strange" portion later.
If you only have one driver — say, compliance — then your processes and operations are primarily geared toward achieving that. Relatively speaking, the level of complexity remains lower. The level of complexity increases exponentially, though, with the addition of another driver. Hence, an organization in which both compliance and progression are drivers will inherently be far more complex than an organization with only one driver. This is due in large part to the magnifying effects of feedback loops, sensitivity to initial conditions and being far from equilibrium, which I will discuss shortly.
From an HR perspective, it is important to be clear on the drivers that are central to the HR space. Each of them will have an accompanying set of processes and even teams supporting them, who often speak a different language and see the world differently. The complexity is that these attractors are also "strange." In complexity science terms, this means that these drivers are fractal — that is, they tend to repeat themselves, with some variation, at many different levels. This is not like the creation or existence of a neatly bound department or function. Instead, there is an informality to the way that strange attractors operate, and they will imprint themselves in nonobvious ways in unexpected places. This is what can make them difficult to manage.
Being a strange attractor, compliance will have a life of its own, seeking always to reinforce itself, and this may set into motion the accompanying belief that everyone will do something wrong, rather than the real phenomenon of people doing mostly what is right. Once you recognize this, you'll most likely see the source of the increasing complexity in an organization more clearly. Seeing that compliance is a strange attractor will increase the likelihood that HR will not, in fact, burden the organization with a plethora of processes and checks based on an underlying lack of trust.
Feedback Loops And Sensitivity To Initial Conditions
But further, it's important to understand that once drivers exist, they naturally reinforce themselves by even subtle momentum-increasing processes. These take the form of feedback loops that may have been created as overthought reactions related to the driver. If processes to check that rules have not been broken become the important thing, then the organization effectively gets choked by an accelerating number of rules. These patchwork and often unnecessary processes reinforce often suboptimal ways of doing things, which also substantially increases complexity. Hence, the existence of strange attractors will naturally also increase the existence of feedback loops that further increase the momentum of these strange attractors.
Increasingly, time will be spent in these feedback loops, and you have to understand why these exist and how to simplify them. Often this means becoming clear on what is required by law versus what is being added because it seems like a nice thing to add. The paradox is that feedback loops all have different entry points into the complexity of a system. In complexity science terms, this refers to the underlying idea of being sensitive to initial conditions. Depending on the unique entry point, the organization can be thrown into a correspondingly unique state of frenzy.
Far From Equilibrium
The final core concept that is natural to strange attractors is that of being far from equilibrium. This may take the form of "noise" — for example, a hint from some parts of the organization that too much time is being spent on nonproductive tasks. But it's crucial to recognize that when this happens, it means that there are important signals at the edge that are suggesting that the nature of the strange attractor or what is important is, in fact, changing. Of all the factors or drivers of complexity, you should pay the most attention to being far from equilibrium. This is what can serve as a wake-up call that things are becoming more and more complex and need to be simplified.
Summary
To summarize, these four concepts — strange attractors, feedback loops, sensitivity to initial conditions and being far from equilibrium — drive complexity. As an HR professional, you need to first be able to see the underlying driver and then realize that complexity will increase through feedback loops, sensitivity to initial conditions and the phenomenon of not paying attention to states that are far from equilibrium.
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