I offer a definition of complexity that I'm working with. It's not
in the accepted lexicon as far as I know but I'm finding it useful as
I experiment with it. Don't bother to disagree because it's not firm
enough to disagree with. But I'd love to hear questions, challenges
or further insights that explore it.
As an operational definition of complexity for considering
organisational design, I'd offer:
- something is complex when it is considered emergent from
the interplay of existing structures and forces
- something emerges when the information and forces go beyond
the ability of a system to handle them and can be recognised to have
formed patterns independent of and/or beyond the power of the
original structure.
An example would be that a "team" emerges from an ordinary group of
people coordinating action on a task when the formal structures of
the group cannot handle the multiple interactions and the energy and
information that result - and the group does not break down into
permanent chaos, upset or noise and does not return to rigid
structures. That is, there are new patterns of behaviour, of action,
of information that didn't exist before, can be seen to have emerged
from some new interaction, and couldn't have been predicted or
controlled by the original "authority structures" or other formal
processes.
Is there gold in here somewhere?
Michael McMaster
Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk