Harnessing Complexity: Organizational Implications of a Scientific Frontier

As my first venture into the world of complexity and complex adaptive systems this was an interesting book. A lot of what I anecdotally thought about complexity was reinforced through the authors' own anecdotal examples. The examples were from a wide variety of situations, but were explained in a way to be understood by someone without a background in those various areas. However, I think the title was somewhat misleading. It seemed that a lot of the value of the book depended on having at least the initial, possibly intuitive, understanding of the interrelatedness of events, structure, and environment. The diversity of the areas affected by complexity would seem to make it difficult to formulate a simple step by step approach for using complexity. However, it would have been helpful if the authors spent some time on what initial or environmental conditions might have been changed in their examples and how those changes would have affected the end system.

The world of organizations in which we work and live tends to be swept with 2 major theories of functional organizational alignment: hierarchies and networks. For thousands of years, we have been applying hierarchies to the domain of organizational structure and management while allowing networks to thrive in marketplaces and alike. As we have moved into modern organizations, there have been ample studies that networks are also play a very important role in organizational survival and efficiency. Hierarchies effect on markets is not part of this discussion. Although the concept of the networked part of organization is very popular in management literature, it tends to be actualized poorly, and worse, is often not connected to solid underlying theory. Axelrod and Cohen's work is a step towards remedying this situation. They appear to have taken their insights from their theoretic work on complex adaptive systems (CAS) and empirical insights into how organizations function and created a new framework of applying networks in organizations. This framework links together many different, often opposing ideas. For example, the authors claim the need for variation amongst types of roles people (which they call agents) play as well in the routines that used in a system. Yet, these differences cannot be too varied, as to cause to much agent confusion, e.g. chaos, or to orderly as to having the system, e.g. organization, susceptible to large scale breakdown due to un unforeseen, possibly malicious, external events. Another example is the balance between exploitation of current organizational resources and systems, and exploration of new resources and systems. It is in these ways that the idea of complexity, the region between order and chaos, is eloquently presented. As the reader progress through the book, many of the core concepts or complexity are introduced and integrated into the overall framework. In the end, what is presented is a delicate, yet solid foundation in understanding and applying complexity theory insights to the networked aspect of organizations. This framework is presented in such a way that is can be applied to networked based, complex issues facing managers in modern organizations. This brings up a few cautions for the readers as well as opportunities for further research in this area. First there is little to no discussion to how organizational hierarchies and networks, e.g. CAS, can be adequately combined. This could make it very difficult to apply this framework across most modern organizations. Next, there is no discussion on how to create a viable CAS from `scratch.' In other words, it is not obvious how to create an organization with this framework. The framework only addresses how to affect change in a currently `thriving' organization. Also, some aspects of complexity theory have not been integrated into the framework, some of which are aggregation, building blocks (al

HARNESSING COMPLEXITY is a breakthrough book on complexity science. It provides the first useful framework and vocabulary for evaluating complex adaptive systems, while giving you the first guidelines for considering how to use the circumstances of your complex adaptive system to your organization's advantage.All of this is beautifully summarized in a brief concluding chapter. I suggest you begin by reading that chapter, so you will have a better idea of why you are learning what you are learning.This approach will also be improved by keeping in mind some problem or opportunity that you want to think about in terms of complexity science as you read the book. You'll get more out of the book that way.But do be warned that the book starts off like a typical popular book on a technical subject by academics. There are lots of references to the work of others, lots of pages of definitions, and a very long introduction. But don't be fooled; it's just laying the groundwork for enabling you to apply a new framework to your situation. But the writing is simple and clear. The examples are varied and interesting -- drawn from computer sciences, evolutionary biology and social design. One of those areas is bound to interest you. The framework is pretty simple: Variation (we usually encourage too little of it -- that's our old friend complacency fooling us, again); Interaction (connections cause ideas and physical changes to grow in significance -- showing the importance of overcoming the communications stall); and Selection (watch the tendency to close off experimentation too quickly or to reward the wrong behavior -- avoiding the misconception and disbelief stalls).I found that the framework immediately worked in thinking about problems that I have been considering, like how to spread the awareness of superior practices.In fact, the framework itself is a good example of a theoretical best practice thinking exercise. I highly commend it to you.Unfortunately, the book will appear to be too difficult and too abstract in concepts for many. I suggest the authors plan to follow this book with one more along the lines of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Complexity Harnessers (I'm sure they'll find a better title). The point is that most readers will want more help with application, and less development of the framework.I strongly recommend this book to those who want to understand more about complexity science. The nontechnical overview is excellent. But more importantly, I strongly recommend that you try to apply the book's principles as expressed in the conclusion to your own issues, those of your organization, and those of humanity and the other species on Earth. I think this book can be a big help in speeding human-led progress.

In clear, non-technical prose, the authors spell out the practical implications of complexity theory for a variety of domains. They use lots of examples to illustrate their points, and deliberately keep the discussion at a level accessible to non-experts. If you were baffled by Stuart Kauffman's writings, you'll be surprised to learn that complexity theory has practical applications!