Strategic Leadership and Strategic Management by Shand Stringham

Author:Shand Stringham [Stringham, Shand]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781475964325
Publisher: iUniverse
Published: 2012-12-10T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10—A Complexity Approach to Decision Making and Problem Solving

Decision making and problem solving are the two fundamental, concomitant tasks of leadership and management. This chapter examines the difficult task faced by leader-managers in organizations as they confront increasingly more complex decision making and problem solving situations in their work environment.

Complexity is not new. We have long been confronted by the complex nature of the human experience and we have developed a variety of simplification strategies and approaches to deal with it. By and large, these strategies have served us well in permitting us to act within a highly complex reality. Without these simplification strategies, we might find ourselves paralyzed with complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty.

Unfortunately, although simplification strategies permit us to act, they also tend to distort reality and frequently lead us into unintended and undesirable consequences. There is thus a natural tension between the complexity of the problem solving and decision making realm and the need to simplify.

Complexity in today’s world is increasing at an accelerating pace as new information and knowledge doubles about every two to four years. Rapid advances in transportation, communication and information technologies are expanding the boundaries of our operational environments and increasing exponentially the number of relationships with other systemic entities—individuals and organizations—in our immediate decision vicinity that must be considered in our problem-solving processes. Complexity in the decision-making realm is thus exacerbated by both the explosive increase in the number of variables and by their increasingly interconnectedness and interdependency.

On a theoretical level, researchers are working to better understand the increasingly complex nature of our social environment. Unfortunately, this has not generally translated into a more robust and comprehensive curriculum in our institutions of higher academic learning nor into more effective decision making approaches utilized by practitioners in corporate, government, and non-profit sectors.

We continue to use simplistic, linear decision-making and problem-solving models to address complex problems that are patently nonlinear. Thus, with respect to complex problem solving and decision making, there is a significant gap between theory and practice. The central thrust of this chapter is to underline the shortcomings and risks of our continuing reliance on simplistic, linear decision-making and problem-solving models and to suggest a more effective, cyclical strategy for addressing complex problems in the social environment.

Complexity versus Simplification

Complexity has been defined or described in many ways. The nature of human reality is inherently complex. Complexity is characterized by more than just large numbers of actors and variables.1 The infinite number of systems and subsystems that make up our reality are the result of complex, underlying nonlinear processes that involve intricate causal relationships that feed back on each other.2

A systems-thinking approach to understanding complexity suggests that all systems in an environment are interconnected, interrelated, and interdependent. At times, these relationships are trivial and insignificant, but frequently they are quite significant and changes in one system within an environment can have dramatic outcomes and consequences for others. The degree of complexity of our reality

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