A Consultant's View
Prairie Trail Software, Inc. ............................................................. July 2007
Watching a four year old play with a large pile of toys is instructive in messes. Like children, we often start with a tidy world, then something happens to totally mess things up. It turns out that there are different kinds of messes and different ways to deal with them.
It is important for a manager to recognize different types of messes. The mother (manager) who sees red on the carpet and assumes spilled paint, won't see the blood of a medical emergency (of course in either case she'll spring to action). There are four types of messes: known, unknown to you, complex, and chaotic.
The simplest mess is a known mess -- where you understand the situation. A child's set of blocks can be a mess, but we know how to clean it up. Likewise, "production" programming is simply following known methods and practices to create the software needed.
The next type of mess is unknown to you or me, but known to someone. We don't know how to solve the situation, but we know that someone does. The process to deal with this mess is to find that person and use his or her knowledge. This is a process with which most managers are very comfortable. It's like a programmer learning a new language like Java. The problem is known and the solution is available.
In complex messes nobody knows how to solve the problem. Often, there are patterns to complex messes that can be discovered after the fact. As Mark Twain said, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Once the patterns can be discovered, the solutions can be applied (and/or invented) and the mess moves from the complex to the known. So, the first time that a company faces a catastrophe, it has to operate blind. This is often where a consultant, who really knows history, can help guide a company.
The trouble with complex messes is that there can be so many participants that a solution to one complex mess will not necessarily work with a similar complex mess. Politicians recognize this. Something that worked for one election is likely not to work the next. Having a vice president court the NRA by going on a hunting trip probably won't happen again.
Chaotic messes have no pattern. They can be found both in a room full of kindergardeners, and in war. A story is told of a group of West Point seniors being given the task of working with a kindergarden –after making detailed plans, they proceeded to fail miserably. All their training on goals, planning, and discipline to work towards those goals wouldn't work in that chaotic situation.
The type of people who are successful in working with complex or chaotic messes generally have a different kind of personality from those who are successful with simpler messes. General Patton worked very well in a chaotic mess by acting decisively. Yet, many have said that he would not worked so well after the war. Likewise, those who work well with known messes rarely have the temperament to work in chaos.
Kurtz and Snowden (IBM Systems Journal Vol 42 No. 3) say that in a complex mess, the strategy is to try things and attempt to identify patterns, but recognize that the pattern identified is not necessarily correct for tomorrow's version of the mess. Patterns are discovered from the stories of those who have tried things in the past. In other words, try to sense what story most closely matches what fits with what we see today.
In a chaotic mess, those who have an uncanny sense of what might be happening will out- perform those who know systems and how to work them.
Part of what makes American culture different from other cultures is how we embrace those who work well in chaotic or complex environments. We allow people, who would be shunned in some societies, the freedom to create new companies and new technologies.
Our culture recognizes how things change over time and how using government to deal with complex issues often fails. Our past attempts to make society static failed quickly. For example, the Puritans at Plymouth Rock hoped to establish a structured society only to find that their attempts to rein in change failed when people could leave the colony and do better. The women of the Temperance Union had a noble goal of bettering mankind by eliminating alcohol, but their dream floundered on the reality that government could not force people to be better. In the South, many a small community tried to force society to match the dream of what things were like prior to the Civil War only to find out that their efforts only made things worse by chasing out innovations and progress.
Today, we are trying to make complex and chaotic situations simpler through laws, standardizing tests, surveillance cameras, and urging everyone to monitor and turn in thy neighbor that might be doing wrong. It will be interesting to watch how the next generation turns some of these around.
The crayon drawings on the wall may be messy, but not necessarily bad -- it depends if the artist is well known or a toddler. A mess may simply need a known solution or it may require great innovation. If you are in a mess and would like help to identify the type of mess and the possible solutions, give us a call.
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Dave Randolph,
President, Prairie Trail Software