Complicated v. Complex (And why you must let go)

Putting a man on the moon is complicated. Ending a civil war is complex.

One is expensive, tricky and difficult, but has been worked out. The other has not been worked out. It has multiple causes and moving parts, over which no one has total command.

Big organisational outcomes that you can’t realise yourself are more complex than complicated. The people involved are not predictable, and have competing, evolving agendas. The context is shifting and the link between what you do (inputs) and what comes out the other end (outputs) is not always direct.

Faced with complex problems, we tend to ask: “What’s the problem, and how can we fix it?”

It’s the wrong question, because it lures us into devising a plan that seems to match the problem in scale and detail, and such plans usually disintegrate on contact with complex problems.

A better question is: “What’s working around here, and how can we do more of it?”

Posing this question means letting go, and allowing the delegatee to venture forth and discover the answers.

I discuss this in more detail here: https://dsabuilding.co.uk/deep-and-deliberate-delegation/