Learn from Complexity
Complexity can be uncomfortable but it is an opportunity to learn
Sometimes it is easier to believe an answer that is simple but wrong - than to believe an answer that is complex but right.
Do you ever find yourself simplifying your answer so that it is easier for others to understand? ‘Where are you from?’, how many of us choose the easy answer in a simple but inaccurate way to save the other person from the discomfort and confusion.
I wanted to write about the way that complexity feels. What makes it okay in one circumstance and unbearable in another?
One of the qualities I inherited from my father is the ability to hold space for complextity, I can be connecting many ideas and concepts at one time. My fathers stories and explanations always had multiple layers and connections to people, to the past to meaning in different ways, they can be conflicting and they can be a mixture of technical, emotional and logical or illogical all at the same time. I didn’t realise it at the time but I was learning to be comfortable with complexity.
COMPLEXITY OF CHANGE - I was helping a change project leader to navigate how to communicate a structural change in her organisation. The complexity was that every person in every team could have a different response- some would be excited and energised, others would be shocked and fearful for their jobs. When we broke down a map of the whole team we found a level of complexity that would be unnerving for many leaders. But we also found clarity- clarity about the blend of approaches we would need to think about when communicating the change. It was not a simple solution but it was an effective one.
HIERACHY OF LOGIC OVER EMOTIONS- Most of my working life has been spent working with engineers, technical experts and people who have deep and narrow expertise. I am in awe of and have a great appreciation for the complexity for that their area of expertise. In the days when I was a technical writer, I was often tackling a delicate balance of writing something people could understand versus simplifying it to the point where it lost its substance- dumbing it down!
Complexity is a reality of life, just take a look at the human body! So why don’t we like it?
There is a tension that we navigate all the time and that is, many people, especially in traditional corporate environments have a bias for linear, analytical, binary. Maybe the drive for efficiency, performance, measurement, practical, hands on solutions, etc drive us to seek the simple.
We follow the advice to …“Keep it simple, stupid.”
But often life and people are not simple.
The fear of complexity is actually the fear of uncertainty, which often triggers a need for control. Our brains are more relaxed with the binary. Our brains seek to do less so we seek a simpler short-cut. Managing complexity starts with understanding your own comfort levels and building better awareness about yourself, your thinking and behaviours when you are faced with different types of uncertainty. But also…managing uncertainty depends on our ability to manage emotions.
HUMANS ARE MESSY & EMOTIONS ARE MESSY- Emotions are invisible but powerful, unknown emotional responses in ourselves and others can have many leaders struggling to know what to do or say. Complex and messy humans cover the earth in complex and messy ways and we interact and connect with each other in complex and messy ways. Should we try to simplify humans? I think not. Emotions are complex because we often don’t spend enough time to understand what they are. Who can blame us, here is what unpicking emotions can look like…
I am frustrated. I am frustrated because I am disappointed. Why am I disappointed? Was there something I want and needed that I didn’t get, who did I want it from? Did I communicate to them what I needed? Do I value my needs enough to communicate them? What can I do to communicate what I need?
Emotions are hard and messy- but if we don’t look at them, they still drive our behaviour, they still show up when we least expect it.
I think we need to open and switch our mindsets to find more calm in complexity. Reframe the challenges to bring us out of our panic zone and into our stretch zone because that is where we will grow and learn, innovate and overcome our challenges.
GROWTH AND LEARNING
If we never felt any discomfort we might never learn new things. Things need to be hard so that we can be pushed to find out how to learn
test out the boundaries of your comfort and stretch zone
Sometimes it only takes a small shift to move from your panic zone back into your stretch zone.
“Students need something complex that challenges them to explore”- Eleanor Duckworth
I drew the image (diagram on the right) for a client to help her to distinguish between her comfort zone, her stretch zone which is her learning and growth zone and when things tipped into her panic zone. We don’t want to always be in our panic zone, this is where high stress, burnout, illness, anxiety and depression take hold.
But it is so important to work out the boundaries between these zones and understand that those boundaries can change over time and with new experiences so we can learn and grow.
EXERCISE TO TRY:
You can do this with your team or manager to explore how to understand and work through complexity. Or you can do this as a self-reflection exercise on your own.- Draw our your own version of the diagram in this article.
- STRETCH- Start with your stretch zone- think about projects, activities, occasions where you have been pushed out of your comfort zone in a healthy way- What did that feel like? What results did it bring to you and others? What values, skills and strengths helped you?
- COMFORT- Now think about those times and opportunities where you stayed in your comfort zone- What did that feel like? What results did it bring to you and others? What could you have done differently? What might have been the results of that change?
- PANIC- Lastly think about those times and opportunities where you were pushed beyond your stretch zone and into stress or panic- What did that feel like? What results did it bring to you and others? What could you have done differently? What might have been the results of that change?Reflect on the short, medium and long-term opportunities you might have to seek your stretch zone.
Take note of what you need to feel balanced and healthy- what is enough and what is too much?
The fear of complexity leads us to spend energy in trying to simplify and mathematise reality. We should maybe spend our energy in trying to resolve the problems ahead of us.
If you every ask me for the recipe for my chicken curry you will most likely get a long and complicated answer, I could just say chicken, vegetables, eggs and spices, but you wouldn’t get the same result.
Sometimes we need complexity and need the skills, support and resilience to face it.
ARE YOU FACING A COMPLEX AND MESSY CHALLENGE?
Do you need help to navigate the complexity of human change?
