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| Map-makers,
Explorers, and Tricksters: New Roles for Planning and Prediction in Nonlinear, Complex Systems
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| A Limit
to Unpredictability Amidst all this talk about unpredictability, however, an important point needs to be underscored. To be sure in the wake of complexity research, there has been a great deal of brouhaha surrounding the newly discovered unpredictability of complex systems which has been having a major impact on how we are now thinking about our businesses and institutions. Some organizational theorists have even gone so far as to claim that such unpredictability obviates entirely the role of planning and visioning (a chief buzzword of leadership in the 1980's and early 90's). What's the point of planning if the future is totally uncertain? All it can be is to serve as a temporary illusion, something nice to strive for but a striving that is ultimately in vain. To be sure, complex
systems are unpredictable in ways not previously considered. But it is simply not true
that they are not predicable at all. Instead, the world of complex, nonlinear, and
nonequilibrium (or far-from-equilibrium) systems is a strange brew of anticipated and
surprising events, continuous and emergent phenomena, and stable and unstable features. To
say they are totally unpredictable is as simplistic as to say they are as predictable as
they were once thought to be. Rethinking the role of planning called-for by the
recognition of organizations as complex systems demands then not only a sufficient grasp
of what makes them unpredictable, it equally requires those involved in corporate planning
to understand in what ways this unpredictability is itself limited. Complex organizations
are indeed predictable but in ways not previously considered. Therefore, a nonlinear and
complex world requires a nonlinear and complex map, and, accordingly, leaders as planners
must practice a new style of cartography (see the geography of the new nonlinear and
complex world in Figure 1 above). |
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Copyright © 2001, Plexus Institute Permission |