Using Complexity Thinking to Navigate Ambiguous Problems

A quick search of the most popular or frequently cited articles and journal papers published between 2021 and 2023 reveals an accurate picture, and is a reflection of the current climate surrounding modern organisations. By performing a simple search in Google Scholar-for anyone who may not know Google Scholar, it is a web search engine for scholarly literature. I looked for any articles or publications that had the keyword combinations of “complexity”, “organisational change”, “uncertainty”, and “managing change”. These keywords are associated with many of the challenges faced by leaders and the workforce today.

This simple search, unsurprisingly, returned a significant list of results, hundreds in fact. I have gathered numerous of the phrases or words from the titles of some of the top papers, and put them in what I will refer to as The List below:

• ‘transparent internal communication’

• ‘relationship between transformational leadership, trust in leadership and employee championing behaviour’

• ‘trust’

•  ‘sensemaking’

• ‘stagnant growth and uncertainty’

• ‘intensified job demands’

• ‘challenge stressors’

'The List' shows us that these 'hot topics' are gaining momentum, being frequently cited, and actively studied. However, these topics are not only of interest to the research community-they are of great interest to industry and organisational leaders too, across many sectors. This is because they have practical implications for performance, workplace wellbeing, managing change, and navigating the future of the workplace.

They also occupy conversations and frustrate leaders and managers. These topics are on a strategy list in just about every organisation. Here is why...

What Words are on Your List?

There words and phrases that plague leaders and managers are complex challenges-all organisations have a list of complex problems and challenges. Approaching complex problems in organisations is deeply entangled with other aspects of leadership, management, and workplace behaviours -such as strategy development, employee engagement, and sensemaking.

For some time now, there has been balancing act of borrowing from the wealth of research available in the fields of human resources, management sciences, leadership, and organisational behaviour, and applying it to a fast-paced dynamic changing business world, and hoping for some resolution.

Many years ago, the traditional methods of approaching and fixing problems like internal communications, sensemaking, and challenge stressors, was challenged to adopt new approaches, more suitable to the dynamic and ever-changing workplace environment. Topics such as those on the 'The List' above are now being increasingly explored by applying complex thinking, or a whole-systems approach to better understand or make sense of these many challenges, and how to inch an organisation towards remedy-or at least prepare some possible solutions.

In a recent paper by John R. Turner, that explores how complexity theory has developed and can be applied to social environments, the paper makes some notable observations about the increasing complexity of today’s workplaces including:

• The influences of technology and globalisation is great

• The volume and speed of information exchange is unpredictable

• People management becomes more difficult the larger the organisation becomes

• Organisations are failing to make sense of information and problems, therefore consequently ceasing to function at increasing rates

So, where does this leave us today?

Wicked Problems

Organisations are facing complex, ambiguous, and wicked problems. ‘Wicked problem’ is a term most commonly found when discussing sustainability. They are are frequently discussed as problems that are difficult to define or articulate, and have little or conflicting information available. Quite appropriately, the word wicked is surrounded by feelings of ambiguity, and describes the ominous nature surrounding the problem at hand. The wicked problem itself is often matched by an equally possible number of possible solutions. This dramatically increases the challenges of solving it- think of solving climate change obesity or homelessness!

'The List' is a great example of some the wicked problems faced by organisations. Those topics or words present multifaceted challenges, with numerous unknown participants,, stakeholders, or outcomes, and no clear beginning or end point for the problem-solving to start or end.

Similarly, in my Google Scholar search for articles and keywords around uncertainty, complexity and change management, I performed another search on the activity in the literature around 'wicked problems'. This showed that exploring problems is also an increasing area of interest. Over the past decade there has been a marked increase in publications and research around this topic.

The complexity of organisations is creating wicked problems

Number of papers published on ‘wicked problem’ in a study by Johanna Lonngren 2020

Wicked problems share many similarities with complex problems. They are both constantly changing, riddled with uncertainty and ambiguity, and how to solve it is unknown

Naturally, how to address these problems or challenges, and make sense of them is also influenced by the industry or context of that particular problem. Wicked and messy for sure.

The complex nature of organisations is unleashing wicked problems and challenges that require a novel response.

  Whole systems thinking is rapidly emerging and lays a foundation that enables a situationally appropriate approach for the ever-changing landscape of organisations. It is well past the eleventh hour for organisations to embrace a complexity approach and apply it across leadership, change, and crisis management, organisational learning, and strategic management.