Managing Complexity - Mastering Chaos

What are we talking about when we use the term ”complex”?

- What does complex mean? Differences between complex and complicated

- Characteristics of complex situations

- Problems which may entail complex situations

- Structure and possibility of breaking down complex issues

Strategies: close up - less close up:

- Simplification strategies and taking rash action just for the sake of doing so: Why simplifying is not enough

- Over-informed - under-informed: the difficulty of finding relevant data

- Identifying possibilities and limits when it comes to influencing complex states

Handling:

- Which practical solutions are there to complex situations?

- Phases of the problem-solving process - understanding what is really going on

- Analyses, perspective changes, goal definition, solution searches, decision-making

- Rational methods - not always helpful

- Where intuition and practical knowledge are more helpful than rational methods

- Collective intuition as a way forward

People and Complexity:

- What scares people: acting when over-challenged

- The role of the team in the solution-finding process - symptoms of group-think

- Overcoming team-specific blindness

Method pool:

- Methods of maintaining an overview

- Methods of developing approaches

- Methods of deciding in uncertain contexts

- Methods of communicating complex contexts to third parties

- Methods of keeping cool and collected