Six Simple Rules: How to Manage Complexity without Getting Complicated

Harvard Business Review Pres, 2014. Hardcover. Very Good. New tools for managing complexity Does your organization manage complexity by making things more complicated? If so, you are not alone. According to The Boston Consulting Group's fascinating Complexity Index, bu siness complexity has increased sixfold during the past sixty years. And, a ll the while, organizational complicatedness-that is, the number of structu res, processes, committees, decision-making forums, and systems-has increas ed by a whopping factor of thirty-five. In their attempt to respond to the increasingly complex performance requirements they face, company leaders ha ve created an organizational labyrinth that makes it more and more difficul t to improve productivity and to pursue innovation. It also disengages and demotivates the workforce. Clearly it's time for leaders to stop trying to manage complexity with thei r traditional tools and instead better leverage employees' intelligence. Th is book shows you how and explains the implications for designing and leadi ng organizations. The way to manage complexity, the authors argue, is neither with the hard s olutions of another era nor with the soft solutions-such as team building a nd feel-good "people initiatives"-that often follow in their wake. Based on social sciences (notably economics, game theory, and organizational sociol ogy) and The Boston Consulting Group's work with more than five hundred com panies in more than forty countries and in various industries, authors Yves Morieux and Peter Tollman recommend six simple rules to manage complexity without getting complicated. Showing why the rules work and how to put them into practice, Morieux and Tollman giv.