Complicated – Complicated systems require expertise in their management, but as long as the proper expertise is available and used, the attractiveness of complicated systems is that they generally can be successfully managed.
The key to building complex systems is not designing complexity from the start. Instead, it’s about building simple systems, allowing them to fail, and iterating on those systems based on what works and what does not work.
By mapping the components of individual services (or portfolios of services) against these two axes, perhaps we can explore their relationship to systems change. To what extent are we tweaking around the edges of the existing system, versus changing the behaviour of the system itself — and how ambitious is the effort?
“Complexity science,” the SFI website explains, “attempts to find common mechanisms that lead to complexity in nominally distinct physical, biological, social, and technological systems.”
Systems thinking enables us to engage complex problems more effectively, steering us away from short-sighted solutions that may work in the short-term but ultimately backfire and make things worse in the long run.