Complex or complicated? What do these two words mean? Are they the same, and does it even matter? Yes, it does. Let me try to explain.
A car engine is complicated, but traffic is complex.
A person may have an illness, the treatment for which is complicated. This person’s other health issues, those treatments, and the interactions of those different remedies make it complex.
A look at a detailed chart as to how a large organisation is configured shows it is complicated. The interactions between the different groups, their motivations and concerns, make it complex. In a nutshell, complicated means lots, whereas complex, is about the interaction of lots. They are not the same, but they may exist together. Or they might not.
In How Many More Reports? I noted how common it was for organisations to put together some pleasant sounding words and announce them as their values. Often done, in some mistaken belief that merely identifying and announcing them will somehow magically transform how staff conduct themselves. It will not, I noted. Unless you take the steps I outline, to engage and operationalise them, then you are treating it as a fact / knowledge issue, which it isn’t. For them to impact on staff, and how they conduct themselves, it needs meaning. It needs people to understand, almost, to feel. It is not a knowledge issue.
I have also written about our whistle blowers, in the book, and elsewhere. That they can start out without realising what the problem is they are taking on. Going to various people of different ranks, or to assorted groups, and getting nowhere. They persist in doing this, under the mistaken belief that if they could only find the right person to talk to, then the problem they are trying to highlight could be handled effectively. The penny takes a while to drop. Those who have ever chased round an organisation trying to find that one person, the right person, who can help, will testify to this.
All this matters because it is very easy to chase the wrong problem. If you misdiagnose, if you fail to comprehend the dynamics at play, then you will apply the wrong remedy.
You don’t need to be a doctor to understand that.
