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Planners as Nonlinear and Complex Explorers

 

Conclusion: From Planning the Future to Preparing for the Future

Unlimited possibilities for a company are, of course, not possible. Possibilities for strategies are limited by the past history of the organization, by the constraints of the marketplace, and by the identity of the organization, i.e., its set of core competencies. Complexity sciences can provide better maps for organizational strategy design that follow these constraints than traditional organizational tools or constructs. We live in a complex, interdependent world where the business and institutional environment is undergoing unprecedented change, even turbulence. Whereas planners whose main function was to accurately predict the future had some reason to congratulate themselves when organizations were in a more stable environment; today the whole claim of linear predictability is being seriously undermined. Therefore, the role of leader/planners must shift to take advantage of what we are learning about the dynamics of complex, interactive, nonlinear, nonequilibrium systems. This shift includes transforming planning into:

  • A set of better means for organizations to get to know who they are, what they do well, and what their innate tendencies are. Planning becomes preparation for the future through greater insight into what one does better right now.

  • A set of processes for facilitating organizational experimentation through using whatever happens, anticipated or unanticipated. This makes planning into a way to prepare for or adapt to, not predict the future.

  • A set of tools taken and modified from nonlinear mathematics and sciences to help an organization navigate through the newly discovered, intriguing terrain opened up by the exploration of complex systems.

Whereas, at first sight, it might have appeared that the unpredictability of complex systems foredoomed all attempts at planning, there are important ways with which the nonlinear dynamical accounting for this unpredictability can be exploited for a revised conception of organizational leading/planning.

 

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Copyright © 2001, Brenda Jane Zimmerman and Curt Lindberg. Permission
to copy for
educational purposes only. All other rights reserved. Excerpt
from "Stories of the Emergence of Complexity Science in US Health Care" -
paper to be published in a book edited by Eve Mitleton-Kelly of the London
School of Economics.