Embrace and go Deep | Business Complexity series
I’m fascinated by how we view Complexity. It has become something we fear so much that even our vernacular repels it. The VUCA model of leadership often interchanges complexity with chaos. And when we are forced to deal with complexity, we can’t even name it as such - we’ve gone so far as to adopt a new moniker for it; ‘deep’. And right now, as leading businesses are reviewing their business models, we’re seeing a lot of deep thinking, deep research, deep designs. But really, it’s just complexity packaged up to be more palatable.
Whatever term you’re more comfortable with, the take away here is that complexity is not something to be feared. Why? Because the greater the complexity, the greater the number of opportunities. It just requires us to tap back into our biological fitness to unearth the opportunities.
Going deeper (sorry, couldn’t help myself 😊) on the analogy of parenting from Part 1, we know that to raise healthy, empathetic, smart, courageous children requires a blend of good food, sleep, education, social playtime, exercise, laughter etc. We know that if we doubled down on one of those things without the others, we’d put things out of balance. We know if we gave one child all the attention and not the others, we’d put things out of balance. We know if we outsourced everything, we’d put things out of balance. We know if we catered to what they wanted and let them stay up late, they’d topple over if we didn’t let them catch up on sleep the next day. We know that checks and balances, boundaries and consequences ensure that everything stays in flow, and all the spillover impacts on growth, mood, health, relationships, smarts are better optimised. We’re thinking long term, we’re thinking holistically, we’re thinking systemically.
It’s the same in business. There are all these interconnected relationships at play, within and around your business, in your business ecosystem. To access the opportunities requires a greater degree of consciousness of this ecosystem.
It also requires us to adopt a slightly more ethnographic view of our business. What are some of the real life behaviours that happen because of how our business model works? What are the ‘spill-over impacts’ of our value chain lifecycle. What is happening before and after our business operations? All we need to do is tap into our inner child to be armed with nothing more than curiosity to learn what we don’t yet know.
To give an example, Apple has done an incredible job of honing the aesthetics of their products. Beautiful. But this front of stage simplicity has a deeper darker back-stage. What is happening in the supply chain? The pursuit of rare earth materials, at what cost? The built-in obsolescence of its products, at what cost? When I worked with World Vision to help transform their business model for international roll out, I encountered something similar. A beautifully simple front-of-stage package of Child Sponsorship, but at real odds with the actual real-life experience in the communities around the world they served.
In the 1970’s design guru Dieter Rams laid out his 10 design principles which have largely shaped the design language of the last 50 years. Form yes, but not at the expense of other equally required principles of function (or usefulness), honesty, being long lasting and environmental friendliness.
So many of the problems we face today in business are ripple impacts from the pursuit of creating utter simplicity at the front end of our business models.
The beauty of being conscious of the full picture, in all its complexity, and embracing it with open arms, means we can more easily see that for every problem lies an opportunity there for the taking. All it takes is for us to reframe our thinking and embrace the complexity. This is what the pursuit of mastery is all about[1]. Pursuing mastery moves is to place of seeing business as a craft. Why play an elementary game when it blocks you from all your potential? The deeper, the more powerful, the more anti-fragile. It moves us from a single repetitive beat to full 8D surround sound – it’s infinitely more resonant. It’s what every sportsmen and women does, what any good designer does, and what leading businesses like Patagonia, Ecostore, Allbirds are doing.
I love Peter Senge’s words “so many of today’s problems are yesterday’s solutions”. Continuing this on, we can open ourselves up to seeing that so many of tomorrow’s success stories are today’s problems, solved.
If there’s any kind of wake call in this, it’s also what more and more consumers are demanding. The good news is that it doesn’t matter where you are on the journey - as you long you carry the intent to pursue this game, and start your journey, you will be acknowledged.
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Given your business has a lifecycle, how conscious are you of what comes before? What happens after? How conscious are you of the ‘spill-over impacts’ of your value chain lifecycle? Where are there opportunities?
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Thank you for taking the time to read. If you want more on business model transformation, feel free to use my free tools page for useful models, tips and examples. If you want to chat about your business model, or how Design Thinking 3.0 can help you face into 2021 stronger connect with me.
[1] Daniel Pink’s seminal book in 2009 which talked about the core intrinsic drivers of motivation: Mastery, Purpose and Autonomy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive:_The_Surprising_Truth_About_What_Motivates_Us