Embracing Human Complexity: Cultural Cures to the Ills of Oversimplifying

By Jacqueline Debien, Global Director of Organizational Development at Momentum Worldwide

I fancy myself an organizational psychologist—that’s what my degree says, so it’s a fair claim. I talk to and observe people, analyze leadership, create systems, facilitate learning and generally help people work. I do that as part of the agency business—an industry that heeds the word of Cannes as gospel. And Cannes says, “Let there be simplicity,” so we collectively agree that the best is always simple, and simple is always best.

But as an industry, have we taken it too far? While it is true that simplicity is key when it comes to good creative—when it comes to agencies themselves, we oversimplify, often to our own detriment. This is true of all industries, but in our frenetic work style, we demand—and need—things to be simple; we’re too easily distracted to operate otherwise, which makes us more prone to oversimplifying complex issues.

And sometimes complexity is the only real road to simplicity.

The reality is, we’re a business of people. And people are the antithesis of simple. In striving for simplicity, we too often gloss over problems or conflicts, presuming that simplicity will win out in the end. All too often we’re just delaying, or hiding from, the real problem.

These oversimplifications manifest themselves in many ways, but I’ve narrowed down three common symptoms of organizational ills, and suggest some cultural cures:

• Process Fixation

Symptom: “Our people aren’t working well together. They move in their lane and never get out. There’s no handoff, no togetherness. They never talk.”

Current cure: “Let’s build a new process!” We tend to see overwhelmingly large problems—like people not communicating—and go straight to something we can rationalize and direct—like process. We oversimplify the problem to feel in control of the solution. The reality of people not communicating doesn’t live in a simple framework. It involves intricacy of personal interactions, including emotions, politics and values. No matter what order you tell people to talk to each other in, they still have to talk, and they’re still people when they do it. No matter what sequence you tell people to follow, they have to actually want to follow it. And you cannot make anyone do anything by putting some circles and lines on a piece of paper.

New prescription: Just talk to folks. It’s a simple answer that may require complex follow-through. Do it one-on-one or as a group, but know that people will help you decide the best solution. Maybe you really need team-building, or to exit a leader; there could be a number of simple solutions to a complex array of problems. But one thing is certain. The solution is not the process—the process organizes the solution.

• What Problem?

Symptom: “Yeah, sure, there’s a new [insert leader, mission, resource, etc.], but it’s not a big deal. We’re all adults.”

Current cure: Denial. So many times, we discount human emotion. Leaders don’t want to focus on change, or even acknowledge that it is change. They want to state the new reality and move to it. But remember, people are not simple. Everyone else is curious, worried, resentful, hopeful, disappointed, etc., and the more you ignore this multi-faceted reality, the more people become dissatisfied. We have to accept that people are emotional, complicated and complex. Only by working through that complexity will they accept what you’ve introduced. Ignore this, and change will fade fast.

New prescription: Acceptance. Emotions are there, so use them. Acknowledge that something has happened. Prepare yourselves to respond to different people in different ways. Then, take the major themes you see and solve each separately—sometimes, the only way to the simple answers is swimming in the complexity.

• Leadership as a Group Hug

Symptom: “No one has any accountability or steps up to lead. Things would be better if more of us had the opportunity to lead! Let’s all be leaders.”

Current cure: More leadership. Here’s a specific version of the dysfunction: When people become dissatisfied and head for the hills, we often want to fix the problem at the top. We look at leadership, but instead of planning for a complicated swap-out of a leader, we add other people to compensate for their weakness. Has this ever worked? You don’t add a half-inflated tire to a car that already has one half-inflated tire. You change the tires. People have sought, fought and fallen for true, piercing leadership—because it works. People have lived in dissatisfaction and stasis in committees. (Congress, anyone?) Trying to avoid the complicated overhaul of leadership by simply adding more inept leaders only creates more complications.

New prescription: Great leadership. A million tools exist to assess leadership. Employ one and give a good, long look at your leadership. Use the complexity of people to find the best one. Then make the gutsy decision to develop what you have, or start fresh, but do so knowing you need one great commander-in-chief—not two, three or seven.

Overall, simple is great and beautiful. But complexity is critical to effectively handling organizational shifts. Necessary cultural change lies in that complexity. The people who make everything work live in that complexity. Let’s at least simply acknowledge that and explore the possibilities.