I keep reading about shortages recently. Is it time to panic? To an old systems guy, the current “shortages” and supply chain chaos are exactly what would be expected as the economy begins to open up again after more than a year of lockdowns, business failures, layoffs, and the usual global weather inconveniences. A bigger surprise would have been no shortages occurring.
Disaster in the form of a black swan is quite often the first indication of excess complexity. From a management viewpoint, this is not a good way to find out. Unfortunately, there are not many effective ways to gauge complexity levels. Here are a few ways to deal constructively with largely invisible complexity before it morphs into a black swan event.
Darkness – in the sense of largely-missing clarity and certainty – is upon us, with no dawn in sight. Business leadership must provide the “light” meanwhile. The “light” here is clear, agile, adaptable plans that develop continuously as a process, not a management product. Leadership-as-light is not a new concept but the critical role of agile management is.
Agile business processes originated and grew up in the IT world, driven by increasingly rapid changes in IT technology. Now this fast pace of change is everywhere – accelerated and made extremely volatile by the COVID disruption and its complexity. Businesses in response have begun an aggressive move to embrace agile principles throughout their organizations. This involves, however, a truly huge change in the way businesses work.
