The ‘Chaos
Game’ was played/conducted with a group of ten people. However, this group of people was not
co-workers that belong to the same organization; it was a group of people that
happen to train in martial arts together (e.g. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu). There was significance in this. In this game of ‘chaos’, the randomness of the
players added even more complexity.
After all, it was a group of people from varying professions,
educational backgrounds, and experiences.
In this group, how the military veteran thinks and acts can be very
different from the medical doctor or the IT specialist. In addition, the demographics of the players
included young and old, modest to financial success, male and female, and so
forth. Each player had his or her own
belief of leadership and order.
Moreover, each experienced ambiguity and uncertainty under extremely
different circumstances. Really, the
only commonality for most was they trained in the same art. In contrast, this author believed that in a
group of co-workers, there would be an increased likelihood of
‘like-mindedness’ because of the commonality of work – similar education,
similar exposure to leadership, order, uncertainty, etc. Moreover, there would be ‘cliques’ at work so
people would tend to gravitate into organized groups. The like-mindedness, he believed, would make the
game easier. Although Obolensky (2012) assured
the game organizer (this author) that this seemingly (near) impossible task would
find order, he still considered the outcome hard to fathom (Obolensky, 2014) . Surely, when there is complete randomness in
the players, the game could not possibly end quickly. Moreover, this author believed that the
players were simply ‘going through the motions’ to appease their friend who had
homework to do. Yet, to this author’s
surprise, order was derived out of perceived chaos and complexity and the game
resulted in the way it was described to be (in less than two minutes). This game provided this author with the perfect
illustration of the eight principles to confront complexity. Those principles being a clear individual
objective; a few simple rules; continuous feedback; discretion and freedom of
action; skill/will of the participants; underlying purpose; clear boundary; and
a tolerance of the players for uncertainty and ambiguity (Obolensky, 2014) . In no such way could order have been
established if one person were directing all of the movements – that person who
have needed the processing power of a supercomputer! Thus, some implications on strategy are
simplicity in the process and the empowerment of people. As with the game, a single leader would not
have the ‘visibility’ of all of the moving pieces to make the best decision at
any given time. As Sull & Eisenhardt
(2012) wrote, a simple framework (with simple rules) led to employees making
on-the-spot decisions and adapting to constantly changing environments (Sull & Eisenhardt, 2012) . An example of this is the company Semco. Semco has strived to have a flat hierarchy,
which is, “distributing decision-making authority out to everyone” (Kastelle, 2013, p. 2) . It was even written that employees bet on how
long between the periods in which the CEO actually make decisions (Kastelle, 2013) . This has led to employee adaptability and
innovation – the company has experience success, growing at a 20% rate for the
past three decades (Kastelle, 2013) .
As the ‘chaos game’ illustrated, many independent decisions (with a sole
purpose in mid) can achieve a common goal.
References
Kastelle,
T. (2013, November 20). Retrieved from hbr.org:
https://hbr.org/2013/11/hierarchy-is-overrated/
Obolensky, N.
(2014). Complex adaptive leadership - Embracing paradox and uncertainty.
New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.
Sull, D., &
Eisenhardt, K. (2012). Simple rules for a complex world. Harvard Business
Review, 68-74.
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