Ashby’s law of requisite variety can often explain why organisational change fails. Organisations often favour simple logical solutions for decision making, believing they ensure clarity, comprehension and ease of implementation. However, this preference can overlook the essential complexities of organisational reality. As Ashby’s Law states: this leads to unintended consequences and structural instability.
Key Takeaway
Ashby’s law of requisite variety means that we need to embrace complexity and diversity in implementing organisational change to ensure that it is sustainable and effective.
Table of Contents
Why Are Organisations Making Simple Changes?
Leader’s Belief in Simple Decision Making For Organisational Change.
Many leaders have belief that organisational changes should be kept simple. As it helps decision makers understand and feel safe and comfortable making decisions that follow a simple logic. (As I’ve discussed in a previous blog.)
What is a Simple Solution?
Solutions typically follow a logical process of Problem + Solution = Outcome. They follow a direct linear causal link, where an outcome is directly related to a solution being applied to a problem.
For example:
People are waiting too long + Employ more Staff = Shorter waiting times
Why Are Simple Organisational Change Decisions So Common?
Finding simple solutions is so common in organisations, partly because we have all been taught at school that every problem has a right answer. Problems cause tension. We then want to feel the psychological comfort a problem, not being a problem any more.
We both get the dopamine hit of solving a problem and the relief that we don’t need to waste mental energy thinking about it anymore. Not only that, but a simple solution or change is much more easily communicated, spread, measured, and complied with.
Simple Organisational Solutions Are Not Simple to Implement.
Simple Organisational Changes That Lack diversity
Simple organisation changes does not recognise the diversity of the real world. In reality, there are few one site fits all solutions. What works for some people does not work for others. This is really what diversity and inequality is all about. A simple solution may in delivery become someone else’s problem. If we are to deliver an organisational change successfully we have to recognise the diversity of our staff and customers. (Read more about diversity and organisational change in this blog post)
Constructal Law: Why Simple Organisation Changes Become More Complex Over Time
Constructal Law means that as an organisational Change Spreads it Increases in Variation and complexity.
For a finite-size flow system to persist in time (to live) it must evolve such that it provides greater and greater access to the currents that flow through it.
(Bejan 1996, p. 815)
Adrian Bejan’s Constructal law describes how in a system such as an organisaiton changes must diverge to persist over time (Maximising flow and minimising energy loss). The upshot is that for a change to sustain itself as it spreads across an organisation it MUST get increasingly complex.
Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety Needs to Be True For An Organisation to Persist.
Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety (from cybernetics) tells us that the change has to be fully adapted to an environment in order for the organisation to continue to exist. As Ashby’s law tells us that for an organisation to continue to exist, the variation in an organisation’s environment, needs to be equally balanced by the variation within an organisations response.
An Example to Help Understand Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety.
To better understand Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety let’s take the human body.
To survive in our environment our body needs to respond to the challenges of the environment in different ways
- Our skeleton helps us resist external pressures
- Our ears help us to locate unseen things around us
- Our eyes help us to respond and react to physical objects
- Whilst our skin not only helps us resist bumps and scratches, but keeps our body together.
Take away any one of those things and we humans will need external help to survive. Whether its a bandage, a crutch or a hearing aid.
Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety in Organisations.
Organisations are the same they need to respond with structure to the pressures of the environment E.g. legal structures and financial reporting, demands of customers, and stakeholders as well as knowledge and expertise of the staff. Whilst also responding to the changing approaches of competitors, partners customers, investors as well as the government.
What Does Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety Mean for Organisational Change.
When we make a change we expose our organisation to a range of new pressures. If we implement a change too simply, it can open us to new problems that we have not encountered before.
If we don’t respond to those new threats we risk compromising the integrity of our organisation in a way that can compromise or put severe pressure on its ability to survive.
An Example of a Failed Change Due To Ashby’s Law Being Failed.
It is easy to think oh this is academic theory, it doesn’t matter in reality. A powerful example of a small change that compromised the integrity of an organisation was the problems that Budweiser had last year after Dylan Mulvaney, the transgender influencer, created a short one off video promoting Bud Light on Instagram.
The Disconnect was More a Problem than the Scale of Change
The problem was not the size of the change. It was the fact the change was substantially unsupported and disconnected from anything else in the organisation.
Mulvaney is quoted as saying “For a company to hire a trans person and then not publicly stand by them is worse, in my opinion, than not hiring a trans person at all,” (NY Times.)
At the same time the change had shocked a conservative segment of the customer base who could not identify with the change.
The irony is that whilst they were boycotting Bud Light many of people still drank Coca-Cola which has compared to Budweiser has a longer and deeper association with gay and trans issues. (Not amazing, but much bigger than the feeble attempt by Bud Light)
Therefore it makes sense to conclude the subsequent battle for right and wrong came from an internal disconnect within the organisation, which very publicly was unable to properly respond to the challenges that came from the organisational environment.
The Change May Have Been Small But the Consequence Was Large
Because Budweiser’s response was incoherent and chaotic, it severely impacted the organisation losing its long status as having America’s number 1 selling beer. According to CNN it is expected to cost them over $1.4 BILLION of lost sales.
The Issue is Not Restricted to Organisations.
We also see this in politics where it is common for a government to announce a change such as the infamous but seemingly innocuous ‘pasty tax’. The UK Government introduced a small tax of 20% added to hot pastries. It was so incoherent that even a year later there was still widespread confusion about it. As well as resulting in a ferocious backlash ‘pastygate’, until the government was forced to change its plan.
It was a tiny change but to counteract the threat, ended up costing a relatively large amount of government time and reputational damage. In the end change could not be saved.
A Simple Decision Does Not Mean a Simple Implementation.
It is often very easy to think we are making simple clear decisions, which should therefore mean that it is simple to implement. It is always worth remembering that Brexit started with a simple, clear, ‘Remain’ or ‘Leave’ decision that was explicitly designed to create clarity. Change in practice is never, the simple reality we believe when we decide on it. We can’t avoid complexity by simplicity.
Complexity is Not a Problem to Simply be Avoided.
When making changes we need to be much more tolerant and welcoming of complexity. The worst thing you can do is pretend it does not exist. Not least as some level of complexity is vital for operating in the real, ever changing world we exist in. The simpler options may be easier to understand, but can lead to significant structural instability. As i described in bureaucratic planning stress cycle) Variation should not be seen as a problem or a risk, but as an essential part of creating a stable change, now and maintaining its success into the future.
6 Tips To Manage Complexity in Organisational Change
- Start and test change at a small scale wherever possible. The larger a change the more risky it is and the more likely it is to fail
- Stafford Beer’s Viable Systems Model has been recommended by researchers as a model that can be help used to keep an organisation in balance with it’s environment and sustain it’s requisite variety throughout the change.
- Containerise the change. Manage the negative impact and increase variation by creating change that is contained and managed in small areas. This can help prevent the contagion of problems across the business
- Plan for contingencies. Don’t rely on a single one track plan of change but plan for managing worst case scenarios and grabbing the opportunities of best case scenarios. (Polarity management is a great way of understanding and managing the tradeoffs as much as possible)
- Devolve much of the implementation of the change to frontline staff who have the best visibility of information and how it affects your customers, and empower them to respond and adapt to change.
- When making decisions do consult with experts and allocate time and resources to people best placed to understand (and be interested in) the complexity of the problem.
Communicating Organisational Changes Can Still Be Simple
When you make changes make sure even if you communicate the change simply. Often a change does not be specified in endless detail. Having some guiding principles for the change and a simple escalation process for issues is often all you need.
Whilst communication can be simple it’s also crucial to create the variety in implementation meaning that you can better respond and adapt to the challenges of the world.
Conclusion
Our organisations often have a significant bias toward making decisions simple. But to make them successful we have to accept that we need to embrace variation and complexity for success. A simple decision inflexibly implemented can result in disproportional large risks to the success of an organisation.
What small changes have you seen blow up and what were the consequences?
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