Solution Design and Management

Understanding the Law of Requisite Variety

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlryrClQ6xc

Coined by Ross Ashby - his version relates to business, "only variety can absorb variety"

Business leader levels mentioned: enterprise, product, department, franchise, business unit

High complexity solution is different to a complex solution - needs only experts

This means if a problem has a complex but standard form, hand it to the form experts

If the problem is complex and multidisciplinary (high variety), meet the challenge with an equivalent
or increased level of variety (in the expertise of your problem solvers)

Knowledge, experience, expertise, knowhow, influence

tackle it, solve it, mobilise around it

Intellect and energy

COMPLEX PROBLEM SOLVING & SOLUTION MANAGEMENT

Identify the requisite variety of people that need to be part of the solution team

Cocreation provides belief in the combined solution and ability to execute

Social technology to move from debate and agenda to cocreated and believed in solution

Your problem is not X its complexity - so the solution is generic

Stake holders, experts and influencers - talent at scale

Example: Cost Cutting

Thinking: Complexity

Usual solution: External consultant, internal task force (or combination of both)

resulting in: analysis, prescribed cuts

limitation: same thinking (future direction, strategy) in, nothing changes, so same out - direction
remains unchanged, but at its core links directly to the purpose/drive of the cuts, and strategy that
may need to change is untouched

Does not yield optimal solution (lingo)

Alternate Thinking: Complex challenge

Solution: bring in all the right (affected) players from across the enterprise

Supplement them with any external subject matter expertise that they may require

Have them all collectively wear the corporate hat (ie. responsibility for strategy) and envision
together what the future needs to look like for their department and collectively

From the future vision, then determine where and how much to cut

Benefit: early alignment and group understanding early on, new synergies uncovered that were
previously hidden, a much more strategic (corporate) exercise

Perform in the face of complexity - put down the little violin and step up to the largeness of the task
at hand, pick up the big violin, and perform from beyond yourself

Innovation - creating something new and making it happen

Innovation begins with a conversation that clearly defines (paints an accurate picture) of the current
state of everything (relevant)

A conversation that is able to surface a full array of stakeholder needs, desires, aspirations

Conversation that allows for freedom to apply each unique individuals thinking style and life
experiences to central challenges

New ideas cannot be commanded from the usual suspects (your close team), it has to come from
fresh perspectives, new stimulus, assistance to see things differently

Interaction, deep dialogue, meditation, personal reflection, iteration

Made happen productively and systematically

Challenges that can benefit - growth strategy, new product development, product launches, post
merger integration, productivity enhancement

What is the essence of innovation conversation? Immersion + productive, constructive, expansive,

divergent and convergent (to a new point/idea) conversation

Small groups, small problems

Large groups - chaos, but key to solutions

solution - break the large group into ~8 person subgroups to target micro issues that are part of the
whole, then bring each team leader together to bring forth the macro holistic solution
Poor solution at large complex problems is to take it apart into silo'd pieces, look at them in
isolation, and expect to come up with anything but a partial and an incomplete solution. Definitely
does not galvanise and mobilise execution.

The leadership imperative is to take everything into consideration. Account for every
interdependency. Come up with fulsome solutions that do justice to the breadth and depth of the
challenge and around which a critical mass of the organisation is mobilised for execution - and for
that to not take months and years to accomplish.

Transformation (in the billionaire code paradigm, transitioning between levels)

Touches everything - (new) vision, strategy, cost structure, org structure, brand, customer
experience, IT, work processes, recruit and develop people, their roles

Silos must be broken down early and figure out what the transformation is about and understand it
and what it's going to take to get there as a whole org

(what is the BilCode equiv. of these levels?)

Franchise level, business unit level, enterprise level

goals: speed, galvanise very large groups across the enterprise, around focused tangible
transformation plans with sustained execution

Eliminating degrees of seperation

context: when the large group comes together

solution: have people who dont know each other work on something in which their roles interact

Chosen reps already have influence and connectivity, it's now time to expand their network and
interact with others of a similar level

Impact the tightness of the impact of the network of the client organisation

Complicated: deterministic, repeatable, eventually reduced to a formula

Complex: never again to be repeated

Application: Post Merger Integration 100 day plans

Difficulty of high variety groups - the language cost is very high

e.g. 8 electrical engineers will know what they are and speak
The first stage is "unversal translation" - shared context, time to align

Time required for initial engagement amongst participants, seek understanding, align on some
critical definitions, level set in terms of the information they are carrying in.

Only once this has happened can they share ideas and solutions in a uniform and clear manner

Knowledge is no longer power

Russel Akoff

1 ounce of information is worth a pound of data. Repeat for: information->knowledge, knowledge->

understanding, understanding -> wisdom

Clay Shirkey

Abundance breaks more things than scarcity

goal: shared understanding and higher wisdom

The organisations brain is distributed and often not tightly packed

The challenges it needs to face are arbitrary

Threats are perceived only in pieces

Collectively they can see the whole, but the dispersed distribution of the whole means its slow to
disseminate completely to each node, perceive (connect the dots into the current reality) and
cocreate to determine how to act, and then to mobilise

Business leaders are pragmatists, and want to hear from other leaders before they adopt a
technology or system that is new. They need to see the business benefits and value

many to many methods and technologies are only now being adopted into large organisations

stakeholders and subject matter experts

one to many - boss to employees - succinct clear and compelling

many to one - experts and consultants, slow, difficult to adopt (change management stage)

many to many - deeply engaged individuals working with equal respect and shared insight

Make the one each of the many

Syntegrity process - compressed time frame (2-3 days), surface everything that matters, not get
overloaded but connect the dots themselves in a way that excites and galvanises them to execute

goal - buy in and alignment of the doers and those who are going to clear the way to allow it to
mobilise and execute

innovation growth transformation