The Hindu Business Line : Handling complexity

I observed that most people, including me, have an instinctive aversion or repulsion towards complexity, particularly in the work place. Whenever a complicated piece of work or task is to be done, I have observed that employees generally tend to resent it. There is a popular distaste for complex work or work that demands going into details or untangling knots. I am not sure whether it is the fear of failing in a complex task which is creating this repulsion or an inherent human tilt towards simplicity. Whatever may be the reason, I would like to narrate an incident where I learnt to handle or solve complexity.

Once I was about to wash a heap of vessels in the sink in my kitchen. I generally find it easier to wash a fewer number of vessels, particularly when they are not stuck together. But this time the vessels were neither small in number nor were they separate. The worst part was that there were small vessels, large vessels, spoons, knives and other kitchen stuff each intertwined with one another. I was in a situation which I hate! I normally pull one vessel - a big one - from the middle abruptly, causing the entire web of vessels to collapse so that I could take them out one by one and wash them. But this sometimes leads to more entanglements, produces a lot of noise and sometimes ends in vessels falling out of the sink. This time, however, I started picking out the vessels on the periphery without disturbing the heap and washed them. Slowly, I took them out all one by one, from the sides, disposed them of and then moved into the centre. Towards the end I realised that there was no complexity at all, i.e., no need for a collapse, no entanglements, and no noise while at the same time I had completed washing them!This incident taught me a very valuable lesson. Our aversion to handle complexity is probably more to do with the view we take and the general approach we follow towards solving a complex problem. We look at the problem as a whole, when it appears complicated. Worse still, when we attempt to solve it we head straight to the heart of the problem. This makes both encountering and solving a problem imposing.

In many instances, the complexity may be a creation of our own minds. We may bunch a series of independent problems together and make them appear complex while in reality they may not be so. In the instance given above, the problem can be posited as one of washing a heap of vessels or as washing many individual vessels. In the first approach, complexity is created or assumed where none exists. Even when complexity `actually' exists, problem-solving becomes difficult when we try to pierce the heart of the issue straight. We would then tend to have a problem-centric approach to solving a problem instead of a solution-centric approach.

From the instance narrated above, I learnt that if we start working from the periphery of the problem — solving the easier bits one by one and then moving into the `centre' of the problem — we would handle it more easily and surprisingly, find that there was no complexity at all in the first place. Certain problems may require a big bang approach, but there are many which can be solved easily in a simple and methodical fashion.

Now I feel it must be a realised soul who gave the principle, Keep It Simple Stupid!

(The writer, an alumnus of IIT, Mumbai, and XLRI, is an HR manager with an MNC BPO firm)