Cooke-Davis, Terry; Cicmil, Svetlana; Crawford, Lynn; Richardson, Kurt: We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto – Mapping the Strange Landscape of Complexity Theory, and its Relationship to Project Management; in: Journal of Project Management, Vol. 38 (2007), No. 2, pp. 50-61.
Cooke-Davis et al. describe the origins of Complexity Theory as it has emerged from the fields of Life Science, Physical Science, and Mathematics since the 1960s. The authors apply a selection of interesting concepts first described by Complexity Theory onto Project Management. Among those are Non-Linearity, emergence of organisation, states of chaos vs. stability, stability & fractals, radical unpredictability, complex responsive processes.
What does this mean for project management? Firstly, project managers should be aware of patterns of communication and relating on the project and should engage themselves in these. Secondly project members need to learn to tolerate anxiety and to cope with not having control over the project. The authors recommend a goal driven, enabling organisation instead of a control focussed management.
I liked the sketch. As an ongoing student and practitioner of complex adaptive approaches to leadership and innovation, the need to nurture conditions and increase adaptation is a more central role for leaders (requiring specific skills and mindset) in changing conditions than the more common command-control model. CC is most common where efficiencies are a driver, although CC practice is so costly to humans that it will hopefully, over time, be seen as a very immature stage of organizational design.
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