A633.5.3.RB -
Reflections on Chaos
Play the chaos game
with a group of people (see Complex Adaptive Leadership (Obolensky, 2010)
Chapter 6, or watch the above video.)
Create a reflection
blog on what this exercise meant to you and how it impacts your understanding
of chaos theory, include the implications that this has on strategy.
I was not able to play this with my team…but I really want
to. This is a great exercise or even ice breaker for any group. I thoroughly enjoyed
the video – I was genuinely surprised that they were able to accomplish the
task in under a minute. It took Obolensky longer to give the instructions than
for the task to be performed. Amazing.
In the simplest terms, this exercise showed me that
simplicity is the best way to manage complex tasks. Chaos, described by
Obolensky in our text, “…obeys deterministic laws, but it is so irregular that
to an untrained eye it looks pretty much random. Chaos is not just complicated,
patternless behavior; it is far more subtle.” (Obolensky, 2015) Subtlety isn’t
the first thing one thinks of when they hear “chaos theory” but after
re-reading that part of chapter five, it’s easy to see that complexity can look
very confusing and random but the reality is much different. For example, when I first
started working here in South Carolina at the 787 final assembly plant, I knew
I’d have to learn how to create bar charts in a software called Aurora. This is
a forward scheduling tool that is frustrating, complex and frankly, scared me. As
I went into this training, everything seemed like learning a new language and
none of it made sense. I couldn’t grasp the scheduling concepts and
relationships between jobs. It was very chaotic and made even more complex
because as I was learning to use this program, leadership decided that the
resources available would lessen, the time frame would shorten and everything
needed to be ready yesterday. I had to rebuild from scratch in order to shrink
it down and that was going to take time. I think that almost every day in
September I cried at least once at work or on the way home out of humiliation,
frustration, and confusion. (Not obviously, you know…quiet tears…there’s really
no crying in aerospace you know…! Ha!) The people trying to help me really just
made it worse because they didn’t understand how I didn’t understand. I finally
started working with the project integrator for my area, also an industrial
engineer, and we would camp out in a collaboration room and just work the problem.
Things were quiet, and I could ask questions and get a simple answer. He
basically sat with me while I made my model and answered questions when I got
lost. It was the simplest way to learn something…one-on-one. Pretty soon, it
was like a fog cleared and things were suddenly making sense. It was like in the
exercise above…if I made slow, small movements – or changes – within the model,
I could change it without crashing the model or creating a mess. I could think
a few moves ahead and understand the relationships between the precedence set
for jobs and if they were truly precedence or just preference.
Anyway, it was a very complex and confusing time and it
seemed like I’d never figure it out. But taking a quiet, simple approach
allowed me to suss out the secrets of Aurora. I’m still not an expert by any
means but my confidence is much higher and I am a better support to my area
because I understand their build process better. (Now we’ve switched to
Schedule Editor in Visio and everything is basically a cut and paste…super
simplified. I feel like all of that pain over learning Aurora was for nothing!
But, I’m still going to work some scenario models in Aurora so I don’t forget the
skillset I worked hard to learn.) The exercise above helped me understand that
when something is overwhelming and chaotic to stop and make small, subtle moves…tackle
complexity with simplicity.
References:
Obolensky, N. (2015). Complex Adaptive Leadership. Farnham,
Surrey, England: Gower Publishing Limited.
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