Smart Leaders Know the Difference Between Complex and Complicated. Do You?

Inc., July 19, 2017

by Theodore Kinni



You probably use the words 'complex' and 'complicated' interchangeably. Most of us do. Heck, most dictionaries use complex to define complicated and vice versa. There's just one problem: If you're a leader and you treat a complex problem like a complicated problem, you are setting up yourself and your company for failure.

If that sounds like baloney to you, it might be worth taking a look at Rick Nason's eye-opening new book, It's Not Complicated: The Art and Science of Complexity in Business (University of Toronto Press, May 2017). In it, Nason, a finance professor at Dalhousie University's Rowe School of Business, makes a compelling case that understanding the difference between complicated and complex is an imperative for highly effective executives.

Here's the problem:

Leaders, says Nason, tend not to realize that complicated issues are different than complex ones. Thus, they try to address them both in the same way. Want to guess what happens next?

You already know the answer. It's what happens when you try to treat employees as if they were interchangeable robots or when you try to remove a passenger with a ticket from your airplane or when you merge two companies with very different cultures together. The situation deteriorates really fast. Read the rest here.