COMPLEX PROBLEMS: THE BASICS
Operational Complexity: What is it?
Today’s Army faces operational environments that are often volatile and highly dynamic. Globalization is causing us to be linked more closely to - and impacted by - events and situations throughout the world. Many low-intensity conflict situations and problems Army leaders encounter fall within the “gray zone,” marked by uncertainty, ambiguity, and levels of complexity that challenge even experienced Army leaders.
These operational environments require that Army leaders have advanced thinking skills that go well beyond technical or tactical proficiency. In order to manage complex challenges and solve problems, Army leaders need to:
- Develop a holistic understanding of multi-dimensional problems
- Understand inter-relationships and connections among people, politics, security, economics, geography, and technology
- Think deeply and critically about challenging situations
- Visualize ways to shape potential future states
- Anticipate the second- and third-order effects of their decisions and actions
“One of the things we can certainly be sure of is that progress in any sort of complex operation, certainly of any effort at the strategic level, will be anything but linear, and that's because these complex problem sets themselves don't allow you to plan well in advance exactly the kind of progress you're going to make in the future.”
-LTG H.R. McMaster
The Nature of Complex Problems
Complex problems are messy. They involve multiple components that are interconnected and that interact in unexpected ways. Important components of a problem and the relations among them may be difficult to discern and highly fluid. With complex problems, boundaries are unclear, cause-effect relationships are ambiguous, and outcomes are often unpredictable.
The volatility, uncertainty, and ambiguity of today’s operational environments add to their complexity and make solutions elusive.
The Arab Spring (2011), the Iraqi insurgency (2003-2006), and global climate change are some examples of complex problems.
“My first complex problem was at Homestead AFB in 1992, after Hurricane Andrew. Corps Colonel threw a stack of papers on my desk and said: “(V6), figure this out.” They were contracts for trash removal. That was my first real complex problem: How do we get the active duty Army out of S. Florida and let the start of normality return.”
-Former Army Planner, Red Team Instructor
The Risk of Underestimating Operational Complexity
One of the things that makes working in complex environments even tougher is that people tend to see complex problems and situations as simpler than they really are. The inclination to underestimate the complexity of problems is known as the reductive tendency. It is a common response when factors are:
- Continuous rather than discrete
- Dynamic rather than static
- Simultaneous rather than sequential
- Interconnected rather than independent
When leaders underestimate problem complexity, the plans and decisions they make may be ineffective and may lead to unexpected and adverse outcomes.
It is possible to overcome the tendency to oversimplify complexity. However, doing so requires:
- Practice
- Experience
- Advanced Cognitive Skills
- Mental Effort
“Effective strategic thinking requires you to be able to see the whole, to understand the whole. Most of the problems that we deal with, the complex problems that really matter as a strategic thinker, are problems that exist in environments that are systems of systems.”
-COL (ret.) Jim Greer
