The 'timeline' is the length of time a person is comfortable making plans for. A gambling addict can have a timeline of between 30 seconds and a couple of minutes. "Where's the next $2 coin for the pokies coming from?"

The 'responsibility' is how much action do you personally need to take, or think you should take, vs. how much action you think everyone else is taking.

The 'scope' is the limits of how complex a situation a person is comfortable making plans about. Many people are daunted by the scope of an issue like climate change. There are many variables involved, including a mass of scientific data to assess and reinterpret into terms intelligible to you, decisions to make about likely scenarios, and a global ecosystem to try and visualise. It is a complex problem.

In 'Solving Tough Problems', Adam Kahane defines three types of complexity:

1. Dynamic - how close together are the problem's cause and effect?
2. Generative - how familiar and predictable is the future suggested by the problem?
3. Social - how much to the people affected by the problem agree about what's causing the problem?

Kahane suggests that to solve problems with a high dynamic complexity, you need to examine the interrelationships among the pieces and the functioning of the whole system.

If you want to solve a problem with a high generative complexity, you can't calculate the solution in advance, based on what has worked in the past; you have to work it out as the situation unfolds.

When solving problems with a high social complexity, the people involved must participate in creating and implementing the solution.

Here are some direct quotes from 'Solving Tough Problems':

A problem has a low dynamic complexity if cause and effect are close together in space and time.

In a car engine, for example, a cause produce effects that are nearby, immediate, and obvious; and so, why an engine doesn't run can usually be understood and solved by testing and fixing one piece at a time.

By contrast, a problem has high dynamic complexity if cause and effect are far apart in space and time. For example, the economic decisions in New York affect the price of gold in Johannesburg, and apartheid-era educational policies affect present-day black employment prospects. Such problems - management theorist Russell Ackoff calls them " messes" - can only be understood systemically, taking account of the interrelationships among the pieces and the functioning of the system as a whole.

A problem has low generative complexity if its future is familiar and predictable. In a traditional village, for example, the future simply replays the past, and so solutions and rules from the past will work in the future.

 

A problem has high generative complexity if its future is unfamiliar and unpredictable. South Africa in the early 1990s, for example, was moving away from the peculiar rigidities of apartheid and into a new, post-Cold War, rapidly globalising and digitising world.

Solutions to problems of high generative complexity cannot be calculated in advance, on paper, based on what has worked in the past, but have to be worked out as the situation unfolds.

A problem has low social complexity if the people who are part of the problem have common assumptions, values, rationales, and objectives. In a well-functioning team, for example, members look at things similarly, and so a boss or expert can easily propose a solution that everyone agrees with.

A problem has high social complexity if the people involved look at things very differently. South Africa in the early 1990s of had the perspectives of black versus white, left versus right, traditional versus modern - classic conditions for polarisation and stuckness.

 

Problems of high social complexity cannot be peacefully solved by authorities from on high; the people involved must participate in creating and implementing solutions.

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