On Managing Complexity: Variety Engineering

Abstract

We, as individuals, are dealing with complex situations, that is, with situations challenging us with a large number of states changing rapidly and unpredictably over time. In all these situations to perform effectively we have to manage the complexity of the situation. This chapter is dedicated to explore principles for managing complexity. We take the view that in general managing complexity refers to our ability to achieve an adequate performance in particular situations of concern. Their boundaries are defined by the purposes we ascribe, implicitly or explicitly, to them. So, in this chapter we explore how we ascribe purposes to situations and why this is important for managing their complexity. The concepts and detailed methods we explain in this chapter are known as variety engineering, which is the key concept that guides our operational design of organizations.