Embracing Complexity in Teams, Products, and Organizations. Originally presented at Adaptive Path's MX Conference on March 29 2016.

1. Resilient Design Management
Embracing Complexity in Teams, Products, and Organizations
Chris Avore
Nasdaq, Inc.
@erova
#mx16

2. How do leaders bounce back from
uncertainty or adversity and succeed
under challenging circumstances?

3. New competitors
New technologies
Growth pressure
Lower margins
Globalization
Talent/workforce challenges
More data to “help” us
and it all happens
faster than ever before

4. Situations emerge in the process of
creative destruction in which many
firms may have to perish that
nevertheless would be able to live on
vigorously and usefully if they could
weather a particular storm
Joseph Schumpeter

6. Businesses that used to be separate
are now interconnected and
interdependent, which means these
systems are now more complex.
Rita McGrath

7. Complex Adaptive Systems are diverse
living elements made up of multiple
interconnected agents that have the
capacity to grow and change.
Sharon VanderKaay

12. This sounds
complicated

14. We can determine complicated outcomes.
We can only enable complex outcomes.
We can specify complicated systems.
We can only intervene in complex systems.
Irene Ng

15. Complicated systems Complex adaptive systems
Predictable
Tightly structured
Efficient
Rebuildable
Trainable
Scarcity mindset
Unpredictable
No centralized structure
Emergent
Uhh, not rebuildable
Learnable
Opportunities for abundance

16. The opposite of simple The opposite of independent
Complicated systems Complex adaptive systems

17. urban
transportat
ion

18. air tower

19. • Planning
• Organizing
• Command
• Coordination
• Control
Greater, denser
interdependencies of partners,
supply systems, customers, etc

20. If you manage a complex
organization as if it were just a
complicated one, you’ll make
serious, expensive mistakes.

21. Our world is dominated by the
extreme, the unknown, and the very
improbable ... while we spend our time
engaged in small talk, focusing on the
known and the repeated.
Nassim N. Taleb

22. Business
Product
Me
Dev
When will this ship?
How many designers
do you need?
How many releases will
this take?

23. Cause
&
Effect

24. Command
&
Control

25. Prepare
&
Embrace

26. Let’s expect surprises.
Let’s foster flexibility.

27. Let’s interpret our environment.

28. Let’s position our teams, products,
and organizations to become resilient.

29. Resilience is the capacity of a complex
adaptive system to absorb change and
disturbances, and still retain its basic
structure and function, it’s identity.

32. What [the tsunami] did was show the
vulnerability in the supply chain. It became
clear automakers had no idea how far down
the supply chain some of these third level
suppliers were. They now have a process in
place to set up a war room to handle these
situations,” says Michele Krebs, a senior
analyst with Edmunds.com.

33. I’m a design manager. I’m
not responsible for e-coli outbreaks or
fraudulent emissions systems, or some
rich dude wanting my Board of
Directors tossed.
or earthquakes or
volcanoes.

34. • Funding gets cut
• Change of boss, stakeholder
• Acquisition of like-assets
• Usability testing reveals failures
• Change in process
• Security attack

35. Resilient Design Management · Chris Avore · @erova #mxconf
Adaptive Cycle

36. • innovation
• new opportunities
• maximum growth stage
• exploit every possible resource or niche
• weakly interconnected
• internal systems weakly regulated
• established system
• standardized, proven solutions
• specialization
• Creative Destruction
• state of chaotic collapse
• often brief, rapid decline
α
Ωr
KConservation
ReleaseRapid growth
Reorganization

37. α
Ωr
K

38. α
Ωr
K
• innovation
• new opportunities
• maximum growth stage
• exploit every possible resource or niche
• weakly interconnected
• internal systems weakly regulated
• established system
• standardized, proven solutions
• specialization
• Creative Destruction
• state of chaotic collapse
• often brief, rapid decline

39. Ω
KConservation
• increase in efficiency through reduced redundancy (one size fits all)
• subsidies so people have an incentive to stay rather than change
• more sunk costs into maintaining status quo
• increased command and control (less and less flexibility)
• preoccupation with process (more rules, more time devoted to sticking to procedures)
• suppression of novelty, less experimentation
• rising transaction costs to get stuff done

40. “Efficiency increases and the future
seems ever more certain to be
determined.”

41. What can designers, and leaders of design
teams, do to avoid this late K phase?

42. I have an have
an idea!
Great idea!
Agree 100%
Let’s do it!
Diversify

43. Diversify
Hire people from different
backgrounds
Don’t fall for domain
knowledge or years of
experience when hiring
Team Approach Business
Alternate prototyping methods,
research techniques
Change up who presents to
stakeholders, bosses, interview
clients, etc
Continually monitor the
industry as potential partners,
not competitors
Highlight risk of only engaging
with one content provider, no
API, etc

44. Modularity

45. Modularity
• Build, Buy, or Partner?
• Many (cough, diverse)
sources of content,
audiences
• Establish autonomous
teams with tools & training
Organizing your design team by
function (collaboration,data
visualization, etc) instead of business
unit or product increases modularity.

46. “We’re in the very early stage of
standardization and our strategy is that we
don’t put all our eggs in one basket,” said
Mr. Bussmann.
Instead, UBS is trying to team up with the
most promising groups and technology
providers so that it has a front-row seat
when one develops critical mass.
“You prepare yourself for that change in the
marketplace so you’re part of that change,”
he said—WSJ

47. We’re gonna be
rich!
The prototype is
testing great
It’s amazing!
The prototype has
serious problems
Let’s get to work.
Let’s look at the
research
I’m ready to
help
The first test
went OK
Uh oh, the
prototype has
serious problems
Close Feedback Loops

48. Close Feedback Loops
As a design manager, it may not be
your responsibility to make sure all
parties are talking to each other, but
you can facilitate the conversations
and recognize who is missing.
• Invite business & product
execs to design studio
• Share design research with
everyone
• Keep Support, Sales,
Marketing included

49. Redundancy

50. Redundancy
• Cross-train designers so more people
know research, visual design, etc
• Teach product managers, stakeholders,
others how to apply design methods in
their daily work
• Move people to different projects so
others know what the projects are about
• Reduce specialization
Teams in which different individuals
took turns leading the group were
more creative than teams in which
one person was consistently in charge
MIT Sloan Management Review

51. Summary
• Diverse teams, approaches, and products increase
your ability to react to disruptive events or take on
new opportunities
• Modular teams can sustain disruption without
adversely affecting other parts of your organization
• Longer, looser feedback loops mean disruptions
can go unnoticed
• Redundancy provides multiple sources of
productivity, knowledge, and leadership
These recommendations will be difficult to
implement in a business built for
optimization, efficiency, and maximum
returns based on minimum effort.

52. conclusion

53. Change the mindset
See your design team as a part of an interdependent system
Appreciate and expect ambiguity
Account for non-linear progress
Replace scarcity-driven approaches with creating abundance
Embrace grassroots/bottom-up ideas & projects
Learn from experience, not just training
Strive for influence, not control

55. Make changes from a position of
strength, not desperation.

56. Thank you.
Chris Avore
@erova