Complexity

A few observations on organizational complexity

1. Principle of functional complexity: Every role within an organization has at least one unique function.
   Addendum: When there is more than one role with the same function, at least one of them has been further specialized to be unique in context.
2. Principle of process complexity: As a consequence of (1), any process involving X roles has at least X steps.
3. Principle of departmental complexity: There is no department within an organization that does not have at least one role.
4. Principle of predictable complexity: As a consequence of (2) and (3), any process crossing at least X departments has at least X steps.
5. First Principle of irreducible complexity: Any process will break by skipping a single step on the critical path, regardless of whether that step is value-adding or not.
6. Second Principle of irreducible complexity: By asking each participant in a process, you will receive X undisputable reasons why a minimum of X steps are on the critical path.
7. Third Principle of irreducible complexity: Any proposed change with with no more than X-E steps will result in at least E escalations against whoever raised the idea.
8. Principle of complexity preservation: If the escalations E against a change proposal have a total influence greater than whoever proposed the change, the proposal will either be discarded or "adjusted" until the overall complexity is no smaller than before.
9. Principle of evolving complexity: The above remain true when a "process optimization" function is added.
10. Principle of special cause complexity: Any comparison towards simpler organizations will return to the principles of irreducible complexity.
    Addendum: This is also true when comparing the organization with its own history.

"Rube Goldberg Contraption" - courtesy of Wikipedia.