The Chaos Theory in Problem solving
The art of sorting out the chaos or better still not creating one evades me at this point of time. Quite recently I was managing a project which ended up with in nothing less than chaos. I am not sure if what I started with will be able to deliver results. and i have been introspecting. what went wrong, what could have gone better.
I have a list of problems but when someone today asked 5 main reasons for not being able to achieve the target, I was vague. I did not like my lack of preparation to deal with the question and hence I wanted to use the Chaos Theory.
Chaos Theory basically tells you that very simple things can cause immensely complex things.
And I believe that was what went wrong with the project, the art of detailing, the lack of one common link, the mismatch in expectation, one oversight eventually led to the gap in delivery of the entire project.
Chaos theory helps to see things in perspective and explain why of a situation as in this case. However when it comes to what for a situation, I want to understand something. At what point of time could we have saved the situation? At what point of time could we have seen the upcoming problem and nipped them in the bud.
Someone once told me, you cannot ensure closure of all the things, be it official or personal. But all you have to ensure is you did not leave any stone unturned to get it done and move on. THis has worked for me so far, but somehow, for this project; I am unable to do that. Personally I wish I could have done something differently; but even replaying it in my head again and again, I feel there was only so much I could have done.
I want you to tell me what my learning from this siutation could have been. I know its difficult when I have not been that explicit about the problem but any learnings for me are good.
I have a list of problems but when someone today asked 5 main reasons for not being able to achieve the target, I was vague. I did not like my lack of preparation to deal with the question and hence I wanted to use the Chaos Theory.
Chaos Theory basically tells you that very simple things can cause immensely complex things.
And I believe that was what went wrong with the project, the art of detailing, the lack of one common link, the mismatch in expectation, one oversight eventually led to the gap in delivery of the entire project.
Chaos theory helps to see things in perspective and explain why of a situation as in this case. However when it comes to what for a situation, I want to understand something. At what point of time could we have saved the situation? At what point of time could we have seen the upcoming problem and nipped them in the bud.
Someone once told me, you cannot ensure closure of all the things, be it official or personal. But all you have to ensure is you did not leave any stone unturned to get it done and move on. THis has worked for me so far, but somehow, for this project; I am unable to do that. Personally I wish I could have done something differently; but even replaying it in my head again and again, I feel there was only so much I could have done.
I want you to tell me what my learning from this siutation could have been. I know its difficult when I have not been that explicit about the problem but any learnings for me are good.
Chaos Theory is a field of study in Mathematics which was pioneered by researchers like G.W. Flake, G.P. Williams and E. Lorenz. "Irregular motion of a dynamical system that is deterministic, sensitive to initial conditions and impossible to predict in the long term with anything less than an infinite and perfect representation of analogue values": G.W. Flake.
ReplyDeleteEdward Lorenz (aka ED) summarised chaos as " When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future." He explained that certain deterministic systems have formal predictability limits.
What is important to notice here is that the systems are dynamic, sensitive to initial conditions and approximations have future predictability limitations.
I feel that to answer the question of "what point of time.." we need to appreciate that the systems we were working in were dynamic and not static that we can isolate phases in time. Given the dynamic nature of the systems we need to have a continuous monitoring with periodic changes in input to reach the desired future state.
While there is a list of reasons which contributed to the wrong result (as mentioned in your post), I still feel that in a dynamic system we can intervene anytime and try to redirect the course of action. It is not a case of I-P-O (Input process Output) wherein the inputs can't be tempered with once set for processing.
Therefore, I feel that it is difficult to isolate points in time for intervention when the system is dynamic - intervene as and when we spot a wrong and then review and if required again intervene.
By: Sumit Singh