Dee Hock’s Law of Simple/Complex Behavior
In Dee Hock’s Birth of the Chaordic Age, he writes, “Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex and intelligent behavior. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behavior.”
To me this means that when we focus on the goal and a straightforward way to accomplish that goal, the pathway is clearer than if we focus on the pebbles in the pathway because then the end goal becomes obscured.
Dee Hock founded the Chaordic Alliance which combines the words chaos and order. According to The Global Citizen: The Chaordic Age (at http://www.alternet.org/story/609/the_global_citizen%3A_the_chaordic_age), chaordic organizations are self-governing and self-organizing and operate as a network of equals instead of a hierarchy of authorities. What makes them effective is a clear, shared purpose. Examples given are Alcoholics Anonmouns and Visa International. It becomes relevant to us in our class because it parallels the use of the Internet–we do not want interference with the simple way it currently functions, or to have regulations put on digital access.
In the video Chris linked to about The Internet’s Own Boy, Aaron Swartz, so many laws had been passed to combat terrorism and thievery by hackers, that the goal of open sharing of public information was lost.
Biblically, Phillippians 3: 13-14 stresses forgetting the past so as to try as hard as I can to reach the goal before me. This relates because focusing on a goal is more effective than getting sidetracked in detail, debate, and remorse over previous actions.
My next reference may be a hot button for some readers. The NRA says new regulations may shut down access to technical data regarding firearms. The goal is to curb terrorist behavior, but in complicating regulation, the individual rights may be infringed upon. According to the NRA, in an attempt to clarify rules about public domain information available online, massive restraints upon free speech would incur. I know some conservative sites can distort issues to present their own agenda, but there is usually some truth worth investigating as well. The Aaron Swartz story makes me take claims like this more seriously.
Transformation by Design, by Melissa Hoffman, includes an interview with Dee Hock. Hock discusses the mindset needed for a new way of thinking and that the essence of organizations as well as many other topics clarifying his views. I especially liked his point that a high level of individual commitment can invoke sweeping change. (Again I think of Aaron Swartz). I recommend this interview as worth reading.
A TED talk, Chaordic Design and Community, by Mike Dahn. We want to lower the barriers to participation so that individuals can create great things. He advocates involving more people to accomplish more. Believe that you can do something even if it’s out of your comfort zone. He quotes Dee Hock, “It is no failure to fall short of realizing all that we might dream. The failure is to fall short of dreaming all that we;might realize.”
As I followed this trail of chaordic design it may appear that I have strayed from the original quote. However, none of the situations can evolve without staying focused on the goal at hand.
A last example of the complex leading to stupid behavior is the No Child Left Behind legislation:
Murnane, R. J. and Papay, J. P. (2010). Teachers’ views on no child left behind: support for the principles, concerns about the practices. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 24 (3), 151-166.
The above references relate to our course because part of becoming a digital citizen is to embrace an awareness of how networks have grown organicly through a common goal to learn and communicate and what factors may restrict our usage, Although certain restrictions appear to be well meaning on the surface, when they are put in place an entirely different outcome may result which may be contrary (and stupid) to the original intent.
You took this in a really interesting, meta direction: focusing on the “simple leading to complex” in terms of your own thoughts and focus on a goal. Until you did that I’d always thought of Hock’s idea only in the form of setting up rules/guidelines for activities/projects/assignments. For example, the “make and share” activities (like many other activities in this class!) are purposefull set up with very simple guidelines because, in my experience, the more I explicitly outline, the less interesting and creative the results (even if I insist that the things I say are just examples…I don’t think students believe me).
But I hadn’t thought about taking the “simple” (but, again, not easy!) to apply to one’s focus on a goal without getting lost in the structure or the rabbit-holes and side-trails (although those might turn out to be the point… more on that in your “thinking about your thinking” post…
The NRA example might be a hot-button, but that’s what makes it important. An area where I think we see this “law” in action very clearly is TSA and transportation security (and “security theater”).
Thinking about Hock’s law from the vantage of action and individual agency makes me realize how many amazing, influential things people have made and done without ever really planning to do so. They’re not accidents, but the creators didn’t get wrapped up in the potential complexity but instead simply did the thing they wanted to do and let the rest take care of itself. Many such projects fail…but so it goes. How many fail by never getting off the ground because we invoke complexity too early? This is, in part, the message of “Bags of Gold” in the “No Digital Facelifts” talk…
This is really interesting. I can’t say I entirely agree, but it’s really interesting to think about. I agree with some of your examples that the complex often leads to more problems than the simple, but why do we continue to have these complex regulations? Are we really making things unnecessarily complicated for ourselves? I don’t think so – I think with topics like the NRA and No Child Left Behind that the issues themselves are WAY too complex to have some kind of simple law. Simple laws I think leave too much room for ambiguities that can be taken advantage of. Do I sound paranoid or what? Is it just me or is it our culture (thinking about TSA, for example)? I think our society is too complex to allow for a very simplistic and straightforward principle. Nor do I think we would ever trust ourselves to try something simple, for the hope that maybe it will result in more intelligent behavior. The ‘what’s the worst that can happen’ scenario far outweighs the ‘what’s the best that can happen’ one. I mean, goodness, I think about this from the perspective of my government agency and have to laugh. Simple will NEVER work! There are too many factors, too many players, too many possibilities, too sensitive of possible outcomes, just too many too manys!
I can see Hock’s thoughts much more applicable to the context of the classroom and assignments like Chris mentioned. We all learned KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) in school right? I think one flaw is that Hock’s ideas aren’t necessarily applicable to all types of students, all types of learners, all types of people for that fact. Some of us may need complex rules/regulations to act appropriately or complete assignments. This is why I *hate* the make and share assignments! I’m certainly one of those who needs complex rules. Leave it open-ended and with simple instructions and unfortunately I don’t think it leads me to more complex thought. My make and shares so far have been nothing more than the creative projects of others! They’ve all come from the assignment bank or from my classmates. But that’s just for me.
Brook: here’s the paradox…you wouldn’t be making any more creative or original assignments with complex rules–and there wouldn’t be any room to do so even if you wanted to. So the question is: allow room for creative approaches (which you are fully capable of even if you don’t end up doing so (and I disagree that your work hasn’t been creative) or create complex rules and receive a bunch of very similar, simple assignments back (keeping mind the multiple meanings of complexity)? I am certainly far happier with what you made with your make and shares, no matter how derivative YOU might think they are (and how much you hate them) than I would be with more rules. Getting more stuff with more rules doesn’t make it complex as often as it makes it boring (for me).
And I hear you about the need for complexity in rules, but we could also dial in on the level of granularity here. Of course TSA is going to have complex rules—it’s a large organization. I am sure that Visa (which Dee Hock founded) has many complex rules as well). The point of the Law is, I take it, to examine if/when that’s necessary. Teachers, like administrators and bureaucrats, often lapse into complexity completely unnecessarily because that’s what they’ve been indoctrinate into or because they honestly believe that complex rules yield complex results, which they often don’t. It’s worth considering that as we make and promote our own!
One other thing: when it comes to posing rules and guidelines, simplicity can be a real art. In my experience with management, I’ve often found myself unable to figure out what the simple rules and guidelines might be right away (like Pascal said: he wrote long letters because he didn’t have time to write short ones)…but over time I go through a sequence of more and more complex until I hit upon that harder, more mysterious, less obvious simple way. It’s not always so, but often enough that I suspect I could get there a lot more time if I had more time, experience and intelligence. I definitely experience–and witness–this ebb and flow *all the time* in teaching and learning…