When asked about their top risk concerns, most company managers

name complexity, globalization, cyber security, IoT, social media and

business model disruption. Funnily enough (if you’re open to dark
humor), the risk concerns listed next to complexity are themselves
sources of complexity, because of the high number of agents involved
and the dense interactions at play. Complexity is therefore one of the
biggest challenges facing organizations, and massive resources are
being mobilized to understand it as well as identify its sources and
accelerating factors.
For this purpose, several insights are unexpectedly being shared with
organizations from other scientific fields, such as biology, meteorology,
physics and computational science. These various disciplines have
started analyzing complexity as early as the 80s, each in their
respective area of research, and came up with similar results as to how
complex systems behave. Thanks to this accumulated knowledge,
organizational complexity, which became a science on its own in the
years 2000, benefited from a big shortcut. It was fascinating to discover
that, as complex adaptive systems, human groups (populations,
organizations, markets, the Internet…) functioned in the same way as an
immune system, a beehive, an ecosystem, a brain, weather turbulences
or a cell. Because of their complexity, all these systems shared the
same set of behaviors. Here are the behaviors identified in several
science fields and recognized within organizations as well:

1- The first behavior of organizations is connectivity, which relates to

the ability of the complex system to dynamically build new connections
between its agents and with its environment. The higher the
connectivity, the higher the complexity. However, for this building
dynamic to be sustained, the connections created need to be easy to
break and replace. For example, companies using a siloed structure and
fixed work groups generate poor connectivity compared to companies
with an open structure and flexible project teams. On the other hand,
connectivity is enhanced in companies that include their external
stakeholders (bankers, customers, suppliers…) in their decision-making
process, training sessions, events partnering, etc.

2- The second behavior of organizations as complex systems is to foster

autonomous agents. Each component of the company (employees,
departments, projects) enjoy a certain level of autonomy, but under a
set of core rules that apply equally to all agents. The higher the number
of internal laws, the stricter the organization, the lower the autonomy
and the lower the flexibility in crisis times. On the other hand, the lower
the number of internal rules, the closer to a chaotic system.

3- The third behavior of complex systems, also applicable to

organizations, is emergence, or synergy effect. This is one of the most
important positive aspects of complexity, because it allows for value
creation without additional resources. Thanks to the agents interaction,
value is added in an unpredictable fashion, but without randomness,
because the causality chain can be traced back, a posteriori. The
emergent properties are not inherent to the agents themselves, and
follow a pattern that can be observed and described. For example, a
project team gets innovative and adapts to a challenging environment,
but the team members, taken individually, are not highly creative or
adaptable.

4- The fourth complexity systems’ behavior is non equilibrium. It’s is

related to the system as a whole, and is characterized by instability and
difficulty to go back to equilibrium after a disruptive event. Stock
exchange markets illustrate perfectly this behavior, as well as all
business environments with high volatility.
5- The fifth behavior observed in all complex systems, organizations
included, is non-linearity, due to the high uncertainty level of
interactions outcomes. The input generates spontaneously, self-
amplifies and self-accelerates, making it near impossible to forecast the
output. This behavior is closely scrutinized by experts, especially
because of the self-amplification of insignificant inputs that could, over
time, cause extreme disruption (think butterfly effect). This
phenomenon, called “drift into failure”, goes through certain phases,
until it reaches its tipping point. It’s up to market observers to recognize
the red flags early enough to take action and avoid stock market
bubbles and crashes.

6- The sixth behavior, self-organization, is a major asset of complex

systems. Disruption from its external environment induces an
autonomous change in the way the system behaves and structures
itself. The disruptive event is considered as a threat to be avoided
(resilience), or at least adapted to, by reducing, if not eliminating its
impact. The Covid sanitary crisis has shown the importance of self-
organization in companies:
when successful, the organization reaches a new state of equilibrium. If
it fails, two scenarios are plausible: either the company’s performance
lowers, due to the staking of minute incremental changes (which
eventually leads to a drift into failure), or the company learns from the
experience, fosters creative solutions thanks to its collective
intelligence, and manages to improve its performance.

7- The last behavior, co-evolution, goes beyond what happens within

the system itself, to observe how it impacts and is impacted by the
other systems in its environment. Adapting to and changing the
environment is an irreversible process, as can be illustrated by the
digitalization transformation. It started with customers, gaming and
technology actors, followed by e-commerce, then banks had to adapt
their services, and ultimately governments gave up resistance and
digitalized their services as well.

Understanding the behaviours of the organization as a Complex System

is crucial if the managers wish to minimize its drawbacks and maximize
its potential benefits. Managing complexity starts with awareness and
objectivity, without falling into the catastrophe mindset: even if
complexity is often associated with its negative aspects (non-
equilibrium, non-linearity), these are easily outweighed by the value-
added and resilience-building of more positive characteristics of
complexity, be it self-organization, co-evolution or emergence which,
when optimized, lead to a better performance of the whole
organization.