Michael Lissack continuous adaptation yield bewilderingly complex, yet enormously pro- ductive, living systems. Faced with complexity, the traditional instinct of the practical manager has been to try to reduce it through rules of thumb, standard operating procedures, etc. If this did not always succeed in eliminating uncertainly, it helped to reduce anxiety allowing life to go on at a lower level of neurosis than otherwise. Yet reducing complexity is only an option if some measure of insight and understanding is present, and if, through the myriad stimuli that rain upon him at each instant, the manager can discern some mini- mum structure that can help him make sense of his situation. Failing this, complexity can only be absorbed and endured. And while most people vary in their willingness and ability to deal with complexity few of them other than mystics or simpletons can live with it for long when it operates at very high levels. Complexity is primarily a challenge to our individual data processing powers. Where complexity cannot be reduced, or where we as individuals are unwilling or unable to absorb it, these data processing powers must somehow be expanded. This is one purpose of organization: to harness the data processing potential of a group of individuals where task complexity proves too much for any one of them. Yet as a way of dealing with complexity, organizations confront us with a paradox. For individual data processors can only be said to be organized when they are in some kind of communicative relationship with each other and such a relationship already presupposes a measure of complexity reduction for messages to be intelligible. There seems to be a limit to the complexity of what can be collectively shared through oral or written transmission. In such circumstances it can only be the collective experiencing of complexity that will produce a common un- derstanding. Having a common understanding is the key to survival in our complex age. And it is in the failure to develop that common understanding the problems of our governance lie. The United States is the information society. Washington, more than any other capital in the world, has incredible numbers of people develop- ing, procuring, selling, trading, analyzing, and often hiding information.
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