The Complexity Lenses are a collection (more than 90) actual framings of foundational understandings and their elements and components. The complexity lenses are used to help others in enterprise and / or in product and system management see and then understand their problems, needs, and gaps (as well as successes) more easily. These lenses have sub-elements and many of the elements have components that help tease out seeing and getting to better understandings.
Most enterprises along with products and systems are quickly find themselves knee deep (or deeper) in a fog of complexity. It is rare that enterprises, or product and system teams have the breadth and depth to have the framing and understanding to work through the complex set of forces and realities they are sitting in. The Complexity Lenses help to broadly and deeply augment organizations and teams understandings to see clearly through the fog of complexity.
Most organizations, product groups, and systems owners are trying to get better, but lack the understanding of what their issues are they are needing to address. Far too often we move to solutions with out understanding the problems and needs, then working through how to address those findings with solutions. Once the problems, gaps, and needs are better understood the paths to getting to solutions that actually work better with better tool selection, improving workflows, and / or processes.
In the 25+ years of building, designing, and guiding digital and social I’ve brought lessons learned and foundations from grad school in public policy with solid depth of understanding and framing from social science and understandings at scales. I started collecting the lenses around 2008 from my prior work and initially called them Social Lenses, even though many went beyond just the natural complexity of human social interactions and their environments.
Seeing Clearly Through the Fog of Complexity
The focus of the lenses is to see clearly through the fog of complexity. Leaders, decision makers, managers, and interested parties often are frustrated that their spending on solutions don’t improve the situation. This frustration quite often is adjacent to “we are missing some understanding”.
A large focus of the lenses is to pull apart many compounding elements with their forces, interests, and needs so that individual lenses can be framed properly and their related elements and components. When everything is viewed as a whole it is really difficult to understand the:
- Problems
- Gaps
- Pain point
- Needs
- Interests
The Complexity Lenses help the people in the organization see the compound areas to address with improved understanding. This becomes the foundation for having much better criteria for planning and finding solutions that address these areas to actually solve them.
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