making complexity work

While many of the details in a recent article from CIO Insight magazine on creative thinking are rather specific to information technology, one particular point in the article does resonate for anyone in the information professions, “…culturally you want a certain amount of complexity and churn because it creates a chemical reaction that jars creative thinking.” Thinking creatively is an important skill when dealing with complexity because it can help us deal in new ways with many of the issues our organizations face.

Think about things in different ways can help us work through the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that accompanies complexity. In doing so, it provides us with new ways of addressing critical issues, such as how to standardize and consolidate functions so we can decrease spending in less critical areas while increasing spending in areas that generate greater strategic return for our organization overall. An example of this from a library IT perspective would be investing in new data mining software. One of the potential benefits of doing so is it would allow us to spend less time tinkering with routine library management system reports and shift the responsibility for that type of reporting closer to where it belongs in the organization. It would also allow the systems development staff to focus on “higher-value” projects, such as developing enhanced user-interfaces that bring all our content together which is one of the most important issues we need to address today.