Small businesses need deep generalists
Effectively managing complexity requires a structured approach, whether by individuals or organizations. What size is your business?
Routine work is repetitive and standardized, designed to achieve consistent and predictable outputs efficiently. It involves minimal decision-making, relying on established knowledge. In contrast, knowledge work is intellectually engaging and focuses on solving problems or generating ideas. As Daniel Kahneman argues, the output of knowledge work is decisions.
Essentially, routine work executes decisions made during knowledge work, with both types of work existing on a spectrum defined by the complexity of decision-making.
Decision-making involves responding to change and effective decision-makers distinguish between the content of change and its context, as the context guides the most appropriate response.
The complexity of decision-making mirrors the complexity of the context and the challenge of fully understanding it.
In this sense, complexity refers to the predictability of behavior based on causal relationships, while the challenge lies in closing the interdisciplinary knowledge gap needed to understand those relationships.
Simply put, the context of change can either be complex or seem so.
These ideas can be better understood through mental models like the Cynefin Framework and The Five Orders of Ignorance.
The Cynefin Framework, developed by Dave Snowden and Mary Boone, helps decision-makers navigate change by categorizing it into five distinct contexts: Clear, Complicated, Complex, Chaotic, and Confused. Determining which context applies to your situation moves you from Confused to one of the others.
- In Clear contexts, causal relationships are obvious, and decisions are straightforward.
- In Complicated contexts, causal relationships aren't immediately obvious, and decisions require expertise.
- In Complex contexts, causal relationships are only understood in hindsight, and decisions rely on experimentation.
- In Chaotic contexts, no causal relationships exist, and immediate action is required to shift to a more manageable context.
The Five Orders of Ignorance, developed by Phillip Glen Armour, guides decision-makers in understanding levels of ignorance and how to address them, especially in software development.
- 0th Order of Ignorance (0OI) or Lack of Ignorance means complete knowledge.
- 1st Order of Ignorance (1OI) or Lack of Knowledge is when you know what you don’t know.
- 2nd Order of Ignorance (2OI) or Lack of Awareness is when you don’t know what you don’t know.
- 3rd Order of Ignorance (3OI) or Lack of Process means you don’t know how to find out what you don’t know.
- 4th Order of Ignorance (4OI) or Meta-Ignorance is when you’re unaware of the concept of ignorance levels.
The context you identify corresponds to your specific order of ignorance. However, because you determine the context based on your current order of ignorance, this can influence your judgment and may lead to misclassifying the situation.
In other words, you might mistake a context for another.
When your activities lean toward routine work, your context is likely Clear, and you operate on 0OI. But as your activities shift toward knowledge work, your current order of ignorance becomes critical in identifying the context of change and closing the interdisciplinary knowledge gap.
Large and medium-sized businesses address the complexity of decision-making by distributing it through hierarchy, reducing it vertically, and managing knowledge gaps horizontally. Small businesses, on the other hand, often lack this structure, requiring workers to structure themselves and take on multiple roles, often without even realizing it.
To thrive, small businesses need deep generalists, and knowledge workers in these settings must learn extensively and continuously to develop this versatility.
