The Pressure of IT on Leaders and Managers
Recently, some people have shown interest in complicated versus complexity. There are a few differences in the descriptions of the two concepts, but those are few and do not take away from the fact that we live and work in a world that is vastly more challenging to maneuver through than just a decade ago.
At one time it was thought that Information Technology (IT) would reduce the tedium of the activities of daily living and also free up time for increased employee effectiveness and efficiency.
But while most would agree that in several aspects IT has made life simpler, it is also quite possible that many leaders and managers would agree that IT has indeed reduced reflex and response times and thereby places more pressure on them and their staff. The difficulty extends to the fact that clients, workers and managers can contact the firm and can be contacted 24/7/365. We rarely have a real day off. Constant connectivity never allows one to get away from work.
IT assisted in the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) which is increasing the complexity of our world due to the multitude of organizational and environmental interactions that their use creates. IT and AI create problems that are very hard to predict and can cause a gamut of unpredictable organizational damage. AI introduces a level of interdependency between organizational divisions, branches, departments, and offices which makes predictability of outcomes of plans and problem and solutions far less accurate than in a less complicated environment. Problems can no longer be broken down into simple base parts that allows an arrival at readily available solutions in a linear and predictable way (methodology).
While IT and AI allow for instant communication and information transfer, the amount of information transmitted in a short period of time can be difficult to sort through and verify. In addition, IT and AI can introduce self-directed changes in a system causing a further perplexity of the multiplicity of issues that leaders must contend with. On top of that, in complexity information rapidly becomes outdated. This leads to incident planning and operational actions that end up behind the power curve, reducing their effectiveness or rendering the plans and actions to essentially useless wasting time, resources.
There are dozens of theoretical approaches to handling issues and crises. What I am interested in are real-world solutions that have been utilized to handle issues and crises in such circumstances. Is there anyone who has been involved in an (organizational) crisis in a complex environment? If so, please comment and explain how you gathered intelligence, formulated a plan, and carried out reliable operations in such complex environment to bring a difficult issue to a conclusion.
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