Understanding complexity just requires a simple process

I’m about to go through a client brief that contains 100’s pages of business analysis, future state mapping, architecture diagrams, blah blah blah. In the words of my boss, “there’s a sh*tload to get through before Wednesday”.

One of the great byproducts of Design Thinking is the translation of abstract & unstructured to practical and concrete using a series of methods.

In Design Thinking, you use the language like ‘Yup, we’ll get to consensus using a visualize-the-vote method’.

It’s the same for making sense of complexity in private. I’m not getting a room full of business users together running funky ice breakers… but I’m still using the concepts of Design Thinking. And yes, there will be post its. Many post-it.

First Diverge — collect data. Build bottom-up

“it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.” — Elon Musk

Collect data, don’t classify yet.

First I want to understand the fundamental principles. I won’t do this top down, I’ll do it bottom up. What I mean by that is, I’m not going to create the labels and then find content to fit it. Eg. I won’t put a label saying “Integration” or “Process” and then find the content from the document to fit it. I’ll go through each page and identify what it is, and write it on a post-it note, and post it on the wall. (Get a big wall)

Now classify

Now I’ll start grouping similar post-its together. Eventually themes start emerging. Some groups are bigger than others, some are better defined than others.

Eventually you’ll finish up with several clusters. Double check them, move them around. Notice the gaps.

This forms your semantic tree and branches. Your structure. Your fundamental principles.

Now start digesting the branches

You’ll notice it’s not so overwhelming. All that content has painted a big picture in front of you.

From here do the same again, but pick a branch, dig deeper. You can literally see where it fits into the big picture just by looking at the wall.

As you understand each branch, write a one sentence summary and place it around the cluster.

Finish out by creating a 1 page summary, guide or infographic

Don’t skip this step. Create some bullet points on the key people, things and concepts that are being referenced.

This is the starting point of creating insight. We now know the structure, but we haven’t judged it as good or bad yet, we just know what we have.

It’s easy to skip the last step, but don’t. Make sure you have something you can share.