The Human Factors of Teams: The Law of the Conservation of Complexity
The Law of the Conservation of Complexity
The Law of the Conservation of Complexity (otherwise known as Tesler’s Law) states that every application has an inherent amount of irreducible complexity.
Human Factors Perspective
In the mid 1980s, whilst working at Xerox PARC, a computer scientist named Larry Tesler observed that there is a degree of complexity in every application that cannot be further reduced. In other words every product contains a certain amount of inherent complexity that, if removed, would destroy the value or intended utility of the product.
Tesler proposed that one of the most important questions for designers to answer is “who must deal with the complexity?” Should it be the user or the designer / developer? For example, imagine a goal setting app for mobile phones. There are certain intrinsic tasks that the user must complete in order for the goal setting app to provide its intended value. Some basic tasks could include: setting goals, recording progress, viewing progress, and receiving feedback. If we examine these tasks in the context of Tesler’s Law, we know that if we spend time to design these tasks to be as useable and intuitive as possible, a person should be able to use the app with very little cognitive effort.
Conversely, if the product team does not spend time to ensure the app is useable, then the end user will feel the burden of the inherent complexity. This is often manifested in increased cognitive load, frustration, multiple errors, and additional time to complete tasks.
As you can see, one group must deal with the inherent complexity of the goal setting app. If the product team works to design the app to be as easy as possible to use, then a team of perhaps five people may need to spend several months of researching, designing, testing, and overcoming technical challenges. So for five people working 40 hours a week for four months, the amount of work effort could add up to 3200 hours. That may be a tough pill for a smaller organization to swallow. However, if the organization shifted the burden of complexity to the user, and the app is used by a million people, then the overall amount of human effort attached to the app can increase by many orders of a magnitude. This can lead to additional customer support calls, bug fixes, and costly redesigns.
Team Perspective
I propose that humans are the most complex systems in the universe. If that’s true then imagine how complex a sports team can be. Not only must a coach work to understand the individual complexities of each player, but by definition, a coach must also work to understand the best ways to encourage multiple players to work together to achieve a common goal, i.e. winning games.
At Horizon Performance, we have found that the most effective leaders work to develop behaviorally complimentary and cohesive players. Using the Law of the Conservation of Complexity, a coach has a choice. Either put in the work to understand the behavioral complexities of the individual players and the overall team dynamics, or simply ignore the behavioral component and essentially offload the burden to the players.
Since we now know that every system (or team) contains a certain amount of unremovable complexity, we can assume that either choice will demand a certain level of work effort. Coaches that take the time to get to truly know their team will reduce the time spent dealing with inefficiency and conflict later on in the season when team cohesiveness will matter the most.
