 Complexity management is an alternative approach or paradigm to our more traditional management methods. Thus, it might be of value to us to start off by discussing what we mean by management in general, before we go on to talk about different approaches to it in later modules. Management, in its most general sense, is a very fundamental human activity. In its most basic sense, we can understand management as being about organization. That is to say, it is the activity of organizing or arranging things so as to achieve some desired functional outcome. As such, management is a pervasive activity that we're all engaged in almost all of the time. When we get up in the morning, we manage our appearance, choosing what clothes to wear in order to project a certain image. We manage our house by organizing the different elements so as to achieve the desired functionality of a living space. We organize our time so as to achieve something in the day. In all of these cases, we have a set of elements and we're trying to arrange them in order to achieve some desired outcome. This is the same on the micro level of organizing ourselves, as it is on the macro level of managing an entire organization, such as a mayor managing a city or for the management of a production process, a business or a country. So this is the idea of management within the most generalized sense, but when we talk about management in the professional sense, we understand the term management in a more narrow context. That is to say, we understand it to mean the management of an organization of people towards performing some collective function in order to achieve some desired outcome. So management then is of course not a static event, it is a process and we can think about a number of stages or activities within that process. We need to firstly understand and create some model to the system we wish to manage and the environment within which it operates. We need to bring people together and define some system to coordinate their activities towards the desired end. And this organization of people needs processes and procedures that enable it to execute on projects. And finally, the organization needs to be able to adapt and respond to the changing circumstances within its environment. So firstly then, we need some kind of model to the system we wish to manage. You can't begin to try and manage something if you don't know whatever it is you wish to manage. In order to manage something, we have to understand the system to some extent. And knowing the system means building up a model to it. If we want to manage something, we have to have experience of that system and it's through that experience that we learn how the organization behaves. The first time we get on a bike and try to manage the cycle, we fall off because we don't really understand how that system behaves. If you were sent in to manage a busy restaurant tomorrow without any experience of it, the outcome would be almost certainly a failure because you have no model for how that system operates. But if you've been working in that restaurant for 10 years or so, you would have over that time gained the experience required to build up a model of how it functions and thus become capable of managing it. Because whatever it is we're trying to manage does not exist in isolation, we have to have both a model of the system and its environment. A business needs to know about the industry they're in, or a government needs to know about the international political environment within which it operates. Finally, the model has to be as complex as the system that you're trying to manage. This is what is called requisite variety. Next, the process of management involves the organizing of people into a functional unit. In order to have an effective organization, we need to integrate and coordinate a set of people with different capabilities. Both of these terms integration and differentiation are important. Integration means they are working together. Differentiation means they are doing different things. Without either of these, we don't really have an organization. If everyone performs different functions, but they are not coordinated, we don't have an organization. Likewise, if everyone performs exactly the same function, again we don't really have an organization. The organization is in how we arrange different functional capabilities in order for them to work together. It is only when we're able to do that, that we get something that is more than simply the sum of its parts, and thus we actually get an organization and not simply a set of people. And thus, we can say trying to create systems that enable different people to work together constructively is a central activity to the profession of management. How well the organization achieves in doing this is central to its success and overall functionality. For example, if we take two economies like that of Germany and Peru, we might ask how is Germany capable of producing all sorts of complex products and services, sophisticated chemicals, manufacture airplanes, produce advanced financial services, etc. But the Peruvian economy is not capable of producing many of these things. If we look closely, we will see that within the German economy, there are very many people who know how to do a very many different specialized functions. Whilst also they have very many large public and private organizations capable of coordinating all these diverse activities towards producing these complex products. While the Peruvian economy lacks both this wide variety and abundance of different occupations, and many of the institutions required to successfully coordinate them. Why and how we get people to come together and coordinate their activities will be a defining factor in the makeup to the organization, and we will be discussing different managerial approaches to trying to achieve these incoming modules. We've been largely talking about the internal structure and workings to the organization, but at the end of the day, this organization needs to perform some function within its environment. That is to say, deliver some outcome in the form of a good or service that is of value, and this can be defined as the system's operations. As such, we can understand operations as another distinct activity of management. According to Wikipedia, operations management is an area of management concerned with designing and controlling the process of production and redesigning business operations in the production of goods or services. Thus the function of operations management is to execute on the organization's projects, and this will require the designing, implementing and monitoring of a set of processes and procedures to facilitate production of some kind. Organizations are dynamic entities, subject to internal and external change, and in order to persist over time, they have to be able to navigate this changing environment. The organization needs to be able to define long term desirable objectives and be capable of adapting to changes within its environment. This is what we call strategic management. It requires business intelligence and decision making capabilities. Within a typical corporation, this is the function of the C level suite of executives who are expected to have a full overview of the internal workings to the organization and have a broad understanding of the industry they're operating in and a long term vision as to what is the best general direction for the organization to go in in order for it to develop and grow over time. Strategic management is the awareness, intelligence and leadership of the organization. This of course doesn't necessarily have to be at the top of some hierarchy. The organization may become corrupted in which case those in positions of leadership are no longer aware of the organization or environment or for some other reason do not act in the long term interests of that organization. Thus leadership can come from any position, it can be anyone in the organization that is aware of how the organization works and takes leadership by acting in a way that is in the best interests of that organization in that environment irrespective of how others may act. Strategic leaders need to define what is the function or desired state of the system and be able to ascribe some metric to that in order to be able to receive information about the system and its state with respect to its objectives. In this module we've tried to outline a basic definition to what we mean by the practice of management which we talked about as the activity of organizing or arranging people or things so as to achieve some desired function and outcome. We then went on to outline some of the basic functions involved in the profession of management including firstly needing some kind of model to the system we wish to manage noting that in order to manage something we have to actually know that organization structure and behavior which means building up some kind of model to it. We talked about how management involves the organizing of people into a functional unit requiring us to integrate and coordinate a set of individuals with different capabilities. We talked about operations as another central activity requiring the management of projects through which the organization executes in the production of some product or service. Finally we looked at the need for the strategic management required for the leadership of the organization in defining and pursuing long-term desired objectives.