Working in Complexity: Start with What Is, Then Take the Next Best Step
It's the only way...
We talk about alignment a lot. But it’s not a finish line; it’s a constantly moving target.
And it only becomes achievable once people can see where they truly are.
This truth sits at the heart of effective collaboration in complexity. And yet most organisations are still using tools, conversations, and assumptions that don’t work well enough.
That’s why I find voices like John Cutler’s resonate so much. His writing captures the texture of complexity – and the human challenge of working within it.
Making complexity legible
Cutler’s Substack channel is called The Beautiful Mess. I always feel a little conflicted every time a new post notification lands in my inbox because it’s about Product Development – an adjacent field to mine – and time is short. But I am rewarded each time I read one because he’s got a very fresh and insightful take on how teams can deal with the constant challenge of sifting through complexity to work better together.
Here’s a great line from his recent post on Shared Understanding at Scale that struck me:
“When people know how to read the information, how to participate, and when to dig deeper, they can review hundreds of diverse efforts effectively. The goal isn't to eliminate complexity, rather it's to make complexity legible.”
Exactly.
In another post, Connecting the Dots, Cutler’s view on why top-down, one-way communication, even just for context setting, doesn’t work for the complex organization:
“Resist the mental model of a cascade. Once you factor in causality, feedback loops, and the time it takes for outcomes to emerge, most cascade models break down.”
So clear.
Much of what organizations still call ‘alignment’ relies on exactly that – cascaded intent. And it fails.
The problem with agreement
Cutler also breaks down how a single word, prioritization, is used in different ways, often without people realising it. He says:
“After all these years, I finally put something into words about prioritization. The key insight was that humans jam four primary jobs into the prioritization discussion. These jobs are related, but they're distinct enough that conflating them really gets in the way of effective collaboration around prioritization.”
He identifies four distinct ‘jobs’ that people are trying to do in conversations about prioritization:
Prioritization for Efficiency: What can we drop, delegate, or delay? We’re overloaded and need focus.
Prioritization for leverage and effectiveness: Are we doing the right things, not just doing things well?
Prioritization for alignment and autonomy: Do we have shared context? Do we need to act without constantly escalating decisions?
Prioritization for support, funding, and commitment: Is the organisation actually behind this work, with money, resources, and visible commitment?
It takes some top-level listening skills to discern differences like that when, naturally, our brains hook onto pre-established meanings and seek to fit everything into that frame. Without that clarity, people can continue to talk at cross purposes about the kind of prioritization they’re looking for.
And because complexity and disorientation can be uncomfortable, we want to be agreeable and supportive. A behavioural bias can take over: we reassure each other with affirming eye contact, we nod our heads, we articulate confidence and commitment.
“Absolutely”
“Couldn’t agree more”
“I’m with you on that one”.
We try to make the ground beneath us feel solid by agreeing – even when we don’t fully understand each other.
But when the terrain is complex, pretending it’s simple and stable doesn’t make it so.
The question isn’t: Do we all agree?
It is: Do we see where we are clearly enough to take the next best step together?
That kind of clarity requires a bit more than discussion.
How people deal with the challenge of complexity
Here are four responses:
1. Situational awareness before action
Dave Snowden emphasises the importance of knowing where you are before acting. It’s an idea that traces back to Timothy Gallwey’s The Inner Game (1974) that collective awareness precedes team performance.
In complexity, that means scanning your context before deciding what’s next, rather than assuming a pre-set playbook will work.
2. Team design as an enabler
Cutler describes two organizational “graphs”:
Company A has a classic hierarchical structure. Intent flows top-down. Teams execute. It's clean on paper, but too rigid for adaptive work.
Company B uses a mesh-like structure. Intent is distributed across teams, trios, and leadership layers. Everyone uses their own context and horizon to make sense of their part of the system.
It’s messy, but it reflects reality. And it enables adaptability.
3. Concept mapping for whole picture sense-making
A 2021 study1 showed that when teams build a concept map of their market, product, and processes together, it significantly improves shared understanding.
Here’s how it works:
Collaborative strategy session: It’s like assembling a puzzle – everyone sees how their piece fits.
Mental model alignment: People articulate how they see things. Misunderstandings surface. Constructive conflict becomes possible.
Directory of expertise: By mapping what they know, people reveal who knows what, creating an informal expertise network.
Living knowledge base: The map becomes a shared reference point, one that teams can return to and adapt as things shift.
It doesn't eliminate performance dips during change, but it helps teams adapt faster, because they’re learning together.
4. Identification of key alignment gaps for team learning and action
This is the one I’m most passionate about (which is why we at Mirror Mirror are dedicating ourselves to it).
This approach uses a diagnostic to compare how people in teams see multiple aspects of their effectiveness, so the alignment gaps become clear. Facing up to these with a structured dialogue process, teams can fast-track the process of building shared awareness of ‘what is’ and agreement on ‘what next’.
Working in complexity
Whatever is right for the team, one thing is clear. The good old discussion is hopelessly insufficient. In complex environments, there’s too much going on for loose conversations to create real clarity.
Shared understanding must be built deliberately. That means using the right tools, frameworks, and practices – not to force agreement, but to create legibility.
In complexity, the work is not simply deciding what to do.
It’s building the clarity needed to decide what’s next, collectively.
M. Santos, C., Uitdewilligen, S., M. Passos, A., Marques-Quinteiro, P., & Maynard, M. T. (2021). The Effect of a Concept Mapping Intervention on Shared Cognition and Adaptive Team Performance Over Time. Group & Organization Management, 46(6), 984-1026. Article 1059601120981623. https://doi.org/10.1177/1059601120981623