Keep it simple, stupid

Dry even for a textbook, Philip Haynes' book argues that classical management can't be applied to 'complex' organisations. But much of it boils down to 'thinking about how the other person feels', finds Lyn Whitfield

Managing Complexity in the Public Services By Philip Haynes Publisher: Open University Press. ISBN:

0335212204.£19.99

Slimming experts and management gurus have a lot in common. Some of what they say changes people's perceptions and behaviour. A lot of it boils down to a few, simple precepts that are deeply boring to apply.

As a result, both the diet and the management industries have a tendency to import ideas from other sectors to make their advice sound scientific and fun.

The diet industry has given us the F-plan diet, the cabbage soup diet and the Atkins diet.

The management industry has given us Taylorism, Fordism, management by objectives, performance management and, now, complexity.

Not that Philip Haynes, a principal lecturer in the school of applied social science at Brighton University, sees complexity as just another management theory.

Instead, he presents it as a new way of looking at the public services, one that can explain why classical management theories 'have not served the public sector well since they rose to the height of popularity in the 1980s'.

Managing Complexity in the Public Services has a 30-page chapter on 'what is complexity' - with 10 pages on its mathematics.However, the gist seems to be that a complex organisation is one that exhibits a high degree of selforganisation and changes over time as a result of interaction between its different elements.

Haynes argues that classical management theories do not work in such organisations because the professionals within them need autonomy, so imposing rigid objectives on them can be de-skilling and demoralising. And because there is there is no easy division between the activities of an organisation and its outcomes, imposing central targets may have unintended and negative consequences.

This is the roughage in Haynes' book and to the extent that 'complexity' illuminates issues that are already widely debated, it is useful.However, Managing Complexity has some serious weaknesses (putting aside its style, which even for a textbook is less than lively).

Haynes never defines what he means by a public service, and picks examples to illustrate his wider points more or less at random from schools, the NHS, social services and transport.

Yet while it is possible to identify trends that have affected all of these public services over the past two decades, they have all operated in slightly different policy environments and responded in different ways - as 'complexity' itself seems to suggest they should have done.

If 'complexity' is going to be useful, it must be as a way of getting into the detail of these adaptations rather than as another way of generating generalisations.

The second half of Haynes' argument is that 'complexity implies that a new mindset is needed for the management of public services'.

Managers, he says, should apply 'emotional intelligence' to their work and give professionals as much autonomy as possible.

They should recognise the nature of complexity and try and work with it, engaging with staff so they can 'take positive action to mediate an improvement'.

Again, there is something in this. But, ironically, it oversimplifies the environment in which managers have to work.

Public services may show a high degree of self-organisation, but they are also subject to external pressures that may conflict with professional values.

When this happens, managers cannot just be the neutral facilitators of agreed change - they will find themselves in the difficult but legitimate role of pushing through contested change.

Anyway, it is not quite clear what Haynes' 'new mindset' really amounts to. Stripped of its jargon, a lot of it could be boiled down to 'think about how the other person is feeling'; 'have some core goals, but be flexible outside them'; 'let other people take the credit if you get what you want'.

Excellent precepts - but not ones that require a 160-page book, any more than 'eat less and move about more' requires The New Diet Revolution.