Chaos In The House: Managing Workplace Complexity

In a previous article, I spoke of how workplace complexity and work overload act like a wave of resistance pushing against all efforts on the part of leaders to move the organization forward. And explained how over time it can build into a tsunami that overwhelms and drowns the workforce.

When this occurs, performance worsens as leaders become more frustrated and disoriented. More disturbing is how workforce morale deteriorates, and workers begin to think about their options, like jumping ship. Righting this situation is difficult at best, and in many cases, it’s downright impossible without new leadership.

Much scholarly work has been conducted on the workplace and its impact on the workforce. Here are a couple of points that you will find over and over again:

• Workplace complexity and work overload are on the rise and have a direct impact on organizational performance.
• Over time, a chaotic workplace will not only degrade the performance of the organization but denigrate the culture of the organization as well.

The late Peter Drucker, proclaimed the management guru of the century by The New York Times, repeatedly reminded us, “Chaos is an opportunity, not a threat.” He touted this belief over his fifty-plus-year career as a management consultant. He believed that turning chaos into opportunity was a sign of a great leader.

He proved time and again that this was the case. But are things changing? Is the current paradigm shift different? As the proliferation of technology continues to make the workplace an ever more complex environment to get things done, is it possible to turn chaos into opportunity.

To an extent, all companies experience a certain level of chaos, but it is usually manageable. I daresay that leading in a chaotic environment is more prevalent today than ever before. What concerns leaders most is that it wears on the human spirit. Contending with workplace chaos today is much trickier than it once was yet much more needed. I believe Drucker is correct. Great leaders will rise above the fray, turning chaos into opportunity to gain the competitive advantage. That you can count on!

When the workplace becomes chaotic, there are usually many factors at play, and none are more contributory than the sheer volume of workflow. Work overload is a direct result of an overabundance of workflow. When the volume of workflow exceeds the human capacity to cope, chaos creeps in.

A major study that amplifies how the volume of workflow alone can lead to chaos in the workplace was published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior in 2020. Titled “Dynamic Patterns of Flow in the Workplace,” it concluded the following:

1. Flow in the workplace represents a high degree of within individual (pertaining to self) variables characterized as chaotic in 75 percent of the cases studied.
2. High levels of flow are associated with chaos.
3. Different levels of the flow experience seen as merging of actions, awareness, age, and job type are associated with the emergence of different, often unwanted patterns (e.g., chaotic, random).

This study, like so many others on workplace and workforce dynamics leaves little doubt that the volume of workflow alone is enough to turn the workplace into chaos. This causes leaders to feel overwhelmed trying to keep pace. The study also showed that the longer chaos persists in the workplace, the more performance worsens.

A senior executive of a healthcare client who was experiencing a great deal of trouble getting control over the direction of organizational performance may have said it best when he declared, “We have chaos in the house!” This is the beginning of the end for many leaders which was the case with this leader. Regaining control over a chaotic workplace usually requires the organization to replace current leadership.

While discussing how the proliferation of technology contributes to chaos in the workplace with the late Pete Bradshaw, president of Organizational Consultants Inc., School of Organizational Management professor at the University of North Carolina, and an adjunct consultant to our firm, he shared, “A primary cause of the chaotic workplace of today comes from work overload. Executives are using technology as a weapon to reduce headcount that to a great extent is responsible for the uptick in workload. Over time, employees become less attentive, less engaged, and less productive leading to poor organizational performance.”

I, too, have witnessed leaders who use technology to justify contracting the rubber band of resources thinking that it alone will enable the organization to do more with less. Assessing the return on human capital periodically and making the appropriate adjustments is good and necessary. However, as leaders squeeze down the workforce just realize that the volume of workload increases proportionally on the remaining workers.

The attitude of “do more with less” is a fact of organizational life. But don’t be blind to the fact that there is a limit beyond which the organization stops working altogether and no matter how much technology is piled on to bail out the situation—it just makes matters worse!

As the wave of resistance created by the proliferation of technology continues to eat away at the marrow of organizational life, leaders must find solutions that simplify and not complicate workplace and workforce dynamics. This means modifying how leaders think and work—never an easy thing to do!