New Economist Intelligence report confirms that organizational complexity is a major business challenge

The Economist Intelligence Unit recently published a report (see below) that concludes that organizational complexity is now a key managerial challenge in many firms. Although different sources of complexity are mentioned, I noted that 57% of the respondents say that their organization’s structure adds to the complexity.

This is the third major survey conducted among top executives on this topic. The same conclusion was reached in the global CEO survey done by PwC (2007) and in a similar study conducted by IBM in 2009. Each of these surveys had more than 2,000 respondents.

As I have discussed before (see this blog post for an example), one problem is that much work in this area is hampered by inadequate definitions. As Peer Gynt says in Ibsen’s famous play – “the wilder the starting-point, the result will oft be the more original”. Although I believe that the trend is unmistakable and that one cannot contest the results of these surveys, the surveys do not provide much guidance in terms of how one can address the complexity. To do that, one must first start by a clear definition of what complexity is and how it can be assessed /measured. One cannot improve something that one cannot even describe!