Sep 22, 2021
Chapter 4. Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety
Pal’chinskii’s first principle was: Increase your chances of success by seeking out and experimenting with a variety of ideas. A few decades later W. Ross Ashby, a leading British scientist, echoed this principle in “An Introduction to Cybernetics”[1] — the science of communication and control in living and mechanical systems. What would become known as ‘Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety’ stated that: If a system is to adapt to change its control mechanism must have at least as much variety as that found in the external environment. In other words, if the world is changing faster than your ability to respond to it then you’re in trouble.
To understand Ashby’s Law picture a room with a thermostat in it that’s linked to a heating system. The thermostat continually monitors the room’s temperature and, in order to maintain an optimal temperature, switches the heating on (or off) whenever it hits a certain level. However, if instead of continually monitoring the room’s temperature the thermostat only checked it once a day it would switch the heating on (or off) too infrequently and the room would become either too hot (or too cold) for much of the day. In this situation the thermostat is the heating system’s control mechanism and it needs a sufficient variety of information flowing in (frequent temperature checks) if it’s going to respond effectively to any changes.
Management is the control mechanism of organisations as it chooses what to focus on, the people hired to do this, how they are incentivised, and the structure, processes and technologies that are invested in to help them do this. But unlike thermostats, which are devices engineered to control mechanical systems, managers are fallible human beings trying to control organic, and therefore unpredictable, living systems. And the natural human aversion to uncertainty[2] results in many managers treating their organisations the way they wished they were (predictable machines) rather than how they really are (unpredictable organisms). These managers — in search of certainty and control in a volatile and uncertain world — simplify reality to make it manageable: Disruptive ideas are ignored in favour of proven ‘best practices’ they can imitate;[3] contrarian people (mavericks) are overlooked in favour of hiring or promoting those considered a better ‘cultural fit’, (i.e. more of the same type of people the organisation already has); and, rather than seeking beneficial but uncertain outcomes, there’s a preference for outputs that can be measured against Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) so the organisation can be managed as if it’s a well-oiled machine.
Forcing the messy reality of an organic world into ordered, repeatable mechanical processes helps create the comforting sense of certainty and control many managers seek. But it also creates a critical deficiency. When new ideas are not explored (as their outcomes are uncertain and can’t be easily — unlike outputs from ‘best practices’) organisations don’t develop a requisite variety of possible responses to change when the inevitable shock hits (a game-changing new technology, a global crash, a pandemic etc). The landscape shifts but these organisations are unable to adapt as they have only one way of doing things. Their only option then becomes to hope that everything goes “back to normal” soon. But hope is rarely a viable strategy.
Adaptivity Intelligence (AQ)
Organisations that lack a requisite variety of responses to change suffer from ‘Low-AQ’ (Adaptivity Intelligence). They are “dead players”[4] — ‘incapable of working off-script and doing new things’. In contrast, ‘High-AQ’ organisations are “live players” — ‘able to do things they have not done before’. When told that something is “best practice”Rather live players ask: Why is this best practice?; for whom is this best practice?; when was this best practice?; and do those conditions apply to us today?. Rather than unthinkingly imitating someone else’s ‘past practices’ they experiment with new ideas to discover what’s valuable (and what’s not) for their organisation. They increase their chances of success by seeking out and experimenting with a variety of ideas ahead of time.
Live players also recognise the importance of Pal’chinskii’s second principle: Failure is inevitable, so do things on a small enough scale that it’s survivable. They don’t go all in on a single big bang change (ex, digital, cultural or agile transformation) as they know such ‘transformations’ to ideal future states are rarely completed before the world shifts again and they must adapt once more. They experiment with new ideas on a small-enough scale that any failure doesn’t cause collapse. This safe-to-fail approach means they can afford to experiment with multiple, even contradictory ideas, in order to learn more quickly what works or doesn’t[5]. This is how live players develop a requisite variety of responses to a volatile and changing world and become High-AQ organisations.
Fig. 9: Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety and Adaptivity Intelligence (AQ)
To be an effective control mechanism for organisations — like a thermostat continually checking a room’s temperature — management must encourage greater inward flows of information from which new ideas can be created and tested. However, more information means more ‘noise’ and uncertainty as the information flowing in is often complex, ambiguous, unreliable or incomplete. This is where Pal’chinskii’s third principle comes into play: Quickly identify and select what’s working in the local context by developing effective feedback loops between decision-makers and those closest to the action. High-AQ organisations seek out people with diverse backgrounds, varied experiences, and alternative ways of thinking to get multiple perspectives about what’s really happening. Then, rather than choosing a single path forward — an industry ‘past practice’ marketed as “best practice” — management encourages its diverse people to experiment and explore more widely in order to discover the next best moves forward for them at this time. By making moves where others fear to tread and continually learning as they go — amplifying what works and dampening what doesn’t — they develop a requisite variety of responses to a changing world. This is what makes a player “live” — capable of doing things they haven’t done before. Let’s have a look at an example of this in action.
Introduction to Part One — Why Best Practices Hold You Back
Chapter 1 — Forget Strategic Plans!
Chapter 3 — Pal’chinskii’s Principles
Chapter 4 — Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety
Chapter 5 — FujiFilm: Innovating Out of a Crisis
Chapter 6 — Honda B: Miscalculations and Mistakes
Chapter 7 — Honda-Yamaha War of Natural Selection
Chapter 8 — The Eastern Approach to Strategy
Chapter 9 — The Western Approach to Strategy
Chapter 10 — Make Moves, Not Plans
1 An Introduction to Cybernetics. W. Ross Ashby (1956)
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/books/IntroCyb.pdf
2 See Chapter 1
3 On the futility of copying ‘best practices’ see the Introduction
4 https://samoburja.com/live-versus-dead-players/
5 This is the approach advocated in the Cynefin Framework when dealing with complex situations: Probe-Sense-Respond, which privileges launching experiments (probes) to learn what works or doesn’t in a particular context. Probes that have positive outcomes are then amplified, while probes with negative outcomes are dampened (and learnings are fed through to new probes).
