Characteristics of Complexity
Adapted from Harvest Moon Consultants, Characteristics of a Complex System www.harvestmoonconsultants.com.
When you think about the challenges you face as an educational leader, what comes to mind? Perhaps you're working to increase student engagement, build more inclusive school cultures, or improve learning outcomes for students who have been historically marginalized. As you tackle these challenges, you might notice that simple solutions rarely work — what succeeds in one classroom might struggle in another. Fixing one problem sometimes creates unexpected challenges elsewhere. The situations and systems you’re working in are complex. Understanding complex systems is fundamental to work in schools and educational institutions, organizations and communities.
A complex system is a system made up of many parts that interact with each other. These systems shape how people interact, learn and develop together. Understanding the characteristics of complex systems (also known as complex adaptive systems or CAS) is essential for anyone working toward change, particularly in education settings where multiple factors influence student success and outcomes.
What is Complexity / A Complex Adaptive System?
Complexity emerges when many elements interact in interdependent ways, creating patterns and behaviors that cannot be predicted by looking at the individual parts alone. Unlike complicated systems (like a car engine) that can be understood by breaking them down into their components, complex systems must be understood holistically through their patterns, relationships and dynamics.
A Complex Adaptive System (CAS) is a specific type of complex system where interconnected parts change and adapt as conditions change. Like natural ecosystems or the human body, these systems feature components that interact in ways that create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. The "adaptive" nature means that the system learns and evolves over time based on experience. In education, this means leaders must move beyond seeking universal "best practices" or replicable models, and instead recognize how context, relationships, and local conditions shape outcomes.
For example, what may seem like a straightforward task —like implementing a new curriculum— reveals the inherent complexity of educational systems. Understanding whether a new curriculum will support student learning depends on multiple interrelated factors like:
Who was involved in selecting and designing the curriculum
Whether the content resonates with students' lived experiences and community context
How political and social factors influence implementation
The ways in which existing inequities affect access and engagement
Five Characteristics of Complexity
1. Ambiguous and Partially Knowable
Complex systems can be understood from multiple perspectives, but no single view captures its entirety. This isn't a limitation but rather an inherent characteristic—like trying to understand an entire community through any single lens or perspective. This characteristic requires developing comfort with ambiguity and valuing multiple ways of knowing.
“Working with partially knowable systems also requires key "inner system" awareness and capacities. Leaders often have a strong attachment to "knowing" and may reach for certainty when risk feels high and uncertainty is perceived as a threat” (Harvest Moon, n.d.). Developing comfort with not knowing becomes a crucial leadership capacity.
Example: In a school community, educators might understand certain visible aspects like classroom dynamics, test scores, or attendance patterns. However, many crucial elements remain partially hidden: the complex social dynamics between students, the impact of community factors on learning, the ways systemic inequities manifest in daily experiences, or how cultural contexts influence student engagement. While leaders can gain valuable insights through data and observation, they must acknowledge the limits of their understanding.
Key Practices:
Engage multiple stakeholders: Actively seek out diverse perspectives, especially from those historically marginalized or excluded from decision making. Create authentic opportunities for students, families, and community members to contribute to design and decision making.
Embrace divergent thinking: Create space for different interpretations, particularly those that challenge the status quo.
Take Action to Learn: Take intentional steps forward while remaining attentive to impacts of those steps on different individuals and communities.
Iterate as You Go: Continuously adjust approaches based on new learnings and feedback from those most affected.
2. Unpredictable
In complex systems, change rarely follows a linear path. Cause and effect relationships are often unclear or delayed, making it impossible to precisely predict outcomes. This unpredictability challenges us to remain flexible and respond to emerging needs and opportunities.
Example: Consider a school district’s initiative to increase student voice in decision-making. The initial step of creating student advisory councils might lead to unexpected outcomes: In one school, students might identify mental health as their primary concern, leading to a restructuring of support services. In another, students might surface inequities in disciplinary practices, catalyzing a complete revision of school culture approaches. A third school might see students creating new peer mentoring systems that cultivate relationships across grade levels. Each development reveals new aspects of the system that weren't visible at the start.
Key Practices:
Small Experimental Actions: Rather than implementing large-scale changes all at once, test ideas in a way that allows for learning and adjustment. This might mean piloting new approaches in a few classrooms or with a select group first.
Monitor Impacts Carefully: Pay attention to how changes affect different groups and communities differently. This includes tracking both quantitative and qualitative impacts.
Set Direction of Travel: Maintain a strong commitment to equity while adapting specific strategies based on emerging results. The destination remains constant even as the path to get there shifts.
3. Interconnectedness
Elements within complex systems influence each other in multiple, often subtle ways. Changes in one area ripple throughout the system, making it impossible to isolate individual components or effects. This interconnectedness means that equity challenges cannot be addressed in isolation.
Example: Student academic achievement connects to numerous factors: teacher preparation, classroom environment, peer relationships, family support, school resources, community context, and systemic inequities. A change in any one area—like introducing culturally responsive teaching practices—might influence student engagement, which affects peer relationships, which impacts classroom culture, which influences teacher morale, which affects instructional quality, creating multiple feedback loops that amplify or dampen the original change.
Key Practices:
Look for contributing factors rather than root causes: Examine situations from multiple angles, understanding how different forms of inequity intersect and reinforce each other. This means moving beyond simple explanations to understand complex dynamics.
Consider both technical and relational elements: Pay attention to how formal structures (policies, procedures, resources) interact with human relationships and cultural factors. Both domains matter for sustainable change.
Value small changes: Recognize that modest interventions at key leverage points can catalyze broader systemic change when relationships are understood.
Understanding these characteristics of complexity helps educational leaders approach change work with greater wisdom and effectiveness. Rather than seeking complete control or perfect solutions, this understanding encourages thoughtful engagement with the system's natural dynamics while maintaining an unwavering focus on equity and transformation.
4. Dynamic
Complex systems are constantly adapting and changing in response to internal and external factors. Unlike ordered systems, where stability is expected (and instability mitigated), complex systems are characterized by continuous change. While certain patterns may persist, their specific impact evolves over time in ways that cannot be predicted with hindsight alone.
Example: School culture continuously evolves through daily interactions, policy changes, staff turnover, and shifting student populations. A school might maintain a stated commitment to equity, but how this commitment manifests needs constant renewal and reimagining as contexts change, new challenges emerge, and community needs evolve.
Key Practices:
Look for patterns: Focus on understanding recurring dynamics rather than just responding to individual incidents. This helps identify deeper systemic issues that need attention.
Shift patterns rather than solve problems: Address underlying dynamics that generate challenges rather than just treating symptoms. This might mean changing conditions that give rise to issues.
Stay engaged with evolution: Maintain consistent attention to how the system is changing, particularly watching for emergence of new patterns or possibilities.
5. Self-Organization
Elements in complex systems naturally organize themselves around constraints and attractors without central control. Constraints are the boundaries or limits that shape behavior, like school schedules or classroom norms. Attractors are conditions or patterns that draw the system toward certain behaviors, like how shared values can influence group actions, or how successful practices tend to be adopted by others.
This is different from both highly controlled systems (like a factory assembly line where every action is prescribed) and completely chaotic systems (like a crowd rushing out of a building during an emergency). Instead, in complex systems, the individual parts and their environment influence and shape each other over time - like how students shape classroom culture while the classroom environment simultaneously shapes student behavior.
Example: Student social groups, teacher collaboration patterns, and informal leadership networks emerge naturally within schools. These self-organizing structures can either reinforce existing inequities (like social segregation by race or class) or create new possibilities (like cross-cultural student initiatives or teacher equity committees).
Key Practices:
Focus on conditions rather than control: Shape the environment that influences how patterns emerge rather than trying to dictate specific behaviors. This includes addressing system conditions that enable or constrain equity.
Work with natural tendencies: Align change efforts with existing patterns where possible, while actively disrupting patterns that perpetuate inequity.
Attend to constraints: Identify and adjust the boundaries and limitations that shape how the system organizes itself, particularly those that might limit access or opportunity.
Conclusion
Understanding the characteristics of complexity helps educational leaders approach change work with greater wisdom and effectiveness. Rather than seeking complete control or perfect solutions, this understanding encourages thoughtful engagement with the system's natural dynamics while maintaining an unwavering focus on equity and transformation.
Working with complex systems requires developing new leadership capacities: comfort with ambiguity, skill in pattern recognition, ability to work with emergence, and deep listening to multiple perspectives. These capacities, combined with an understanding of system characteristics, enable leaders to work more effectively toward educational equity and positive change.
References
Brown, a. m. (2017). Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. AK Press.
Harvest Moon Consultants. (n.d.). “Characteristics of a Complex System.” www.harvestmoonconsultants.com
Meadows, D. (2008). Thinking in Systems: A Primer. Chelsea Green Publishing.
Snowden, D. J., & Boone, M. E. (2007). A Leader's Framework for Decision Making. Harvard Business Review, 85(11), 68-76.
Wheatley, M. J. (2006). Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.