Principles for managing complex adaptive systems
| Principle | Operationalization | Application to our example |
|---|---|---|
| Adapted from Zimmerman et al.19 | ||
| Good enough vision | Provide minimum specifications rather than planning every detail | Focus on patient and family schedules (for example, CT bookings should be as close as possible to clinic visits) |
| Tune to the edge | Foster the right degree of information flow, connectivity, diversity,and difference instead of controlling information and forcing agreement | Foster relationships between booking clerk and families |
| Chunking | Allow complex systems to emerge out of the links among systems that work well and are capable of operating independently | Reinforce the links that are effective, such as interface booking systems between CT scan and clinic |
| Clockware/ swarmware | Balance data and intuition, planning and acting,safety and risk | Explore whether the parents can do their own booking online. If so, follow to see what patterns emerge to build upon |
| Paradox | Uncover and use paradox rather than avoiding it as if it was unnatural | Ask questions that expose the paradoxes. For example, how can you coordinate CT scans and clinic visits when emergency CT scans take precedent over elective ones? |