The power of the 'rule of hand'
Cutting through situations of overwhelming complexity by finding the right key indicators of systemic influence.
The work of Brian Walker on resilience examines ‘social-ecological’ systems, an umbrella term referring to any environment involving a mix of designed organisations and natural environments, where there is an attempt to influence system behaviours towards observably beneficial outcomes and/or explicitly stated goals. In the typology developed to place organisations within the complexity landscape, we would term most of these as DN organisations, designed systems operating in a complex domain.
Power law (or Pareto principle) relationships have been demonstrated as frequently occurring in natural systems, and the relative influence of key domain factors for a particular system will also normally follow this pattern. (On the other hand, designed organisations can have much more skewed or limited power relationships.)
This is the essence of Walker’s “rule of hand”: Due to how the power law works, documenting and monitoring just 3-5 key indicators that reflect changes in the utility of a system over time can be sufficient to understand 80% or more of system impacts. It is a useful heuristic for reducing analytical complexity to a manageable level and understanding where the most critical efforts should lie.
For example: The “rule of hand” indicators, and the justification for their selection, for an organisation like the International Red Cross might be as follows:
Funding levels — provision or withholding of funding by donors directly impacts on ability to undertake mission
Compliance of third parties with rules of engagement — collapse in the norms that support the operations of Red Cross in war and crisis theatres would be disastrous for employee safety
Social license — perception of Red Cross as a neutral, high integrity humanitarian aid organisation is essential to obtain permission to operate
Access to sites — Measured either as an absolute number or a proportion of requests, Red Cross cannot operate effectively without access to the sites at which it administers aid
Recognition — Elimination of both false positive and false negative identification scenarios is essential to preserve reputation and the safety of staff
Each of these indicators can be used to effectively test priorities and the success of initiatives, and are difficult to game without malice since they are so fundamental to the mission of Red Cross as an organisation. This is an important test of “rule of hand” indicators — done well, they should be so obviously relevant to organisational survival and success that they act as stable anchors of purpose in a complex environment.
To apply the rule of hand in your own organization:
Document core mission outcomes and existential risks
Identify the 3–5 indicators that most strongly correlate with achievement of outcomes and management of these risks
Evaluate whether the metrics are resistant to gaming and/or if there are incentives for gaming them
Monitor trends of indicators over time, never focusing on absolute values or short time spans where noise and seasonal trends could overwhelm the signal