Requisite Variety

Have we came across situations where counter service was poor and slow? And how we wish we could "do it ourselves" to expedite the process and get over with it.

Service excellence is everyone's dream. We will appreciate it when we encountered situations mentioned above. But apart from attitude and aptitude for good service, there is also a variety equation to consider. A good example of this variety equation is the departmental store - therefore products or items are stored and displayed at different departments: men's, ladies', children's, toys, electronics, housewares, etc ... And is it not for nothing they are called departmental store. The total system variety is carved up into subsystems of more reasonably sized variety. The customer who is not clear what commodity, if any, will meet her need, represents variety that cannot be trapped by this departmental arrangement; and what we need is an information desk or counter - to absorb this excess variety.

Variety? No, not quite that variety we understood to mean many and of different types. Variety here is meant to be the number of possible states of the system, and the number increases daily, for every institution because of an ever-increasing range of possibilities afforded by education, by technology, by communications, by prosperity, and by the way these possibilities interact to generate yet more variety.

The check-in counter staff, for example, cannot be less knowledgeable, less competent or less motivated that the passengers they serve - this is a simple example of a low-variety system serving a high-variety system. Another example to consider is the low attraction among youth to partake in social organisation activities. These youth inherently exist in high variety situations and systems, and organisational offerings are low-variety and will not be able to absorb the excess variety of the youth today.

So what is it that controls variety? The answer is dead simple: variety.

Only variety absorbs variety. Not only do we need variety to absorb variety, but we need the same amount of variety to do it. What we have arrived at in the departmental store is the dominant law of societary systems, Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety.

In a hypercompetitive marketplace (and in da'wah) where personalised service and attention are sought and won, variety matching is an important skill. And variety matching is a dynamic process of attenuation and amplification and getting the variety equation right.

High variety leaders may find it easier to attenuate their variety to match low variety situations, or members that they serve. But the reverse may not be true. Low variety leaders will lose their leadership role and function if they are not able to match the variety of the members they serve, or situations under their charge.

In any case, Law of Requisite Variety will exert itself.

And don't blame members or customers if we lose them !