https://socialinnovation.org/news/2015/02/20/farewell-to-the-late-brenda-zimmerman/

THE NINE PRINCIPLES OF WORKING WITH COMPLEXITY

1. View your system through the lens of complexity in addition to the metaphor of a machine or a military organization.
2. Build a good-enough vision. Provide minimum specifications, rather than trying to plan every little detail.
3. When life is far from certain, lead with clockware and swarmware in tandem. Balance data and intuition, planning and acting, safety and risk, giving due honour to each.
4. Tune your place to the edge. Foster the “right” degree of information flow, diversity and difference, connections inside and outside the organization, power differential and anxiety, instead of controlling information, forcing agreement, dealing separately with contentious groups, working systematically down all the layers of the hierarchy in sequence and seeking comfort.
5. Uncover and work with paradox and tension. Do not shy away from them as if they were unnatural.
6. Go for multiple actions at the fringes, let direction arise. You don’t have to be “sure” before you proceed with anything.
7. Listen to the shadow system. That is, realize that informal relationships, gossip, rumor and hallway conversations contribute significantly to agents’ mental models and subsequent actions.
8. Grow complex systems by chunking. Allow complex systems to emerge out of the links among simple systems that work well and are capable of operating independently.
9. Mix cooperation with competition. It’s not one or the other.