How was Christmas? In the cold light of January, are you able to read that word ‘Christmas’ and picture how it really was for you, or do all those classic Christmas images still come barging in, nudging reality out of the way?

For I don’t think any time of year conjures quite so much visually, does it? If I had to describe those familiar Christmas images in a word or two – heartwarming scenes of human nature at its best; all that good cheer, good food and good drink, not to mention the reassuring pop of reds and greens – I might reach for ‘rich abundance and reassuring simplicity’. 

For many of us, there certainly is abundance over the Christmas period. Spending goes through the roof and credit card bills up the chimney. We pile plates high with excellent cheese and sweet treats, and the presents higher.

But simplicity? It’s the grasping after those scenes of reassuring simplicity that can make us come unstuck at Christmastime. Christmas is anything but simple. Of course, it might have been ‘simple’ to create a cockles-warming festive scene if you had an army of domestic staff (way back when) or keen-bean runners (the TV cookery show version of today). But for most of us who celebrate it, Christmas is taxing in its complicatedness.

Don’t get me wrong here. I adore Christmas – I defy anyone to prove they love it more! – but I adore it in all its glorious, nerve-shredding complexity. This year, as ever, I met it full force. I gave it my all. I decked those halls. And when the scene was set, the candles flickering, the lights low, the oven murmuring delicious rumours, everything just-so – then I allowed myself a few moments of ‘simplicity’. But boy were they few. And far between at that.

Communion with complexity

Acceptance of – even communion with – complexity is what we need during the Christmas period but also at all times. It’s what we need from our leaders and it’s how we need to lead. For too long we’ve assented to and even glorified oversimplification. We set end goals that look – two, three, four quarters ahead of time – reassuringly feasible and attainable, and then attempt to drag ourselves and our organisations towards them.

But often those end goals are, in fact, idealistic and unattainable. They’re pipe dreams. We start on them full of the joys of spring and don’t notice that the landscape in which we formed the goals is constantly in flux, and that they no longer really suit it.

We need always to edge forwards from where we are now. Dave Snowden, the genius behind the cynefin framework, evokes the wisdom of a song that quite a few of us will have heard during the festive period – ‘The Next Right Thing’ from Frozen 2!

He talks about it in this highly instructive episode from The Decision-Making Studio podcast. The gist here is that the world – and the organisations within it – are subject to such complexity that we simply cannot project too far into the future. Instead, we have to do ‘the next right thing’, conducting simultaneous safe-to-fail experiments as we go. ‘The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and solutions can’t be imposed; rather, they arise from the circumstances’ – as Snowden and Mary E. Boone propose in this excellent article.

Some figures – demagogues, populists and other unwise leaders – seek to oversimplify. This can be reassuring in the short term, both for ourselves and our listeners. Those who polarise – which we see increasingly on all sides – are doing the same. Polarised positions are oversimplified positions. They dismiss everything ‘over there’. As leaders, we must hold all that should be taken into account, and not recoil.

For the world is complex and constantly in flux. A static snapshot of what we wish to be the truth will fall like a house of cards. A good leader will surf the waves of complexity rather than try to dam them.

So don’t be afraid of complexity in 2025. Embrace it. Deck its halls. When you feel the rare gift of simplicity, enjoy it for what it is: a moment or two in the eye of the wonderful tempest that is life and leadership.