Complexity Laundering

When someone points to any number of things instead of themselves.

Recent events reminded me of this fuzzy problem: A person in power talked about how a company they used to lead had lost its edge. Even though they presided over what is often considered that company’s “peacetime”. In short, if anyone’s accountable, wouldn’t they be at least on the list?

So what’s going on?

I want to coin a term: Complexity Laundering.

Complexity laundering is a trick used by those in power. It’s almost never intentional. CEOs and other powerful people are often way way more constrained than you think. When things get tough, they point to the mess and say they can't do anything. And things are almost always tough. They're not lying - the world is complex. In any interesting domain there are loads of thing in play. But they twist this truth into an excuse. It's like washing dirty money clean.

Why don’t they act or accept some partial responsibility? It’s easier to hide behind the chaos: Point at the general systemic forces. Those forces exist! But when they can pick and choose which problems to highlight, the ones that make them look blameless. They forget the problems they could solve.

This game keeps things the same. The powerful stay safe, and the mess gets worse. Complexity becomes a shield, not a challenge. It lets them avoid responsibility, while the real issues are left to rot.

So why does it work? When we expect perfection. If we in the audience don’t allow leaders to be human or fallible, we will get leaders that never accept responsibility. They’ll launder their liability because we force them to.