Complexity in Context
The Complexity Sciences can help us tease out the relationship between an entity (living system) and its environment (a bigger living system). The relationship provides the initial conditions or context for growth, learning and change. We are looking at systems that are complex and adaptive with self-organizing and emergent qualities.
Watch this explanation by Peter Senge on learning in a complex and rapidly changing system.
Context creates space for possibilities and scope for differences. A complex context offers multiple perspectives and constraints. Rules govern local interactions that operate in an unpredictable and constantly changing context. It’s dynamic and constantly evolving to stay viable in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world.
So what?
Leaders need to develop the capacities and skills needed to thrive in a VUCA world. To face this fact means exploring differences and embracing new connections. Clearly, the more understanding you have the more effective you can be. You can make new distinctions and challenge old assumptions.
Think about how this new knowledge could be applied to your life and leadership challenges. How many times have you been in situations and said to yourself . . .
- “I’ve tried to talk to you, but you are just not listening.”
- “I ask for more time to think and reflect, but it’s not wanted”
- “I need to make longer-term decisions, but only short-term results matter”
- “I’ve asked to make changes, but the uncertainty is frightening”
Whether it is investment decisions, political choices or employee engagement we expect certainty, predictability, and security. This is what makes Brexit an issue of competence, authority, and accountability, instead of an opportunity for innovation and creativity. In complex decision making nothing is certain. Differences have to be negotiated and a balance struck to secure mutual benefits. The alternative is a stalemate from which everyone suffers. But common sense is not that common when emotions drown out logic and reason.
Jennifer Garvey Brewer talks about the overwhelm that complexity creates and shows its relevance to the VUCA world we are entering.
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To make practical use of complexity it must be viewed from the perspective of the individual agent acting and interacting within a system. As a “collective”, we face a set of constraints imposed upon us “externally” (top-down energy) by those in authority. We are also embedded in a “collective” contet that shapes our behaviour imposing (outside-in energy) on individual behaviour. We also carry with us a set of mental models and innate capacities coming from eacg individual (inside-out energy) and have to interact with others and face their judgements to get things done (bottom-up energy). Unless we can make sense of the combined effects of these forces, we will not be able to make sense of what is a constantly changing reality and identity.
Diagram courtesy of Integral Leadership
If we are open to wonder about things we will be more open to learning something valuable. We can look for the positive relationships between things, but then note the patterns and consequences we need to “make sense” of. Complexity Science can help us become better leaders because we can see how to balance multiple perspectives (internal and extrnal) and how to use them creatively to find another path as we engage “collectively”.
For example, in the Brexit talks both sides have face facts, explore possibilities and embrace uncertainty, by working to:
- Reduce the elements of uncertainty wherever possible
- Make sense of the certainties that remain and invest in them
- Make choices and structures that will deal with future uncertainties.
Differences have to be seen as a lever for joint action and positive change, so they are not a barrier to thinking differently. The Complexity Sciences suggest a negotiating strategy that:
- makes differences explicit and tensions transparent
- produces clarity of purpose and/or identity
- focuses on the differences that can make a positive difference
- maintains flexibility across and among the differences
- balances internal capacity and external implications
- stays connected and committed to purposeful conversation
What is complexity exactly?
Something that is complex emerges from conditions that have so many factors at play that they cannot be easily predicted in different conditions. This is because they can only react to the dynamic changes happening locally around them, and within the constraints placed upon them by the global conditions. The best we can do is use our senses and cognitive abilities to respond in a way that makes sense to us. We learn how to deal with the complications that a complex system places on us.
When the relationships are simple or can see the rules operating, that they become more predictable. But where complexity still exists novel events can happen. For example, we are better at predicting the weather, but it can still surprise us. These different perspectives are explained in the Cynefin Framework produced by Dave Snowden.
How does the Cynefin Framework work?
When assessing a situation or problem we have to decide how best to go forward. Our approach depends on whether we see it as simple, complicated, complex or chaotic. For example, when feeling overwhelmed by a situation where there is no obvious right answer we feel ungrounded and can only move forward in small steps. We make Assessments.
An assessment is a statement that is a point of view that considers the worth or value of someone or something. It sets a context, orientation, or attitude, that can motivate you to act on something you care about. It tends to reflect opinions or assumptions that represent your truth, often made moment by moment because the situation is volatile, uncertain, ambiguous and unpredictable. Assessing it as a complicated or complex situation will determine the best approach.
Courtesy of The Leadership Circle
Living in a complex space requires us to observe the situation in new ways. This is because the future is unknowable so we have to look for patterns of behaviour happening in the present to suggest what might be possible in the future.
“Certainty is a cruel mindset. It hardens our minds against possibility.“ – Ellen Langer
Where is the energy for change coming from? This could mean gathering stories to understand why events are seen from a dominant perspective. The clue might be in what people are not talking about. It’s important to listen more deeply to get a variety of perspectives to take us out of our current mindset and to see the link between local and global.
Local and Global Considerations
The situation is not always clear. In the diagram below we see that the big fish is unaware that it could be eaten by an even bigger fish because it is so concerned with eating the smaller one. None of the fish could “see” the bigger context. Maybe all the fish feel safe because they only see what they are looking for. Or maybe, they live in a state of anxiety that alerts them to imminent danger. They are not aware of human’s polluting their environment (the global context) they are only aware of imminent danger (the local context). They are blind to the global changes that are killing them. Changes in the external environment can impact on local relationships which in turn can
They are not aware of human’s polluting their environment (the global context) they are only aware of imminent danger (the local context). They are blind to the global changes that are killing them. Changes in the external environment can clearly impact on local relationships, which in turn can self-organise to have a positive impact on the external environment.
Not only do our values, beliefs, and capabilities influence how we will behave in any context, they also filter the way in which we can perceive bigger contexts. They alter the awareness we have of our environment. Context is therefore not a static thing, it is an ongoing process of relating, emotioning, languaging and presencing that generate our Way of Being and the results we can get.
Making Sense
Whether we are trying to make sense of our lives or our work, we have to be more powerful observers to become more sensitive to the opportunities and constraints placed on us by the different situations we find ourselves in. The context for most of our actions and interactions is that of a Complex Adaptive or Evolving System. In such a living system there are a huge number of possible states and influences.
In such a living system there are a huge number of possible states influenced from the inside-out and outside-in sources of energy. People are free to interact locally from the top-down and the bottom-up. How they behave and combine is largely unpredictable and emerges in ways that reflect the conditions and rules prevailing at the time.
In many social, economic and organisational settings, overall behavior emerges from the combined impact of people’s interactions. Both the current world recession and credit crunch of 2008 were predicted by those with an understanding of Complexity Science. They could see how significant changes in the nature of banking relationships would have unpredictable consequences for the world’s economic system. Because these interactions were “non-linear” they could not be controlled by a predictable system that was adapting continuously to survive in its context.
Adaptive and Evolving
Any context that involves living things will not be stable as it is dynamic and constantly shifting. This means that in a Complex Adaptive System relationships have to change as order and stability ultimately bring death. Whilst complexity offers infinite possibilities it is always in danger of collapsing into chaos.
There are ‘agents’ in the living organism that ‘push out’ like the tentacles of an octopus seeking opportunities to improve and evolve. Others are ‘pulling-in’ like a hedgehog to preserve and protect themselves. Both are survival mechanisms, one focused on adaptation and the other on mitigation. In human societies, we seek to do both but often fail to get the balance right.
”The common feature of all living processes is that they acquire information about their environment, identify the patterns and condense them into a model or map that determines their behavior.” – Murray Gell-Mann – Complexity Scientist
The behavior that emerges results from a process where local interactions of agents, be they people, bacteria or ideas (bottom-up forces) influence global behaviour structures (top-down forces) and vice versa. How you see things now is influenced by the way thoughts, feelings and senses have interacted in the past and the resulting structure that gave meaning to them today. For example, a top-down driven Schools Transport System was transformed in Birmingham when seen as a network of providers who were all seen as key stakeholders and engaged in finding and delivering service improvements.
To engage with continuous change in an increasingly complex service is to admit to the possibility that more than one thing can be true at the same time because it can be perceived in different ways. What makes sense to the leader may not make sense to those being led.
“Just as rainfall follows established routes, so perception follows established ways of seeing. Even if the light sources which perturb the back of the retina, or the acoustic waves that hit the eardrum, are identical, what will be noticed by different individuals will depend on the perceptual lens through which we give meaning to the world.” – Dr Ifryn Price
We can think of ‘landscapes of perception where patterns in habits and rules of behavior, ways of thinking, systems of language and states of relationship all coalesce like many rivers pouring into a delta. They are then filtered before the resulting water reaches the sea. Initial conditions or rules are important in Complexity Theory as they influence the process and therefore the result. Acorns are programmed to become oak trees. They cannot become daffodils.
If we have a way of seeing things that can work for us, it gets embedded over time like rivers in a landscape. Change involves seeing the initial experience differently so that it is given a different meaning and generates a different outcome. New perspectives will then begin to flow as old ways of thinking and learning are challenged, redirected and reframed.
References
The Quark and the Jaguar by Murray Gell-Man. Abacus 1995
Navigating Complexity by Arthur Battram. Industrial Society 1998
Shifting the Patterns by Ifryn Price & Ray Shaw.Management Books 1998