In my last post on adapting to chaos I asked — what changes in our sensemaking practices should we incorporate to adapt to a world that is often more chaotic than complex? I received 12 comments here and another ten comments on LinkedIn. Confusion was one theme commented upon and Chris Corrigan referenced an excellent post on that topic — escaping confusion.
In the domain of Confusion the first and most important action, I believe, is an awareness that you are there. Without awareness you are lost. Any action that you undertake from that place is likely to be based on conditioning without any sensitivity to your context and that can be incredibly dangerous. In fact if you look at Dave’s central domain map you will see that Confusion is adjacent to the Clear, Complicated, and Chaotic domains. The division of the central domain into Confusion and Aporia implies that you cannot get to Complex from Confusion without taking what Dave [Snowden] calls the Aporetic Turn.
Nollind Wachell, with whom I had many discussion on Google+ several years ago, commented that, “In effect, often true growth and development doesn’t occur without some form of pain and suffering because it’s needed to wake a person up, slow them down, and help them perceive and see things that they were blind to before. Something that I think needs to happen (ie an awakening) in not just America but in many places around the world, Canada included.” Perhaps we need the shock of confusion in order to move toward Aporia and then wake up. Nollind also suggested a 2007 MPRA paper, Triple-Loop Learning as Foundation for Profound Change, Individual Cultivation, and Radical Innovation.
Michele Martin, another old friend, joined us and commented that, “So much of our focus is on intellectual sensemaking, but what people are actually experiencing is visceral — disorientation, exhaustion, and the feeling that the ground is shifting beneath their feet.”
And sensemaking in chaotic times isn’t just about thinking differently. It’s about moving differently—learning how to orient when the ground keeps shifting, how to keep going when there’s no clear map, and how to hold confusion without collapsing into fear or false certainty. I’ve begun calling this process Wayfinding—the practice of learning how to move through uncertainty when guarantees are gone and stable ground is nowhere to be found. Wayfinding isn’t about fixing chaos or forcing clarity; it’s about developing a new relationship with the unknown. The question isn’t just ‘how do we make sense of this?’ but ‘how do we live inside it?”
I like the idea of wayfinding instead of sensemaking. It reminds me that in unexplored territory a compass is more important than a map. I think we will all have to get used to a sense of disorientation for the time being. Shaun Coffey, another good friend, recommended this book: Wayfinding Leadership: Groundbreaking Wisdom for Developing Leaders.
We guide you on a leadership development journey that requires stepping into the unknown, developing sharper powers of observation, being more comfortable with uncertainty and finding new and better ways to tackle situations, relying not only on rational thinking, but also on the much broader sets of intelligence with which each of us is endowed. A way finder leader is motivated by curiosity and is steeped in wonder. Wayfinder leaders look to develop everyone’s potential and have an abiding belief that ‘we are in the waka together’.
Later in the discussion I referred to this poem that I often share at the end of my PKM workshops.
He is quick, thinking in clear images;
I am slow, thinking in broken images.
He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;
I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images.
Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;
Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.
Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact;
Questioning their relevance, I question the fact.
When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;
When the fact fails me, I approve my senses.
He continues quick and dull in his clear images;
I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.
He in a new confusion of his understanding;
I in a new understanding of my confusion.
—Robert Graves (1885) In Broken Images
Thanks for this thread Harold. Like Michele, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we embody the change experience and really honor it in the gut, so to speak. We can intellectualize about this forever, but at some point, if we don’t feel it, nothing will ever really make “sense.” Helping people to feel the change is the hardest part.
Harold, I really appreciate how you’re extending this conversation! I’ve started reading “Wayfinding Leadership” and I’m seeing how many of my own hard-earned realizations align with this approach. As I read the book, it feels like a form of remembering something that we already know but have forgotten and I’m thinking about how do we return to this more aligned way of being with uncertainty?
Part of what’s interesting to me is that there was a time when we knew that we didn’t “know.” In some sense, everything was exploration and moving in uncharted territory. But now we think we’ve mapped everything out and it’s just a matter of following the GPS. It’s disconcerting to be confronted with the limits of our knowing.
As we are navigating the confusion of these times, I’m finding myself also sitting with some different questions than I did back in 2016 during the first Trump administration. and wonder how they might open more room to move. Questions like:
What is asking to be revealed, not explained?
Can I see what patterns are emerging, without rushing to impose form or meaning? Can I suspend my need to “know” long enough to see a more holistic picture?
What are the underlying (mostly invisible) energetic currents of how people are moving right now? How do we amplify what heals and disrupt what doesn’t?
What if the work right now isn’t about finding better answers, but attuning more to the questions and finding new and better questions to light the way forward?
In some sense, these are “felt” things, not intellectual constructs. Not that we don’t have a need for logic, but I think we’re reaching the edge of what logic and linear analysis can offer us. What we need now may be less about precision and more about perception — about developing the capacity to feel into a field of coherence rather than force clarity through intellect alone.
Coherence, in this sense, isn’t about agreement. It’s about a kind of felt alignment — when our inner knowing, our relational presence, and the energetic patterns of the moment are in conversation with one another. It’s what happens when we stop trying to master the moment and begin to truly meet it.
I’m grateful for this space where we can share broken images, open questions, and glimpses of what might be trying to emerge. There’s something deeply wise in this collective listening.
Harold, my apologies for the length of my reply here but I wholeheartedly agree about using “wayfinding” as a way forward.
For example, I’ve personally been building my own framework to make sense and make meaning of my own developmental journey. I call it “Be Real Creative: The Adventure of Your Life.” It embodies the leadership (“Be”), authenticity (“Real”), and creativity (“Creative”) to be nobody-but-yourself (as E.E. Cummings so poignantly described it).
Its base foundation uses Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey which wasn’t intended to be a formula for writing an epic story but actually a roadmap for living an epic life. So the allegory was meant to help people understand what psychological growth and development “feels” like as a creative transformational process. So the Hero’s Journey isn’t a literal, physical, external journey but actually a metaphorical, psychological, internal one. Put another way, it’s a fictional mythical story that relays deeper truths about life.
So when one faces a challenge in life that they can no longer navigate with their old worldview, they usually begin to question their assumptions and beliefs which begins a “quest” for them into an unknown space beyond their current worldview. This in turn usually causes “monstrous” fears to arise in them which is their ego trying to stand in the way of their growth. If they can overcome these fears though, they can gain both newer “treasured” values and newer “experiences” to live by and embody which helps them to “level up” their level of consciousness, as well as expand their worldview and sense of Self in turn.
Now if some of those narrative mechanic keywords I’ve quoted above sound familiar to you, it’s because they relate very closely to the game mechanics in role-playing games. And as you might remember, my background was in building communities online around video games such as World of Warcraft. Also I believe we’ve had some conversations about how these MMORPG environments are innovative communities of practice that foster leadership capabilities in people through exponential learning (ie John Seely-Brown).
But this emerging “life as a role-playing game” framework that I’m perceiving doesn’t just stop there with the Hero’s Journey as sort of a “Player’s Handbook” to help one “level up” in life. No, I realized something even more profound.
I realized that if you take development psychology (aka leadership development, ego development, vertical development) and use it to extend the allegory of the Hero’s Journey, you effectively have created a “Campaign Guide” for life as well. One that helps you to understand the different inner terrain one can possibly traverse across within one’s “self.” So just as MMORPG worlds have “expansions” comprised of “zones” with accompanying “levels”, so too within us are continental-like plateaus of the mind (ie Robert Kegan) that are comprised of country-like stages of psychological development with accompanying levels of development.
Now while I’ve researched the work of many different notable people in the vertical development field (ie Bill Torbert, Susanne Cook-Greuter, Ken Wilber), I’ve found that Richard Barrett’s values-based work to be the most relatable to my own framework because levels of development and stages of psychological development are determined through these “treasured” values one is seeking and needs. Even more so, the breadth of Richard Barrett’s values-based work is amazing, as it encompasses books on personal development, organizational development, and national development.
All said and done, wayfaring is the perfect way to encapsulate what this inner journey into the unknown feels like. A journey that can transform our outer world in turn, if we have the playful curiosity and courage to embrace the adventure of it.
Alas, many people don’t though. They cling to the shores of the old world, sticking their heads in the sand, disbelieving the changes rising around them until it’s too late. This is what I meant before about how life often has to hit us full force, making us suffer pain, before we’ll wake up to the realities of the world around us.
Thanks for your considered comment, Nollind. Your note about MMORPG reminded me about Simon Wardley’s advice on finding leaders — “To be blunt, your future leaders aren’t to be found studying MBAs … they are currently creating highly motivated and remote collectives to battle elves or aliens or build civilisations. These are the best executive training grounds that I know of.”
https://jarche.com/2021/07/battling-elves-and-building-civilizations/
Indeed. John Seely-Brown’s research on World of Warcraft rings similar to this as well. Here is also an IBM paper on the subject as well.
Virtual Worlds, Real Leaders
https://www.ibm.com/ibm/files/L668029W94664H98/ibm_gio_gaming_report.pdf
BTW while these gaming environments can foster growth and development, as well as leadership, my framework steps beyond this and sees life as a gaming environment itself. But it’s not so much about “gamifying” life, as it is about understanding the never-ending growth and development cycle in life through a “life as a role-playing game” allegory which helps you to understand the myriad of metaphors that comprise it.
In simpler terms, it’s really just about learning to “play” with life but at a much deeper “level” than most people can imagine, well beyond the conventional concept of play. This to me is what’s missing in most organizational development settings. In effect, without the ability to step out of your own worldview and play within a larger unknown sandbox of life, one often can’t let go of one’s sense of “self” and thus is limited by it (which is why it’s extremely difficult for most organizational leaders to let go of who they believe they are and get out of their own way).
So play in this sense is deeply developmental. It’s similar to Rupert Spira’s work on non-duality, whereby he sees life like a stage play, where most of us are so immersed within the roles we are playing, that we forget that we are playing them. When you can become aware of this and remember you’re just playing a role, your potential for growth and development is enormous because you can let go of who you believe you are (or what society expects you should be) and become who you truly are (and have always been at your very core). This mirrors what I mentioned in my previous comment on triple-loop learning in your other post.
David Williamson Shaffer’s book, ‘How Computer Games Help Children Learn’, is mostly about epistemic games, or “games that are fundamentally about learning to think in innovative ways”. I have seen few examples of epistemic games inside organizations. The closest would be the military’s use of large-scale simulations.
https://jarche.com/2013/03/work-is-already-a-game/
This quote of yours below is so on the money and why I don’t like gamification. It’s just a distraction layer that separates us from learning how to truly play with life.
> The major problem with the ‘gamification’ of professional learning is that work is already a game. It is an artificial construct that society has created, and many of us have to play. Adding badges, or other extrinsic motivators, to professional learning only detracts from the real game.
Your mention of military simulations relates as well. This ties into situation awareness and the OODA Loop. Boyds later work is similar to triple-loop learning and what Robert Kegan’s refers to as a Self-Transforming Mind (which sees life more fluidly).
BTW I used to play a tank simulation game online some years back and I was amazed at how easily you could categorize players within the game as using single, double, or triple-loop learning (which I defined as tactical, strategic, and adaptive players).
It was hilarious though because this tank game was effectively like a microcosm of what was happening in the world today (ie people in conflict with each other primarily because of their limited worldviews and perception of things).