beyond the solutions at hand

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“There is a need to deal with the problem independent of the solutions at hand. We have a tendency to define the problem in terms of the solutions we already have. We fail most often not because we fail to solve the problem we face, but because we fail to face the right problem. Rather than doing what we should, we do what we can. In the systems view, it is the solution that has to fit the problem, not vice versa.” — Systems Thinking: Managing Chaos and Complexity: A Platform for Designing Business Architecture

Systems thinking seems to be missing in many parts of our society. For example, green energy proponents refuse to consider low carbon nuclear power as an option, including new nuclear technologies like molten salt. I am not sure what the optimal solution is but there is a significant cost to solar energy. Using only “the solutions at hand” can blind us to other options. Once we have taken up our positions, we seldom question them. This is one of our greatest mistakes, especially since more of our challenges will be complex in a connected world of seven billion people with degraded natural resources and facing climate change.

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learning with complexity

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Two technologies — machine learning, and the internet — are changing our understanding of the world by showing that we really cannot understand large scale complexity.

“We don’t use these technologies because they are huge, connected, and complex. We use them because they work. Our success with these technologies — rather than the technologies themselves — is showing us the world as more complex and chaotic than we thought, which, in turn, is encouraging us to explore new approaches and strategies, challenging our assumptions about the nature and importance of understanding and explanations, and ultimately leading us to a new sense of how things happen.” —Dave Weinberger

Sensemaking is becoming a critical skill in our complex world. We can do this with the assistance of statistics and algorithms, as with machine learning. We can do this between ourselves by connecting and engaging with a diverse network of knowledgeable people using the internet. We definitely cannot do this alone.

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changing structures

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“For the first time since the industrial revolution, organizations are changing at a fundamental level. The change is very much a work in progress in most organizations. But we now have many examples of organizations that are fully functioning in an entirely new way — that is, new ideas about how the organization is designed, about how work gets done, how people relate to each other.” —Nancy Dixon

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social learning is innate

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Social learning is a key theme of mine because imitation is how we learn as a species. Social learning is best explained by Albert Bandura, recognized as the most eminent psychologist of the modern era.

“Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do. Fortunately, most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action.” —Albert Bandura

Making our organizations open to social learning fosters innovation. Nobody works in a vacuum and we all build upon past ideas and achievements. Open structures that distribute authority can lead to more transparent knowledge sharing which promotes social learning. This open sharing can foster more diverse perspectives which can fuel active experimentation. Innovation emerges from this constant flow of ideas and experiments.

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fahrenheit friday

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Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“Nobody listens anymore. I can’t talk to the walls because they’re yelling at me, I can’t talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say and maybe if I talk long enough it will make sense.” —Guy Montag, in Fahrenheit 451,  via @RossDawson

Sarah Cone — “Under ancient Jewish law, if a suspect was unanimously found guilty by all judges, he was acquitted. Why? The legislators noticed that unanimous agreement often indicates the presence of systemic error in the judicial process, even if the exact nature of the error is unknown.”

Bruce Schneier — ” … we need to decide if we are going to build our future Internet systems for security or surveillance. Either everyone gets to spy, or no one gets to spy. And I believe we must choose security over surveillance, and implement a defense-dominant strategy.” via @aukia

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user-generated content

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Content creation, a subset of sensemaking, is difficult. It takes time and effort. According to a 2019 survey of 213 North American workers conducted by Degreed, most sharing of information is in responding to other content found in the flow of work or learning. A lot of user-generated content is sharing content that has been created by others.

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finding and sharing information

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One of the challenges we face in our professional and personal lives is making sense of the flow of information that passes by us each day and then aligning that with our current priorities and challenges. The seek > sense > share framework of personal knowledge mastery is a simple method to help us stay focused in our sensemaking. The image below shows how information and knowledge can flow when people develop filters to seek information, take time and effort to make sense of it, and then share appropriately, often adding value to what they share.

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working collaboratively and learning cooperatively

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Improving Organizational Performance

Organizational performance improvement is comprised of reducing errors and increasing insights, according to Gary Klein. For the past century, management has primarily focused on error reduction, with practices such as Six Sigma, especially in manufacturing.

“Fifty-eight of the top Fortune 200 companies bought into Six Sigma, attesting to the appeal of eliminating errors. The results of this ‘experiment’ were striking: 91 per cent of the Six Sigma companies failed to keep up with the S&P 500 because Six Sigma got in the way of innovation. It interfered with insights.” —Gary Klein

Learning and development (L&D) practices reflect this priority on error reduction. But knowledge work, especially creative work, is not mere production.

“Visualize the workflow of a physical job: produce, produce, produce, produce, produce, produce, produce, produce, produce.

Now visualize the workflow of a creative knowledge worker: nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, flash of brilliance, nothing, nothing, nothing.” —Jay Cross (1944-2015)

Based on 120 case studies, Gary Klein identified five types of ‘triggers’ that produced insights.

  1. Contradictions
  2. Creative Desperation
  3. Connections
  4. Coincidences
  5. Curiosity

Most of these five triggers can be enhanced through informal and social learning, and the individual practice of personal knowledge mastery. Insights often come while working, resting, and playing — or even in the shower — but not while undergoing formal education or training.

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sensemaking in a networked world

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It’s a networked world

As we become more connected we should not be cutting out social media, instead we should be using them in smarter ways so that we are sensemaking beyond the outrage.

Don’t teach people how to fish. Teach people to learn for themselves how to fish and then they can learn anything else for a lifetime — citizen sensemaking.

Filter failure is a human failure. It means we are not connected to trusted communities that have the cognitive diversity we need to make important decisions.

We need to organize our workplaces better

Organizations need to make time and space available for conversations inside teams, across teams, and outside the organization —  it’s about finding community.

A combination of curiosity and resolve enables continuous learning while still getting things done. This requires an attitude of life in perpetual beta.

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debunking

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Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“A body of men, holding themselves accountable to nobody, ought not to be trusted by any body.” —Thomas Paine 1737-1809

“I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.” —Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s fictional detective, via @duncan_stuart

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