Complexity

Complexity

learning in complexity and chaos

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Most of our current work structures are designed to address complicated situations, such as constructing a building, launching a campaign, or designing a piece of equipment. But more of our challenges are complex and cannot be solved in a standard way —  inequality, refugees, populism, racism. Whenever people are involved, within a global context of climate change, the situation is likely complex. In complex situations there is less reliance on detailed plans and analysis and a greater emphasis on continuous experimentation coupled with good observation and tracking. We have to learn constantly in complexity.

Complexity & Chaos

According to the Cynefin framework we should Probe > Sense > Respond when dealing with complexity, as opposed to Analyze > Sense > Respond when the situation is complicated. Mechanical systems are complicated, but human systems are complex. It means that we cannot over-plan, though planning itself prepares us to deal with what emerges as we probe complex situations and environments. In complicated conditions we can rely on established good practices, but in complex ones we need to continuously develop our own emergent practices.

In Chaos: A User’s Guide, Bruno Marion concludes that the world today is not just complex, but even chaotic.

“Never in the history of humanity has a single human being had so much power. Never in the history of humanity have YOU had so much power!

Optimistic or pessimistic, it is like being a spectator of a film of which we seem to know the ending, whether happy or unhappy. Today one must cease to be a passive spectator but an actor in this fast-changing world.”

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gaining insight at work

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With increasing complexity in most aspects of a network society, the way that we support organizational learning must change. With low levels of complexity, knowledge can be codified into documentation and distributed throughout the organization. Best practices can be determined and then people can be trained to perform these methods at work. Basic aircraft flight operations can be taught in this way. But complex problems require implicit knowledge that cannot be put into a manual. This type of knowledge is nuanced and dependent on the context and situation. For example, negotiating the creation of the United Nations required many conversations and involved a myriad of social connections. It required social learning, which is how we gain insights, by connecting with others and learning while we work.

Social learning is the process by which groups of people cooperate to learn with and from each other. The network era is creating a historic reversal of education, as discourse replaces institutions, and social learning in knowledge networks obsolesces many aspects of organizational training. It is as if Socrates has come back to put Plato’s academy in its place, but this time the public agora is global.

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curiosity, creativity, complexity, & chaos

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In complexity, cooperation trumps collaboration. Collaboration happens around some kind of plan or structure, while cooperation presumes the freedom of individuals to join and participate. Cooperation is also a driver of creativity as it enables more and varied connections with people and with ideas. Cooperation is a fundamental behaviour for effectively working in networks, and it’s in networks where most of us will be working.

People in networks cannot be told what to do, only influenced through other nodes (people) due to their reputation. If people don’t like you, they won’t connect. In a hierarchy you only have to please your boss. In a network you have to be seen as having some value, though not the same value, by many others.

Coordination is the lowest level of working together. It ensures that the right person is doing the right work at the right time. It works in low levels of complexity. Cooperation is not the same as collaboration, though they are complementary. Teams, groups, and markets collaborate. Social networks and communities of practice usually cooperate. Working cooperatively requires a different mindset than merely collaborating on a defined project. It requires curiosity.

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understanding the shift

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Continued from — Post-modernity: a way station to the future

“If you want a natively digital nation, or a state, or a city, or whatever, my message today is you actually need to be bold enough to create some new institutions; institutions that are of the internet, not on the internet.” —Making Government as a Platform Real

None of our institutions, and not even our markets were designed for the network age. This is the major tension of our times. We are between a societal form where markets, and to a lesser degree institutions, are the dominant way of organizing and now we are evolving into a network-centric society. What type of network society will be up to us — centralized or distributed?

As we make this transition, the confusion of post-modernism clouds our vision of a positive future. It seems that the traditional political Right wants to go back to the Pre-modern Era — dogmatic, faith, truth — while the traditional political Left wants to stay in the Modern Era — doubting, science, facts. However, the way ahead is to a Meta-modern Era — seeking, knowledge, combining. Few have a coherent vision for an emerging meta-modernity based on the network form. Understanding networks is the first step for governments to become ‘digital nations’. I would say it’s not a digital, but a networked society that should be government’s focus.

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adapting to constant change

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Perpetual Beta

The future of [human] work is perpetual beta: adapting to constant change while still getting things done.

“Basically: technological innovation and artificial intelligence are going to accelerate at a pace we’ve yet to really comprehend. (Fifteen years ago, Facebook wasn’t even around. Now it’s so efficient at micro-targeting that it helped sway a democratic election. Imagine what it might be capable of in another fifteen years.) That means automation will likely disrupt your current job (and your next one, and the one after that), and you’ll be the target of attention-grabbing, behavior-modifying algorithms so exponentially effective you won’t even realize you’re being targeted.

The best defense against that? An emotional flexibility that allows for constant reinvention, and knowing yourself well enough that you don’t get drawn into the deep Internet traps set for you.” —GQ Interview with Yuval Noah Harari

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post-modernity: a way-station to the future

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The TIMN Model describes how people have organized through history — first we lived as Tribes, then Institutions (church & state) dominated, and now Markets reign supreme. Each new form did not obsolesce the previous ones, but did change them. For example, tribes and clans have less influence over global markets than stock exchanges do. But families are still powerful bonding units between people. T+I+M is what David Ronfeldt calls a triform society, which we are currently in. T+I+M+N is when the Network form becomes our main way of organizing society. This will be a quadriform society. We are not there yet but can already see examples of what could be our future with  — networked warfare, networked cryptocurrencies, and networked social movements.

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complexity & chaos — the new normal

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A major challenge I have had in my organizational change work is getting people to understand that complicated environments are different from complex ones, and the latter are almost always the situation when people are involved. Generally it means that in complex situations there is less reliance on pre-planning and analysis and a greater emphasis on continuous experimentation coupled with good observation and tracking. Reinforce successful projects and learn constantly in complexity.

According to the Cynefin framework we should Probe > Sense > Respond when dealing with complexity, as opposed to Analyze > Sense > Respond when the situation is complicated. Mechanical systems are complicated, but most human systems are complex. It means that we cannot overplan, though planning itself prepares us to deal with what emerges as we probe complex situations and environments. In complicated conditions we can rely on established good practices, but in complex ones we need to continuously develop our own emergent practices.

This is my 200th post on the topic of complexity. But I have not paid much attention to chaos. In Chaos: A User’s Guide, Bruno Marion concludes that the world today is chaotic.

“Never in the history of humanity has a single human being had so much power. Never in the history of humanity have YOU had so much power!

Optimistic or pessimistic, it is like being a spectator of a film of which we seem to know the ending, whether happy or unhappy. Today one must cease to be a passive spectator but an actor in this fast-changing world.”

Read more

25-10-3

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An understanding of the research on how and why groups of people change can lead to better ways of organizing as a society or an organization. For instance, small groups of committed individuals who want to influence society need a significant presence to make that change happen: twenty-five percent.

“When a minority group pushing change was below 25% of the total group, its efforts failed. But when the committed minority reached 25%, there was an abrupt change in the group dynamic, and very quickly the majority of the population adopted the new norm … “And if they’re just below a tipping point, their efforts will fail. But remarkably, just by adding one more person, and getting above the 25% tipping point, their efforts can have rapid success in changing the entire population’s opinion.” —Science Daily 2018

However, if the people have an unshakeable belief, such as religious zealots or fervent believers, then you need fewer committed people: ten percent.

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the new networked norm

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Our societies have grown from a collection of tribes, added institutions, and later developed markets. These aligned with revolutions in communications: from oral, to written, to print. The network era began with the advent of electric communications, though it is by no means completely established.

Each type of societal structure has required different types of leadership. Alexander the Great was probably one of the best tribal leaders. He led his armies from the front and created an enormous empire. After his death, some of his generals created long-lasting institutions not based on military tactics. Ptolemy’s library at Alexandria is one example. Later, institutions like the Catholic Church dominated more through soft institutional power, rather than wielding swords. Others did that for them when necessary. As a market society developed, new types of economic and financial power were exercised by the Fuggers and the Hanseatic League in Europe. Later, captains of industry in America, such as Andrew Carnegie, would dominate in their markets, often circumventing existing institutional power.

As we enter the network era we see companies like Apple dominating, often ignoring Wall Street pundits. With network effects, Google can control the online advertising market, making market competition almost irrelevant. Power shifts as a society’s organizing principles change. In almost all organizations today, positional power is alive and well. For some managers, this is all the power they have, and they are at the mercy of the organizational hierarchy. If they lose their position, they lose their power. More effective leaders influence people through their social leadership abilities. This is what most modern leadership training programs focus on developing. In the network era, effective leaders also have to build their reputational power through connected leadership.

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chaos: a user’s guide

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“Humanity is at a turning point. We are at a period when we must totally redefine the norms and values in fields not only related to work, to the economy, but also to social life and relations between countries.

It is perhaps time to put on the right lenses to understand this. It is perhaps time to get the right tools so as to construct a world ever turbulent and chaotic no doubt, but also more sustainable and harmonious.” p. 29

So ends the first part of Bruno Marion’s book Chaos: A User’s Guide (2014) . Marion uses fractals as a way to describe the underlying nature of chaos, or the world we are living in. Fractals, shapes that maintain their shape at any scale and never get simpler, were brought into mainstream mathematics by Benoit Mandelbrot.

“The world is no longer linear, it is no longer relative, it is no longer quantum — it is chaotic! Or more precisely, it is linear and relativistic and quantic and chaotic.

Now we will be able to recognize fractal images around us. We will be able to see ships, and see factories that run without stocks. We will be able to follow the example given to us by nature and be ready to understand that order can emerge from disorder and we can learn to manage our lives, or organizations in a more fractal way.” p. 65

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