Complexity

“Shape Patterns, Not Programs”

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Excellent lessons and a wealth of references are included in this paper, Changing Homeland Security: Shape Patterns, Not Programs which is applicable to a wide and sundry audience.

Advice from Socrates to a man who over-planned his son’s birthday party – “ask the women”, with the following results:

We held the party at Panathinaikon Stadium. We set up places to eat, a site for crafts, a tent for shelter and rest, a station for music, and a space for art. Singers wandered and told stories. There was a field for wrestling and running and flying kites. We encouraged the children to try what they pleased. We helped if they asked, then we stepped back and watched. When there was hitting or crying or harsh words – and there was – we immediately spoke sternly or separated the offenders. Then we redirected them toward an established activity.

In sum, our strategy was to control only that which could be ordered. For those activities in the realm of that which is, and must be, unordered, we watched and we shaped – gently, but with insistence. Because I have learned to know the difference between the states of order and unorder, I am now seen by all Athens as the wisest of men. Second to you of course.

On planning for the future

We need to learn how to become a partner with an uncontrollable future.

Consider how one rears children. They are not little machines waiting to be directed by higher headquarters. They are people learning how to be free and responsible citizens. Their future emerges; it is not designed. So too with homeland security – it is only five years old.

There is much good advice here for all organizations dealing with complex issues.

The collapse of complicated business models

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Clay Shirky, in the collapse of complex business models, notes:

Bureaucracies temporarily reverse the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In a bureaucracy, it’s easier to make a process more complex than to make it simpler, and easier to create a new burden than kill an old one.

The premise of his article is that successful organizations and industries become more complex over time and are unable to embrace new ways of doing things, which at the onset are much simpler. He discusses the complex television industry and how it cannot produce simple, and low cost, fare for the web.

I’m not sure if complexity is the issue. I see it more as complication. Companies and industries start out as relatively simple operations and then become more complicated. Complicated systems can be analyzed, and we can tell how things work. Modern organizations are not complex, they are merely complicated. A complex organization could not be managed.

The real problem is on the outside, not the inside, of the typical complicated organization. The outside environment has become complex and the complicated organization lacks the ability to deal with it. Systems like the Neilson ratings don’t give us the kind of information we need to make decisions on programming. The media landscape is too fragmented to completely analyze.

The Cynefin framework describes the complicated & complex domains as:

  • Complicated, in which the relationship between cause and effect requires analysis or some other form of investigation and/or the application of expert knowledge, the approach is to Sense – Analyze – Respond and we can apply good practice.
  • Complex, in which the relationship between cause and effect can only be perceived in retrospect, but not in advance, the approach is to Probe – Sense – Respond and we can sense emergent practice.

The typical large modern organization tends to thoroughly assess a situation before acting, assuming it can be analyzed. This does not work in complex environments where we need to first do something and then see what happens. We see this with Beta releases of web services, which adapt as they are used by more people. many web companies understand this.

I don’t see simplicity as the solution to dealing with complex environments. A new organizational structure is required that is 1) based on simple units but is 2) connected as a network that is much more complex than any hierarchical organization could ever be. This type of organization will be too complex to manage directly. It will self-manage and adapt. The best work structures to deal with complexity will be complex networks, and likely some mix of wirearchical, chaordic, democratic, etc.

Wired Work

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Wirearchy may be a neologism, but I’ve found it to be a most descriptive term for discussing what happens when you connect everyone via electronic networks. To paraphrase Jon Husband:

It is generally accepted that we live and work in an increasingly ‘wired’ world.

There are emerging patterns and dynamics related to interconnected people and interlinked information flows, which are bypassing established traditional structures and services.

This presentation covers my interpretation of wirearchy and is a continuation of my presentation on Net Work: learning to work anew. Once again, it is in MP4 format and runs less than 5 minutes.

Wired Work: complexity, the web and business:

2 way flow

wired work (MP4)

A linchpin culture

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Here is Seth Godin being interviewed by Hugh Macleod:

In a sta­ble envi­ron­ment, we worship the effi­cient fac­tory. Henry Ford or even David Gef­fen… feed the machine, keep it run­ning smoothly, pay as little as you can, make as much as you can. In our post-industrial world, though, fac­tory worship is a non star­ter. Cheap cogs are worth what they cost, which is not much. In a chan­ging envi­ron­ment, you want peo­ple who can steer, inno­vate, pro­voke, lead, con­nect and make things hap­pen. That’s my the­sis. This is a new revo­lu­tion, and just as Marx and Smith wrote about the indus­trial revo­lu­tion, I’m wri­ting about ours.

Godin’s new book is called Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? and he hits the nail on the head that the industrial model for work design is no longer of much use. The work that we will be paid for is the difficult, innovative, one of a kind, creative stuff.

The cynefin model (below) shows that emergent practices are needed in order to manage in complex environments and novel practices are necessary for chaotic ones. We will be facing more complexity and chaos in our work. There are fewer easy answers, easy jobs with good pay, or simple ways to keep a job for life.

I don’t believe that it’s any longer a question of whether standardized work will be outsourced or automated, but when. How much time do we have to prepare people for the new revolution? Any scenario that I consider – peak oil, global warming; globalization; Asian dominance – still requires that the developed world’s workforce deals with more complexity and even chaos. We need to skill-up for emergent and novel practices and that means a completely different mindset toward work.

cynefin linchpin

It’s not enough that I am ready or that you are prepared. We have to be able to deal with change as a society. How can we help get our communities out of their comfort zones or overcome their fears and get their innate creativity flowing? Becoming a linchpin is the first challenge, but enabling a linchpin culture is the greater one.

Complexity and change

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Interesting things I learned on Twitter this past week.

Complexity

The State of Social Learning Today & Some Thoughts for the Future of Learning & Development (L&D) in 2010 via @c4lpt

If it seems too complex for L&D to take on the “responsibility” for enabling learning across the organisation, then bear in mind that this role will probably be assumed by others, e.g. Bus Ops, IT or Internal Communications departments as their own interests widen. If this takes place, what is likely to happen to the L&D function? As the desire and need for formal training diminishes, L&D will probably become more and more marginalized. 2010 is therefore the year for L&D to take action! So who can help?

via @finiteattention “Seen on a colleague’s noticeboard: If everyone is doing it …” [Dilbert’s point hits the core of the “best practices” problem]

The Cynefin Framework Mindmap via @johnt

Classroom instruction is complex but do we treat it as such? Is “sensing” a priority of teacher education? How would an instructor who waits for “patterns to emerge” be viewed by their supervisor? As laid back? Aloof? And does outcome-based education (unintentionally) result in educators treating complex situations as complicated, or worse yet, simple in nature?

Networking reconsidered via @jonhusband

In a rapidly changing world, the knowledge that matters the most is tacit knowledge — the knowledge that we have all accumulated from our experiences that we have a hard time expressing to ourselves, much less to each other. The challenge is that this type of knowledge — in contrast to the explicit knowledge that can be written down and broadcast to the world — does not flow very easily. Accessing this kind of knowledge requires long-term trust based relationships and a deep understanding of context. Large contact databases don’t particularly help in this quest and, in fact, can subvert our efforts to build the kinds of relationships that matter the most.

Changing Practice

Tom Gram: Instructional Design: Science, Art & Craft: in balanc:

Effective learning designs then,  happen most when that elusive combination of art, science and craft come together. Where the three approaches coexist, through a skillfully assembled learning team the result is usually effective, motivational learning grounded in the realities of the organization.

Evidence that change does not come from within, in this ASTD article via @JaneBozarth

Old favorites dominated in our study. E-learning today appears to be mostly about delivering assessments and designs, testing, personalization, scenarios, and tutorials. All these are familiar, and they all have deep roots in the training and development community. Should we lament that the habits identified in this study are not much different in 2009 than they were in 1989 (although, of course, enabled by technology)?

Group photo of some of the ASTD survey respondents:

changethesystem

Sharing tacit knowledge

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H.L. Mencken, American satirist, wrote that, “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” That pretty much sums up the problems we are facing today in our organizations and institutions. We are using tools that assume simple, or at most complicated, problems when many are actually complex. A mechanistic approach to problem solving is inadequate in complex adaptive environments. Global networks have made all of our work, and all of our problems, interconnected. We live in one big, unfathomable complex adaptive system.

Managing in complex systems is more about influencing possibilities rather than trying to determine any predictability. This requires tacit knowledge, or ways of thinking that cannot be codified and written up as best practices. It’s a continuous process of trying things out, sensing what happens and developing emergent practices. This is the great potential of web social media. Social networking supports emergent work practices.  The true value of social networking is in sharing tacit knowledge.

What hinders the adoption of social media is that hierarchical leaders (those in power by virtue of their position, not their knowledge or ability) are not able to function when ideas and knowledge flow laterally as well as vertically. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy. Social media bypass the organization’s information gatekeepers and render hierarchical leadership useless.

Over the past century, large organizations have simplified and codified their processes in order to get economies of scale. They have also centralized as many functions as possible, including anything related to learning and performance. This is the modern institution and corporation. The problem is that this will not work any more. Biological, technological, environmental and societal change are accelerating. Moore’s Law states that computational power doubles every 18 months while human knowledge doubles every year.

Our current models for managing people, training and knowledge-sharing are insufficient for a workplace that demands emergent practices just to keep up. Formal training has only ever addressed 20% of workplace learning and this was acceptable when the work environment was merely complicated. Knowledge workers today need to connect with others to co-solve problems. Sharing tacit knowledge through conversations (the only way to do this) is an essential component of knowledge work. Social media enable adaptation (the development of emergent practices) through conversations.

In the 21st century, conversation is learning and learning is work.

complexity

Co-operation: from soft skill to hard skill

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What are known as soft skills, like getting along with others, are becoming much more important than commonly known hard skills. This is still not a general perception amongst business leaders; as recently as last year, Management-Issues reported:

The annual CEO study by PricewaterhouseCoopers has argued that what companies around the world are crying out for is CEOs with technical and business expertise, who have global experience, are strong leaders, innovative, creative and who can manage risk effectively.

People skills, while a bonus, were not seen as an essential, despite the fact that fewer than half of CEOs globally (and around a third in the UK) felt their HR department could manage the people agenda adequately by itself.

Work in networks requires different skills than in directed hierarchies, which have nurtured these CEO’s for the past decades. Co-operation is a foundational behaviour for effectively working in networks, and it’s in networks where most of us, and our children, will be working. Co-operation presumes the freedom of individuals to join and participate so that people in the network cannot be told what to do, only influenced. If they don’t like you, they won’t connect. That’s like being on Twitter with no followers and never getting Retweeted (RT). You are a lone node and of little value to the network. 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.

Co-operation is not the same as collaboration, though they are complementary. Collaboration requires a common goal while co-operation is sharing without any specific objectives. Teams, groups and markets collaborate. Online social networks and communities of practice co-operate. Working co-operatively requires a different mindset than merely collaborating on a defined project. Being co-operative means being open to others outside your group and casting off business metaphors based on military models (target markets, chain of command, line & staff).

cooperation

We are moving from a market economy to a network economy and the the level of complexity is increasing with this hyper-connectedness. Managing in complex adaptive systems means influencing possibilities rather than striving for predictability (good or best practices). Co-operation in our work is needed so that we can continuously develop emergent practices demanded by this complexity. What worked yesterday won’t work today. No one has the definitive answer any more but we can use the intelligence of our networks to make sense together and see how we can influence desired results. This is co-operation and this is the future, which is already here, albeit unevenly distributed.

Co-operation is a soft skill? I think not.

Embracing complexity at work

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After our session at Online Educa this morning (well, it was early morning for me anyway) I thought some more about one of the models I used. The Cynefin framework is a good way to explain different types of work and how training can only help in some cases: when work is simple (cause & effect are obvious) or complicated (cause & effect can be determined through analysis). Training is of little use in developing the necessary emergent practices for dealing with complex problems in our work environment.

cynefin and training
Source: Wikipedia

My basic guideline for the workplace is that:

  • Simple work will be automated
  • Complicated work will go to the lowest bidder, as processes & procedures become more defined and job aids more powerful (e.g. mortgage applications)
  • Complex work requires creativity and is where the value of the post-industrial (network era) organization lies
  • Dealing with Chaos sometimes has to be confronted and this requires creativity as well as a sense of adventure to try novel approaches

Reading between the lines of many comments from Online Educa, one thematic question would be: This stuff may be interesting from a conceptual perspective, but what can organizations do right now to address increasing complexity? Initially, I would say there are two laws at work over which you will have little control:

  1. The bottom of the complexity pyramid (simple work) will continue to be automated.
  2. All work that is merely complicated will be done as cheaply as possible (outsourced, partially automated, done as cheap piece work)

Here is a possible strategy to consider:

Work that is merely complicated does not require all of a worker’s cognitive capabilities (really). Use this cognitive surplus and couple it with a time surplus, like Google’s 20% for engineers to work on pet projects. Have incentives for workers to find the complexities in their work and try out creative ways to address them. This will encourage people to move up the creative ladder, into more complex work. Remember, almost all of this complexity is man-made. We decided to network the planet and increase the speed of human communications. We will continue to create more complex work to do.

As for people whose work already requires creativity in dealing with complexity there are a few things they can do. First, they can become mentors and guides for those doing merely complicated work. This is one way to address Richard Florida’s concern that we need to make the service industries more creative. Who we work with makes a significant difference in how creative we are. Everyone can be creative – just watch this video involving the highest and lowest paid staff in a hospital creating a powerful message together.

Those dealing with complex work situations can also be further encouraged to take on Chaotic situations. It’s one thing to be creative and quite another to jump into the unknown by taking action without any idea of what will happen. Here’s a good video on systemic, organizational change explaining some aspects of simple, complicated, complex and chaotic work environments.

The bottom line is to make organizations more flexible, able to deal with change and even create change. Complexity should be embraced as the future of work and the key to an engaged workforce. Few are bored with complex challenges.  The more people who are engaged creatively, the more effective the organization will be and no, there isn’t a course you can take to address this.

Simplexity – review

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In Simplexity Jeffrey Kluger writes an easy-reading book on “why simple things become complex and how complex things can be made simple”.

simplexityFirst of all, this is not a book for anyone looking for a deep examination of complexity theory. Kluger is a writer for Time, not an academic or researcher. This makes Simplexity a very easy read and rather enjoyable. It’s the kind of book you want to take on a business trip, as it will give you some interesting ideas and perhaps help you look at things a little differently.

The book is organized into chapters that read like short stories. Topics range from “Why is the stock market hard to predict?” to “Why do people, mice, and worlds die when they do?”. My favourite chapter was, “Why is a baby the best linguist in the world?”. I learned that the first 9 months of life are essential to language learning and that a baby’s brain can do some amazing things in language acquisition. It had me questioning some of the common practices in language education.

For business professionals, the chapter on “Why do the jobs that require the greatest skills often pay the least?” is informative. The story of Beth Bechky, a workplace ethnographer, tells how she discovered that engineers in a firm would spend hundreds of hours developing blueprints to pass on to the assemblers, with the instructions, “Build to the print”.

The assemblers, in turn, accept the blueprints, shoo the engineers away – and often as not simply put the drawings aside. Never mind building to the print, many of them barely look at it. The source they turn to instead is one another. The more experienced assemblers figure out how the job should be done and tell the less experienced ones what to do. When a question arises, all of them simply consult one another.

The back cover compares Simplexity to Freakonomics and I would say that it’s a fair comparison. It’s a fun read and will make for interesting dinner conversations and may provide some insights, but it is only a shallow dive into complexity theory.

Increased complexity needs simplified design

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In the book Informal Learning: rediscovering the natural pathways that inspire innovation and performance, Jay Cross draws a parallel between the development of:

1) Bands, 2) Kingdoms, and 3) Democracies

with

1) Small, local businesses, 2) Large, central corporations, and 3) Loosely coupled networks.

bands to democracy

The learning analogy Jay provides is

1) One on One, 2) Classes & Workshops, and 3) Informal learning. I’d like to expand on this.

Most learning of skills was based on an apprenticeship model until quite recently and this model still exists in some fields. One of the limitations of apprenticeship is that it does not scale. Each master is limited in how many personal relationships can be managed.

apprenticeship

With better communications, the course model enabled expertise to be collected, first with books and later with other storage media such as video and audio. However, the limiting factors were lack of access to the resources and the shortage of connections between expertise and need.

training pyramid

The course model is an artifact of a time when information was scarce and connections were few. Now that many of us live in messy democracies and work in loose networks, learning has become complex with more connections to influence us. According to the authors of Getting to Maybe, in complex environments:

  • Rigid protocols are counter-productive
  • There is an uncertainty of outcomes in much of our work
  • We cannot separate parts from the whole
  • Success is not a fixed address

As Jay has said, informal learning is a better approach for more complex environments. Given the above, here are some guidelines for what informal learning development could look like:

  1. Spend less time on design and more on ongoing evaluation to allow emergent practices to be developed.
  2. Build learning resources so that they can be easily changed or modified by anyone (allow for a hacker mentality)
  3. Allow everything to be connected, so that the work environment is the learning environment (but look for safe places to fail)
  4. There is no clearly defined start or finish so enable connections from multiple access points.

Information is no longer scarce and our connections are now many. If an organizational informal learning effort lets people connect more easily and communicate more effectively, then it will have a chance of success. Connecting & Communicating are central roles for organizational leaders whose workplaces are becoming more complex, either in terms of evolving practices, changing markets or advances in technology. Enabling the integration of collaborative learning with work is a more flexible model than designing courses that are outdated as soon as they’re published.

emergent learning

Related posts:

Informal Learning & Performance Technology

Analysis for Informal Learning

Note: this will be the theme of my Trading Post session on 20 October at the CSTD Conference.