Complexity

Complexity

leave standard methods to the machines

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Any situation at work can first be looked at from the perspective of — is this a known problem or not? If it’s known, then the answer can be looked up or the correct person found to deal with it.

Known problems require access to the right information to solve them. This information can be mapped, and frameworks such as knowledge management (KM) help us to map it.

We can also create tools, especially performance support systems to do the work and not have to learn all the background knowledge in order to accomplish the task. This is how simple and complicated knowledge continuously gets automated.

Of course this still might be difficult, given that finding the right information or right people still consumes a lot of time at work. But this is merely a complicated problem. We have proven methods to improve collaboration, cooperation, knowledge sharing, and sensemaking.

If it’s a new problem or an exception, then workers have to deal with it in a unique way. This is why we hire people instead of machines — to deal with exceptions. Complex, new problems need tacit and implicit knowledge to solve them. Exception-handling is becoming more important in the networked workplace because computer systems can handle the routine stuff. People, often working together, have to deal with the exceptions.

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human engagement counters misinformation

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A recent study conducted by Facebook suggests that when it comes to vaccine doubts and misinformation, “a small group appears to play a big role in pushing the skepticism”.

Some of the early findings are notable: Just 10 out of the 638 population segments contained 50 percent of all vaccine hesitancy content on the platform. And in the population segment with the most vaccine hesitancy, just 111 users contributed half of all vaccine hesitant content. —WaPo 2021-03-14

Small groups of people can have influence beyond their numbers. For example when a committed minority in society rises above 25% there can be a tipping point. However it only takes 10% if those people have an unshakeable belief in their cause. Meanwhile, inside an organization, there is usually a small group of people — 3% — who can influence up to 85% its members. Find out more at — 25-10-3.

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nature favours large social groups that network their information

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Knowing how to get the answers you need is more important than storing those answers in your head, especially with the shorter lifespan of knowledge these days. What you find when you look something up is probably current. What you already know is more and more likely to be out of date.

A vital meta-learning skill: how to find the answer you need, online or off.

—Jay Cross (2006)

Knowledge is evolving faster than can be codified in formal systems and is depreciating in value over time. One of the ways to deal with this knowledge explosion is to use what we have — our humanity. We have developed as social animals and our brains are wired to deal with social relationships. By combining technology with our brainpower, we can figure things out. We are naturally creative and curious.

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trust emerges over time

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Imagine a research-intensive organization where scientists should be sharing what they learn, and the official company policy is to share information and expertise among public and private partners. However, the company is ‘downsizing’ and layoffs are based on performance reviews. If one scientist helps a peer develop a patented product, and as a result the peer gets a better annual review, then the former may end up losing their job during the next round of layoffs. This was the situation I found myself in a decade ago.

Sharing knowledge was not a good personal strategy in this work environment even though it was official policy and was the focus of our project. We could not achieve our project objectives because systemic barriers pitted workers against each other in order to remain employed.

In this case, financial rewards for patents impeded learning, and in the end halted any knowledge sharing. In complex systems, the solutions are never simple, but our only hope is learning how to learn better and faster — individually, in teams, as an enterprise, and as a society. If we want to promote learning through knowledge sharing we should first look at what is blocking it.

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six ways to make sense

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One of the big consultancies is promoting ‘six ways’ to make sense of these complex times, or words to that effect. If you believe you are getting leading-edge thinking from these types of businesses, think again. Here is a story about a major consulting company, from one of its own.

“Despite having no work or research experience outside of MIT, I was regularly advertised to clients as an expert with seemingly years of topical experience relevant to the case. We were so good at rephrasing our credentials that even I was surprised to find in each of my cases, even my very first case, that I was the most senior consultant on the team …

I got the feeling that our clients were simply trying to mimic successful businesses, and that as consultants, our earnings came from having the luck of being included in an elaborate cargo-cult ritual. In any case it fell to us to decide for ourselves what question we had been hired to answer, and as a matter of convenience, we elected to answer questions that we had already answered in the course of previous cases — no sense in doing new work when old work will do.” —The Tech 2010-04-09

Is this what clients really want?

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retrieving the cooperative imperative

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The biggest challenges facing us today are climate change and environmental degradation. The current pandemic is a symptom of these situations. These are complex issues without simple answers or explanations, because with complex problems the relationship between cause and effect is only seen after the fact. As H.L Mencken stated, “Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.” Thinking in terms of neat and plausible answers only feeds the post-truth machines.

The best way forward is through cooperation and the engagement of a diverse set of human abilities. Cooperation is freely sharing among equals in order to benefit the greater whole. Hierarchies, such as those found in most institutions and organizations are useless in the face of complexity. As Yaneer Bar-Yam explains in Complexity Rising, hierarchies have diminishing usefulness as complexity increases.

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sometimes perfection is the enemy of the good

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While many of our professions and organizations can deal with some complexity, few are adapted to deal with chaos on a large scale. Chaos — violent political action, climate change, pandemic — requires structures that promote curiosity and resolve. With frequent chaotic events to deal with we have to organize in temporary, negotiated hierarchies that can quickly form and re-form in order to test novel practices. The ability to do this requires diverse thinking, open structures, and trust among those doing the work. So I concluded in our wake-up call in June.

Six months later and what have most Western democracies learned? Not much. In the USA, EU, and Canada, half-measures continuously get added to already complicated and difficult-to-understand protocols. Instead of stopping the ship-of-state and taking it into dry-dock for a refitting to deal with a viral sea, we are haphazardly patching the vessel and missing what is below the water line.

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let’s stop the war of words

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A November 2019 article in the British Medical Journal showed how difficult it is to change peoples’ minds, especially with regards to vaccinations. Facts don’t change peoples’ minds.

Lesson 2: don’t bring a fact to a narrative fight

Experts and health professionals can arm themselves with white papers, peer reviewed studies, and symposia; but if these are our only weapons, we will only ever get so far. In an era in which experts are increasingly distrusted, the “we know best” mindset is counterproductive.

Those wishing to encourage vaccination need to identify and amplify the stories that emerge from the real lives and lived experiences of people in their communities (to start, they need to listen for them). It is no coincidence that the most effective climate advocacy in the world right now comes from the improvisations and stories of a 16 year old girl rather than the strategic plans of a generations old institution. —BMJ: New Power versus Old

For example, a mandatory education class in Ontario, Canada — complete with videos and health care professionals to advise — has been useless in getting parents to accept vaccinations for their children.

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get out to the edges

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In March [making sense of our digital world] I wrote that my own understanding of the COVID-19 disease started with centres of networked expertise — WHO, CDC, Public Health Agency of Canada. By September [connecting knowledge] I wrote that I see information from the WHO and CDC as lagging indicators, and no longer my first stop to find out what is happening now.

I should have known better and gone back to some of my earlier understanding of sensemaking in complexity and chaos. These formal organizations are hierarchical and bureaucratic. They have institutional blinders. According to Mark Federman, “Organizations are made too complicated in response to complexity.” That complication blurs our vision.

To understand our current situation we need to move to the edge or find others who are there already. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote — “I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over; on the edge you find things you can’t see from the center.” On the edges the answers may not be clear, but they are less obscured than in the centre.

People on the edge mostly do not work for the likes of WHO, CDC, or PHAC.

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put on your dance shoes

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(Let’s dance) for fear your grace should fall
(Let’s dance) for fear tonight is all
—David Bowie (1983) Let’s Dance

Creative work is a constant dance between complexity and order, or curiosity and resolve, as Jony Ive explained in his acceptance speech as the first recipient of the Stephen Hawking Fellowship in 2018.

“You see, in the mode of being unreasonable and resolute, you have to solve hard problems. But solving those problems requires new ideas. And so, we’re back to needing ideas and back to having to be open and curious. This is not a shift that occurs once or twice in a multi-year project. I find it happens to me once or twice a day and that frequency of shifting between two such different ways of seeing and thinking is fantastically demanding.” —Jony Ive

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