Nancy Dixon tells a wonderful story about ‘Researcher’s Square’ and the hallway of learning. The whole story is well worth your time. It describes how a diverse group of mostly independent researchers who worked in their individual offices were able to cooperate and even collaborate due to a change in the built architecture. A central hallway was placed in the middle of 20 offices so that everyone had to 1) use the same café area, and 2) use the only available large table & whiteboard, which were visible to everyone, for group meetings. In addition, copies of everyone’s published research was on display in this central area. While most researchers felt this would not change their work behaviours, it did.
Complexity
Complexity
the relationship era
“In the agrarian age of the 19th century, when schools meant one-room rural schoolhouses, teaching morality and morals and character was all important. That’s because society needed, and so demanded, good moral character.”—Nineshift
Not so long ago ‘gee’ was an offensive word in the USA. It was considered to be short for Jesus. But a focus on morality shifted to a focus on responsibility, as we entered the factory era, where timeliness was necessary to keep the machines moving. We are nearing the end of this era, but its influence is still in our schools.
So today ‘responsibility’ means:
* Being present, not absent.
* Showing up on time.
* Handing in your homework on time.
—Nineshift
range & inefficiency
An innovation system should preserve range and inefficiency, concludes the book Range—Why generalists triumph in a specialized world, by David Epstein. Focusing deep yields efficiencies and incremental innovation. But a broad base of learning and experience can produce radical innovation. Many (most?) of our research and education practices are designed for ‘kind’ environments where the rules and parameters are relatively clear. Playing chess is one example. But the world, and most fields of human endeavour are complex, or ‘wicked’. “In wicked domains, the rules of the game are often unclear or incomplete, there may or may not be repetitive patterns and they may not be obvious, and feedback is often delayed, inaccurate, or both.” When faced with new and complex challenges, we cannot rely on learning from experience, as we have none.
the silo effect
“Silos are cultural phenomena, which arise out of the systems we use to classify and organize the world,” states Gillian Tett in The Silo Effect. Silos are bounded hierarchies that define specialized work or areas of knowledge. They come in the form of academic fields, organizational departments, schools of thought, and many other forms created by humans. They are all based on an explicit or implicit model of how things are done. But all models are imperfect explanations of the world. Forgetting that can make us blind to what would be obvious to an outsider.
Tett first gives an overview of silo thinking and its effects — such as the 2008 financial crash — and goes into detail with examples. This is followed by various stories of silo-busting. The conclusion provides a few rules of thumb. Hierarchies and classification systems are necessary, especially in complex fields of practice, so we will never get rid of silos, says Tett.
The challenge is to find ways to get outside their boundaries and see from multiple perspectives. Silo thinking can be countered by engaging ‘cultural translators’ — “people who are able to move between specialist silos and explain to those sitting inside one department what is happening elsewhere” — but only about 10% of an organization’s staff need these skills.
Helping information to flow requires that everyone not only share data and information but also have the opportunity to interpret information and share their conclusions. Not everyone sees the world in the same way. Cultural translators are also ‘knowledge catalysts’.
metamodernity
Continued from: understanding the shift
To an older culture, a newer one often looks amoral, as morality guides older cultures. To a newer culture, older cultures appear to be primitive, lacking complexity. But each culture has its pros and cons. The challenge in developing what Lene Rachel Andersen calls ‘metamodernity‘ is in taking the positive aspects of previous human cultures in order to create a global culture that can deal with the complexity of technology, climate emergency, and evolving political situations.
The Nordic Bildung perspective of societal evolution aligns with David Ronfeldt’s TIMN Model, which I have discussed in — understanding the shift. Andersen suggests we can build upon the positive aspects of each previous societal form in order to create a metamodern society. We do not need to destroy the old ways.
status update on society
Many of the changes we face today are similar to a time when a new communications technology came along and changed the face of Europe — print. The Protestant Reformation saw the rise of religious wars, which were later followed by the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment. An age of exploration and colonialism followed, which brought not just gold and silver to the coffers of Europe, but new foods such as potatoes, to fuel the Industrial Revolution.
Today the world is dealing with another new communications technology — electric, now in its digital form. It too is and will continue to change a now globally connected society. These changes continue, with the concurrent challenges of natural resource depletion, pollution, over-population, and the effects of climate change. We are now all members of Marshall McLuhan’s “global village”. What happens in one remote location can be felt across the world through our collective digital nervous system. Our senses are overwhelmed.
The impact of the electric revolution, which started with the telegraph, are now evident and reactions vary across societies and cultures. For example, new technologies and scientific breakthroughs show great promise while these new discoveries put into question older scientific work. This is a natural process for scientists but this can be jarring for citizens, many of whom seek solace in certainty from those selling easy answers, such as anti-vaxxers or homeopathic healers. We humans have difficulties dealing with complex answers.
learning with complexity
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.
changing structures
“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
connected thinking
“… it’s easy, and it’s seductive, to assume that data is really knowledge. Or that information is, indeed, wisdom. Or that knowledge can exist without data. And how easy, and how effortlessly, one can parade and disguise itself as another. And how quickly we can forget that wisdom without knowledge, wisdom without any data, is just a hunch.” —Toni Morrison (2019) The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
Data needs knowledge to understand it. Those who have this knowledge can then create information about the data to help others understand it. This is why there are so many different interpretations of complex issues. We have limited data and limited knowledge. Therefore experts often disagree. Each expert comes with a different story. Some groups share a story which influences their judgement. But wisdom is being able to understand knowledge and data in context and then make appropriate decisions. Without enough good data, we have no foundation for our knowledge.
what it’s all about
Three things are essential for meaningful work in the network era — diversity, learning, and trust.
Diversity
While there is much talk about information overload, it has never been easier for us to find diverse opinions, experiences, and perspectives. To make sense of any complex matter we cannot rely on a single source. As with the blind men and the elephant, each of us can only see a part of the whole. It’s not just gender balance that we need to cultivate in our social networks but overall intellectual diversity.
“All human systems are connected and connected systems cannot be understood in terms of isolated parts.” —Esko Kilpi