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“There is never a wrong time to do the right thing.”

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“It is not that a person makes meaning, as much as that the activity of being a person is the activity of meaning-making … the most fundamental thing we do with what happens to us is organize it. We literally make sense.”

Developmental psychologist Robert Kegan

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ideas that are the most difficult to validate can feel like the most important ones

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Complexity, in business, is in the midst of a weird time. In the attempt to translate complexity-in-theory to complexity-in-practice, a whole bunch of people are turning themselves into pretzels to simplify, uhm, complexity. The intent is to make it understandable and manageable (ability to navigate or as Donella Meadows suggests “dance with the system”), but in doing so there have been a variety of quadrants, some delightful descriptors (see: ‘wicked problems’) and, in general, a bunch of things which actually make complexity even more complex in the minds of people in business as well as in practice.

I continue to believe the rough-ish diagram Stacey placed in “Managing the Unknown” is one of the more practical views of complexity for business.

One of the things I like about it, and have liked, is that it has its own version of an OODA loop. This seems important to me because navigating complexity is less about the decision and more about observing decisions and decide what to do with the effect, or effects, which exist as a consequence of the initial stimulus <other past decisions>. In the past I have called this ‘situational awareness.’ That said. OODA loops WITHIN complex dynamics is how to iteratively navigate complexity without simply reacting. You do something and then manage against that decision because it is not a linear directional world in which a problem leads to an action that leads to a solution. Instead, we live in an infinite looped dynamic world. Each action is based on current conditions, such actions affect future conditions, and changed conditions become the basis for later action.  The system, and systems nested within, are reflections of ceaseless connections and feedback loops (even if they are nonlinear). This makes complexity tricky because you can do something with good intentions, say to resolve a problem, and actually alleviate that problem and, yet, be causing another unseen snowballing problem. By applying pressure <or a resolution> in one place tends to create some equal opposing pressure (or pressures) in another place.

Regardless. While that, generally, sounds complex – because it is – the simple truth is everything is connected and nothing is ever really stagnant. But the complexity folk just don’t seem satisfied with that. We need labels and words and definitions. To that I say we don’t need to be brilliant; we need to find ways of doing useful things.

“If you keep certain creative people in too tight a box, they blow up the box.”

Liz Phair

Anyway.

One of the most interesting books I have read about complexity was not actually about complexity. it was about people and society – The Listening Society by Hanzi Freinacht. Ok. Hanzi Freinacht is a complex guy, complex thinker, and talks about the future of society and humankind (kind of a complex topic).  The reason why I believe Listening Society is about complexity and business is because it is about people. And while we like to talk about systems, algorithms, digital infrastructure, culture, and, well, anything but people, inevitably if you want to navigate complexity you need to get people’s heads screwed on right and get everyone thinking about the right things.  I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out, pragmatically, business is a lot like living life in that for the most part you are just trying to get shit done the best you possibly can. It sounds like a grind and aspects of it really are – but can be a thinking grind. So, despite the fact we speak of the rise of the ‘knowledge worker’ the truth is if a business wants to have some agility it needs thinker/doers (or doer/thinkers) or at least have teams in which there is some equilibrium between needed thinking and needed doing and the grind it out mentality needed to navigate complexity and a complex world.

Which leads me back to Hanzi.

He suggests that each person is a cross section of the self – the depths & dimensions – and the conflict and potential inherent in the interactions with social, economic and cultural fabric – all amped up in a technological world. Freinacht calls this ‘a transpersonal perspective.’ Its not just that we are each a billiard ball that interacts with other people. We co-emerge or ‘intra-act.’  He suggests we have a lived experience as well as a creational experience. We experience and absorb from all experiences and in doing so we, systemically, change. What this means is that society is present within each individual as well as within the relationships one forges with what we call ‘self.’ Here is the uncomfortable suggestion — there is no true individual nor is there any true collective there is simply an evolving interlinked emergent set of ‘transviduals.’ This makes each of us inseparable, in a complete sense, rather than some simplistic unique separate life story. This means each person should be viewed as an open and social process, a “whirlwind of participation and cocreation of society.” Society, or social dynamics (which is relevant to the business world), as a whole is then viewed as a self organizing system which creates each of us (transviduals) who, in turn, recreate society. We are all social constructions. We are all, in fact, parts & pieces of one another and affect one another. We consist of many different influences (which makes the idea of individual a constraining idea), roles and perspectives WITHIN a multitude of contexts. In other words, we are complex.

Which leads me to what Ralph Stacy called “bounded instability.” People are inherently unstable <I call them uneven> and forcing consistency, rather than coherence, actually limits possibilities (stability comes at a cost). His thought is to relax the inhibitors and optimize (in a situational equilibrium, not balance) what he calls ‘fit & split’ and what I call coherence.

But lurking within what I just shared is that people systems inherently are driven by stable laws of behavior (boundaries) which actually CREATE specific kinds of instability, yet, this creates some aspect of patterns. It sounds crazy but stick with me here. The tighter the boundaries the broader the instability (fragility). But stable, not constrictive, boundaries create patterns.

“Companions the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds, not believers. Fellow creators the creator seeks – those who write new values on new tablets. Companions the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest.”

Zarathustra (Hanzi Freinacht)

Patterns? Reality is made up of inner landscapes rubbing up against each other. This means reality is emergent and we are not successful by slavishly following ‘laws of’ protocol, but rather our ability to sense make reality and navigate emergent patterns. What this means from a complexity standpoint is that Life, business, any environment, is best felt, not organized (or controlled).

That thought is kinda important because complexity, to the everyday worker, isn’t about chaos or stability or any management guru word, its about competing demands and the tension between meeting status quo demands and opportunistic demands WITHIN time demands.  Reconciling this is tough because most people make it a binary choice and the natural arc of business behavior is status quo because of a pressure to produce consistent and reliable outcomes. I believe it was Dewey who suggested people, in general, tend to formulate our beliefs in terms of “either–or”, between which alternatives we recognize no intermediate possibilities. Just like algorithms, which choose only in X or Y choicemaking, we tend to strive for clarity to such an extent we will make things simplistic, i.e., a highly probable assessment becomes a 100% choice and 100% invested <when probability and choice or not equal in truth>. Circling back to sensing or feeling patterns, this means we need to avoid either/or binary choicemaking so that we can ride patterns rather than control patterns.

 

structure influences behavior is a central principle underlying systems thinking

complex systems resist behavior change

the active energy in an organization is people

a process is only good, and efficient, as the market is built to serve. if the market changes, the process may still generate positive results, but it will no longer be efficient and will continue to decay in its effectiveness.

Anyway. I am not a big believer in social system design, more in trying to understand systems dynamics, but ignoring the fact that all systems, including social, HAVE a design and therefore can be ‘re-designed’ (in some form or fashion) would be naïve. Systems exist everywhere. Systems influence everything we do.  The idea of a social system implies that relationships between its parts strongly influence human behavior. To put the matter more bluntly, a social system implies that people act partially as cogs in a social and economic machine. In other words, people play roles demanded by pressures of the whole system. This idea is a bit uncomfortable because at its core it suggests people aren’t totally free to make their own decisions. That said. Suffice it to say all social systems have some ‘design’ features (or have actually been designed) which, tying back to Hanzi, means people, as social constructs, are designed by social systems.

Yup. The structure of the system will define behaviors. I say that because one cannot blame individuals for most failures, but rather the system itself. Yet. We tend to highlight the accountability of ‘the individual’ in some fairly unhealthy ways within business. Circling back to Freinacht, the entire idea of individual or collective is outdated in today’s world. Cluetrain Manifesto called it ‘the hyperlinked organization’ and the reality is “I am parts of you, you are parts of me, and the whole is a malleable mix of parts of all of us – even those we interact with outside the internal system within the business.” Business and our little personal circles of existence are simply a system within a system, or of the system, and people are systems in and of themselves. That’s today’s world. I imagine I make that point to suggest gamification (which I dislike anyway) of business tends to seek out ‘individual motivations’ when in reality all gamification does is create less than unifying aspects within an organization (when business, in general, while not seeking unity, should seek unifying systems). Gamification, or many of the silly leadership tactics, are attempts to untangle complexity into manageable units. That’s a less-than-useful approach. The intertwined nature of complexity means one shouldn’t be seeking untangle anything, but rather seek to get them to develop TOGETHER to create new evolutions of the system. It isn’t about shedding things, but rather creating things. My point, I imagine, is complexity does not exist to be solved, but rather developed. That thought, in particular, is counter to what society encourages us to do.

Lastly.

We need to deal with this. Remember earlier I suggested we are social constructs. If we do not deal with it, we, well, stop constructing <and that is bad>. This isn’t some theoretical mumbo jumbo issue I am sharing. We need to deal with it because people will be increasingly squeezed in a complex world. Squeezed? What I mean by that is the world is not going to become any less demanding with regard to ‘results’ or outcomes and the world is not going to become any less complex and overwhelming. In fact. They will both likely become more. Under the pressure of time and demand for ‘do something/decide something’ our behaviors will inevitably arc toward the simplistic on our bad, most overwhelmed, days (and simplicity on a good day). In our inability to navigate the multidimensional abstraction of each moment/situation/event/decision/etc., we will lean in on what we believe is our true ability – intuitive behavior. Uh oh. “Believe” as an ability is a misnomer. In a complex world 99% of us suck at intuitive behavior <heck, most of the time all of our intuition is dubious at best> and actually simply grasp the closest key we can find to unlock the door to get the hell out of the complex hallway we seem stuck in. The truth, the reality, is that even the most time-constrained decisions demand some mental grind. If we don’t, then even at our best, we will always remain a step or two behind not only the world but behind any semblance of a sane world. But here is where it gets, well, bad. As the world becomes increasingly complex and we become increasingly overwhelmed and under increasing pressure to ‘do something’, there will always be someone peddling ‘simplicity’ or some tool/tactic to ease us through that situation. Uhm. Easy does not equal what is best for us <see the endless apps claiming to streamline our interactions with the world only to divert our attention from some pretty important things>. Streamlining is more likely to strip away the important than to strip away the unimportant. We need to expand our abilities in order to expand the space we need to navigate as well as to simply expand space so we stop getting squeezed. And maybe that is the most important point. Look. Complexity has a nasty habit of making us feel like we are being squeezed – even when we are not. Gaining the ability to expand space is actually improving reality and, well, an improved reality is a reality more readily navigated. This can be done and we need to shed the defeatist attitude which arcs our mindsets into the space of being ‘overwhelmed’ versus ‘whelmed’. It is within that space in which we may not completely shed the constraints of complexity, but we can certainly push out on the boundaries to give us some space to breathe a bit. And, well, I imagine that’s the key to navigating complexity – space to breathe. No quadrant, no theory, no management guru, will give you any tool better than space to breathe. Complexity CAN be suffocating so the simple action of breathing is the path to navigation. Ponder.

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“Once the inner connection is grasped, all theoretical belief in the permanent necessity of existing conditions collapses before their collapse in practice”

Karl Marx

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“It’s never the changes we want that change everything.”

Junot Díaz

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How often have we identified a strategy and then went about identifying the obstacles within the system to effectively bring it to life? I would suggest more often than not this is exactly what we do. So, then we go about fixing the system, or fine tuning it to match the strategy, only to find the obstacles we foresaw were not really the inhibitors we thought (or by fixing them we created some unintended consequence instead).

The alternative, I imagine, is maybe we design a strategy to most effectively match the system we have only to watch the system change as it implements the strategy.

Both are flawed albeit the latter less so than the former.

The only thing a dynamic system guarantees is the future you foresee, or envision, will not happen.

My point here is you do need some plans, but plans, in a dynamic market, shouldn’t be followed to the detriment of the objective.

My point here is you need some strategies, but strategies, in a dynamic market, should sometimes be pursued to the detriment of a planned objective.

My point here is you need to recognize that your system is in some cases is not worth the energy to change (use as it exists) and in others tweak to enable plans and strategies, i.e., your system is both an enabling and a restricting constraint.

My point here is that strategies should nest within a system, or system dynamics, rather than have systems support a strategy <note: this is a general rule which under circumstances can be broken>.

Ok. That nested thought.

Nested dynamic processes ARE the system process. Anyone who suggests “this is our process” and describes it as some discrete, mutually exclusive thing, is on drugs. Any one process is simply something you have chosen to put boundaries around just to analyze and describe <that is a bastardization of a Donella Meadows thought>. Processes are layered, distinctly paced and intersectional. There are slow variables to fast variables all of which create patterns with slow to faster moving parts. This means, not only those things happen in combinations of speeds, but that also change occurs, and is encouraged, to happen at different speeds. The only way to manage this is to reduce environment variables to attempt to manipulate the context to create positive dynamics for process/system to thrive. I’d be remiss if I didn’t state these are ‘limited time contexts’ and more often than not dissolve faster than any business person would like. I would also be remiss if I didn’t point out this also demands:

• Different configurations of strategy

• Emergent strategy implementation

• Predictive strategies only used for framing not execution

All these layers and connections can create what appear to seem like fluid patterns and interactions, but are actually a makeup of somewhat unexpected patterns (within the transactions, community and world) but typically within a range of anticipated behavior. This also means that while a pattern is occurring, simultaneously, new patterns are being created (new patterns also create new possibilities). This may seem simultaneously exciting and frightening (organizations like tidiness and predictability & replication), but what I can say it should be simultaneously opportunistic and dynamic.

It is key to remember that systems, left to their own devices <maybe with some constraints>, have the ability to expand the proper strategy beyond the imagination of any objective one can place on it.

That said. More strategies die within systems than they do in the marketplace. Think about that. Think about that for a long time because if you don’t recognize the doom loop between strategies and systems you are, well, doomed.

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“The world went on the same after all. The same things happened every morning. So what if they did not like her? She would go on the same.”

Harriet the Spy

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Let me get this out of the way upfront: likeability, in and of itself in an organization, is deadweight.

Yeah.

I just said that.

Now. I am not talking about people wanting to be liked. I believe Alicia Menendez wrote a book called “the likeability trap’ which deals with that.

I am speaking of how people desiring to ‘build a culture’ saying things like “its important we like each other.” No. It isn’t. It isn’t important you like everyone, its important to not actively dislike everyone <that is different than liking everyone> and it is important to respect everyone. It’s a business not a circle of friends.

Look.

I am not suggesting someone seek to be unlikeable nor am I suggesting actually recruiting based on finding unlikeable people. Shit. Liking people you work with actually increases some social cohesion. The tricky part about that is effective business culture is more about professional cohesion.

What I mean by that is say you have Joe, and everyone likes Joe. No one has anything bad to say about him and, in fact, almost every conversation begins with “I like Joe”. But then the inevitable shoe drops … “but.” He’s likeable but doesn’t contribute shit. He’s just the likeable guy in the office taking someone’s salary who may be a little less likeable, but you can count on to get good shit done when the business of doing business needs to be done. Yeah. Professional cohesion is grounded in contribution, productivity and respect.

Please.

Please no one suggest I am suggesting a binary. This isn’t an either/or discussion. This is a “what is most important discussion” and a ‘proportional” discussion. Let me address the latter. “Likeable’ takes on disproportionate importance in many businesses and how they view ‘culture’. What I mean by that is whenever a review comes up or senior folk are gathered around some mahogany conference room table the “everyone likes him” cloaks all the other business negatives surrounding good ole Joe. Yeah. Proportionally we seem to disproportionately weight the importance of likeability higher than just professional contribution. Its almost like we view the likeability/contribution organizational formula as a zero-sum analysis where a lot here, zeros out a little here. That’s slightly absurd and not really a good way of ‘constructing a healthy culture.’

Let me be clear.

Joe is deadweight.

Joe is also actually bad for the culture. Yeah. Deadweight and bad. Deadweight in that salary earned is supposed to be related to business value provided and in this case that translates into “we are paying him because he contributes to the likeability in our culture” (maybe suggesting he contributes in some way to social cohesion). Which leads me to bad. Bad in that everyone else in the company senses that if you don’t really have anything to contribute, but figure out how to be likeable you can pull down a sweet salary and get healthcare.

In the end. I dislike, no, hate when people discuss likeability when it is related to culture. “We want to be known as likeable” is a horrible objective. I am fine if someone states “lets make sure we are not unlikeable as we craft a distinct professional position in the marketplace”, but likeable? Please.

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“Sliding down the slippery slope of mediocrity.”

David Ogilvy

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Turn on television on any given weekend in the United States and you have a very high probability of finding the movie The Replacements at some point. While the movie, at its core, is about taking for granted what you have versus taking advantage of opportunities, tucked within the movie is what I call “the quicksand moment.”

This is the scene where the coach asks the players their greatest fear and the quarterback says “quicksand.”

Businesses get stuck in quicksand all the time. Shit. People do too. What makes it worse is that most times you know how to play the game well, in fact, you may have actually been playing it well at the time so the first thing that goes wrong is just a blip.

“Just one thing” is what you say.

Then another thing happens.

Then another.

You fight back alone and sink.

Or.

Someone notices (usually management) and they help you fight back.

How?

The first response almost every business has to a problem is “more resources”. Oh. That is the first sign you have fallen into quicksand. As Brooks pointed out in the Mythical Man Month, even on projects, our first instinct is to add more people. This only makes everything even slower and more dysfunctional.

If that fails, the second response is usually even more resources.

You sink deeper.

Faster.

On a personal level this comes to fruition in “I’ll stay later or get in early.” You are on the edge of quicksand. You see added resources as “more time.” So, you put in more time. And more time. And this is where fear enters. You know you are trying hard; you know you are doing right things and, yet, it still keeps going wrong.

You are sinking despite all the effort.

And then you can’t breathe.

Organizational quicksand.

Now.

Quicksand and slippery slopes share some similar characteristics.

The first is that you don’t know you are in, or on, them until its too late.

The second is what I call “just this once” behavior.

It is absolutely easy to compromise – in business and in life. “Just this once.” An exception. And then another.

And before you know it you are on that slippery slope.

Regardless. This is a Life and business lesson. So, let’s just call it “truth.” It’s a truth about work, effort, decisions, compromise, lies (or “half-truths”) and almost anything else I can think of.

Slippery slopes are incredibly easy to step onto AND get stuck on. What do I mean?

“Just this once” you say to yourself when you are tired. Whatever the decision or action we are discussing, to you, in the moment … it is mentally “an exception”.

“Just this once” when you are asked a question and you ponder your answer and maybe you embellish a bit.

“Just this once” you say to yourself when you put off that thing you wanted to do. A workout. A chore. A book. A project. A diet. A decision.

“Just this once” you say to yourself when it is a silly rule or what you are doing isn’t really unethical, but its not 100% ethical, it’s just in the margins of “okay to do.”

Before you know it <after some “just this onces“> you have edged on to that slippery slope. Once has become many and, well, many becomes the standard.

Business is funny that way. Its sneaky. It permits you to look at things in a mutually exclusive way so that you don’t really see the accumulation of events and decisions until you have sunk.

Oh.

Quicksand.

Ponder.

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“The moment of truth, the sudden emergence of a new insight, is an act of intuition. Such intuitions give the appearance of miraculous flushes, or short-circuits of reasoning. In fact, they may be likened to an immersed chain, of which only the beginning and the end are visible above the surface of consciousness. The diver vanishes at one end of the chain and comes up at the other end, guided by invisible links.”

Arthur Koestler

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“There are no separate systems. The world is a continuum.”

Donella Meadows

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We love addition. It is simple, linear and understandable. One and one makes two provides some logic in a sometimes illogical world. It implies if we just study each of the ‘ones’ well enough we will be able to predict an outcome when we put them together. Understand one, and then understand another, and when you put that one and the ‘another’ together it will equal something.

Which leads me to “and.”

“Ands” are connections. Between people, between things, in general ‘ands’ are things within a system. This means in order to understand <as well as one can> a system one has to explore the mechanisms/things/connections that makes things happen – the “ands.” Simplistically the easiest way to do this is to step back and watch how the system behaves. And, yet, even this is tricky:

“You think that because you understand ‘one’ that you must therefore understand ‘two’ because one and one make two. But you forget you must also understand ‘and.’”

 (Meadows Thinking in Systems)

It is in interconnection <the ‘ands’> which may actually make one and one equal something other than two. That makes most people’s heads explode, yet, it shouldn’t because it explains velocity, scale and a variety of other exponential growth/progress ideas. Similarly, if you grasp the concept, now you must also accept that, in this case, one and one maybe actually equate to something less than two.

Which leads me to resilience.

Understanding “ands” is actually about understanding the resilience of your business. Yeah. Resilience rarely resides within a system, but rather the connections within a system. So, if you seek to understand a business’s resilience you have to understand the connections <complexity science suggests ‘fractals’>. I say that because resilience is a measure of a system’s ability to survive and persist within a dynamic environment. It has elasticity embedded within in, not constancy. Resilience is restorative from conditions encountered which means it offers non-static stability. All that said. The elasticity is found in the conversations, the connections, the “ands” and the ability to juggle, and find the appropriate equilibrium, of replicable and emergent.

Which leads me to “ands” and complexity.

While ‘ands’ are connections it is within connections where one can actually find insights into a system. While interconnected can look incomprehensible you can actually see some insights within the connectivity because connectivity, at its most basic level, are small linear fractals within a nonlinear complexity which represent. To be clear. I propose insights are not causally linear (they simply release a nonlinear aspect of probabilities) nor are they simple rather they are reflective of unleashing complexity’s non-linear potential. These insights may appear simple, because at their best they focus on some linear fractal, but they are complex in nature.

The truth is below the surface of any complex system outcomes lies a complex arrangement of fractal connections <”ands”>. By rummaging around the ‘ands’, you can discover some human insights (mindset/attitude/behavior) or some recurring patterns that ground connectivity AND observe some of the more nebulous inconsistent interactions/connections. Technically these are ‘fractal simplicities’ or what Alvin Toffler suggested in the 1980’s as halfisms versus wholisms.

Insights actually straddle halfisms and wholisms (albeit I could suggest insights are halfisms which lead to a wholism). Regardless. Insights reflect a connection TO the truthism while not offering the whole truth in and of itself.

Which leads me to the “art of ands.”

“And analysis” is an art. Here is what I mean. It was Arthur Koestler, in The Act of Creation 1964, who identified something called “bisociation of matrices” or how one creatively identifies patterns or connections.

** note: (Koestler) “The pattern underlying [the creative act] is the perceiving of a situation or idea, L, in two self-consistent but habitually incompatible frames of reference, M1 and M2. The event L, in which the two intersect, is made to vibrate simultaneously on two different wavelengths, as it were. While this unusual situation lasts, L is not merely linked to one associative context, but bisociated with two.

I have coined the term ‘bisociation’ in order to make a distinction between the routine skills of thinking on a single ‘plane,’ as it were, and the creative act, which … always operates on more than one plane. The former can be called single-minded, the latter double-minded, transitory state of unstable equilibrium where the balance of both emotion and thought is disturbed.”

‘Ands’ are grounded in a “bisociation of matrices” and, as Robert Kegan (Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life, 1994) stated, the idea of a “holding environment” which offers two key aspects within thinking — the Socialized Mind and the Self Authoring Mind:

Order 3: Socialized Mind. Cross-categorical thinking-the ability to relate one durable category to another-is evident in the third order of consciousness. As a result, thinking is more abstract, individuals are aware of their feelings and the internal processes associated with them, and they can make commitments to communities of people and ideas.

The ability to scan about for cross functional, cross categorical, cross institutional, thinking is at the core of sense making.

Order 4: Self-Authoring Mind. Cross-categorical constructing-the ability to generalize across abstractions, which could also be labeled systems thinking-is evident in the fourth order of consciousness. In this order, self-authorship is the focus. Individuals “have the capacity to take responsibility for and ownership of their internal authority” and establish their own sets of values and ideologies. Relationships become a part of one’s world rather than the reason for one’s existence.

‘Ands’ almost demand an understanding of the parts AND the whole, the intentions of the individual and community effort to be successful. In other words, ideas are self-authored AND socialized through connections so that the vision, idea and implementation are aligned to the benefit of the concept AND the business. in other words, ands is artistic thinking.

Which leads me to why understanding “ands” matters.

Even if you don’t completely buy into the mindset that all of business is complex, at minimum, most agree it is dynamic, constantly shifting and never/rarely static. That said.

• • • • I believe complexity just is. Period. It is the system in which all businesses work within. All dynamics are simply the dynamics of systems – institutions, people, process, automation, technology, society, culture (inside & out of a business), community (inside & out of a business), global, etc. – interacting with each other. In other words, a bunch of “ands”.
      • I believe complexity is expansive in nature, not reductive. Therefore, the objective of navigating complexity is always to unlock its potential, not ‘reduce complexity.’ In other words, maximize the “ands” and maximize complexity.

• • • • I believe there are linear aspects within complexity and there are causal relationships. In other words, “ands” are linear and their outcomes are causally nonlinear.

In the end. Thinking in ‘ands’ keeps us from simply dividing an issue into what we perceive as a solvable part versus unite the complexity into one seemingly unsolvable issue. Counterintuitively, the latter is actually the path to meaningful progress even though I suggest it is ‘unsolvable’. You do not ‘solve’ complexity, you use ‘ands’ to navigate and untap complexity’s potential.

I believe we would be better off thinking about this. I imagine my larger point is that systems and individuals are inextricably linked and if one desires to ‘work the system’ they will also need to ‘work the individual’ (I hate that phrase) and become experts in “and analysis.” Systems are people and people, inherently, are unique typically working in coherence to the benefit of a larger collective. In other words, systems are people, but systems effectiveness resides in the “ands.” Ponder.

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“One person should not give orders to another person, but both should agree to take their orders from the situation.”

Mark Parker Follett, 1925

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“a class of social system problems which are ill-formulated, where information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision makers with conflicting values, and where the ramifications in the whole system are thoroughly confusing.”

C. West Churchman, 1968 in Management Science on Horst Rittel’s ‘wicked problems’

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If business were honest with itself, it would admit that most everyday decision-making careens between shambolic consensus (groups of people staring at dashboards hoping that a number will absolve them of accountability and make the decision for them all) and an individual who, hopefully, has the sense of the least of most damaging decisions. It is almost amazing more businesses do not crash and burn despite their reliance on data, KPIs and measurement. That said. The reason why they don’t is that there are thousands of these decisions being made very day and week and the mean of those decisions tend to course correct enough to find survival in the overarching decision-making shambles.

Which leads me to a discussion on situations, or, as Follet suggests: “agreeing to take their orders from the situation.” Let me begin by saying that ‘context is everything’ is just a lazy way to say “the law of the situation.”

So lets talk about situations and the Law of the Situation in business.

About the Situation. Empty space does not tell us much. It is how space, and time, is used that tells us everything. I believe this is called ‘the structure of occupancy’, i.e., why is something there and not there. The reality is a situation is crammed full of information. They represent the space in between where people’s productivity, the system itself and new ideas create the feedback loop for progress and profitability. How well an organization works within a situation is actually an emergent property – the interactions of the people, technology, system dynamics and resources. This means the whole cannot be inferred from the parts or by adding up the parts or, if you try within a situation, the whole will be defined by that specific context and non-replicable <but can still offer some learnings>. There is some value in defining the whole by its parts within a situation simply because looking at the parts and the collective behavior and all interacting elements. Regardless. The study of a situation should not seek to control the parts, or even the whole, but rather discover the underlying patterns which make up the aspects of potential. This understanding leads to an ability to make the adaptability of components, and people, a priority because rather than simply having resources they become resources used well.

To assess a situation, one must be able to find the signals and properly sift through the weak and strong to assess probability scenarios from that situation. The key is detection – effective detection of the environment and environmental changes. This demands a style of thinking which ‘hits without aiming directly at something.’ What I mean by that is this type of thinking is less interested in declaring right and wrong or true or false statements, but instead are focused on knowing, knowledge and understanding. The acquisition of knowledge through detection is an active involvement in designing for any situation and demands active interest in the world/environment and not just on solving some specific problem. This is important because every situation is emergent in its properties and the thinking is emergent in its properties. In other words, it is a constantly evolving interaction between context, environment and situation and the Law of the Situation demands one ‘configure’ conceptually. Ponder.

About configuration. Developing a configuration takes some intellectual rigor, some data savviness, creativity, imagination and a good dose of pragmatism. At the same time, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that whatever configuration one, or a group, creates cannot be viewed as a prediction. In fact, about the only thing one can predict is that the future state will not be the configuration simply at best just like it. Sure. The outcome may look inevitable in hindsight, but within the situation itself, at best, it will simply be an approximation of the outcome. That said.

“Nothing is built in stone; all is built in sand. But we must build as if the sand were stone.”

Jorge Luis Borges

Once defined, each level, and function, of a configuration typically emerges (constantly) into a new form of functionality (unless rules or ‘top down’ management tamps it out) which creates new features to create positive consequences for the function and the form of the business itself. In other words, the best decisions iterate to accommodate the dynamics without losing the objective. Ponder.

Defining a configuration. Configurations are made up of cooperating data points. If ‘big data’ has taught us one thing, in a complexity dynamic world, it is that if you can find a reliable correlation it doesn’t really matter if there is a causal link. In other words, pattern seeking is often more important than causal discoveries. The patterns give decision makers clues as to what is emerging. This is important within a Law of Situation mindset because people inevitably seek causal things to solve rather than seeking patterns to ride or exploit. Just a reminder that it was Peter Drucker who said ‘solving problems simply returns a business to equilibrium’ so that seeking the causal, or problem solving, is actually counterproductive in terms of seeking to optimize emergent opportunities.

Now. Just because we can’t know everything in advance doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t gather what information that we do have to help us assess what might happen in the future, and plan and act on this basis. Planning and preparing are, if nothing else, helpful coping mechanisms to help us deal with uncertainty. Our troubles only occur when we apply near certainty to our scenarios and configurations instead of probabilities (while this may sound common sense, in the business world, this is anything but common sense in that certainty is where many businesses define their decision-making upon). On the other hand, just because you can’t know everything doesn’t mean that you can’t know anything. Nor just because we believe in complexity doesn’t mean we cannot accept some causality accountability. Of course, we should moderate any predictions let alone strict causalities, but we still need to act and make decisions. I believe it was Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, who suggested we use information from the past, i.e., concrete experiences, to get a ‘grip’ on the present. It may not be certainty, but it is enough for configuration and, eventually, designing action. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the choice isn’t binary, absolute certainty versus absolute uncertainty, but rather on a continuum between levels of confidence in probability. Regardless. If people in today’s business are addicted to anything it is concrete and patterns. They are two sides of the same coin. In a complex uncertain-strained world concrete looks like an oasis in the middle of a desert and patterns are paved roads in the middle of nowhere. Ponder.

Which leads me to reification or misplaced concreteness (Philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, 1929).

Reification is when an abstract object or idea is treated as if it were concrete (materially real). It is a cognitive illusion wherein the mind plays tricks with you to make you distort the uncertain and make it seem certain.

Examples:

− “Confusing the map with the territory“ – i.e. thinking as if the ideas baked into a theory, model, or story are more real than what they represent, such that reality, or one’s interpretation of reality, must bend to fit the map (as opposed to the other way around).

“A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.”

Alfred Korzybski

− “The myth of the given“ – i.e. believing that one’s perceptions of reality, which are in fact constructed subjective experiences, accurately represent objective reality.

− The symbolic impulse – which treats abstract concepts as if they had the properties of concrete objects –  well-defined boundaries, durability, location, etc.

− Anthropomorphism – attributing human properties such as emotion and intentionality to natural or social objects, processes, or structures, like the Universe is kind; Mother Nature is protecting herself; the government is greedy.

− Psychological projections – when I assume that others must have the same beliefs or perceptions that I have

Source: Knowing and Unknowing Reality – Tom Murray

And then there are patterns.

Michael Shermer, “The Believing Brain” (2011), calls the cognitive tendency to find patterns regardless of whether they are real “patternicity.”

The mind’s sensemaking function discovers patterns primarily by matching incoming information to what is known and anticipated. This means accuracy, or truth, is less important than the pattern (i.e., we affix accuracy and truth to the pattern rather than have the patterns define reality and truth). This is different from default because the brain tricks us by actually doing some work – seeking patterns – all the while usually simply trying to confirm existing patterns rather than discover new patterns. We bend the incoming information to configure what we desire (or some version of a comfortable solution). I would be remiss if I didn’t point out complexity increases this behavior exponentially.

A last thought on Patterns. While patterns naturally emerge most common leadership guidance suggests a map needs to be offered to guide desired patterns. As Ralph Stacey suggests: “this turns out to be a poor guide to successful action: the whole idea that a map can be drawn in advance of an innovative (emergent) journey through turbulent times is a fantasy.” By definition, any emergent strategic direction will inevitably take the business into unmapped situations and environments. Any ‘map’ developed is built with some underlying assumptions of unforeseen dynamics which under the scrutiny of “the law of the situation” (decisions are subservient to the situation & context – Follett), end up only being derivatives of those assumptions (not the actual assumption itself) which actually increases situational inertia as people debate the assumptions rather than discuss the decisions to be made. Patterns are a reflection of learning in real time so it seems to make sense to learn about HOW your organization (and what learnings they tend to gravitate toward) and its people learn rather than map out some unknowable future. Ponder.

“Context is the appreciation that everything going forward is part of a complex adaptive system that is based on its unique dependency formed in the past. It is boundary and signal constrained. What is hard and difficult to determine, as I am just an observer right now in the live system, is; are we in a stable, negative feedback, control loop or are we in an unstable, positive feedback, transformational control loop, or a balance of both wresting for dominance. Does your signal matter? Context is everything. But everything is context; unless something makes a bigger noise.”

Tony Fish

Improving situational awareness. Ongoing learning creates is natural boundary. While this may sound counterintuitive, it is a positive version of an enabling constraint. While this is true of individuals it is even more so in groups or organization. This occurs because connections inevitably create reflection, some conflict and conversations which inspire discovery (which is the engine for progress) but are bounded by the group dynamics.

How? Behavior is constrained by group knowledge and shared views. The other positive aspect of this is that group learning is naturally asymmetrical which means the irregular aspects of ongoing learning actually enable dynamic thinking, and strategies, to accommodate shifts in the marketplace. I would note here that ongoing learning, while encouraging adventurous thinking, also has some coherence in that the core of an ongoing learning organization is self-directed toward service to ‘the idea’, objective or the vision (as long as the vision isn’t too vague). I would like to note here that I am not as opposed, like Ralph Stacey is, to having a vision as a north star coherence tool. However, I would agree with him that a vision does not diminish competing and conflicting ambitions within an organization while ‘an idea’ tends to create coherence even with that conflict. In addition, a vision can offer a close ended situation to all challenges versus encouraging open-ended thinking/innovation in service to ‘an idea’ (the latter offers a more viable path to greatest potential).

What this does mean though is how well one learns depends on how well they interact with each other, i.e., group dynamics. The group dynamics is a culmination of the interactions and dialogue between members of the group producing coherent behavior, beliefs and decisions – absent of any formal plans or hierarchy or control.  Today’s business lack of understanding of this dynamic is easily found in the general dependence upon long term plans and

…. typical plan ….

planning. What I mean by that is most typically a small group of people go off, develop some mission, some mission statement, maybe even some ‘purpose’, then hand it all to ‘people’ to carry them out. That is, simplistically, the law of the plan, not the law of the situation. Sure. The plans may be under the guise of some grander vision or mission or purpose, but they still make people implementers, not thinkers and do not encourage continuous improvement or learning. Just a reminder that Law of Situation learning is most useful in reflection, not in application. Ponder.

Which leads me to Managing a situation.  Situations demand multiple conversations connecting diverse skills and knowledge to define the emergent understanding. Notice I focus on the understanding because far too often we attempt to put together thinker/collaborators with a solution in mind. We shouldn’t. it is my belief almost anyone can design a solution once a situation is understood so the focus should be understanding the situation.

Now. Part of the situation definition issue is found in its vagueness or maybe that some of the outlines are blurry. What I mean by that is while things are obviously the effect of certain, or all, other things, doing something with those things, can only have a vague outline. This makes framing concepts, or how we take ‘the important stuff we should know’ and make it tangible, incredibly important. Framing’s most effective form is a concept which leads me back to the cooperating data points I mentioned earlier.

** note: I would note that the highest value in anything occurs when finding the optimal mix of cooperating variables/people/ideas/data.

Cooperating data points means people need to become better at assessing cues, patterns and probabilities. This means people need to embrace some aspects of black box thinking – just enough information and knowledge. As I noted in my piece on black box thinking, the key is ‘cooperating data points’. Cooperating data points is a term I made up. I made it up because I have seen far too many people pull random bits out of a black box, or some dashboard, and suggest these are the bits that we should use to inform our choice at hand. The random bits look good in isolation, but do not necessarily ‘cooperate’ with each other. Effective concepts do not rely on randomness, they rely on cooperation of knowledge, data and information.

Effective decision-making is borne of this cooperation.

This is important because we need to keep in mind that in a dynamic system <which is a typical business> the probability of any specific event occurring again is relatively small. Contextual variations make each event unique although they can have some resemblance to each other. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that ‘trial & error’ is effective as long as it is judged under a ‘progress’ or improvement criteria and not a ‘scalable’ criterion. Trial & error should be used to create experiences which feed into knowledge which can be applied in an analogous way, not a parallelism.

That said. We can learn from the past because even within a complexity framework there will always be existing constraints (some with more malleable outlines) so there are some pragmatic fundamentals that frame strategy probabilities.

Reminder, any strategy is only as good as:

(a) how it related to context/environment, and

(b) how well it can be implemented.

Everyone should note this is also true of any decision made within a situation.

“The game’s sealed when a player gives up having any strategy at all. “

Kazuo Ishiguro

Which leads me to business sets the objective, but situations create the strategies.

I find there is a general confusion around what a strategy is and what it isn’t. A vision is where you want to go, a mission is what you want to achieve, a strategy details how you’ll get there, and tactics are how you’ll enact the strategy. They can overlap and reinforce one another, certainly, but these words – vision, mission, strategy, tactics – are not interchangeable.

** note:  some nice sources on strategy:

A Primer on Strategy. Good strategy bad strategy. Real strategies—good strategies—can be wrong. And we don’t want to be wrong.

Perils of Bad Strategy

“The wave of information threatens to obscure strategy, to drown out details and numbers, calculation and analysis, reaction and tactics. To have strong tactics we must have strong strategy on one side and accurate calculation on the other. Both require seeing onto the future.”

Gary Kasparov

I bring that up to discuss objectives versus maps. Objectives, more than a vision, tend to provide a directional compass so all the emergent aspects of applying a ‘law of situation’ doesn’t become a mishmash of incoherent activity. That said. Basing business success on a map, most typically based on a range of dubious assumptions, is a highly questionable path.

Plans. Plans are mostly a fantasy.

Parts. Parts are not meant to be measured as mutually exclusive of the whole.

Adopting a law of situation mindset, an acceptance of systems dynamics in action, makes one see business, and organizations, in a very different way. Instead of following past planning principles, which lean in on alignment (a version of control – ‘a line’), there becomes a self-created sense of emergence in which even individuals (and their brainpower) become less important than situations – people serve the situation rather than having a situation serve an individual or their interests.

Now.

That last sentence makes me want to say the idea that people’s interests and incentives have to be aligned with shareholder (external) interests may be one of the most destructive ideas in business. It is certainly destructive to the idea of the law of the situation. Incentives, generally speaking, of any kind are a gamification of behavior. The law of the situation eliminates gamification and makes the situation subservient to nothing but the context and environment that exists. The situation is less about the level of adoption to a particular theory and more about what aspects of a model can be adopted as part of the situational awareness and thinking. There is no ‘gaming’, simply thriving and the pursuit of meaningful progress. Yeah. That is an optimistic thought. I would argue that optimism in people can be realized into improved situational behavior and, consequently, improved decision making (pessimism is naturally reductive). I would also note that theories, conceptually, encourage reductionist thinking. Theories should, instead, be platforms for expansive thinking – true for situations also. What this means is that situations can never be elegantly modeled – in conceptual form or in executional design.

Which leads me to executional dexterity (execution from the Law of Situation).

Executional dexterity, whether it be assessing what scenario to consider, strategy to execute or executing against a strategy, needs the traction of effective situational awareness. To be clear. Accurate recognition, detection, of factors, cues and the assessment is hard work. No data or dashboard will give you answers – only inform.

Dexterity, or agility, will always only be as good as “the law of the situation’ effectiveness. Some people call this “agility setting.”  That said, there is often a gap between decisions and probabilities. What I mean by that is decisions line up based on scenarios, yet, either there is not enough data to inform some probabilistic thinking or decisions are simply made by consensus. In addition, we tend to align decisions linearly when in reality they get executed non-linearly (unevenly). This is mostly due to the fact organizations do not run at one pace.

Ultimately, as “Agility” points out, effective Law of Situation behavior comes down to the ability and willingness to make decisions and execute in stride. This demands effective situational awareness as well as coordinated pacing – structural (resources and culture) and transactional (edge cases and application uses). This could be called ‘understanding the flow of situations.’ Yes. Every business has a cadence. Even when edging toward chaos, or disorder, there is an organizational pace humming along at a low level. Getting pacing in sync is almost as important as ensuring the situation has been assessed properly.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that self-organizing is actually a naturally emergent type of control mechanism. The truth is that when a group informally coalesces it will naturally establish some boundaries – or control. It is self-imposed control rather than imposed control. Systems CAN have a life of their own and contrary to popular belief that life tends to desire to coexist with reality. Stacy calls this; ‘stable equilibrium.’ The law of the situation permits the organization, situation by situation, to create, invent, defend, and discover their destination as they progress. This demands some navigational principles, some guidance for ‘decision sight’, as a rolling roadmap of organizational existence chugs along. Ponder.

Which leads me to lack of helplessness.

The law of the situation discards the idea of helplessness. Complexity, or dynamic systems, when fully embraced can create a sense of helplessness. A sense of being powerless to external forces. The law of the situation does the opposite – “seize fate by the throat” (Ludwig van Beethoven). The truth is in any given situation you, or a small group of individuals, have the opportunity to impact the arc of external forces. Value then is no longer that of some external shareholder, or external interest, or even of some lifeless spreadsheet but rather the energy within, and released, of the situation itself. In the end, it is about creation versus destruction, optimism versus pessimism, and the fact that if facing each situation as one is not helpless to create something good, inevitably, people will be more likely to actually create something good. Ponder.

Lastly.

Two things – long term planning and agility.

First. Long term planning. Everything I have written does not encourage chaos, lack of focus or suggest long-term planning is not important.

It would be very easy for someone reading this to think I am espousing “live in the present” or “manage the short term because that is the only thing one can control” or even that some long-term planning or strategy is unimportant. I am not. Agility and adaptability are not done at the expense of long-term objectives. What I am suggesting is that a desire for stability has had a tendency to constrain exploiting emergent opportunities and put an emphasis on ‘solving problems keeping us from our plans.’ What I am describing flips the equation and puts an emphasis on optimism (we don’t always have problems to solve), emergence (things we could have never planned for) and creativity (innovation is meeting the needs of situations rather than ‘planned obsoletion’).

Second. Agility.

We learn all the time and I imagine my question is “why shouldn’t we be using that learning all the time? (rather than just at some designated time)”. Dynamic thinking, learning, application of that learning (situational strategizing) all can be done in a coherent way of meeting objectives is less a specific destination, but rather a systemic way of doing the business of doing business. This system type of thinking also challenges the belief that people need to be ‘gamed’ in order to be successful, i.e., specific objectives make people work better. Generally speaking, that is a myth and one could argue it is a self-fulfilling belief. If creativity and imagination is the future of business, than systems need to be designed which encourage it. I add that last thought because traditional long-term planning is, at its core, linear thinking. There is a pathway between doing nothing (no long-term objectives and planning) and doing the wrong thing (assuming you can predict a desired long term). It is within these two things in which I believe the Law of the Situation resides. It may not always look orderly but, as Stacey called it, it has aspects of ‘bordered instability’ in which effectiveness trumps efficiency without actually discarding efficiency. Success is found through accumulating patterns, recognition and acquisition of, and exploiting them in real time in creative thinking and agility AND clarity of desired objectives (which ensures coherence). There is no strategic control, only strategic coherence. More importantly, I am suggesting agility is not a feature, but an infrastructural imperative wherein the entire organization is responsible to contextual dynamics, efficient in doing so and effective in generating profits (or making meaningful progress against the business objective or intentions). That last point is important then the organizations that adopt agility adopt agility will invest in many capabilities that other organizations will struggle to see an ROI in. Law of Situation organizations realize these investments make situations expansive, not reductive, and create decisions from which future changes can be made faster and easier.

In the end. The Law of the Situation means building your business, your strategy, and your mindset, around agility rather than simply adopting agility as an enabler of a strategy. It suggests in a dynamic marketplace your ability to reconfigure to maximize situational awareness – short term and long term – is the business’s most valuable asset. It means the Law of the Situation is the path to meaningful progress.

“cadence, boy, is the key to everything, you better learn to pace yourself.”

Patty Hurst Shifter <acetylene>

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“Jumping from boulder to boulder and never falling, with a heavy pack, is easier than it sounds; you just can’t fall when you get into the rhythm of the dance.”
Jack Kerouac

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One of the most difficult things in business is how to excel at a specific project/initiative and, yet, have that ‘best’ fit within the greater business system to make it better. This came to mind when I read Dr Leda Glyptis’ piece on “how do you eat an elephant.” Suffice it to say the majority of business people will agree on “bite off small pieces and get shit done”, yet, the majority will also find that while that one piece done well was truly was excellent it still didn’t ‘fit’ into the existing system and ended up at least partially being a waste of time. The intent was good, but work ended up in no-mans-land. This is a parts and whole discussion and it is never easy. It is a systems discussion and that is never easy. I face this every day, in some form or fashion, in almost every business discussion I have. This often appears in conversations under the larger heinously less-than-useful label of ‘transformation’, but I am fairly confident most business people ask these following two questions all the time:

• How do I get good shit done when it seems like the system, overall, needs to be fixed?
• Should I simply focus on my one part and get that done believing by improving that I will end up improving everything (or at least get the ball rolling on larger improvements)?

Here is where I, personally, begin this discussion.

Cadence

Every business has a cadence. A rhythm it seems to work to. Now. It isn’t just one cadence, but a coherence of cadences. What I mean by that is there are systems within the system and each system has a cadence of its own. That said. The effective organization cadence accommodates each sub-cadence. This becomes important when it comes to initiatives and innovations and even basic projects. Your job’s output, to be successful, has to dance with all other systems. This dance is more like one of those huge ballroom things where partners get exchanged at different points in the dance. It isn’t always seamless but, yet, the dance (viewed from overhead) has a sense of coherence and cadence.

Anyway. Everyone just should accept the reality every organization has a cadence (usually captured in a description like ‘vibe’ or ’energy’ but is actually more a reflection of how the system works). It is, in essence, what we generally feel. The danger resides in the failure to acknowledge this ‘vibe’ is a complex mix of pacing and cadence dynamics – individuals, cliques, teams, tribes, departments, even individual projects. Even a Porsche engine has slow moving, even solid, pieces in combination with pieces moving at rates almost invisible to the eye. Organizations are systems and systems have parts and parts move at different paces so that the totality works efficiently & effectively.

To be clear. Cadence is difficult to understand in an organization. It is difficult because of how, conceptually, layered the problem of cadence is. And, yes, it is a problem. It is a problem because no layer (or dancer) remains in ‘neutral’ nor is it neutral in its motivation nor its impact. Ponder.

Gravity.

Every business has an institutional gravity. I imagine someone could call this culture, but I will not. I simply suggest that left to its own devices an organization will pull things to the ground. You have to see and sense the organizational gravity in order to (a) fly or (b) simply keep things from crashing.

A unique feature of a conserving institution, or even an industry, is a strong center of gravity.

** note: this can be good – as in a vision or principles – or it can be bad – status quo or thinking the way things have always worked is key to optimizing – or it can be even badder – as in power dynamics.

This center of gravity is good important because, in its conserving energy, it keeps all the expended energy from flying off into chaos, albeit it can also be bad important in that it sacrifices progress in doing. Gravity keeps the business institution grounded, but the danger resides in that the institution has all the feeling of speed and achievements and all the while it’s just one huge hamster wheel, i.e., they absorb piecemeal projects to create an illusion of progress while maintaining the status quo.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out status quo is a tricky topic. The truth is a conserving institution can purchase a startup with progressive ideas or thinking and, yet, because it is a conserving institution, they can use it to maintain the status quo. To the outside world they are ‘showing progress’, yet, all they are doing is maintaining the status quo. This is the illusion of progress and that is where gravity dictates organization behavior. Ponder.

Anyway.

How did I arrive at this way of thinking?

Although I have nothing, or little, to do with advertising anymore I began my career in account management. My job was to insert myself into businesses and without getting lost in their business uncover & discover opportunities in which my advertising agency could offer creative value to create value for their business. I found fairly quickly in order for my business (the agency) to be successful it needed to offer solutions that could dance within the existing cadence of the business as well as, if not more importantly, didn’t defy the business gravity – but could fly.

Lastly.

Because I have danced around some system thinking concepts in this piece, I will end with one: leverage points. Systems within systems always have leverage points. I will not suggest they are always easy to find in fact they are fairly often elusive (that’s a natural characteristic of a complex system). That said. There are leverage points that can affect the cadence and gravity or simply how a system works (effectiveness) within the existing cadence and gravity. Everyone should always have their head on a swivel looking for those. To be clear. There will always be false prophets who will shout from their podium that “this is the one to change it all!” and part of good business is attempting to separate the wheat from the chaff. But a leverage point is a leverage point and when found and exploited well it makes a difference – to the team working on the part and the greater system within which it works. Maybe what I am saying is that biting off a piece of an elephant, if that piece represents a leverage point, can be quite useful. But I am also saying that simply biting off any piece of the elephant is more likely to be less-than-useful energy expended.

Even elephants have a cadence and gravity. Ponder before you try and eat one.

Complexity is good. Complications are bad, yet, some things that are complicated can be extremely useful – but inherently fragile.

If you say you think your business is complex, that’s good. It means your business has a shot of being successful in what is a complex, dynamic, marketplace.

If you say you think your brand is complex, that is good. It means your brand is a reflection of humans – who are complex.

If you think messaging or communicating what your business does is complex, that is good. Complex things are inherently interesting to people <the paradox is multiplicity is interesting but singularity is more easily embedded cognitively>.

Now. Complicated is defined by complexity theory people as linear in nature. Or, as the author of ‘It’s Not Complicated: The Art and Science of Complexity in Business’ Rick Nason suggests, “the components can be separated and dealt with in a systematic and logical way that relies on a set of static rules or algorithms. It may be hard to see, but there’s a fixed order in something that is merely complicated and that allows you to deal with it in a repeatable manner.”

There are a number of people who, theoretically and conceptually, can sit anyone down, even businesses, and parse out some really important distinctions between complexity and complicated. And while it is true complexity and complicated are two different things, in the business world, pragmatically speaking, most business people work with the complicated shit and attempt to reduce or eliminate complications so that potential, within a complex system, can be released. That doesn’t mean complexity shouldn’t be examined nor does it mean complexity shouldn’t be ‘managed’ <or as Donella Meadows suggested “danced with’> just that, in general, complexity is good, complications are bad, complicated is the way most businesses get shit done. For most business conversations, this is how to set the stage to get people to focus on the right things, in the right ways, to get the right things done.

Which leads me to simple or simplicity. We talk about those things all wrong. In fact, I would argue business should just get rid of those words. Toss them into the “misguided and less than useful business thoughts” trash bin.

Everyone should focus on ‘understandable.’

Why?

If you buy into complexity and the fact complexity is inherently good <on all aspects of a business>, then the natural achievement to be desired is how to make it understandable.

If you assume complexity is good <and necessary to be successful>, and assume if people understand it, they will:

<a> feel smarter,

<b> feel like they are in & of a world they believe exists,

<c> feel more relevant because it is in & of that world, and

<d> be empowered to take action however that action is defined – buy, decide, choose, think, sensemake, whatever.

Then ‘understandability’, not simplicity, becomes the path to not only thriving in a complex marketplace, but managing a complex business.

I would be remiss if I didn’t end by pointing out the objective of every business is meaningful value creation <the value created has value to whoever it is being offered to>. That means the more understandable you can make your complexity, for those doing & thinking as well as those doing the purchasing, the higher the value you offer and, of course, the higher the price you can charge.

Ponder.

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“I lived according to the prevailing myth.  Everyone lives by myths.

Prettied up they are called truths … basic truths, natural truths, self-evident truths. What I knew or thought a year ago is beside the point. The problem is today. Even if the past was a lie, what am I supposed to replace it with? Another lie? All that’s necessary is to pull the old one out and put a new one in like a circuit board?  

Inspector O

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“The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.”

Robert Heinlein

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“The way we got out of the caves and into modern civilisation is through the process of understanding and thinking. Those things were not done by gut instinct.  Being an expert does not mean that you are someone with a vested interest in something; it means you spend your life studying something.

You’re not necessarily right – but you’re more likely to be right than someone who’s not spent their life studying it.”

Brian Cox

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“… if no one knows anything then why can’t I know something?”

Bruce McTague

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Well. Increasingly we are hearing more and more people publicly questioning the expertise & knowledge of experts. It has come to a point where significant public figures have even stated things like “we have had enough of the experts.”

Uhm. When this occurs, and enough people actually believe it, well .. geez … if no one knows anything than why the hell can’t I know something becomes the overarching perception <if not attitude>.

You know where this belief has always existed? The corner of the neighborhood bar. I am sure we have all experienced it. Sitting around with friends, maybe at the corner of the bar, bitching about the world and talking about what we would do to fix it. At that table … and at that time, well, we can solve everything that the experts, the leaders, the grand decision makers seem to struggle solving.

Most of the time, if we are honest with ourselves, we dumb it down to some simplistic surface conclusion which sometimes is partially right. Often we apply a ‘common sense’ filter which, if we are honest with ourselves about this too, does not really reflect the complexity of reality. If we are honest with ourselves <once again>, more often than not we are wrong. Now. Its not that we aren’t smart. It just may be we are a little intellectually lazy.

Ok. That was harsh. Try this. Maybe we just don’t know enough or have enough experience. Maybe it is because we have not spent a lifetime studying it or we assume our personal professional or whatever experience is indicative of the knowledge necessary to be ‘right.’ And maybe we rely a little too much on what I have called “fortune cookie wisdom” <quasi-intellectual soundbite wisdom>.

But … whew … in the moment … in the discussion and debate and obvious common sense, we could run the world, the country and the biggest business venture out there. It is a fun moment. And we feel smart and even more importantly we feel as if we could do whatever it is as well as the person who is doing it. For a moment, just a moment, we look around at all the Harvard MBAs and all the policy experts and all the high falutin’ experts and we are as good and as smart as they are.

Sigh.

But we are not. It may seem like it. But we are not. Yet, at every bar, at every table, every Steve, Sarah, Sue and Sam thinks that they are.

That is the sad truth.

I actually believe this belief is driven by a version of the 80/20 rule. Assuming you are fairly worldly, fairly well informed and fairly enlightened, you probably get 80% of it right. And, boy, that 80% feels good. It may even feel “right enough.” But, in general, its just, well, 80% right. In general, just 80% on the important stuff just is not good enough. That is the difference between an amateur and a professional or an expert. That 20%. Some would argue it is simply the nuance, but in most of the larger more grand problems and issues we face it is that 20% that makes something go incredibly right or incredibly wrong.

And, uhm, I hate to tell everyone … but … most of us are not capable of that 20%.

That said. Realistically the last time everyone possessed the same skills in a society to participate within a leadership role at 100% equal was maybe several million years ago when all of us humans ran around as hunter/gatherers. Once we evolved into larger social groupings, and inevitably created cities and population clusters where some people had to make decisions for the greater good of the whole some people naturally evolved into governors and governing <leadership> and the expertise needed to assume those responsibilities. And while we can bitch & moan about the ineptness of leadership, in general, leaders lead and others follow. Yet, we everyday schmucks get confused and believe we would be smarter, if not as smart, as people in the positions of leadership.

Part of the problem is the problems themselves. Most problems contain contradictions and truly are complex with lots of moving parts. Heck. Everything is complex, not just the problems.

** note: that last point contributes to corner of the bar wisdom. solutions, or good past decisions, tend to look simple in hindsight and we ignore the complex interconnections which begets the result we are pointing to <while at the corner of the bar>

For example. As we discuss country issues we discuss natural contradictions within a complex world <both domestic & international is important> as well as the fact the American people often embrace contradictory goals <just wander through any PewResearch report to confirm that thought>.

What do I mean? Well. For example. While any citizen of any country wants to be ‘great’ – defining ‘great’ is a complex puzzle. At the corner of the bar more often than not we ignore the contradictory challenges with more simplistic solutions for what would be great <under the guise of common sense actions or ‘seems to make sense on the surface’ attitudes>. Sometimes this ‘common sense’ assumes ‘oh, everyone would agree with that’ when, in reality, the majority of people would debate it <that is actually complexity in a nutshell>.

I would like to note the exceptional corner of the bar pontificators position themselves incredibly well to exploit such contradictory opinions. For example. “Make America Great Again” is a simplistic slogan that embraces some aspects of patriotism or nationalism pride and is broad enough that any individual can define ‘great’ from their own perspective including both a harsh insular ‘past driven’ edge to a much grander ‘future possibilities’ thought.

That said. At the corner of the bar we more often than not rule our thoughts based on passion <fear, individualism, frustration & anger> supported by reason. The experts reverse the equation ignoring passionate response <fear, individualism, anger> and basing ideas & solutions on solid reasoning and rational thought <and things called “principles” & laws>. I will not spend any time on laws, but, while we at the corner of the bar sometimes shake our heads wondering what common sense <or lack thereof> created some laws we accept they are laws because in some way we all know it creates a construct of ethics.

But let’s be honest. The neighborhood bar is in … well … the neighborhood. It is where we kibbitz over non neighborhood things.

In general it is healthy semi-intellectual debate which makes us feel intellectually good.

In general we take a fairly ridiculously narrow view of how the world works.

Anyway.

The experts who have been talking about this stuff. For today’s discussion I am going to lean on two relatively short, but broader insightful reads – Huntington’s “clash of civilizations’ written in 1993 for Foreign Affairs magazine and then Foreign Affairs magazine’s reprise of the article in 2013 with a number of short “here is what I think” articles.

Rereading the well written thoughts makes you not only realize that the intellectual of those of us at the corner of the bar may not be at the level of stupid, but that there are a shitload of really smart people discussing these topics not at the bar.

Basically, most of us struggle with globalization and nationalism. It’s not that we do not want either or reject one over the other it is that we struggle to see, feel and understand the balance. One expert called this uneasiness we feel ‘casual collapse.’ It is the seemingly ongoing blurring of many beliefs, rituals, formal requirements and laws that define specific societies and us.   And we feel a little helpless in stopping this ‘casual collapse’ because of that darn thing called ‘the internet’ <the cross-cultural sharing of information and knowledge> all compounded by all those darn people shouting nonsense on that darn thing called ‘the internet.’

Now. All this is happening without causing any particular larger collapse of anything. It is just a casual collapse of things as they used to be. And it is happening despite any government edicts or programs designed to slow the change <collapse> or older generations tied to some past cultural aspects efforts. It is an inevitable collapse driven by the fact as everyone becomes more knowledgeable about ‘what is happening and what people are thinking’ half way around the world they begin questioning the status quo conventional thinking where they are. It becomes a blending of local cultural thinking and a more global perspective.

And the whole issue is exacerbated by a faster additional natural progression created by the urbanization of emerging countries.

Why does this change anything? There’s an obvious link between the broad spread of more liberal attitudes and increasing urbanization globally <in 1980 Africa 28% lived in cities – today its 40+% – 40+ million people>. As new urbanites find themselves further distanced from traditional social and familial structures, and are exposed to a wider range of alternative goods, services, lifestyles, opinions and experiences, their tolerance to alternative thinking and behavior grows – as does their interest & attitudes. The web simply accelerates what would have been happening naturally.

I am certainly not suggesting this will happen overnight. As trendwatching suggests “compared to much trend thinking, casual collapse moves at a glacial pace.” Basically, whether we like it or not, globalization has forced the world to be at odds with itself. We are not a world of countries and states living in solitude, but rather one in which we overlap linked, and delinked, by varying degrees of history, culture, religion, language, location and institutions.

This causes a natural reaction against a sense of uniformity. We naturally chafe at the thought of “being the same as everyone else” <while still viewing aspects we like & want>. And therein lies the greater conflict – while economic life takes place on a global platform human identity remains national & local.

Yeah.

The identification of local <and nationalism> will always continue and will always create the same angst we feel at the corner of the bar as we watch the zillion TV’s typically sitting in the bar suggesting globalization is infringing upon our corner of the bar.

Even global economic growth infringes upon our national identification.

What do I mean? Economics depends on education and communication which leads directly to conflicts over language and comparisons over education levels. All the while … a global economic view encourages everyone to believe the world is their oyster – anyone can aspire to any economic position. The reality is that everyone does not have an equal likelihood of upward economic mobility <locally, nationally or globally> and not simply because individuals have different innate capabilities <but that is a different post>.

At the corner of the bar we need not worry nor address the balance we focus on what we need and what we want – not necessarily the greater good.

And then there is the scary factor we local experts face over a beer.

Terrorism.

There is clearly a relationship between globalization and violence. Unfortunately, this stage of globalization <its current stage of maturity> doesn’t necessarily spread peace & understanding. Instead it tends to foster conflicts and resentments <global media makes it possible for the most deprived or oppressed to compare their fate with that of the free and well-off as well as showing one nation what another nation is achieving>. In today’s world globalization tends to provoke revolt and dissatisfaction.

All that said. The one thing we common everyday schmucks can certainly do at the corner of the bar is to analyze the present, embrace some of the past, but we cannot predict the future.

The future is yet to be written by a world that is anything but simple. It is a world where society is often uneven, always complex and often local societies overlap with a global society all the while burdened by public institutions seemingly incapable of navigating local and international needs. This often leads us to simply divide the issue into a solvable part versus unite the complexity into one seemingly unsolvable issue <because it is easier to solve a part rather than a complex whole when you are at the corner of the bar>.

And that is where most of us at the corner of the bar truly fall short. Enriching people, minds, bodies and spirit, is the ultimate objective of any problem & issue and the most difficult task in the world.

It is a complex task.

It requires the best of everyone, the best of civilizations and the best of leadership & thinking all not emphasizing the differences, but reinforcing the common objective.

A country, a culture, a civilization … is a messy creature.

A country can be kind & generous as well as cruel & coldblooded as they pick their way through the natural chaotic world.

Me, and American, believes the United States clearly has the capacity to influence which future is most likely. However, for anyone to predict the future confidently would be naive <or outright lying>. But globalization is not a simplistic concept. But nationalism is not a simplistic concept. Being a president, or any leader of a significant organization, is not a simplistic concept.

Inevitably leading is not just about hope or promising something better, it is a pragmatic pushing of  opportunity to the people who need it the most and want it the most <thereby maximizing what opportunities do exist>. And opportunities abound … in fact … there may actually be more opportunity in the world than problems <but you would never know it by listening to conversations at the corner of the bar … or on TV>.

Look. In a world where I have no idea how my mobile phone or the internet work <or my car, television, or microwave, or … whatever> and, yet, they consistently work, everything seems so unknowable that amateurish expert wisdom actually seems … well … attainable.

In other words. If no one knows anything then why can’t I know something?

C’mon, let’s be honest, corner of the bar discussions typically devolve into the simplistic and our solutions skate on the superficial surface of reality. We should not, and cannot, devolve into a world where there are no experts or believe that experts don’t know more than we do.

Simply being an expert doesn’t mean ‘perfection’ – not making mistakes or being wrong <because that would predicate they could actually tell the future>. But let’s be honest, we want people smarter than us – the people sitting at the corner of the bar – making the really important decisions.

Well.

I certainly do.

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originally posted July 2016

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“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

Albert Einstein

—————

Well. Who would have thought the guy who figured out e=mcsquared would actually say something so simple even someone who doesn’t have a physics PhD can understand it.

I am gonna dumb this down even more.

People in business who manage by milestones and aren’t satisfied unless they have “milestones” to measure and  lean in on “how do we make people accountable” drive me crazy.

Why?

Because they are always seeking something to count.

And what is worse?  That is where they stop.

They stop there because if they can’t count it, it doesn’t count.

Drives.

Me.

Fucking.

Nuts.

Look. Setting clear objectives and maybe some goals is always useful. But not to inspire work. It should be done to guide workers toward something. That said. The entire thought of “because you cannot count something that it doesn’t count” is … well … absurd.

It is absurd because the best people I have ever worked with, or even just glanced off of, had an intangible that made everyone around them be better. Yeah. Often they ‘hit’ numbers but they were also the ones most likely to hit numbers you never even imagined if you didn’t give them a frickin’ number to ‘hit.’  And maybe that is my point. The space between hitting a designated number and a realized number is uncountable upfront. Yeah.  I don’t know how you count that. I can’t even count the intangibles that go into creating a predictive uncountable number.

And trying to figure out how to make an intangible tangible just so you can figure out a way to measure or count it seems to be an incredible waste of time and effort. Let me explain just so you don’t think I am being silly. In most businesses if you leave people alone and let them create business and they generate some number bigger than what was expected <or forecasted> some numbnut will come along and analyze every aspect of what happened and who did what so that they can ‘count it’ into their next forecast. Its absurd.

(but that is something you can count on)

Numbers, in and of themselves, are not accountable. They are simply a reflection of some “cause” <and ’cause’ can be accountable>. More likely numbers are a refection of that wacky thing called “people working together.”

Numbers, in and of themselves, are less facts and more reflections of a mosaic from which you need to build facts. Even more importantly numbers are more a reflection of the intangible aspect of

What you can also count on is Albert was smarter than he looked.