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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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“I have no way of knowing whether the events that I am about to narrate are effects or causes.”

Jorge Luis Borges

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I have been talking about complexity, and building emergent agility, into business for quite some time. Yeah. Maybe I didn’t use exactly the same words as all the complexity folk today, but there were a bunch of us talking about it. The original seed was Toffler’s 1985 The Adaptative Corporation. I believe he recognized the shift occurring in business from standardization, mass everything (manufacturing, strategy, communications, etc) and drew a line in the sand between simple/replicable & complexity/dynamic. Yeah. It was a fuzzy line to me, but it felt right. Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints, taken literally, was about production and work flow. Taken figuratively, as many of us did, was about agility in a dynamic environment. It’s true they weren’t speaking of Complexity Theory, but they were clearly talking about how to conduct business in a constantly changing dynamic marketplace. Mintzberg dumped his book, Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, in our laps in mid-1990’s drawing some clearer lines on emergent strategy in meeting the needs of a dynamic marketplace <i.e., thinking in a complex environment>. Once again. he didn’t invest a lot of energy on the idea of complexity <even though that’s what it is about>.  Toffler cranked out three more books which if you didn’t have your head up your ass clearly showcased a complex world where the way business traditionally being conducted was going to be screwed. Some of us paid attention and started tweaking from within businesses. Then around 2000. Cluetrain Manifesto (meta view) explained complexity in a way we all could understand. The New Marketing Manifesto (marketing view), while about marketing explained complexity in a way we would understand. Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games (complexity humanized into behavior). Peter’s Thriving in Chaos (management view – albeit the only time he mentions complexity it is to encourage keeping things simple) explained complexity in a way any business could understand. And a little bit later, Rozenweig’s The Halo Effect, sealed the deal for us complexity embracers as well as The Culture Code by Rapaille nailed down some heuristic narrative making concepts to unlock understandable <Rapaille was a bit of a nutjob but his heuristic ‘codes’ are a fabulous narrative concept>. To us, complexity just was, not a theory, and while cause & effect <or linear relationships> did exist, we understood the consequences of those linear relationships were vectored.

** note: the distinction between linear activity <a specific action creating a specific outcome> and linear consequences <which is a probability causal calculation> is an incredibly important one I believe complexity theorists overlook when dealing with business which is in the business of doing business, not theory>. linear activity exists, even in complexity, linear consequences are rare.

If you were paying attention, and felt like the existing business construct and way of working felt flawed, all these books and ideas were planting seeds in your mind.

Eventually we navigated complexity embracing a number of principles:

• • • Situational awareness: a SWOT established a benchmark but once completed most of us made it a rolling roadmap reflecting present status. It was straddling past, present & future while assessing resources available. This was the easiest part because a SWOT made even the most ‘stick with the 5-year plan’ people feel at least slightly comfortable with diverging from the plan.

    • Coherence over consistency: you encouraged some freer thinking, some continuous improvement <using
      

      

      …. Value Creation of Possibilities: Emergence over Predictive ….

      Goldratt always eased C-level concerns> and got people believing that sometimes better outcomes could be achieved with some adapting or agility. This one was more difficult because, even with Goldratt in our hip pockets, consistency is business’s heroin.

    • Context was everything: the only way to kill a best practice/formula response or activity was to deconstruct the context in which it would be successful – and point out the current context wasn’t applicable. This one was time consuming, energy sapping and unless you had some scenario planning skills was fraught with peril.

    • Probabilistic thinking: once you have even taken a half step into believing in complexity you know predicting anything is absurd. This is where you need a C-suite support system (or in the case of edge employees, managers) because in the good ole days not promising specific results against specific objectives was like committing Hari Kari. You needed someone else in the room to absorb some of the risk.

These were principles of which our successes resided on a wide continuum because the world we were working in, for the most part, wasn’t exactly in sync with what we were thinking. That didn’t mean we didn’t have some wins, just that to a ‘purist’ complexity person it may not look that way. We learned some hard lessons along the way.

• • You need generalists.

  • You need people who can think spatially (or conceptually).

  • You need creative thinkers (and they could be found in any department).

  • You need a CFO who ran a flexible balance sheet (you didn’t really need other budget-owner buy-in because in those days any budget owner always had money stored away in some rainy-day bucket if you had a good idea).

  • You need at least one C-suite person who liked pursuing emergent opportunities (& could understand emergent strategies in a timely fashion).

  • You need both emergent and predictable/replicable (the %’s can vary depending on organizational palate).

  • You need some restless people (adventurers or people in a ‘state of perpetual dissatisfaction’).

** note: I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out none of the books I listed nor all the lessons learned gave clarity on complexity immediately. Each, and all, were disparate puzzle pieces we slowly accumulated in our heads until at some point the puzzle itself became clear. The books, in particular, didn’t always make sense at the time, but they all resonated in a way that made us think “there is sense in this.”

In the good old days when you got this right you not only created a business constantly adapting, but you were surrounded by groups of curious, restless, thinking, people. I will suggest in those days that was the satisfaction because most likely, as you introduced complexity-like things into business in a business environment focused on replicable, simple & uncomplicated, you got things fed back to you like a co-worker said to me when I was at JWT – “you have your own way of doing things” <kind of a backhanded way to say they thought it was an unusual way to create positive results>. That said. When you got it right you not only created some good business stuff, but the people you worked with tended to take aspects of business complexity thinking wherever they went – and found success.

Anyway. I have watched people as they have come around to the Complexity side of the world watching as they toss aside the simplistic view of Occam’s’ Razor and Steve Jobs ‘simple mantra’. Heck. I went through the Complexity Rabbit Hole myself.

….. The Complexity Rabbit Hole ….

Business loves certainty and evenness and has embedded that type of thinking into everyone so the initial grasp of complexity is one of excitement and, well, some uncertainty. The crux of complexity is found in lack of predictability (oh my). This rubs up against a feeling of lack of control or a constant state of liminalness (oh my). The natural reaction to that is to find ways to control or find concrete solid things to create some construct<within complexity>. So, in the good ole days it was milestones and clear short-term objectives which then turned into sprints, scrum and Agile Manifesto tools. We would be naive to think that these weren’t methods we sought to control aspects of complexity. This journey all leads to a place in which you embrace complexity and emergence and realize that navigating complexity resides not in any framework or methodology or even some really good everyday management tools – it is in humans and how they think. Conducting business, strategy & tactics, against Emergence is an art and skill which I call ‘conceptual thinking’ <which is most likely a derivative of sensemaking and meaning making or critical thinking>. Conceptual thinking embraces complexity, acknowledges aspects of complexity theory (the ones that pertain most to the business of doing business) and suggests continuous learning. Going back to an earlier point, this is all valuable for the future success of a business in a dynamic marketplace, but much of it becomes moot if the business model itself doesn’t change from a traditional hierarchy or command/control-ish construct.

This is to suggest embracing complexity is an unfolding process which we all go through. I’d suggest it is finding a comfort level between infinite and finite or maybe risk and certainty. The depths of the complexity rabbit hole can almost make you feel like nothing you do can mean anything and, from a human perspective that not only seems meaningless in some ways, but also chafes against a natural desire of productivity (proof). Therein lies the rub. Complexity Theory doesn’t have to worry about ‘meaning’, business does.

Look.

I have written about complexity in business for over a decade (maybe two). And while, today, I talk about complexity, complexity theory and, specifically, business, I am not associated with the Santa Fe Institute (but have invested time reading their thoughts on complexity theory), not part of the Cynefin community (but have read about and follow several on twitter), nor am I a complexity expert. But I do understand business and I do understand complexity in a dynamic business environment. Some of my thoughts may not align with some traditional thinking, and parts may, but I will remind everyone, when discussing business and complexity, it is about doing the business of doing business within complexity wherein the business is the priority, not some Complexity Theory. In addition. I also remind everyone “perhaps because the field has attracted researchers from a wide diversity of home disciplines, there is no consensus as to how to define, measure, describe or interpret “complexity.” <Steve Maguire, The Interaction of Complexity and Management> Read on. Think. Disagree if you wish. But everything I will offer is grounded in the pragmatism that within complexity <world, industry, company, humans> business needs to do business in a way that optimizes the dynamics of complexity and minimizes confusion complexity discussions sometimes seem to create.

• • 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.

  • I believe complexity is expansive in nature, not reductive. Therefore the objective of navigating complexity is always to unlock its potential, not ‘reduce complexity.’

  • I believe there are linear aspects within complexity and there are causal relationships. In fact, I have argued insights are often found within these ‘fractal’ connections , i.e., solving the fractal releases complexity potential.

  • I believe complications exist within complexity and not all complications are created equal. In fact, complications exist as the normal, either human created or natural creations of dynamics, consequence of complex system.

  • I believe being able to discern what is a human-made complication and what is a natural-system-made complication is often one of the most critical things in deciding what a business wants to do with a complication.

  • I believe there is a difference between complicated and complication. A process can be complicated and, yet, effective and even efficient. I believe a complication occurs when the ‘complicated’ becomes an issue to the effectiveness, or efficacy, of a system.

  • I believe not all complications need to be resolved.

  • I believe many systems work, in totality, quite effectively with complicated parts and even some complications.

  • I believe Chaos does not occur in 99.9% (I made up that % to make a point) of businesses and I do not believe it is helpful to suggest chaos as a feature, or a bug, of business.

  • I believe many successful businesses can edge close to chaos, I actually call it ‘the bedlam stage’, but it is simply patterns yet to be identified, but patterns nonetheless.

  • I believe, to quote The Santa Fe Institute “we are not ants nor are we bees”, to quote Dave Snowden (22:50 in this fabulous talk ) “industrialization at scale is a real problem in leadership and management”, to quote Alvin Toffler “the future belongs to the company who can de-standardize” and to quote me “the natural arc of business leadership bends toward evenness, predictability and replication.” I imagine I state this because I believe frameworks, quadrants, formula-thinking formats, will only be counterproductive to the natural dynamics of complexity (which are not nice & neat) because business, invariably, will take a framework and make it a process.

  • I believe complexity shouldn’t be discussed as a theory, but as a reality.

  • I believe complexity in business cannot be discussed without discussing business models.

** note: conceptual thinking, or sensemaking/meaning making, needs a malleable organizational structure or business model in order to maximize its effectiveness and, I would argue, make adoption of that thinking pervasive in an organization. I worked with P&G as Design Thinking was implemented and I watched as a business model, and institutional debt, constrained the possibilities.

That said.

Let me share my biggest issue with where I believe complexity discussions in business tends to struggle – infinite. Complexity becomes, well, complex when in theory. When everything is connected with everything, and, conceptually, nothing is causal (which, in practicality, is untrue in the doing of doing business), and consequences are found in probabilities not predictions, the whole seems infinite and infinite seems overwhelming (sometimes hopeless). The main consequence of this overwhelming and hopelessness is that simplistic models that define well enough to help make, not inform, a decision win (even if they do not explain truth). The next, almost as important consequence, is complexity increases the sense of pressure (to not only make a decision but that each decision carries a larger burden of consequences) so in order to appear (be) decisive most people will justify ‘right choice’ by selectively using data from dashboards. Going back to where I began, complexity just is. Its like living within a universe with some different gravities here and there, but, the important things remain the important things no matter where you go in the universe. Complexity shouldn’t increase stress, but rather offer freedom. And this is where I believe complexity folk need to get a grip. In a business world, to most business decisionmakers, possibilities are not infinite. In fact, they are clearly finite. Time, resources, information and people within any given situation represent a finite set of possibilities. Not infinite, finite. And within that finite sphere someone has to assess, most likely through some probabilistic thinking, what to do in that particular finite sphere. Within the business of doing business, pragmatically, people need to be doing shit not noodling some infinite set of complex dynamics.

I am at my core a pragmatic business person. I love theory because it stimulates thinking, but in the end, business is about taking action and doing things (hopefully productive things enhanced by the theory thinking). Complexity, complexity theory, complexity discussions, are really important discussions because accepting business is complex is the first step toward navigating complexity (rather than building simplistic  solutions and aiming for the wrong things). But discussing complexity always runs the risk of becoming a rabbit hole discussion in which it becomes impossible to make choices (because it is difficult to wrap your head around making sense of things). What I mean by that is if, within complexity, everything is connected with everything, and nothing is causal, consequences are found in probabilities not predictions, the whole not only becomes nebulous, but actually infinite. And while business people love talking about infinite possibilities, pragmatically (once again), infinite thinking does absolutely zero good to everyday business and decision-making. It is overwhelming and can often make decision-making seem like a hopeless effort therefore the default becomes ‘just check the task off the list’.

Once again, the truth is that in any given situation while the outlines may be vague, the choices are actually finite, not infinite.

I bludgeon all of you with all that repetitive thinking because the truth is that discussing complexity does not occur in a void, but rather needs to be discussed within a framework within which business, all people in the organization, can envision as a way of doing business – not just of how they are now doing business.

In other words, I believe most businesses recognize that decision-making needs to be dispersed within organizations more so than it currently is (this ‘dispersed’ is relative to its current status of distributed decision making). So, any discussion of complexity theory, in a practical sense, needs to keep an eye on the fact everything will be shifting out toward the edges of a business and many people who have never been expected to think conceptually, make many of these types of decisions or even ‘see’ the kinds of cues an emergent opportunity offers someone. I am certainly not suggesting things need to be ‘dumbed down’, but I am suggesting any theory needs a good dose of pragmatism.

Here is one thing I know for sure. Business has a nasty habit of turning the positive complex into the negative complicated. That is just what business does and if anything needs to be ‘transformed’, it would be that. I would suggest business will not be transformed by understanding complexity just as it is not really transformed by technology. Business will be, as it has been forever, transformed by people – people thinking clearly, conceptually and critically within situations they are placed. This isn’t to suggest part of developing a learning organization shouldn’t be learning some skills and beliefs which can enhance their success in navigating a dynamic business world, it is simply to suggest, in the end, success will be found in people working with people and people talking with people and people innovating with people.

Personally, I think we need to get this entire Complexity discussion right. Why? People spend about 1/3 of their lives working (or in a workplace). Businesses, generally speaking, spend 100% of their business either integrating with the world (gathering resources) or with people (exchanging the resources they have used). In other words, quoting Drucker, business, and its people, are in and of society. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out society, or humankind, is actually a complex dynamic marketplace of its own. I would also be remiss if I didn’t point out most of Humankind does not have the structure/boundaries a business has. That last point is relevant because most people, in society, are also struggling to navigate complexity (most of whom had been taught in school some fairly causal things). I imagine my larger point is humankind benefits if the business word has its shit together on complexity learning. Probabilities, emergent strategies, complications versus complicated, agility, situational awareness, all are invaluable learnings for successfully navigating life – self, community, country & world. It’s quite possible I am being too dramatic in my view of the scope, but it’s possible I am not. So, for all the complexity people out there, what are the probabilities if we get this right? No predictions, just is the probability of positive effect on Humankind worth getting this right.

Maybe I say this because I bang on Cynefin, & I shouldn’t. They are simply a part of the puzzle we all need to solve. The truth is I am a ‘mutt thinker.’ When I speak of complexity in business, I don’t really have a single framework and I pluck out the aspects of Learning Organizations (which I tend to believe is the larger vision), Senge, Pflaeging/Hermann OpenSpace, Lisa Gill’s thinking on flat organizations, Leloux, Drucker, Goldratt, Stacy, Ackoff, Deming, Mary Parker Follett of course (my business guiding light), the military (who most likely embraced individual conceptual thinking earlier than most of us – simply out of survival), Jason Fox, Mintzberg, John Grant, even The Santa Fe Institute <their collection of essays, “Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight” is fabulous learning fodder>, and finally the two sources who sealed my meta view on this whole complexity thing – Cluetrain Manifesto and the person who planted the seed of complexity thought – Alvin Toffler.

Complexity is, well, complex. The one thing I believe all Complexity people can agree on is the importance of words and narratives. From Toffler to the present the constant theme has been stories, storytelling, metaphors, codes and the use of words. At some point, at least in the business sphere, I believe it would be helpful if there could be some common agreement on definitions, narratives and words. Why? Well. To go back to maybe my most important thought – business is in, and of, society. It behooves us to get that right because, in the end, while I am in the business of doing business, to think we can help the greater humankind think just a bit better every day, and maybe that helps society progress a little bit better every day, is a way I think we make a dent in the universe.

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Postscript: I, personally, believe the future of business – embracing complexity – is a future business model within which technology augments people in a way that facilitates constant learning and conceptual thinking  . i even have the draft of a book on this idea – combining complexity, people and technology. I, personally, believe any existing business could adopt a 100% emergent strategic outlook – people, left to their own emergent opportunities, will naturally build in the predictable/replicable parts out of some efficiency recognition.

That said. I could never have written The Adaptable Corporation, Cluetrain Manifesto, New Marketing Manifesto, Finite and Infinite Games as well as a slew of other books which have all fed my ‘mutt thinking.’ I highly recommend you read all of these books, as well as the newer book Agility (Tilman/Jacoby) which captures a lot of how I think, as well as any others I included in this piece. I would argue 99% of us will never have the answer, but 99% of us can find some answers in someone else’s thinking.

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“Sometimes I wonder whether I have any real intelligence or if I just have enough random bits of surface knowledge to bullshit my way through most things.”

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“Some conversations are not about what they’re about.”

Anne Carson

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Sometimes you give a crappy answer to a good question which makes you think of a non-crappy answer to the question. In this case it is about black box thinking. Marshal Kirkpatrick asked me about black box thinking in this Sprinklr podcast  and I hashed the answer. Time to clean it up.

Black boxes

Black box thinking (making sense of the black box output)

Framing concepts (to enable choicemaking)

 

Black blackboard in brick loft, close up

Black boxes are the increasing number of things that we do not really, or completely, understand and, yet, we are dependent upon them. Black boxes range from a television, smartphone to even ‘big data.’ In almost all cases we interact with a superficial surface intelligent delivery from the internal black box. In our gadgets how these things produce isn’t really that important (until it breaks down), but in a business context black boxes inform real decisions with real consequences.

Black box thinking is the increasing amount of thinking we need to do USING what black boxes give us. In society it is the things algorithms throw in our faces to read and how we think about it (or manage the algorithms to insure we maintain some perspective). In business it is the dashboards, excel spreadsheets, and, yes, algorithms, that are designed to tell us “what is important to know.”

Framing concepts is how we take ‘the important stuff we should know’ and make it tangible. Its most effective form is a concept – so that we can make decisions.  To do this, to make the black box tangible, you actually need to find cooperating data points.

** 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 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.

** note: the bits inform, do not decide for us.

Using black boxes

I disagree with a portion of the business world (mostly older people in my generation) that we need to become skilled at understanding the black box. The argument is “if you do not understand how it works, how can you understand how to work the information it gives you.” Well. I don’t understand how to build software or algorithms or even a powerpoint presentation (well), but I understand the potential impact of all of them and assess their outputs with an eye toward, well, impact. I need to understand how the output relates to the outer contextual environment and assess whether they relate to the most important aspects of what I need to know to navigate the context. That said. The real issue is navigating certainty versus uncertainty or ‘black & white versus gray” rather than understanding the black box.

All black boxes have really done is teach us, or make us more aware, that we deal in a world of probabilities, not certainty or predictions. That true black & white choicemaking is a myth and that you seek shades of gray. You learn that your decisions are dabbling in the shades of gray and yet you have to be committed to the decision if you want any hope of progress. Gray resides in probabilities and the black box offers you the prompts to inform your probabilities assessment.

Here is where I bring in ‘out of the box.’ Crucial to effective black box thinking is to stop all the ‘out of the box’ thinking mumbo jumbo and embrace the fact anything you would have considered ‘out of the box’ actually resides inside the black box. Yeah. Inside the box resides all of the out of the box shit you are seeking. Go figure.

It is inside the box where it happens.

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“Chance favors the connected mind.”

Steven Johnson

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The black boxes

The future of business resides in the hands & minds of humans/people. Period. But it would be absurd to ignore that the hands & minds will be empowered by the black boxes and technology:

• Knowledge <or information of shit> is available to anyone with access to a computer
• There are an increasing amount of things which are ‘black boxes’ of inner workings <they work … but the majority of us have no clue how they work>which compress thinking & doing time
• Great decision making in today’s business world is more often defined by on how good you are at assessing what aspects should be accepted on ‘faith’ <the black box designated aspects> and what aspects need real knowledge & understanding
• It has never been possible to know everything … but in today’s world it is mind numbingly <and humbling so> obvious … and it has become more accepted to learn on the go

We are increasingly surrounded by ‘black boxes.’ These are complex constructs that we do not understand even if they are explained to us. We cannot comprehend the inner processes of a ‘black box’, but nonetheless we integrate their inputs and outputs into our decision-making.

The trick to black box thinking <the intangible, the uncertainty and vague ‘knowing’> is to make it more tangible, therefore, useful. This is ‘framing.’

Cooperating data

I talk about framing and the importance of effectively framing things all the time. I believe I should talk about ‘cooperating data/information’ more. Framing demands a skill in assembling ‘cooperating data.’ Just like building the foundation of any structure the cornerstones need to have some semblance of relationship. In crafting that cooperation you offer concepts people can assess and envision how it could impact the future (or some existing situation).

Discovering cooperating data is a skill, and art, and using cooperating data is an art, and skill.

Regardless. Black box thinking is the key to unlock business agility, adaptability, ability to meet emergent opportunities, well, the ability to be successful in a complex business environment.

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“Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.”

André Gide

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I am always wary of those who come out blazing by speaking “the truth.” I believe rarely are things black & white. In fact. I believe truth is often contextual and often slippery to get a hold of.

Now. Let’s not confuse facts with truth. Lots of facts exist. And in a mutually exclusive environment someone can hold up a fact as a single-minded fragile truth. The difficulty is that everything is connected with everything and a single fact does not ever live in a world solo. It rubs elbows within a community of other facts. And as they rub against each other they create, well, truths. Truth is a combination of facts.

I would also suggest truth is often elusive. In that I mean if you care about truth and are a truth seeker you are always in the pursuit of truth as facts replace facts (as facts tend to do).

Now. I want to be careful. Yes. There is truth in the world. Even if some facts change all they do is change the shape of most truths, not make them ‘untruths.’ I do believe we sometimes forget that. Simply because a fact changes does not make the whole become irrelevant. It can, but most times it does not.

I believe rather than discussing truth, or a truth, as static we should refer to it in, well, progress terms. The pursuit of truth is one of progress.

Things may arc toward truth (assuming there is active involvement in the pursuit of), but that arc is not smooth nor does it actually move in one direction. Truth, itself, is uneven in that in its combination of facts those facts can reside in the past, present and future as well as within the truth itself and ‘with-out’ (correlative connectedness). Truth is, well, very often emergent. Therefore, we truth seekers deal with many wrong turns, stops (which look like dead ends but aren’t really), doom loops and a variety of backtracking trips. All in all, though, things continue moving toward Truth. Truth is often contextual, often situation-specific and often can take on a slightly different hue when viewed by different people.

Truth changes. Truth changes in some unexpected and unpredictable ways. Being blind, or remaining purposefully ignorant to that, shifting of truths can cost you, well, Truth itself.

Anyway.

I have been called optimistically cynical. I guess I question everything upfront (or maybe one would hope as I have become older I can judge what to question and what to accept upfront), but always believe great things can come of the pursuit of truth (rather than use the cynicism to drag me away from accepting a truth).

I would like to believe I am one of those people who are constantly seeking truth.

I would like to believe I collect facts and seek the coherence that shapes truths.

I would like to believe I am one of those people who sees truth as kaleidoscopes of colors rather than simplistic black & whites.

Well. I may not be, but it is certainly a good objective to try to attain. Maybe I am simply a truth seeker work-in-progress.

Well, even if you never find truth, I could argue that trying to achieve that objective is not the worst thing in the world. In fact. Maybe it is the only way to get to Truth.

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“The best is the enemy of good.”

Voltaire

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I am sure everyone has either heard of, or read, the book “Good to Great.”

I am not as sure everyone has heard Voltaire’s “the best is the enemy of good.”

Well. Voltaire only beat the book by about 200 years and all while trying not to die in a duel or get his head chopped off.

Two points with this quote.

First is my personal soapbox. Just because something is old doesn’t mean it isn’t smart. I didn’t need an entire book to tell me about good to great. Voltaire said it in one line.

A shitload of people in the past, who never used technology let alone electricity, said a shitload of smart things that are relevant today. One could ask “how the hell could do they do that?” If one asked, I would remind everyone that principles, and principled thinking, are timeless and while past events are contextual, past thinking tends to adapt to context.

Ponder.

Second is the truth behind the thought. You can settle for good or you can do something better. I don’t need a book for that either. What we mostly get wrong in business, and life, is thinking we need to worry about doing ‘bad shit’ or doing something wrong. That is actually the least of our worries. Why? Because for the most part doing bad shit, or doing things wrong, is never satisfying. People, in general, are satisfaction seeking entities. This is where ‘good’ comes into the picture. Good can be quite satisfying. In fact. Good can become addictive if that is all you want. Good can be done in extremely high quantities. But. I would be remiss if I did not point out no matter how many ‘goods’ you do they will never attain the quality of a ‘best.’ I will not suggest everyone should do ‘the best’ or even seek to do ‘the best’ every single time. If we are honest, that is an energy sucking way of life. What I will suggest is that good is so seductive it is the enemy of best.

Yeah. I just flipped the quote.

Yeah. I am pretty sure that is what Voltaire was trying to tell you.

Ponder.

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“In a finite game, the rules are fixed until there is a winner, but in an infinite game, the rules must change during the course of play.”

James Carse

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“If life’s journey be endless, where is its goal? The answer is, it is everywhere.”

Rabindranath Tagore

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While this is about finite versus infinite, it is really about winning or success.

• a commitment to the future versus a commitment to a conclusion in the present.
• using resources or using ambition.
• repeating behavior instead of reinterpreting, reimagining, principles for new contexts.

Now.

This piece may not be for people who like specific goals and milestones, but for a joker like me who likes the randomness of life and finds pleasure not in linear success, but the spontaneous successful moments that appears in life the whole idea of infinite is far far more appealing to me than the Finite.

“I have no way of knowing whether the events that I am about to narrate are effects or causes.”

Jorge Luis Borges

Let me be clear.

There is absolutely a need for ‘finite’ type activity. Some people prefer working toward specific objectives and finite activity has value in its, well, finiteness. That said. As Goldratt suggested about business: “there is no finish line.” The grander objective of any business is never something finite, it is actually infiniteness – thrive-ability for an unforeseeable length of time. And that thrive-ability is actually grounded in, well, complexity (and the finite tends to thrive on simplicity).

The complexity that everything is connected with everything & the difference between beginning & ends is simply one’s perspective. cause & effect is a linear idea in a non linear world.

The complexity of reinterpretation based on context wherein ambition to meet the needs of a situation trumps simply using resources available.

The complexity in recognizing that progress has no finish line and that successes are just situational (but should still be celebrated).

Now.

This entire idea is outline in James Carse’s book “The Infinite and Finite Game.” The book is not a read for the faint of heart. Fascinating, interesting and, at times, unintelligible. Yet, at its core, it explores what is actually at the heart of the challenge facing the business world – must we view things in a finite way to be successful or if we viewed it in a infinite way could we get out of the horrible cycle of shortermerism, profit over people, traditional hierarchy, and the general muck business seems to be mired in.

Anyway.

The most visible concept of finite in business is gamification. That alone should make everyone dislike gamification. It is simply a series of challenging people to work in an endless array of games where there is a winner or loser.

But the finite/infinite relationship comes to life in a variety of other ways.

Abstract versus tangible:

Infinite is abstract. Finite is tangible. Unless you can tether the infinite with some narrative, some vision, some story, some metaphor, running a business with an infinite mindset is going to feel a lot like chaos. And it may actually be (although it may not be in that there are other surrounding principles which permits the organization to act in a coherent way).

Another abstract versus tangible aspect is value. Now. Most businesses do not discuss finite versus infinite in terms of Finite value versus Infinite value. They should.

In business Finite value can most often be found in maximizing a transaction (between purchaser and enterprise) – maximizing present value.

Infinite value can most often be defined in maximizing a life (of a business enterprise) – maximizing future value.

Ponder.

Cooperation:

Carse suggests finite versus infinite is about competition versus cooperation.  This is an important distinction because rivalry, or competition, is self-terminating. If business were a 100-yard dash this may be okay (maybe), but its not. The purpose of any business is actually to be infinite where its life has no foreseeable conclusion and progress has no foreseeable stopping point. Once again, in Goldratt’s words: there is no finish line.

I would point out that this is really about decision making. Good decision-making needs good sense making. I imagine I am suggesting sense making demands we remove competition (and its unsavory companion – rivalry) to be successful.  I imagine I am suggesting true, effective, collaboration cannot exist within competition environment. I imagine I am suggesting collective sensemaking is collaboration. I imagine I am suggesting shelving a ‘benefit now, disadvantage later mindset’ tied to tangible finiteness and tapping into infinite value.

Ponder.

Emergent:

While we cannot control the future, we can certainly control the conditions of how the future we want is constructed. This is actually probabilities management, not goals management (kind of the business version of “push versus pull” marketing strategy). That said. Emergent defies most planning (finite management) and embraces ‘smart strategic opportunistic” behavior (potential management). Yes. There has to be an artful balance of finite, self-interest/transactional, and infinite – the larger greater good (self-interest cannot be separated in the long run from the interests of the world” Daniel Schmachtenberger) . Emergent demands a buy in between the individual and the collective wherein the individual ‘self authors’ (autopoietic) with an accepted vision of the larger group so that all decisions & actions remain coherent.

** Note: Autopoietic – self authoring.  Society is emergent in that people self-author their own definitions of success and self-narrative (meaning in the world & society) versus society establishing the definitions with which an individual should judge themselves (and be judged).

** Note: autopoiesis (from Greek αὐτo- (auto-), meaning ‘self’, and ποίησις (poiesis), meaning ‘creation, production’) refers to a system capable of reproducing and maintaining itself. The original definition can be found in Autopoiesis and Cognition: the Realization of the Living (1st edition 1973, 2nd 1980)

I would suggest Emergent could be called deterministic chaos in that Complex systems are both deterministic (when constructed well) and chaotic (when working well). Therefore, success is found in both constraints and in the unconstrained, the finite and the infinite.

Ponder.

Abstract pattern recognition:

Part of infinite is shifting patterns or maybe the ongoing instability of patterns, therefore, finite resides within the pattern itself. Now. Power has always resided in the tangible which inevitably arcs toward simplicity (if not oversimplification). Yet. When external events disrupt the pattern then we, individuals/organizations/society the effectiveness of existing patterns becomes less effective, new aspects into patterns yet to be defined and then new patterns occur. It is important to note that most existing patterns do not function when conditions change.

“Humans reproduce geometrically while resources reproduce arithmetically.”

Malthusian Theory

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out no business can exist without any pattern or pattern identification. Patterns identify structure and all business needs some structure. That said. Finite tends to define patterns in a static way (linear) and infinite tends to define patterns from an abstract perspective (coherence). Both have some value although the former is fragile and the latter is antifragile.

Ponder.

Idealism versus realism:

Idealism versus realism is often a debate between abstract and tangible as well as possibilities and pragmatism. When someone says “I am being practical” 99% of the time they have resolved themselves to a binary world in which the choice making, the decision, is some simplistic fork in the road. The truth is crossroads are more roundabouts rather than some ‘road not taken’ type decision.

That, my friends, is the finite versus infinite mindset.

“La fixité du milieu intérieur est la condition d’une vie libre et indépendante”

(“The constancy of the internal environment is the condition for a free and independent life”).

Claude Bernard

Every business demands realism. The issue is when that realism suffocates the idealism.

Ponder.

In the end.

The most basic aspect of finite versus infinite is transactional versus long term value. Present value versus future value. And while both have roles it would be a mistake to solely choose one over the other.

Look. The truth is people, to be at their best, need to have some core consistency (passion, vision, character, whatever), some finiteness, in order to be free enough in the infinite universe to be successful.

Not to get too philosophical but a successful business is always a fragile balancing act between being independent from the external environment and actually of the external environment. In other words, balancing the finite and infinite. Business demands not only recognition of the finite versus infinite aspects of business itself but also the people who make the business work.

Ponder.

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“And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.”

Stephen Chbosky

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