Analyse this...!
Yesterday I had a chance to grab lunch with Dave Pollard in our local coffee shop on Bowen Island. One of the things we talked about was the supremacy of analysis in the world and why that is a problem when it comes to operating in complex domains.
I have been intentionally working a lot lately with Dave Snowdon et. al.’s Cynefin framework to support decision making in various domains. It is immensely helpful in making sense of the messy reality of context and exercises like anecdote circles and butterfly stamping are very powerful, portable and low tech processes.
Cynefin is also useful in that it warns us against a number of fatal category errors people make when trying to design solutions to problems. The most serious of these is remaining complacent in a simple context which has the effect of tipping the system to chaos. Nearly as infuriating and problematic to me is the applicability of analysis to complex domains.
Analysis has a dominant place in organizational and community life. It provides a sense of security that we can figure things out and operate in the space of the known. If we just analyse a situation enough we can identify all if the aspects if the problem and choose a solution. Of course in the complicated domain, where causes and effects can be known even though they are separated in time and space, analysis works beautifully. But in complex domains, characterized by emerged phenomenon, analysis tends to externalize and ignore that which it cannot account for with the result that solutions often remain dangerously blind to surprise and “black swan” events.
The Cyenfin framework advocates working with stories and social constructed meaning to sense and act in complex spaces. Where as analysis relies on objective data and meaning making models to create rules and tools, action in complex spaces uses stories and patterns to create principles and practices which help us to create small actions – probes in the system – that work in a nuanced way with emergence.
In this respect culture matters. The stories that are told and the practices thy are used to make sense of those stories is the method for acting in complex space. This distinction us helpful for me working with indigenous communities where program management may rely on analytical tools (and culture is stamped out in the process) but practices need to be grounded in culturally based responses. Using stories and social meaning making restores culture to its traditional role of helping groups of humans move together in complex domains while using analysis more appropriately.
Just off a call where we were discussing what it takes to shift paradigms in indigenous social development. We noted that we hear a lot from people that they are busy and challenged and they need clear paths forward otherwise they are wasting their time.
I have a response to that.
We don’t know what we are doing. Everything we have been doing so far has resulted in what we have now. The work of social change – paradigm shifting social innovation – is not easy, clear or efficient. If you are up for it you will confront some of the the following, all of the time:
- Confusion about what we are doing.
- A temptation to blame others for where we are at.
- Conflict with people that tell you you are wasting their time.
- A feeling of being lost, overwhelmed or hopeless.
- Fear that if you try something and it fails, you will be fired, excluded or removed.
- Demands for accountability and reprimands if things don’t work out.
- Worry that you are wasting your time and that things are not going according to plan.
- A reluctance to pour yourself into something in case it fails.
- A reticence to look at behaviours that are holding you back.
Social change is not easy. Asking for it to be made easy is not fair. Leadership in this field needs to be able to host all of these emotional states, and to help people hold each other through very trying times. It is about resilience, the kind that is needed both when things fall apart AND when things take too long to come back together.
Everyone needs to be a leader here, everyone needs to recognize these states in themselves and hold others in compassion when they see them arising in others. Working with the emergent unknown requires pacing, a big heart, and a stout challenge. To create the experiments that help us forward we need to be gentle with judgment, but fiercely committed to harvesting and learning. We need to cultivate nuance, discernment, advocacy and inquiry rather than jumping to conclusions and demanding rational analytical responses to every situation.
You up for that?
History is made in little leaps and bounds. A treaty has been signed on the west coast of Vancouver Island, and this month it came into effect. Here is the story.
Very interesting link here. Tipu Ake ki te Ora means “growing from within, ever upwards towards wellbeing.”
We share the Tipu Ake ki te Ora Lifecycle – an easily applied, and action focused leadership model that exploits Kiwi style teamwork. It provides new tools for organisations that wish to grow into dynamic living entities, rather than just behaving like machines.
via The Tipu Ake Lifecycle – An organic Leadership Model for Innovative Organisations.
If you want to learn the way another culture thinks, listen to their stories. But don’t just listen to any stories; listen to the stories they have about how knowledge is gained. That gives you the key to understanding all of the other stories and teaches you everything you need to know about the experiences you need to have to gain knowledge.
Thinking about the Nuu-chah-nulth methodology of oosumich today which is the way of stilling oneself to listen to the world and enter a dialogue with the unseen. My friend Pawa says that prayer is the act of speaking to the immaterial and meditation is the act of listening. It takes at least that quality and depth of engagement with thoughts to reach beyond the material world to the source level.
Taupouri Tangaro says “access into the inner sanctums of hula knowledge is reliant on a vocal invitation.”. It begins with a murmer, a sound uttered into a void field. As you approach a moment or a place in which you are seeking knowledge, begin with a sound. Introduce yourself to the moment and to the place. Offer a song.
And the journey: I was re-reading Eddie Benton-Banai’s teachings about the little boy that brought the Midwewiwin to the people. Part of his journey was traveling through the dark part of the moon, the part the we know is there but that we can’t see. It is a call to go to the spiritual parts of ourselves that we know exist.
Easy. You can sit still in a beautiful place in the forest but can you sit in the beautiful stillness of a forest? That which you know is there bit which you cannot see. Anishnaabe epistemology relies on our ability to learn from both the seen and the unseen.
Tomorrow is the solstice. It is the longest night illuminated by a full moon that will be in eclipse. Layers of darkness and light. A time for exploring the complex interrelationship of light and dark, yin and yang, male and female, action and structure.
Listen to it. Sing to it. Celebrate!