The idea of a complexity entrepreneur

Gabriele Bammer and Jean Boulton identify a role and a set of capacities needed for research teams, and they call that role a “complexity entrepreneur.”

This style of operating in a complex world requires engendering a milieu in which people regain confidence in working with intuition, making sense of subjective and evolving information, and are able to hone the skills of judgement. Traditional methods of mapping and modelling have their place in surfacing less visible systemic patterns in relatively stable situations, but such methods can also mask the qualitative, contextual and emerging aspects central to facilitating a deeper understanding of the dynamics of change, stuckness and opportunity. Complexity entrepreneurs need to go beyond the analytical and gain experience in handling the ambiguous, the paradoxical and the co-evolving nature of context and action.

To brand these skills as entrepreneurial puts them in a positive light. It is hard not to feel at odds in a world seeking predominantly hard evidence and clear evaluation of alternatives to support conclusions and action strategies. And even with those intent on ‘embracing complexity’ there often lurks the hope that methods can be identified that will reduce that complexity sufficiently so that objective clarity is found. This can lead to a search for methods at the expense of enhancing and valuing the cognitive and emotional qualities needed to apprehend the terrain, judge what can be done and take action.

I’m sure some will seize on the brand title without seizing on the actual role, but I think there is some decent descriptions in this article that can help teams of researchers and others see the role of those who are skilled nd experienced at working with complexity. I especially like their description of the shadowy forces that drive our search for methods. We are teaching this week a cohort of labour educators in the Art of Hosting and we have a two day workshop that deliberately dives below methods. Even though we are sharing and using methods to ground the learning, the focus of the workshop is on the role of hosts as people who work with constraints to work with emergence.

I’ll have a lot more to say about this!