{"id":4146,"date":"2014-12-15T12:32:25","date_gmt":"2014-12-15T20:32:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/?p=4146"},"modified":"2014-12-15T12:34:42","modified_gmt":"2014-12-15T20:34:42","slug":"disintermediated-sensemaking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/disintermediated-sensemaking\/","title":{"rendered":"Disintermediated sensemaking"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"2014-11-25<\/a>

Hmmm…maybe I should have let the group do this…<\/p><\/div>\n

When I popped off to London last week to take a deep dive into Cognitive Edge\u2019s work with complexity, one of the questions I held was about working with evaluation in the complex domain.<\/p>\n

The context for this question stems from a couple of realities. First, evaluation of social programs, social innovation and other interventions in the human services is a huge industry and it holds great sway. And it is dominated by a world view of linear rationalism that says that we can learn something by determining whether or not you achieved the goals that you set out to achieve. Second, evaluation is an incredibly privileged part of many projects and initiatives and itself becomes a strange attractor for project planning and funding approval. In order for funders to show others that their funding is making a difference, they need a \u201cmerit and worth\u201d evaluation of their funds. The only way to do that is to gauge progress against expected results. And no non-profit in its right mind will say \u201cwe failed to achieve the goals we set out to address\u201d even though everyone knows that \u201ccreating safe communities\u201d for example is an aspiration out of the control of any social institution and is subject to global economic trends as much as it is subject to discrete interventions undertaken by specific projects. The fact that folks working in human services are working in a complex domain means that we can all engage in a conspiracy of false causality in order to keep the money flowing (an observation Van Jones inspired in me a while ago<\/a>.)\u00a0Lots of folks are making change, because they know intuitively how to do this, but they way we learn about that change is so tied to an inappropriate knowledge system, that I\u2019m not convinced we have much of an idea what works and what doesn\u2019t. And I\u2019m not talking about articulating \u201cbest practices.\u201d<\/p>\n

The evaluation methods that are used are great in the complicated domain, where causes and effects are easy to determine and where understanding critical pathways to solutions can have a positive influence on process. in other words, where you have replicable results, linear, summative evaluation works great. Where you have a system that is complex, where there are many dynamics working at many different scales to produce the problems you are facing, an entirely different way of knowing is needed. As Dave Snowden says, there is an intimate connection between ontology, epistemology and phenomenology. In plain terms, the kind of system we are in is connected to the ways of knowing about it and the ways of interpreting that knowledge.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to make this overly simplistic: If you are working with a machine, or a mechanistic process, that unfolds along a linear trajectory, than mechanistic knowledge (problems solving) and interpretive stratgies are fantastic. For complex systems, we need knowledge that is produced FROM the system and interpreted within the system. Evaluation that is done by people \u201coutside\u201d of the system and that reports finding filtered through \u201cexpert\u201d or \u201cdisinterested\u201d lenses is not useful for a system to understand itself.<\/p>\n

Going into the Cynefin course I was interested to learn about how developmental evaluation fit into the complex domain. What I learned was the term \u201cdisintermediated sensemaking\u201d which is actually the radical shift I was looking for. \u00a0Here is an example of what it looks like in leadership practice.<\/a><\/p>\n

Most evaluation uses processes employing\u00a0a specialized evaluator undertaking the work. The problem with this is that it places a person between the data and experience and the use of the knowledge. And it also increases the time between an experience and the meaning making of that experience, which can be a fatal lag with strategy in emergent systems. The answer to this problem is to let people in the system have direct experience of the data, and make sense of it themselves.<\/p>\n

There are many many ways to do this, depending on what you are doing. For example:<\/p>\n