Just off a call with a potential client today and we were scoping out some of the work that we might do together, with a small organization facing unprecedented change. \u00a0They are in a place of finally realizing that they are not in control of what is happening to them. \u00a0They are completely typical in this respect.<\/p>\n
I am constantly struck by the fact that we have so few skills, frameworks and so little language for dealing with complexity. \u00a0Clients all the time approach me looking for certainty, answers and clear outcomes. \u00a0It\u2019s as if they are searching for the one person who will promise them the relief they are looking for. \u00a0And no one can. \u00a0Because mostly what they are FEELING is their emotional reponse to the reality of a complex world. \u00a0And no amount of rational and linear planning will address that feeling. \u00a0in fact quite the opposite. \u00a0Sitting down and deciding on a vision, goals, objectives and plan just defers the pain, because it fools you into thinking you are in control but it sets up a false ideal against which your progress will always be measured to be short.<\/p>\n
Confronting complexity is hard. \u00a0It is not merely that we need better tools to think about it. We need better tools to emotionally deal with it. \u00a0it is overwhelming, infuriating, confusing, and frightening. \u00a0And almost every organization I work with that fails to address it well fails because they don\u2019t attend to the fear. \u00a0They build fears into their processes, or they build processes to avoid confronting what they are afraid of: usually that we don\u2019t know what\u2019s going and we don\u2019t know what to do.<\/p>\n
My potential client asked me if I could say what outcomes would come from working with me. \u00a0In brief they are this:<\/p>\n
That\u2019s it. Sometimes those outcomes are incredibly concrete, sometimes it is more about building capacity, but it is always about acting strategically, and that sometimes means learning a new language and a new set of skills. \u00a0I find that it\u2019s the learning part with which people are most impatient. \u00a0They seems to want to be able to accelerate the outcomes they want without having to change their approach. But, if you found yourself teleported to rural Bangladesh and you now had to make a living as a rice farmer, do you think your current language and skill set would be applicable, if only you applied yourself harder?<\/p>\n
There are projects that fit the ordered domain of work, in which project management and strategic planning leads to predictable outcomes. And there is work for which \u201clearning\u201d is both the outcome and the new organizational structure and leadership practice. \u00a0It is very important not to confuse the two contexts. \u00a0And it is surprising just how much we are willing to turn a blind eye to complexity (as both a friend and a foe) \u00a0in favour of a stable and knowable future, no matter how impossible that idea is.<\/p>\n
Just off a call with a potential client today and we were scoping out some of the work that we might do together, with a small organization facing unprecedented change. \u00a0They are in a place of finally realizing that they are not in control of what is happening to them. \u00a0They are completely typical in this respect. I am constantly struck by the fact that we have so few skills, frameworks and so little language for dealing with complexity. \u00a0Clients all the time approach me looking for certainty, answers and clear outcomes. \u00a0It\u2019s as if they are searching for the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[29,22,53,18,16,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-of-hosting","category-collaboration","category-complexity","category-emergence","category-leadership","category-learning"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piBp1-1dh","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4667"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4668,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4667\/revisions\/4668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}