{"id":5778,"date":"2017-12-14T04:30:45","date_gmt":"2017-12-14T12:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/?p=5778"},"modified":"2017-12-14T04:34:16","modified_gmt":"2017-12-14T12:34:16","slug":"shallow-dives-into-chaos-in-teaching-and-leading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/shallow-dives-into-chaos-in-teaching-and-leading\/","title":{"rendered":"Shallow dives into chaos in teaching and leading"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Cynefin framework, the domains are really shades with some clear boundaires. \u00a0Strategic work using Cynefin is about making various moves between different domains for different reasons. \u00a0This is called Cynefin dynamics, and there\u2019s an old but good paper on it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Cynefin dynamics there is a strategic move of “taking a shallow dive into chaos” which is useful for strategic purposes when one needs to break pattern entrainment. \u00a0It is a very useful move in teaching contexts when we are trying to get people to let go of some of their fixed ways of seeing and doing things. \u00a0Even putting a group in a circle can be a shallow dive into chaos. \u00a0The idea here is that in complexity you have a system with a permeable boundary with lots of connections between the elements in the system (people, ideas, resources). \u00a0That allows for emergence to happen. \u00a0In chaos, the connections break down and you need to hold a tight container – nothing is emerging, everything is breaking. \u00a0So if you want to take a shallow dive into chaos, the container needs to be very tight, very constrained, and the relationships between people and ideas that are within that container are very open. \u00a0That\u2019s how you break patterns without creating a deep experience of chamos, which would be when everything breaks down, including the container. \u00a0Sometimes that is required, but there is a much lower likelihood of recovering from that kind of thing. \u00a0I wouldn\u2019t call that \u201cleadership.\u201d \u00a0It\u2019s more like \u201cabandonment.\u201d \u00a0No one wants to create a deep dive into chaos unless you want to create a civil war or a revolution, and even then you have no right to expect you\u2019ll survive it.<\/p>\n

Chaos is a very high energy state, and it costs a lot to be in it. As a result systems (or learners) that are in a state of chaos won\u2019t stay there for long. \u00a0Typically they will respond to the first person that comes along and applies tight constraints (think about a paramedic arriving on the scene of an accident). \u00a0From the perspective of the person in chaos, anything that helps stabilize the situation is welcome.<\/p>\n

This can make chaos in systems VERY VERY vulnerable to unchecked power. \u00a0In times of war, fear or conflict, it is very easy for people to choose and trust despotic leaders that bring tight constraints to the situation, because bringing constraints is actually the right move. \u00a0I have seen meetings and gatherings happen where chaos was deliberately triggered (sometimes under the guise of \u201cthere\u2019s not enough happening in this container\u201d) and then people come in and hijack the agenda and apply their own power. \u00a0In my experience, very few people are deeply skilled at initiating deep levels of chaos to break patterns and then creating complexity responses (rather than imposing their will), but on the national scale perhaps Iceland is an example.<\/p>\n

In workshops \u00a0sometimes participants want to question or check the power of the facilitators. \u00a0This has happened twice to my colleague Tuesday Ryan-Hart and I when we have taught groups of activists who seized on her power teaching to question the power dynamics of teacher\/student within the workshop. \u00a0In both cases we took responsibility as hosts to hold a tight container in which the relationships could dissolve and so that the group itself could discover what to do next. We did this by suspending the agenda and hosting a circle and a Council. \u00a0The decisions that came out were both group owned and I think made the workshop a better learning experience for everyone AND proved the efficacy of our tools and processes. \u00a0I have seen other examples where the hosts did not take that responsibility and instead the participants were left designing their own gathering. \u00a0That kind of thing is poor strategy in chaos, unless you are planning on just abandoning the situation and letting others take over, in which case it\u2019s an excellent strategy to ensure you\u2019ll never be invited back (I have also done this sometimes intentionally and sometimes accidentally.)<\/p>\n

So that is the kind of decision that you have to make from time to time. \u00a0Working with constraints is what leaders and teachers do. \u00a0Being conscious about that is good practice.<\/p>\n

At his two day class last week in Vancouver, Dave Snowden presented this constraints based take on Cynefin and shared the evolution of the framework. \u00a0There is now a new version of this known as \u201climinal\u00a0<\/a>Cynefin<\/a>\u201d that explores the boundary conditions between complicated and complex and complex and chaotic. \u00a0I like this because it begins to highlight how dynamic the framework is. \u00a0I use Cynefin to explain systems and I use the Chaordic Path<\/a> to talk about developing the leadership capacity to stay in the dynamism of flows around these types of systems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Cynefin framework, the domains are really shades with some clear boundaires. \u00a0Strategic work using Cynefin is about making various moves between different domains for different reasons. \u00a0This is called Cynefin dynamics, and there\u2019s an old but good paper on it here. In Cynefin dynamics there is a strategic move of “taking a shallow dive into chaos” which is useful for strategic purposes when one needs to break pattern entrainment. \u00a0It is a very useful move in teaching contexts when we are trying to get people to let go of some of their fixed ways of seeing and doing …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5779,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Shallow dives into chaos in teaching and leading #cynefin #artofhosting","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[53,6,56,16,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-complexity","category-facilitation","category-featured","category-leadership","category-learning"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Mull.jpeg?fit=800%2C600&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piBp1-1vc","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5778","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=5778"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5780,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5778\/revisions\/5780"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}