Embracing our Complex World

The last two posts on the blog have got me thinking about ways the we can utilize ourselves as part of complex systems that we work in to help make decisions and avoid analysis paralysis.  One of these decision making techniques that I use a lot is something I like to call excitement based decision making.

A few weeks ago when we explored Analysis Paralysis, we said that one way to overcome the challenge of having many options to move forward with, especially when we could only pick a small number, is to make some assumptions about a small number of options, follow through with these options and learn if our assumptions were right.  But that’s kind of bland and technical.  Where’s the fun?  With excitement based decision making, when presented with a whole bunch of options to move forward with, we ask ourselves which one of these options is the most exciting to me, write down a few assumptions on why its exciting and move forward with those.

Like we talked about last week, if you use your own excitement and energy to help make decisions through complexity than you’re using the fact that you’re part of the system as an advantage to take action.  If an option is exciting to you, then there’s something about that option that draws you towards it, whether that’s conscious or unconscious.  Maybe it’s playing to one of your strengths.   Maybe it’s similar to an experience you had in the past that worked out well.  Or maybe its just looks like a lot of fun!  But whatever it is, if you’re excited by the option your going to pursue it with a lot more personal energy than an option that seems kind of bland.  You’re going to enjoy working on it which helps keep you motivated to keep moving forward and learning from it.  You’ll want to dive right into the activities, investing a lot of you’re own time in them, and end up being able to stay super-productive and work quicker than if you weren’t excited by it.

Being excited by actions in a complex systems can be a real catalyst for change.  It let’s the system play match-maker to find the actions forward that really speak to you and by drawing on your energy from being a part of the system.  It also makes working in complexity a lot of fun and let’s you be tremendously motivated to create change and be extra proud of the change you create!  So next time you’re faced with an analysis paralysis situation, ask yourself “which one of these options is the most exciting for me?”

When we’re creating change projects, we always want to be able to capitalize on innovative ideas and cool opportunities. In fact, if we have many opportunities available to us, that usually means we’re on a good path. But what happens when we have two many opportunities and we can’t capitalize on each and every one?  What happens if we have too many innovative ideas where each one looks just as good as the rest?

The answer is: usually nothing …  and that’s the problem.  Usually when we’re faced with having too many potential directions forward we stall and we get stuck trying to identify which is the best one to pick. With the information we have at the time, all our options look good and they all seem like they will take us somewhere we want to go. We know we have to pick a few but the problem becomes we don’t know how, so we spend all our time thinking about how and no time bringing any of these options to action.

That’s analysis paralysis, we’re stuck in this loop analyzing all of our options trying to find which one is better when chances are we can’t with all the information that we have. That’s one of the traps of working with complex problems: information can be limited during the times we need to make decisions, which holds up our decisions. Remember, one of the characteristics of complexity is that we can’t model or know the whole systems or context, so information will always be limited. We’re sitting around waiting for a new piece of information to come and tell us what to do, when in all likelihood it’s not coming.

So how do we get around this problem. Making good assumptions, like we talked about last week, is one way. Assumptions can let us take a guess on that extra piece of information needed to break out of our analysis paralysis, and if it seems plausible and we record what the assumption is, then we can check back to see if we were right. We have to be careful though that we’ve been diligent to have done enough our homework so we don’t take unthoughtful actions. But as long as we’re sure we’re not repeating an old mistake, we’re usually good to act.

The trick with analysis paralysis is that recognizing that sometimes you can’t think your way through a problem. Sometimes you’ll have to take a risk and make a good assumption on what course of action is the best. The key to managing complexity is being able to move to action through the ambiguity it provides. That’s why analysis paralysis is not our friend to creating impact in complex environments.

“The important questions are ‘When will change happen?’ and ‘What will change?’ The only answers we can rule out are ‘never’ and ‘nothing’”

-Clay Shirky, from ‘Here Comes Everybody‘

That’s one of my favourite quotes about change.  It captures the two key points of change better than anything I’ve read up until now: Change is constant and change is pervasive.

Change and complexity are linked.  If complex systems or complex problems are dynamic and constantly in a state of flux, then to understand them we must understand how these systems and problems are changing.  More importantly, if we plan to act in a complex system or solve a complex problem, then we are really in the business of changing the system or the state of the problem.  Like it or not, if we wish to become experts in managing complexity we must become experts in change.

Change is a large concept and we’ll explore many of the characteristics and nuances of it through later articles.  But in this article I wanted to focus on two qualities of change highlighted by the quote.

The first is that change is constant.  It sounds weird, since we’re used to constants being static and unchanging.  But we can never avoid change, it’s all around us.  I read once that change comes at two times: 1) When you expect it, or 2) When you don’t expect it.  Naively, sometimes we focus only on option one of that statement and think we can specify the time and place for change, like we’re setting up a meeting or a date.  But I’m sure we can all think of times when change has come too early to our lives when we weren’t ready for it, too late when we needed it earlier, or just showed up unannounced.  But understanding that change is always happening allows us to identify it when we don’t expect it and capitalize on the opportunities it creates.  Rather than being blindsided by change we can use it to our advantage.

The second quality is that change is pervasive.  Change in one area usually wiggles its way into other areas.  Sometimes when we identify change or plan for change, we assume that it will only affect one area and have no effects on others.  But our understanding of complexity shows us this assumptions is too simple.  If the world is complex and complexity involves a massive amount of interconnected components, then change in one component should be expected to affect other components within the system.  So the key question to managing change shouldn’t be “How can we keep change confined to one area?” but rather “How can we leverage the ripples of change in other areas from the change in one area?”  Just like understanding the constancy of change, understanding that change is pervasive allows us to get in front of it and capitalize on the opportunities it creates.  Once again we can turn the pervasiveness of change into an advantage.

If the bonus to understanding complexity is that we understand change, then the bonus to understanding change is that we start to understand how the world works.  We can start to understand how we interact with the world around us and the world interacts with us.  And more importantly, we can start to understand what we need to do shape the change we want to create within the world.  Rather than be receivers of change, we can start to become agents of change.

Welcome everyone to EWB’s new blog, From the Edge of Complexity. This blog explores ideas around complexity, what complexity is and why it’s important to understand.

Many of us EWBers have already grappled with working in complex systems and complex situations (and if you haven’t yet, just wait!) Complexity can be mystifying. It can take an concept that we thought we understood and turn it on its head. It can make the perfect plans and actions that we used in a certain situation to great success in the past lead to utter failure when we’re faced with a situation that seems similar in the future. It can take us from feeling brimming with confidence and able to overcome any challenges we’re faced, to feeling completely stumped, confused and useless. Complexity can lead to incredible impact, and it can devastate programs to be completely ineffective.

The question is, why? And more importantly, what can we do about it? How can we use complexity to take advantage of all its positives, and avoid its negative traps? These are the questions that this blog is going to try to tackle.

Every week (or every other week … it depends on my busyness/laziness), there’ll be new thoughts, articles, and stories trying to explore this idea of complexity, what it means and what we can do about it. We’ll be able to debate and discuss these ideas too through this blogs comment system. Also, I don’t want posts to be limited to just me, everyone is invited to submit thoughts, stories ideas and feedback. If you’re interested in contributing, drop me a line at jonfishbein@ewb.ca.

So buckle up as we dive into complexity and emerge on the other side of it with a better understanding of how we can work through it!