4/11/08 |

Knowledge strategy: little things making a difference

By Mark. Filed in Complexity, Knowledge, Strategy.

The actKM conference was held in Canberra in mid October. One of the presenters was Jane Chrystal from the Central West Catchment Management Authority who were one of the pilot sites for the Regional Knowledge Resource Kit (RKRK) project. The RKRK project developed a process and supporting resources for the various Natural Resource Management regions to develop their own knowledge strategies.

Jane mentioned that one of the actions from their knowledge strategy has had a big impact. This simple action was for all staff to write a clear description in the subject line of their emails. Adopting this practice has helped staff deal with information overload by being able to quickly identify emails that they need to deal with, and which ones can be simply deleted. I recall when we were working with Jane and her team that another 'small' initiative was to encourage people to travel together as much as possible when driving around the region - the idea being that car trips are an ideal time to have conversations, build relationships and share knowledge.

Congratulations to Nerida Hart and the Knowledge for Regional NRM team from Land & Water Australia on receiving the actKM Platinum Award for their achievements in developing the RKRK and related activities. Anecdote is proud to have had a major role in supporting the RKRK project and we really enjoyed working with Nerida and her team on this project.

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23/08/08 |

Aphorisms we should dismiss in the face of complexity

By Shawn. Filed in Complexity, Quotes.

Life's little sayings have a big impact on how we think.

A stitch in time saves nine.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

They make up our common sense but as Einstein quipped:

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."

I believe these aphorisms survive because they contain wisdom that work for us. But in the face of what we know about complexity there are some sayings that should go the way of the desert bandicoot.

Here are two that no longer make sense when things are complex:

• The definition of insanity is to do the same thing twice and expect a different result
• You can't fix what you can't measure.

Can you think of others that hold us back?

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7/08/08 |

Individual intelligence can lead to collective stupidity

By Mark. Filed in Complexity, Strategy.

I am reviewing Fred Kofman's book 'Conscious Business' subtitled 'How to build value through values. He uses a soccer game to illustrate 'a puzzling paradox' whereby coherent and rational individual behavior often produces incoherent and irrational systemic behavior. Systems theory teaches that to optimize the system, you must optimize its sub-systems. Kofman's soccer analogy kicks this into touch...I have paraphrased it below:

In soccer, the objective of each team is to win by scoring more goals than the opponent. Teams are organized into sub-teams, offense and defense. The objective of the offense is to score goals; the objective of defense is to prevent the opposition from scoring. If the coach decides to use management by objectives and performance-based incentives the resultant compensation system sees the offense receiving payment in direct proportion to the goals they score and the defense in inverse proportion to the goals they allow.

If the incentive system works, the team will end up defeating itself. The offense would rather lose 4 goals to five than win 1 to 0. The defense would rather lose 1 to 0 than win 5 to 4. There is no incentive for the offense to help defend their goal and vice versa. While each sub-team tries to optimize its sub-objective, it sub-optimizes the team's objective. Substitute 'operations' for 'defense' and 'sales' for 'offense'; 'revenues' for 'scoring' and 'costs' for 'preventing goals' and you can see how this would work in organisations, and how easy it is to lose sight of the objective of winning the game as a team.

Kofman's book is an excellent read, using anecdotes and examples throughout to illustrate his ideas. It is a 'must-read' for all managers and leaders.

1. Kofman, F., 'Conscious Business: How to Build Value through Values', Sounds True, Colorado, 2006, p77-78

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5/07/08 |

The pond metaphor

By Mark. Filed in Complexity, Culture.

Here is something I have meant to post about for a while. It is a metaphor in the book 'Dangerous Undertaking' by James Harlow Brown. Shawn has previously blogged about the extensive use of metaphor in the book. The metaphor is in a story about a NASA engineer who discovered something that took him off his 'autopilot' and helped him realised the impact his behaviour and actions have. I have tried to paraphrase the story to capture its essence:

The engineer was sitting by a pond, contemplating. He saw a frog jump into the pond and noticed how the ripples spread right across the pond. He watched intently and realised that there were many other sources of movement on the surface of the pond. Insects would occasionally touch the water causing tiny ripples. A swallow swooped down and lightly touched the surface as it caught a bug. A light breeze came up and created more ripples. All these ripples interacted and caused complex patterns on the surface of the water. The engineer began to get an insight; each event was writing its unique pattern on the water and the ripples lasted long after the event happened. He realised that the whole world was the same way. We make ripples and create the future every moment.

The engineer's insight deepened. He realised he was watching the pond from a distance, as if he were outside watching others make ripples and he couldn't see himself in the picture. Suddenly it hit him that in the real world, there is no bank to sit on. He was right in the pond where the ripples were affecting him, and where he was causing ripples too. This was the insight that had a profound effect on the engineer, getting him to turn off his autopilot. Seeing himself as a part of the pond, not as some external observer.

For me, the pond metaphor has relevance to our work in leadership development. Some managers see themselves as sitting on the bank, carefully choosing where they want to drop a pebble and create patterns. They do so without realising that their every action creates patterns that have a big influence on the pond. Influences that may counteract the effects of their carefully dropped pebbles. 'Sitting on the bank' is a luxury that doesn't exist. We are all creating patterns, and the future, constantly because we are in the pond. Seeing ourselves as 'in the pond' helps change the way we think about the effects of our behaviour.

What ripples are you causing? Will your pebble drop with scarely a ripple in the pond, or will it have lasting effect?

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16/05/08 |

Criteria for implementing initiatives in a complex space

By Shawn. Filed in Complexity, Facilitation.

Dave's written a excellent post on how to make progress in a complex environment. It's excellent because it comes at a time when I'm working with a client where their staff have come up with a range of initiatives yet there is a feeling among some of the project members that the initiatives wont make a difference—they are not clear winners.

In hindsight, I should have made my approach clearer to my client and said that we create a process for the client to work things out for themselves and that I don't have the answers. I suspect they're used to the highly controlled and 'expert' facilitator who leads the group to a conclusion that is mostly pre-determined. But I didn't do that. I used a combination of narrative techniques, open space and world cafe approaches so the business folk worked out their own way forward.

Mind you there's a spectrum here. I have insights to share. I've seen many other organisations and their initiatives but I know the context will be different and a tremendous success in one organisation might go nowhere in another. But they are still possible patterns for experimentation. I need to work on other ways to share these ideas and experiences.

I liked Dave's tests for whether an initiative should be tried. To paraphrase:

1. If the proposed initiative fits in with things that have happened before and what might happen in the future, give it a go
2. If a failure in unlikely to be overly costly and there are things to learn, give it go

I'd like to add another criteria,

1. If people in the organisation are taking responsibility for making it happen, give it go

Failure is scary for organisations. But without a safe-fail culture new ideas and new opportunities will never stick.

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15/05/08 |

Lessons from Lewis & Clark—a new white paper is coming

By Shawn. Filed in Change management, Complexity, Narrative.

David Drake and I have written a new white paper describing a narrative approach to successful organisational change. We've built on our three journeys metaphor, which you might remember was inspired by the epic exploration of the the US West by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Apart from describing the three journeys we've drawn a set of lessons from the Corps of Discovery (the nickname for the expedition) for each of our three journeys. Here are the lessons from our first journey:

• It is important to be clear on sharing the rewards before there are any.
• Travelling requires both authority and freedom/permission.
• Change requires an organisation to venture into unknown territory; it is as much about discovery as it is about design.
• Every change process has its “St. Louis”—a jumping off point into the unknown, a hub for action, and a platform to which one can return.
• Often the landscape changes merely as a result of setting out on the journey.

If you'd like to early notification and the ability to get this paper before we publish it more widely, please sign up for our monthly newsletter. In the next few days I will share the lessons for the second and third journey.

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15/04/08 |

Leading from the front...complexity management basics for CEOs

By Robyn. Filed in Anecdotes, Complexity.

The damaging windstorm in Melbourne two weeks ago gave me an interesting insight into how poorly prepared the leadership of our energy organisations were to deal with a crisis. You could argue that a simple demonstration of the energy of Mother Nature and its effects on modern civilisation is hardly a crisis but I doubt that many of the 300,000 Melbourne households that were without power for days would agree with you.

I was one of those left in the dark both literally and figuratively for close to 55 hours. I understood that it was an “unusual weather event” and it would not be easy to get everyone quickly back onto the power supply. I didn’t mind losing everything in my fridge and freezer, having no hot water, reading by candlelight or being without my laptop, broadband internet or Foxtel. But I did mind not being able to speak to anyone at my power company…and I was surprised by just how much I minded. When things are not going the way they should, we all look for reassurance and information to help us wait it out. The situation across Melbourne was complex and complicated and I knew that SP-Ausnet would not be able to tell me when they would get to the fallen powerlines in my street and I knew that every available repair crew member was on duty and out there working through the night to get the job done. My appreciation to them knows no bounds. But…not once was I able to find out whether anyone at the power company knew that our powerlines were down. Our suburb was either not listed on their answering machine message as offline or being worked on. In fact, on the Friday morning, we once again woke to a cold, dark morning and the recorded message “There are no known outages in your area” Yeah, right! My congratulations go to the one exception in all this – the CEO of Alinta, Peter McGarry, who was a shining example of “The buck stops here”. He was personally available to radio and television interviewers and the number of interviews he had done by day three was close to twenty. He took on board the concerns expressed by disgruntled customers who were unable to speak to anyone or get any information from their power company. And like his repair crews, he and his team worked long hours to stay on top of things. An SMS service for customers to report outages and damage was quickly set up as was a website to give up to date information. I was impressed to find out that on Friday as my household entered its third day without light, power or information, Alinta had rung their 1700 customers still waiting to be reconnected to let them know how things were progressing and ask how they were getting on. Peter McGarry made sure his company looked after their customers and kept the communication coming. When one of his linesmen was killed working to restore power to houses on the Mornington Peninsula, most of us would have understood if Peter had gone to ground and hidden out at Head Office. But that was not his style. While under enormous pressure he made time to visit the family and colleagues, made sure there were condolence notices from himself and the company in the Melbourne newspapers and I have no doubt he made time to attend the funeral as well. In contrast to my supplier, he didn’t hand any of that over to “a company spokesperson” from the PR department. Complications and complexity are part and parcel of crisis situations where the shifting nature of the problem is a big part of the challenge of solving it. Peter and the Alinta team stepped up to that challenge, made sure they kept telling everyone what they were doing as they did it and, as far as I'm concerned, did it markedly better than the rest.

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25/03/08 |

Making sense of history

By Mark. Filed in Complexity, Knowledge, Sensemaking.

I am reading The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I enjoyed his description of how history is extremely opaque; how "you see what comes out, not the script that produces events." He describes three ailments the human mind suffers when it comes into contact with history (he calls them the 'triplet of opacity'):

• The Illusion of Understanding. This relates to the pathology of thinking that the world we live in is more understandable, more explainable and therefore more predictable than it actually is. It also relates to our tendency to reflect and conclude that events had a specific cause and that events could have been averted by removing that specific cause.
• Retrospective Distortion. How we assess matters after the fact, as if they were in a rearview mirror. Taleb describes his impression that our minds are wonderful explanation machines, capable of making sense out of anything, capable of mounting explanations for all sorts of phenomena and generally incapable of accepting the idea of unpredictability. History and societies do not crawl. They make jumps. They go from fracture to fracture with few vibrations in between. Yet we believe in predictable, incremental progression. This is a slightly different take from Dave Snowden's description of 'retrospective coherence' where cause and effect in complex situations only becomes visible in hindsight.
• Overvaluation of Factual Information. Taleb also calls this 'the curse of learning', referring to the "handicap of authoritative and learned people, particularly when they create categories-when they "Platonify."" In many cases, particularly regarding complex issues, experts are no better at knowing what is going to happen than cab drivers. The difference is that the experts think they know better what is going to happen. Taleb also describes how gathering more and more facts, details and information doesn't help us predict what is going to happen.

Not surprisingly, we see these 'ailments' all the time. The trick is balancing our tendency to 'Platonify' with the need to make sense and become aware of the inherent unpredictability of our organisational environments. A bit more inquiry and listening, a little less arrogance (believing we know best). Continuing to see good data..and supplementing it with the willingness to try things and see what happens.

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28/02/08 |

Meeting to talk about storytelling, narrative and complexity

By Shawn. Filed in Complexity, Narrative, News, Storytelling.

I run a meetup group in Melbourne call Emergence and we get together for drinks and dinner each month. Our next meeting is on the 13th March at 6pm. For full details and to RSVP go to here. It very informal and just a good way to catch up with new people and talk about things that interest us. Everyone is welcome.

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12/02/08 |

Good intentions and the ability to apologise go hand-in-hand

By Shawn. Filed in Collaboration, Complexity.

I caught up with Julie Perrin yesterday. Julie is a storyteller and performer and we got talking about the dangers of spin in teaching people storytelling. Julie made the important point that any storytelling effort must start with good intentions and be told with authenticity.

Then it dawned on me: in a complex world many outcomes are largely unpredictable and so while our intentions might have been sound at the outset, the result might unexpectedly cause pain to someone. Consequently the ability and willingness of people to apologise is a fundamental business skill. I wrote this post a year ago on ways to say sorry to rebuild trust.

This thought was prompted by radio discussion yesterday morning about the impending apology the Australia government will give to Aboriginal people for the past practice of removing Aboriginal children from their families and putting them into foster homes. Tomorrow will be a historic day.

One radio listener sent a message into John Faine (the radio announcer) and said something like: "Saying sorry is the first step when a mistake is made in order to maintain a relationship regardless of the intention" (she said it much better than that. Please let me know the actual wording if you heard it). The many relationships at work are important because they have such an impact on how we feel and our ability to do a good job.

The ability to say sorry sincerely is also important in the growing number of collaborations we are now seeing in business.

How to say sorry¹

1. recognise and acknowledge that a violation has occurred
2. determine the nature of the violation—that is, what ‘caused’ it—and admit that one has caused the event
3. admit that the act was destructive
4. accept responsibility for the effect of one’s actions
5. offer some form of forgiveness, atonement, or action designed to undo the violation and rebuild the trust
   

1. Lindskold, S. (1978). “Trust development, the GRIT proposal, and the affects of conciliatory acts on conflict and cooperation.” Psychological Bulletin 85: 772-793.

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7/02/08 |

The link between complexity and narrative?

By Daryl. Filed in Complexity.

Steve Hardy has written an article - What Specifically Do Generalists Do? To quote:

All the elements that make up experiences are very complex when viewed objectively ... but since experience is subjective, it is wonderfully refreshing and most useful to look at that kind of complexity through a human subjective lens and ask simply "what does the experience feel like from this perspective?". Literally seeking to understand the experience, the journey through time and space, for someone else. That perspective automatically integrates all the contributing elements into a whole and helps you appreciate the interdependencies in a way that doing only objective analysis wouldn't.

This is the most succinct--and perhaps the best--description of complexity I've come across. It captures the essence of what we are trying to do in our narrative projects.

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6/12/07 |

Follow That Feather

By Daryl. Filed in Complexity, Strategy.

A strange recurring pattern involving pigeons seems to have emerged in my life recently.

A pigeon walked into my house the other day after I had left the back door open. It caused a bit of a ruckus when my dog realised what was going on and started chasing it all around the house, bouncing off the furniture and trying to climb the walls to catch it. Relating this incident to a friend a few days later triggered childhood memories of Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines. Anyway, I digress.

Yesterday morning while having coffee with a colleague, we talked about the often inappropriate use of the 'target' metaphor so often used in business, and ended up having an interesting discussion about how pigeons find their way home. I'm no expert on pigeons, so intrigued, I decided to do a little research. Here's what I found:

When reared in a particular loft, a young pigeon can be transported hundreds of miles away and successfully find its way home from the release site. Because it requires the pigeon to pinpoint a specific location, this behavior necessitates more than the compass orientation system of migratory birds. Instead, the pigeon must be able to determine its position relative to the location of the home loft in order to orient itself in the proper direction. In doing so, pigeons use a variety of external cues such as the sun, visual landmarks, olfactory cues, and the earth's magnetic field. Depending on the weather conditions, where the pigeon was raised, and the nature of the release site, pigeons use a combination of these cues to determine their flight path. [1]

After exploring this in more detail, it seems like this might be a useful alternative metaphor for exploring strategy and objective setting, particularly in the complex and rapidly changing environments in which organisations operate today where linear thinking is mostly inappropriate and ineffective.

1. from a copy of articles published by Cornell University: http://albertaclassic.com/suncomp.php

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28/10/07 |

Cynefin now published in the Harvard Business Review

By Shawn. Filed in Complexity.

Congratulations Dave and Mary for your HBR article. I've had a chance to browse it and it looks great.

The article is called A Leader's Framework for Decision Making. It covers the Cynefin framework, complexity, with a heavy dose on the importance of context in decision making.

Anecdote had it start as one of the groups that sprung from IBM's Cynefin Centre. So it's great to see Dave's work to get wide recognition. Well done.

Technorati Tags: cynefin, dave snowden, mary boone

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21/10/07 |

Why don't they just follow the procedure?

By Mark. Filed in Complexity, Knowledge.

On 29-30 August, a USAF B-52 bomber mistakenly armed with six nuclear tipped cruise missiles, flew from Minot, North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. The incident has sparked enormous media attention and it is the first time the US military has publicly commented on the whereabouts of nuclear weapons.

The Air Force deputy chief of staff for operations announced the results of a six-week inquiry into the incident yesterday, the results of which pretty much conclude that the procedures were correct but the personnel simply didn't follow them. The incident was evidently not a one-off: "there has been an erosion of adherence to weapons-handling standards." The airmen replaced the schedule with their own "informal" system, he said, though he didn't say why they did that nor how long they had been doing it their own way. Apparently, up to 70 people will be disciplined over the incident; a wing will be removed from wartime status and the base commander has been relieved of his command.

My 20 year career in the Australian Air Force, and consulting back to Defence since, makes me pretty familiar with the rigorous documentation of policy and procedure in the military.... and with the way these procedures are often used. I remember the mantra "policies are for the guidance of wise men and the blind obedience of fools" and how this was embedded into many of the stories told in the bar and on the flight line. What was also evident was the enormous amount of experience, knowledge and understanding of context that enabled the tailoring of procedures to be done effectively and with due regard to the circumstances. The 'people' bit was always much more important than the 'process' bit.

If we wanted a procedure to be followed precisely there was a lot of work up front ensuring the necessary understanding (knowledge, context) was provided and a lot of resources monitoring compliance. As the drive for military 'efficiency' bit in the late part of my career the extent to which the basics were done dropped dramatically. In the Australian Defence Force this was exemplified by the annual audit of Defence accounts being qualified (a very bad thing) for years on end due to a decade of neglecting the simple act of stocktaking. It was like the organisation just started to assume it would get done 'because everyone knows its important' and yet it behaved in a way that gave no indication that it was, in fact, important. Hmmm, sound familiar?

So, in the case of the recent 'nukes across the US' incident, I would love the opportunity to do some narrative-based research (probably using anecdote circles) to find out what was really going on. Of course, if the objective was to determine blame we would not get much better information than provided by an investigation. But if the objective was to understand the context and behaviors relating to the incident the insights could be incredibly valuable. And with something important (and I guess nuclear safety would fall in that category) we should be using the full range of investigative/evaluation approaches available to us rather than relying solely on traditional, linear ones based on the scientific method and focused on who was at fault.

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8/10/07 |

The billiard ball example

By Shawn. Filed in Complexity.

When I talk about complexity to clients I mention that complex systems are impossible to predict in detail especially as your forcast extends into the future. I point out that there are so many connections among the objects affecting the system and many of the cause and effect relationships are non-linear (a small thing can have a big impact and vice versa). Every now and then someone will say, “but if you could work out all those connections you could predict the outcome.” And this is where I will tell them the chessboard story.

The legendary information scientist, Claude Shannon, calculated how many possible moves there are on a chessboard. It's a finite system of 64 squares, 32 pieces, 6 movement patterns. The number is big and equates to the number of milliseconds the world has been in existence. And that's for a simple system. Imagine the possibilities in a social system where the objects have free will.

But I think I've just read a better analogy (perhaps equally as impressive) and the topic is billiards. The calculations were done by Prof. Sir Michael Berry in 1978 in his paper Regular and Irregular Motion, in Nonlinear Mechanics and recounted in The Black Swan.

If you know a set of basic parameters concerning the ball at rest, can computer the resistance of the table (quite elementary), and can gauge the strength of the impact, then it is rather easy to predict what would happen at the first hit. The second impact becomes more complicated, but possible; and more precision is called for. The problem is that to correctly computer the ninth impact, you need to take account the gravitational pull of someone standing next to the table (modestly, Berry's computations use a weight of less than 150 pounds). And to compute the fifty-sixth impact, every single elementary particle in the universe needs to be present in your assumptions! An electron at the edge of the universe, separated from us by 10 billion light-years, must figure in the calculations, since it exerts a meaningful effect on the outcome. (p. 178)

No wonder I can't play billiards to save myself.

Technorati Tags: black swan, nassim nicholas taleb, puppy

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6/10/07 |

The importance of the rough sketch

By Shawn. Filed in Complexity, Narrative.

Last week Robyn and I were in Adelaide starting a project to help a company get a community of practice up and running. As we were talking to our client explaining our approach I was mindful of all the rough sketches of models I use to communicate ideas. With this in mind I stumbled upon this great new web service called Sketchcast which enables you to jot a sketch and provide a voice over explanation. So I thought I would give is a go and show you how I typically introduce executives on why they might want to use narrative techniques.

Technorati Tags: sketchcast, cynefin

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23/09/07 |

Why we need stories from the edge

By Shawn. Filed in Books, Complexity, Narrative.

I came across the idea of the power law when I read Duncan Watt's Six Degrees. It's the one that best describes city population distributions, the size of hubs in networks, the popularity of blog sites, word frequencies and the Pareto principle, to name just a few. In power law systems there's one standout (the biggest city, the most frequently used word, the most popular blog) then the rest trail off into a very long trail. Imagine one of those fun drop slides where you hang from a bar, let go and enjoy a terrific slide to the end. The shape of a drop slide is the same as a power law if you graph these distributions. Quite a different shape to the normal, bell-curve distribution we were all told at university best represented the world we live in. Power laws tell us to notice the extremes. Bell curves tell us to remove the outliers and look at the majority.

Do you know the difference between character and characterisation when you are crafting a story? In Story, Robert McKee tells us that characterisation is what you can see, the observable qualities: a person's age, gender, occupation, how they dress. Whereas character is revealed by their action when there are tough choices to be made. In the final season of the West Wing, Bruno (the Republican campaign advisor) finds Senator Santos' (the Democratic presidential candidate) briefcase and Bruno brings it to his boss, Senator Vinnick who's running against Santos. Vinnick is presented with a dilemma: leak the contents of briefcase and gain an advantage in the campaign or return the briefcase to Santos. His actions in tough situations when there is much at stake reveal his character. Vinnick returns the briefcase.

Stories are told at the edge and from the edge. We recount remarkable events which in turn communicate those events that reveal our colleague's character. This is why stories are at the heart of organisational culture but they don't magically appear without a trigger. They come from remarkable things that are happening.

Sometimes people say to me, “does that story really represent the majority of what people think?” My first response is to say we are less interested in a single story than the patterns many stories reveal. But the question does reveal bell-curve thinking where the outliers don't matter, they're an aberration to be ignored. But think of every major breakthrough in how things are done. Each one came from the edges. The trap we make for ourselves comes from the wonderful minds we have and their ability to make sense and explain things after the event. “Of course Google had to happen, 911 was a foreseeable tragedy waiting to happen, the ability to show videos on the net would result in a multi-billion dollar purchase”—bollocks! In hindsight it all makes sense to us and we believe we can predict what is coming next by analysing past events. Those days are well behind us now. From now on we need to design for serendipity, furiously take action, make mistakes, but most importantly create situations where ideas can bubble up and and be tried out.

Stories are a double edge sword. On the one hand they deliver the messages from the edge. On the other hand they are the carriers of sensemaking, explanation and encapsulate the causes that brought us here today. Stories help us simplify what happened. We need to be both wary of and embrace stories. Get used to paradoxes. Charles Handy said it was the age of unreason and I think he is right.

While I haven't finished the book yet I'm finding The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb an inspiration that's generating so many thoughts. Last week I had the good fortune to have a hour long chat with Tom Peters at the AIM Convention. It turns out we both share many intellectual interests such as Karl Weick's work on sensemaking, a love of storytelling and a desire to challenge the status quo. In that conversation Tom said I was crazy if I didn't read The Black Swan. I'm glad I took his advice.

Technorati Tags: black swan, karl weick, nassim nicholas taleb, tom peters

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17/08/07 |

Wiki Patterns

By Daryl. Filed in Complexity, Sensemaking.

We're currently working on a knowledge project with a client, part of which involves setting up a collaborative environment for managing and editing content - in this instance a wiki.

As part of the initial setup, I've been looking at 'best practices' for wiki implementation and adoption and I quickly came across wiki patterns , which is such a fantastic resource.

But that in itself is not all that I find interesting about the site. For me, it was the observation of the structure and language of 'patterns' used on the site and my association of that with the process of sense-making that I find intriguing.

Now, being the new guy here at Anecdote, I'm still immersing myself in the use of narrative and complexity theory, but my current understanding using the Cynefin framework -- is that 'best practices' belong in the known domain ... when things are prescriptive, can be reduced to binary decisions; black and white, yes and no answers. There is a known solution.

On the other hand navigating complexity requires us to detect new and emerging patterns. Humans are good at seeing patterns, making sense from them and then acting on them. Deciding on courses of action or 'solutions' in this domain are about influencing these patterns and behaviours, reinforcing the positives and discouraging the negatives.

The wikipatterns site is doing exactly this - putting wiki adoption squarely into the complex camp, and using patterns to help people make sense of what to do and not what to do, rather than trying to lay out prescriptive answers on how-to implement wikis, because it's just not that simple when humans are involved!!

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14/05/07 |

The story of a map - Massimo Vignelli's 1972 NYC Subway Map

By Shawn. Filed in Anecdotes, Complexity, Sensemaking.

Imagine if you could get people to talk on camera about their achievements and mistakes. The result could be a powerful, especially if you use these stories to get people talking. Here's a tiny example on a topic dear to my heart: how to convey complex information simply. In this clip Massimo Vignelli talks about his 1972 information design masterpiece, the New York City Subway map. There are a couple of things I noticed in this four minute video, which is an out-take for the documentary Helvetica.

• the actual map was a powerful reminder device
• enough time had elapsed for Massimo to be comfortable to talk about his mistakes (just one) - mind you, you could imagine his self confidence soaring
• the beauty of the map comes from knowing what to leave out--and if Massimo could do it again he would have left out even more

Mr Vignelli was inspired by Henry Beck's 1933 legendary map of the London Underground. You can take a look at London's current versions here. Michael Bierut has written an essay called Mr Vignelli's Map which you might enjoy.

Thanks to 37 Signals for the pointer

Technorati Tags: information design, massimo vignellie

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6/02/07 |

What is happening to Melbourne's trains?

By Shawn. Filed in Collaboration, Complexity, Knowledge.

There is something peculiar going on with Melbourne’s trains. A couple of years ago we received a new fleet of brand new Siemens trains and everything worked fine. This year the same trains have a mysterious and serious problem: they don’t stop when and where the driver wants them to. The brakes seem to have a problem and no one can pinpoint the difficulty. According to The Age, there is a glimmer of hope but the resolution is dragging out. Experts have been flown in and the best people are working on the issue, so why is it taking so long to resolve?

What increases my befuddlement is the apparent nuts and bolts characteristic of the problem (at least that is how it appears). A train is a system (admittedly complicated) you can pull apart, analyse each component, make a diagnosis and put back together and you still have a train. So the solution, therefore, can’t be just a simple malfunction of equipment there must be something more complex occurring.

Could it be that they just don’t have the right people working on the problem, that the true experts on maintaining Siemens trains are yet to be engaged? I think this is unlikely given the concern and inconvenience the absence of these trains is causing Melbourne commuters, Connex and the Victorian Government. Could it be that this type of problem hasn’t been encountered anywhere else in the world and the engineers are simply not equipped to handle the problem? That’s hard to believe given the number of these trains working diligently on so many tracks around the world. While the problem might not be identical, if it were a purely mechanical issue the mechanics would be able to spot it and fix it.

But any issue involving people is never purely mechanical. When people are involved in problem solving we need to consider how knowledge is flowing from one person to another; from one group to another; from one organisation to another. Here are some possibilities that might be hindering the resolution of the unstoppable train problem.

The people responsible for the day to day maintenance of the trains in Melbourne (I’ll call them the mechanics) don’t know the experts that well from Siemens (I’ll call them the engineers). Knowledge will only flow between these groups after a relationship has developed and trust formed. If the first time they have ever met is in the heat of resolving a high profile issue, then tempers are likely to be frayed, finger-pointing occurs and communications stop. In the future, prepare for emergencies by ensuring the experts know the people on the ground.

Mechanics tend to be practical, concrete thinkers. Experts like to work with abstractions. Engineers like to work with drawings and designs. When there is a problem, go back to the drawings to figure out what is going on. Mechanics like to try things out. Get another part, replace an old one, see what happens. The two groups speak different languages. One solution is help both groups become bi-lingual and show more empathy for the others’ approach. And mechanics and engineers wont be the only groups involved who speak a different professional language. The policy folks from the department, the politicians and the rail safety regulator will have a way of talking that will be different again.

While the absence of pre-existing relationships and the lack of a common language among experts will slow the flow of knowledge, there are a myriad of other possibilities and it’s impossible to predict which one will help resolve the problem. The key point is that a complex problem like this requires the team to try things, make educated guesses and see what happens, while ensuring the public is kept safe and services are maintained as best as they can.

The unstoppable train problem is unlikely to be a mere mechanical fault. It sounds like a knowledge problem: an inability to find and access the right knowledge when it is needed. But don’t be fooled in thinking this knowledge resides in a database somewhere. More than likely it is contained in the experiences and stories of groups of people around the world who don’t even realise they have the answer or that anyone is looking for it.

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21/01/07 |

The difference between a sound argument and a good story

By Shawn. Filed in Complexity, Knowledge, Narrative.

I spent a couple of hours today tracking down some papers for a course I’m helping to teach at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University on business narrative when I discovered this excellent paper by Tsoukas and Hatch called ‘Complex thinking, complex practice: The case for a narrative approach to organizational complexity’. I’m a bit of a fan of Hari Tsoukas’ work. Just read his paper on tacit knowledge to get an idea of what a great KM thinker he is. Anyway, there are a couple of paragraphs and a table that jumped out at me in this paper. The paper is based on two modes of thinking proposed by J. Bruner and goes on to say,

Bruner called the two modes of thought ‘logico-scientific’ (or paradigmatic) and ‘narrative’, arguing that:

the types of causality implied in the two modes are palpably different. The term then functions differently in the logical proposition ‘if x, then y’ and in the narrative recit ‘The king died, and then the queen died.’ One leads to a search for universal truth conditions, the other for likely particular connections between two events – mortal grief, suicide, foul play. (pp. 11–12)

To compare the two modes, Bruner claimed, is to understand the difference between a sound argument and a good story.

I’ve been working with engineers lately and I have been struggling to explain this whole issue of knowing the truth. Now I have some language to open the conversation up. This table elaborates this idea perfectly.

Bruner, J. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.

Tsoukas, H. and M. J. Hatch (2001). "Complex thinking, complex practice: The case for a narrative approach to organizational complexity." Human Relations 54(8): 979-1013.

Tsoukas, H. (2003). Do we really understand tacit knowledge? The Blackwell Handbook of Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management. M. Easterby-Smith, M. A. Lysles and K. E. Weick, Blackwell Publishers.

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13/11/06 |

Measuring knowledge work - when measures become targets

By Shawn. Filed in Change management, Complexity, Knowledge.

The whole fraud is only possible because performance metrics in knowledge organizations are completely trivial to game. Joel on Software

Joel demonstrates a weakness of metrics in assessing the performance of software developers and somewhat cynically suggests that large management consulting firms actively exploit this weakness. Whenever I have a choice between malicious intent and incompetence I tend towards the latter as an explanation.  Personally I believe large consulting firms have these problems because they are steeped in particular mental models, namely the idea that organisations are machines and if you can’t measure it you can’t fix it. Fredrick Brooks understood this and painted a clear picture of the complexity of managing software development projects in his classic, The Mythical Man-Month.

So what is the weakness Joel uncovers? Companies want to improve performance (excellent objective) and consulting companies have methods to measure the current performance (it’s good to know where you stand). But here is the big mistake: the consulting company makes the measure of performance a target. And this is what happens:

Consulting company comes in, gets all the programmers in a room, tells them all about Function Points [the measure of performance] and stuff, and how productivity is REALLY IMPORTANT.

Programmers remember that scene from Office Space where Bob and Bob, the consultants, recommended all the people to get fired.

Programmers start writing a heck of a lot more function points. For example you can triple the number of function points in your code simply by round tripping everything through an XML file. Big waste of time, prone to bugs, does nothing, but each file you touch adds a function point. W00t!

Consulting company comes back, measures again, and lo and behold, with all the round trips through XML the function point count is up drastically. Consultant announces that Oil Company is now at 151.29% productivity. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

Here is an alternative approach.

• Work with the leaders to get a broad picture of what they think performance is in the context of software development. Get them to paint that broad picture while resisting the temptation to fill in all the gaps.
• Ask the software developers to define the performance measures and keep them to a minimum.
• Be clear what will remain measures and what will be the targets
• Add to the metrics approach a qualitative assessment of impact using Most Significant Change (see Zahmoo to learn about this technique).

This approach is based on the idea that any journey of change (actually I prefer the metaphor of the expedition) should be created three times. The first creation is in the minds of the leadership group (however you want to define that). The second creation of the journey is in the minds of the participants. Finally the journey is created for real as everyone sets off together and it’s here that everyone discovers that is never turns out the way they expected, so a willingness to monitor and adapt is essential.

[thanks to Les Posen for the pointer to Joel’s post]

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2/11/06 |

Kurtz and Snowden on inter-organisational learning networks

By Shawn. Filed in Communities of practice, Complexity, Knowledge, Narrative, Social networks.

Cynthia Kurtz and Dave Snowden have written a thought provoking chapter on inter-organisational learning networks. I’ve seen their ideas develop over the last few years (on listservers, Skype chats, rare meet-ups and presentations) and this paper is an excellent synthesis and application of three key ideas (in my words):

• idealistic approaches predicated on predictability, analysis and the depiction of ideal future states are total nonsense for making progress in a highly connected, complex environments.
• dispassionate and objective observers can carefully analyse and diagnose ‘the problem’ then implement a solution—more nonsense. The fact is observers impact what they observe and every diagnosis is also an intervention.
• experts have the solution—even more nonsense. The knowledge required to change and successfully adapt exists within the group and participatory approaches seed and harness natural social processes.

The chapter goes on to say:

Two of the most important elements of the naturalistic sense-making approach are narrative (as one of the primary mechanisms of complex knowledge transfer, creation and interpretation in human society) and networks (as one of the primary realities of human life – we are still, unless artificially constrained, tribal and clan-like in our needs and perspectives).

The rest of the chapter looks at inter-organisation learning networks from the perspective of tangible benefits delivered by this type of organisational structure. K&S note that “Inter-organisational learning networks are valuable yet intangible: while participants feel that they and their organisation have benefited, they struggle to explain what exactly those benefits are and how they can be expressed.” According to K&S, the broader literature points to speed of innovation difussion and improved knowledge creation as tangible benefits of these types of networks, but Cynthia and Dave suggest three more:

• improved negotiation of multiple identities
• increased discourse regarding trust and rule structures
• greater productive conflict

I’m not going to give a blow by blow description of the paper. Instead I will highlight a few of the ideas that grabbed my attention—mind you, it sparked many thoughts.

Naturalistic approaches … seek to understand a sufficiency of the present in order to act to stimulate evolution of the system. Once such stimulation is made, monitoring of emergent patterns becomes a critical activity so that desired patterns can be supported and undesired patterns disrupted.

Most Significant Change is an obvious technique for monitoring because of its participatory nature and it’s story based. I know Dave has a slight reservation about MSC because he sees it as privileging some stories over others. I think Dave makes a fair point and MSC done badly will focus on the selection rather than the dialogue that’s created by the selection process. This is a danger to keep in mind for MSC practitioners.

Many employees do their work without being able to answer the question, "Who are you in this organisation?" (And possibly just as importantly, "Who are the others in this organisation?" and “Who is this organization?”).

When I was in London last week I met Martin Clarkson from the Storytellers and their business is entirely focussed on using a story approach to address “Who is this organisation?”

I was reminded at this point of the simple test I use to assess the likelihood a community of practice forming. If you can sensibly complete the sentence, “I’m a <blank>”, then there is a chance a community might form. For example, I was helping a Defence organisation start a community of practice for project managers. I asked them, “do people ever say, ‘I’m a project manager.’?” Absolutely! Great … people identify themselves as project managers so we could get a community going. The next community was more problematic. They wanted to create a community around the competency of ‘technical.’ Does anyone say, “I’m a technical.” No… I suggested they think of another possible community to establish.

One of the ways people have always talked about identity has been through the telling of identity stories which feature the individual or group as a coherent character with certain highlighted characteristics – the lone genius, the band of principled rebels, the misunderstood nobility. Stories told for purposes of identity negotiation (both individually and collectively) are fundamentally different from stories told for other purposes.

K&S point out three characteristics of an identity story:

• the story is well known
• they tend to have a dramatic or performance nature
• they are apparently useless; they appear to be about nothing

These stories help people understand what it means to be part of the group. I heard this story last week which I think is an identity story:

A new salesman joined the company and a week after joining was told by his manager that the team was meeting in Jervis Bay. On the day of the meeting the salesman got up at 4am and made the trip down the coast and on arriving at the bay phoned his manager on his mobile to find out the exact location of the meeting. The salesman was told the Jervis Bay is the name of the meeting room of their conference centre in the city.

The example of a sacred story of the nine day fortnight reminded me of the importance of trying to find these stories in organisations. One way might be to ask, in the middle of an anecdote circle, whether anyone is aware of stories that are told and retold. I did this a couple of days ago and the fellow I was talking could immediately recall two negative stories. I’m not sure these are the sacred stories described in the chapter but I’m sure they are important to how things get done.

I loved the analogy between a Tour de France team (a peloton) and an organisation dealing with complexity.

K&S suggest a set of three heuristics for ethical narrative work:

1. always declare up front the use of narrative techniques (no stealth story work)
2. if asked any question about what sort of narrative intervention you are doing (such as instructing executives in how to tell stories for cultural change), answer honestly
3. appoint an independent arbitrator for any dispute over the use of narrative techniques in organisations

The last section of the chapter is about productive conflict. I have to admit that before reading this section and before chatting to Dave about the use of debate in a variety of forums I was sceptical about its effectiveness. As I saw it practised it seemed to be very much “I’m right, your wrong” approach that seemed to me less that productive. But I think if productive conflict is practised as described in this chapter I can see how a level a friction can be extremely beneficial. K&S’s main point, as I understood it, is that if a group focuses on conflict around ideas (cognitive conflict) and avoided conflict associated with interpersonal relationships (affective conflict) and conflict over who should do what (process conflict) a product outcome can emerge. This also assumes the group has a desire to improve the understanding or has a group problem to solve. Using a sporting metaphor, “play the ball, not the player.” 

This chapter is well worth a read. The only criticism of have of it is the slight feeling of disjointedness throughout. Each section was interesting and useful but I couldn’t always see how it fitted into a larger picture.

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31/10/06 |

The Storytelling and Complexity Conference in New Mexico

By Andrew. Filed in Complexity, Storytelling.

What is the link between storytelling and complexity?

This was the theme that found me travelling over 28 hours from Melbourne, Australia to Las Cruces, New Mexico to join with 38 other participants in the story circle. It was a fantastic conference. One of the highlights for me was the socratic circle process which opened up on the 2nd day of the conference. This I will definitely be sharing more about, after I’ve gotten over my jetlag. But for now, I thought I’d just share some elements which emerged for me during the conference.

During the socratic circle process, participants were asked to consider “what is complexity”. Some of the metaphors that appeared were:

Complexity is incompressible
Complexity is a methodology
Complexity is a language
Complexity is a theology

When asked in the socratic circle to define “what is story”, I really loved one participants response. She said “I have heard people say there is no story only storytelling, but I don’t agree with that. If I had a definition of story I’d be wrong”.

So, what is the link between storytelling and complexity?

I think one of the best answers came in the form of a question proposed by Theodore Taptiklis. He asked “Like storytelling, does complexity help us understand that “paradox” doesn’t need to be resolved?”.

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29/10/06 |

Facilitating a workshop of 90 futurists

By Shawn. Filed in Complexity, Knowledge.

Last week I faciliated a workshop of 90 futurist gathered together for The Australian Foresight Conference. The organisers were keen to harness the energy created by the conference to explore new ways the group might collaborate into the future. With 90 people in a large atrium I was keen for the group to learn about themselves as a whole and go beyond an intellectual understanding. With Andrew’s help we designed a 90 minute session which included sociometry and getting people to vote with their feet. Here is what we did and a few things we learned from the process

We divided the session into two parts: understanding where the group was now; and exploring possible future collaboration opportunities. This session tool place about 2/3rds of the way though a three day conference. To kick things off I got everyone to stand and ask them to arrange themselves along an imaginery 20m line. One end of the line represented those people who thought this was one of the best conferences they had ever attended; a transformational event. The other end was for those people that thought the conference really sucked. With lots of laughter and chatting the group arranged itself pretty evenly along the line. I asked everyone to have a good look around at the result.

Using the same approach I then asked people to indicate the level of foresight experience they have with one end representing over 30 years (2 people) and the other end for those people just starting out. This time there were more people in the middle and the ‘just starting out’ end of the spectrum. Based on the movement from the previous question, it seemed like the people ‘just starting out’ were enjoying the conference more that the highly experienced practitioners.

The previous two questions where aimed at getting people used to moving around and learning about the whole group. My last question was directed squarely at the objective of the session: please indicate your level of comfort and preference for using technology to collaborate. One end represented those people who loved using technology and the other consisting of people who would rather avoid it eschewing even the telephone. Again, an even spread.

We then moved to creating a human social network diagram and I asked everyone to think about the time before the conference and recall those people they regularly collaborated with. Then stand next to a collaborator and place your hand on their shoulder. Within a few minutes a complex network of bodies emerged with clear clusters evident. I asked people to look around and then invited people from each cluster to describe their bunch.

The next step was to explore the potential for new collaborations, so I asked the group to think about the people they’ve met at the conference and who they would like to collaborate with in the future. Again I invited everyone to place their hand on the shoulder of potential future collaborators. The network changed considerably suggesting a substantial potential for new connections and collaborations.

At this point I asked everyone to grab a seat. The tables were arranged in groups of eight. To get people to consider what collaboration meant to them I ask each group to have a conversation and explore the question “why do you collaborate?” This discussion went for 15 minutes and was simply designed to get people to think about collaboration generally.

We wanted to move from this understanding of the reasons for collaboration to different forms it might take, so I invited the whole group to construct a final spectrum but this time with one person on the spectrum line representing a form of collaboration. The group made suggestions. At one end of the spectrum was formal approaches to collaboration while the other end represented informal approaches. The suggested structures, from formal to informal, were: association, community of practice, salon, virtual collaborators, partnerships, mentoring, adhoc collaborations. A addtional group formed calling themselves ‘the walkers’ and they paced up and down the entire spectrum highlighting that all the structures were relevant and useful.

Now that we had some structures identified I asked people to join a group that appealed to them most and for each group to develop a description of why their structure would be best suited for everyone to adopt. Each group then had a representative spruke the benefits of their approach. As the final move of the session I ask people to make a decision as to which group they would like to move to after hearing each benefits statement. This final group then develop a mini action plan on what they would do next to make progress after the conference finished.

The session seemed to be enjoyed by the group and the organisers were pleased with the outcomes. Lots of good actions and a commirement by people to take the next steps. One of the interesting things for me was how quickly strong groups formed and how strongly people identified with their chosen group. For example, in summarising the session I forgot to mention the Salon group and an indignant Salon member quickly pointed out that they had a very productive session and didn’t feel compelled to join any other group.

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29/09/06 |

The role of past patterns in discontinuous change

By Shawn. Filed in Complexity, Knowledge.

Dave Snowden has written an excellent post warning of the dangers of simply looking at the past and attempting to apply, without adaptation, what happened then to what is happening now. After reading Dave’s post jumped on a plane to Sydney and as I was rushing out the door grabbed Charles Handy’s Age of Unreason from my friend’s bookshelf for some in-flight reading. Published in 1989, Handy’s words are prophetic and reinforce Dave’s message as Handy argues that the nature of change has morphed in the last 30 years from incremental change, where the past was a good indicator of the future, to discontinuous change, where the future is much less certain.

Of course we do learn from history (Dave makes this clear in his post) but it’s how we apply this learning that matters. I remember in Arthur Koestler’s The Act of Creation (1964) how he talked about creativity being like being faced with a canyon you wish to cross. Your first step it to find a bridge. You might find a bridge that nearly fits but then some extra effort is required to completely span the gap. These ‘bridges’ are our patterns which we develop through experience or by hearing stories about other people’s adventures. While we are good at recalling past patterns we must remain mindful of the need to reshape these patterns according to the context and needs of the issue at hand. 

This view of decision making in a world of discontinuous change suggests two capabilities each and everyone should actively develop:

• seek out opportunities for new and diverse experiences or seek out people or accounts of new and diverse experiences – build your pattern repertoire
• learn ways to adapt bridges. As deBono says, “creativity thinking is a skill and can be taught.” Many of his techniques are applicable here.

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6/09/06 |

Complex systems for a complex world

By Shawn. Filed in Complexity.

My friends Pascal Perez and David Batten have just had published a new book called Complex systems for a complex world. It’s all about exploring human ecosystems using agent based modelling. The best news is that you can download a copy for free here.

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14/08/06 |

The art of complex problem solving

By Andrew. Filed in Complexity.

Check out this link from Marshall Clemens, a talented complexity graphics designer. Probably one of the most comprehensive diagrams I’ve ever seen regarding complex systems thinking.

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15/07/06 |

A question of balance

By Mark. Filed in Complexity, Sensemaking.

For centuries (until the 1950’s), scientists believed that the left side of our brains (the rational, analytical, logical side) was the crucial side; the side that made us human. All sorts of evidence was collected to support this view.  Our organisations are often reflections of this type of thinking: obviously we needed all sorts of rules, systems and procedures to adequately control things. So, this is where the emphasis has been and the result is a system out of balance.

Increasingly our organisations are realising that numbers are not enough in an increasingly complex world. They are realising that the ‘bossy, know-it-all’ left brain approach, and its associated capabilites, are a necessary but insufficient condition for success. The language of complexity teaches us that complex problems cannot be ‘analysed and solved’ per se and that new approaches are required to supplement (not replace) our problem solving capabilities.

 

Apart from helping organisations to tackle complex problems, building the organisation’s right brain capabilities creates the conditions for insight and empowerment and can help create a richer and more rewarding work experience. Used in combination with traditional approaches, the techniques that we use such as business narrative, most significant change, social network analysis, storytelling, communities of practice (and others) can enhance the ability to tackle intractable problems, achieve meaningful change….and to help restore balance to the ways we think about and manage our organisations.

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13/07/06 |

The Top 10 Things They Never Taught Me in Design School

By Shawn. Filed in Complexity.

Design Observer has republished an article by Michael McDonough listing the top 10 things they never taught Michael in design school. Design is a fundamental capability in a complex world and I think you’ll find Michael’s list useful. Here are the bullet points. For the explanations I recommend you pop on over to Design Observer.

1. Talent is one-third of the success equation.
2. 95 percent of any creative profession is shit work.
3. If everything is equally important, then nothing is very important.
4. Don’t over-think a problem.
5. Start with what you know; then remove the unknowns.
6. Don’t forget your goal.
7. When you throw your weight around, you usually fall off balance.
8. The road to hell is paved with good intentions; or, no good deed goes unpunished.
9. It all comes down to output.
10. The rest of the world counts.

[via Daniel Pink]

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10/07/06 |

The importance of dialogue

By Mark. Filed in Complexity, Sensemaking.

Shawn’s series of posts on finding expertise has reminded me of one of my favourite quotes: an anthropologist’s description of an agricultural North American tribe from David Bohm’s book On Dialogue:

Dialogue provides shared meaning and empowers people. With the number of meetings in most organisations it is not unreasonable that we should expect high levels of shared meaning and empowerment…but this doesn’t appear to be the case. What is it that prevents our meetings from enabling us to engage in dialogue?

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28/05/06 |

Designing interventions requires new perspectives

By Shawn. Filed in Complexity, Narrative, Sensemaking.

Designing interventions for complex environments requires the designers to see new patterns. Before I elaborate on this idea here is a story Steve Denning told today on the workingstories email list.