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Figure it out…(aka, how to use the Cynefin framework)

August 31, 2020 By Complexity, Emergence, Featured 11 Comments

“Figure it out…that’s what I say…figure it out…”

Another reference from Letterkenny to start a blog post, another southern Ontario expression that means “it’s obvious, what’s the problem?” or “just do it.” Here in B.C. there is a similar expression: “give your head a shake.” It’s supposed to indicate that everything you’re making complicated is really just pretty simple.

The Cynefin framework is like that. It gives you something to help you give your head a shake when you are confronted with a confusing situation. The framework is useful in so many ways, but here are a few that help you get started using it.

If you’re confused, just stop for a moment and think about it.  Cynefin, is a decision-making framework. It helps you to decide what to do. So when you DON’T know what to do, the Cynefin domain can help you figure out what kind of problem you have and what to do about it.

There is nothing wrong with being confused, that is why I consider the middle domain of Cynefin the most important one. Confusion has the benefit of inviting us to stop and figure out what’s going on. It’s not the same as chaos, where we have to act in order to preserve ourselves or restore order. Confusion is the pause that makes us question what is going on. So the first benefit of Cynefin is that it has a place for confusion, and I invite folks to enter to the framework from that point.

Is this knowable or not? At a high level Cynefin divides problems into ordered and unordered problems. An easy way to know which one you’re facing is to ask yourself questions like this:

  • Does this problem have a stable solution?
  • Is there someone out there who knows for certain what to do?
  • Can I learn how to do this myself, and get repeatable results?
  • Can I predict the outcome of my actions with certainty?
  • Have I solved this kind of problem before?

If you answer “yes” to one of these questions, then you know you are in the ordered domains. If it is a thing you can do on your own right now, using best practices from the past, you are in the clear domain. If it’s something that an expert can do for you – someone who has the answer and can fix the problem – you are in the complicated domain.

If you answer no to these questions, then you are in the unordered domains, and probably in the Complex domain. If you are panicking, in the middle of a crisis, or in some kind of physical or emotional danger, then you are in Chaos, and you’re probably not sitting down to think about what domain you are in, anyway.

Ordered problems are pretty straight forward to solve. In the ordered domains we solve things with a linear sequence of steps that goes like this:

  • Understand the problem
  • Decide what makes sense to do
  • Do it
  • Evaluate the results

In the Cynefin world this is basically what is meant by “Sense – Categorize – Respond” or “Sense- Analyse – Respond.” The results of your actions will be almost immediately clear to you in these types of problems. Either you have fixed the problem or you haven’t. The more complicated your problem, the more expertise is required to both solve the problem and evaluate the results, but at the end of the day things are doable and solvable and it’s clear to everyone that the intervention worked.

If it’s Clear, just do it. Clear problems are easily solvable by doing things that you’ve done before. You might think that Clear and obvious problems shouldn’t be confusing at all, but sometimes we get into tricky situations where our minds cloud our thinking. We can overthink something or stare at a problem, not sure of what we are looking at. I have often had that experience while using public transit in unfamiliar cities. I stare at the ticket dispenser not knowing what to do. Sometimes it takes a person behind me to point out the big STEP 1, STEP 2 and STEP 3 instructions for me to see how to actually buy a ticket. Because systems are different in different places, and design isn’t always awesome, I often get confused the first time I travel in a new city. Once I figure it out though, I never have that problem again.

If it’s Complicated get an expert to do it. A Complicated problem is solvable, but not by me. It’s why I hire people to do my books, maintain my webserver, fix my car, repair my appliances, or maintain my musical instruments. If something is Clear to you and not to others, there is value in your knowledge, and so folks that have specialized problem-solving expertise make their living charging money for this value. There is something immensely satisfying about solving problems, and many folks that I know who work constantly in the unsolvable world of complexity, have hobbies that are are merely Complicated. Knowing that a problem is Complicated is a great relief, and then it’s just down to finding the right person to do it for you.

The secret to unordered domains is working with constraints. This is a tricky one to get, but basically the first thing to know about the unordered domains is our standard Western models of linear problem-solving don’t work here. The reason for this is that things are non-linear and emergent in this domain. Problems seem to spring up from out of the blue, and if we try to figure out what caused them, we head down rabbit holes. The system that gives rise to problems is unknowable in its totality, so we can feel free to release ourselves from needing to know everything and concentrate instead on finding patterns. Noticing patterns in unordered problems is hugely valuable. When we see patterns, we can hypothesize that things are probably Complex. When we can’t see patterns, things are probably Chaotic.

In the unordered domains, expertise is not helpful on its own – there is no one with an answer – but experience can be helpful. What IS helpful is gathering a larger number of people together to look at a problem and see if they can find patterns in it.

If it’s Chaotic, apply constraints until it is safe.  Chaos is defined in the Cynefin framework as the absence of constraints. Ther is nothing holding the system together and everything seems random. In those situations, applying a tight constraint can help stabilize the situation to the point that you can think about what to do next. Think of a first responder to a fire, who establishes a perimeter around a burning building, orders people to evacuate and follows clear procedures to suppress the fire with water or chemicals. Applying constraints on behaviour and firm boundaries around situations helps to control it. As you gain control of the situation you can loosen the boundaries, let people back into the area, remove safety gear, cruise the area for hot spots or other dangers.

In psychological chaos, such as times when one is afraid, anxious, panicked, or reliving a trauma, constraints can be immensely helpful in self-regulating. Many therapeutic modalities that work with trauma help give people tools to control their breathing, bring their awareness back online, and gather themselves up. One doesn’t;t use these interventions in every moment, but they are helpful in the moment of panic.

If its Complex, work with the patterns. Finding patterns and understanding them is the key to working in complexity. A pattern is basically anything that repeats over time. Patterns represent some stability in a system and they are held in place by constraints. Once you find a pattern, you need to figure out if it is one you want to keep or one you want to disrupt. Either way, finding some of the constraints that keep a pattern in place helps you to work with it.

Think about forming healthy habits. For me working on my own health has been a decades-long struggle to eat well and exercise. I’ve tried lots of diets – from vegetarian to paleo – and found that the best way to eat well, at least for now, is to eat out of a small bowl using chopsticks. Why? Because those constraints help me be more mindful about the food I eat and the quantity of it I consume. Given a bag of potato chips, my salt and fat-loving body will eat the whole thing. Given a small bowl, and a slower way to eat, I find I can stop much sooner. Likewise with exercise. I have learned that if it is a huge production, I won’t get myself together, go out to a gym, and go through a routine using a bunch of equipment. Instead, for the past year, I have followed a simple set of bodyweight workouts from DAREBEE which has highly constrained the activity I do. For the first time in my life, I have stuck to a daily fitness regime and I’m healthier and more fit than I have been in years.

Complexity requires trial and error and lots of experiments. In the Cynefin world, we use the phrase “Probe – Sense – Respond” to capture this idea. Basically, because you can’t know what will work, you try a bunch of things to shift unhealthy patterns and stabilize healthy patterns and see what works. If you are getting better results, you do more of that. If things aren’t working well, stop doing that. In complexity conflicts get resolved by people DOING things, not arguing over them. We can make better decisions when we have some data that comes from action. If people have different ideas about what to do, invite them to take on small experiments to see if their ideas are promising. You can even have people do two opposite things – “we’ll take the high road and you take the low road” – and see how they compare. Experimenting with action is a far better way to find promising practices than constant arguing about the “right” thing to do.

So there are a few ways in which Cynefin helps you to figure things out. If you are an experienced practitioner, what would you add to this list? If you are new to Cynefin, what resonates most with you?

How’re ya now?

August 12, 2020 By Uncategorized 6 Comments

I love that little phrase. It comes from southern Ontario where I live and has been turned into an ongoing joke on one of my favourite shows about rural Ontario culture and friendship, called Letterkenny. The ritual answer to this question is “Notso bad ‘n’you?” or “Good ‘n’you?”

These days though, whew. We need another response.

I haven’t blogged since June. I feel like I’ve been working harder and more intensively than I have at any time during my consulting career. I have clients in different parts of the world so some days I’m up at 4am, or on calls late into the evening. I’m getting jetlagged without leaving my home.

I’m noticed a deep tiredness in my brain not just from the screen time, but from the intensity of maintaining concentration when my conversation partners are small squares in an undifferentiated mass. I think when I’m working with groups I tend to focus on one person at a time, and there is never a time when I am making eye contact with 25 people at once. Mentally, I’m forgetting things. My short term memory is full of holes. As one client said yesterday, I work a whole day online, turn off my computer and can’t remember a single thing I have done. The abrupt nature of the transition between states is jarring. We are not made for this, and I’m not sure we are adjusting, but rather just wearing ourselves down.

Everything takes longer, there is more anxiety about the future, everything feels more high stakes, maybe because no one really knows what to do, what’s going to happen, or how to make it through this moment into whatever is coming next.

Many folks I work with are feeling this same fatigue and anxiety, somehow familiar and also strange. And this isn’t REALLY suffering at all.

I am working. My job has simply moved online. I continue to be paid for my work. I live in a place that has been minimally touched by COVID-19, where it is easy to be outside and to practice physical distancing. I am not sick, I am not out of money, my children are grown adults and look after themselves. I am not suffering.

Increasingly though I am working with folks who are in deep grief. Their lives are continuing and their anxiety is only increasing. They are worried about schooling their kids, they have lost jobs or been forced to take new ones, exposing them to a higher risk of getting sick. Our government benefits programs are expiring and the hope I had at the beginning of the pandemic, for a compassionate public policy leading to a universal basic income seems to have been high jacked by whatever usual suspects make policies that punish the poor and the marginalized and let the rich ride.

People I know have died from COVID. Others have developed chronic health conditions ranging from hair loss to heart problems. Friends are in the streets in different countries protesting injustices, trying to be heard, trying to grasp ahold of enough power to remake their societies in a just and equitable way. The political rhetoric fuelled by rage, wedge political marketing, creeping fascism and bots has made the democratic commons a toxic, angry, anxious laden space of backlash and retribution.

We are losing our minds.

So how’re ya now? What are you doing to hang on? Are you able to think about what comes next? Are you placing your hope on something? What do you need? What can you offer?

Developmental Evaluation for beginners

June 15, 2020 By Evaluation, Featured, Uncategorized 2 Comments

It is “Juneuary” on the west coast of British Columbia, a time of year when low-pressure systems of cold air break off the jet stream and drift down the coast providing unstable weather, rain, and cloudy days. It’s like a return to winter.

It reminds me that walking in the mountains in the winter, or indeed during these wet and unpredictable weeks, can result in getting lost in fog. When that happens, your response to the situation becomes very important if you are to make choices that don’t endanger lives.

My colleague Ciaran Camman was presenting on a webinar with a client today and used a lovely metaphor to describe developmental evaluation relating to being lost in a fog. I’m always looking at ways of describing this approach to evaluation with people because it is so different from the kinds of evaluation we are used to, where someone external to a process judges you on how well you did what you said you were going to do. Having said that, I like to introduce people to “developmental evaluation” by telling them it is actually just a fancy way of talking about what people do to make everyday decisions in changing and unfamiliar contexts. In some ways, you could call it “natural evaluation.”

Ciaran used the example of navigating in a fog. When the cloud descends on you, you best slow down for a minute and think about your next step. You have a sense of your destination – a nice warm house and a cup of tea – but suddenly what you thought you knew about the world has disappeared.

You can manage for a short time based on the last picture you had of your surroundings, but after a few meters of walking, you will be in a very different place, and you need to carefully probe your way forward. As you find the path again, you can move with a bit more confidence, as as the trail fades, you will adjust and slow down to sense more carefully.

Developmental evaluation is indistinguishable from adaptive action. The two sets of processes form an interdependent pair: you simply can’t do one without the other. How you choose to developmentally evaluate – including what you consider to be important, your axiology – is critical to how you will gather information and what decision you will take to adjust your action. Walking in fog towards a warm cup of tea is fairly straightforward. Creating new forms of community safety in a world dominated by racism and social and economic injustice is rather more difficult.

How do you explain this to folks?

When you are lost

Chenchénstway

June 11, 2020 By Being, Bowen, Featured, First Nations, Uncategorized

It’s my birthday on Saturday. Join me in donating to:

On Saturday it is my 52nd birthday. It seems to be a feature of getting older that birthdays and other gift-giving holidays become less about the stuff and more about the relationships.

For this birthday, I’d like to invite any of my readers, friends, and colleagues to join me in donating funds to two local indigenous women who are doing powerful work for others. We can gift to them and through them to support a better world. For my birthday this year, I’m donating $200 to each of their initiatives and I invite you to join me and give what you can. In these times, and perhaps always, the work of indigenous women is critical to support.

One of the gifts I receive all the time is the gift of living in Squamish territory on a little island called Nexwlélexwem (Bowen Island) in the Squamish language. I am grateful to live here and grateful to have so many friends and colleagues from the Squamish Nation who have schooled me on the cultural landscape that surrounds me.

The word “Chenchénstway” is a Squamish word meaning “to lift each other up” and it’s a key value in Squamish life. It is one of the values that permeate the landscape where I live and it’s the core of the work of one of my friends, Ta7talíya (Michelle Nahanee), who has assembled a powerful collection of teaching and practices in the service of decolonization. Her work is opening eyes and building capacity and she holds it with the energy of a matriarch. Donating to Michelle’s work helps her to develop new resources and grow the impact of her work. You can learn more about her work and offer a donation at the Decolonizing Practices website. You can also sign up for a 4-week online program there, so consider that too.

The other woman I’m donating to this year is Teara Fraser. Teara is a pilot and an entrepreneur who is single-mindedly focused on indigenous women’s leadership development, including her own. She created the first indigenous-women owned airline, Iskwew Air, which flies out of Vancouver. During the pandemic, along with the Indigenous LIFT Collective, she has been raising funds to fly essential goods and services to remote indigenous communities along our coast.

I’ll be donating to that initiative this year too and hope you will join me in supporting this work.

I’m grateful to be living and working on Squamish land, and deeply grateful for the work these two women do in the world.

Freedom shock

May 26, 2020 By Being, Complexity, Featured 3 Comments

These sea lions are afraid to be in the ocean, because a small family of orcas are nearby, and they hunt sea-lions for food.

Years ago I was facilitating an Open Space meeting for people working in philanthropy, several of which were self-identified libertarians. They were unfamiliar with the process, and had the common misgivings about it seeming “unstructured.” People often confuse an empty container with a lack of structure, but in truth, Open Space meetings are highly structured. They offer a form and a process to help a group self-organize around issues of importance to the participants themselves. The process invites a radical blending of passion for a subject and responsibility for doing something about it.

Witnessing the empty agenda wall and the circle of chairs, one of the libertarian participants complained that the lack of structure was making him nervous and he needed to be told what we were going to talk about, what the outcomes were going to be and what would be done on the day. I teased him a little about being uncomfortable with freedom, to which he responded “well yes, THIS kind of freedom.”

That was interesting.

Harrison Owen has called this common experience “freedom shock” and it is what happens when people who are used to be told what to do suddenly get the freedom to take responsibility for their own actions. The way to deal with it is to keep asking people what they care about and what they would like to do about it. Fortunately, Open Space provides a mechanism for others who feel the same way to find each other, so that you are not alone, and can connect your ideas to other people’s.

As the restrictions on our societies are lifted gradually, I am seeing examples of “freedom shock.” Although many of us bristle at being contained and constrained, for many of us, the orderliness of structure and rules he’s us to cope with uncertainty and fear. When those rules are loosened, the become principles, and it is up to each person to interpret those principles according to context and need. We go from being confined in our homes with only sanctioned reasons and times for leaving, to being allowed to get out into public while “maintaining social distance and being aware of others.”

Everyone will interpret these new principles differently, and there is conflict and anxiety around whether one is interpreting the order more broadly that another person.

My friend Ciaran Camman observed this morning that we are comfortable when we can feel the boundary. That seems true for me too. When I know what is allowed and what isn’t, I can relax into being in a small space. When the boundary is more permeable and less clear I can get anxious about what is allowed, what I am supposed to be doing and whether others are doing right. And in these times, the consequences of doing it wrong can be devastating, so there is no amount of risk and pressure in doing this.

Whether it’s COVID or working with containers in facilitated sessions or workplaces, the halting anxiety of freedom shock is a natural reaction to loosening constraints. As you become a skillful complexity practitioner and realize that loosening constraints is one way to influence a system, be aware of this emotional rebound.

And on a personal level, remember that you can always shrink your own constraints inside a larger system if you need more comfort and security. The way we handle too much freedom is by choosing limitations that help us make order of all the possibilities. I wear a mask in public, and although I am allowed to be out and about more, I’m choosing to stay home as much as possible, still treating myself as an asymptomatic carrier of COVID, despite not knowing if I have had it. These personal heuristics allow me to be comfortable, confident and live by my principles. I’m glad things are opening up, but aware too that I have come to be comfortable functioning in a small bubble and a part of me is nervous at this moment.