From a piece of unsolicited email I got this morning comes an absolutely exquisite piece of writing. I’m sure this makes sense in some contexts, but it is reason number one why you should not have your all star business analyst write marketing copy:
Do you know the story of the Taoist farmer and his son?
There once was a Taoist farmer. One day the Taoist farmer’s only horse broke out of the corral and ran away. The farmer’s neighbors, all hearing of the horse running away, came to the Taoist farmer’s house to view the corral. As they stood there, the neighbors all said, “Oh what bad luck!” The Taoist farmer replied, “Maybe.”
About a week later, the horse returned, bringing with it a whole herd of wild horses, which the Taoist farmer and his son quickly corralled. The neighbors, hearing of the corralling of the horses, came to see for themselves. As they stood there looking at the corral filled with horses, the neighbors said, “Oh what good luck!” The Taoist farmer replied, “Maybe.”
A couple of weeks later, the Taoist farmer’s son’s leg was badly broken when he was thrown from a horse he was trying to break. A few days later the broken leg became infected and the son became delirious with fever. The neighbors, all hearing of the incident, came to see the son. As they stood there, the neighbors said, “Oh what bad luck!” The Taoist farmer replied, “Maybe.”
At that same time in China, there was a war going on between two rival warlords. The warlord of the Taoist farmer’s village was involved in this war. In need of more soldiers, he sent one of his captains to the village to conscript young men to fight in the war. When the captain came to take the Taoist farmer’s son he found a young man with a broken leg who was delirious with fever. Knowing there was no way the son could fight, the captain left him there. A few days later, the son’s fever broke. The neighbors, hearing of the son’s not being taken to fight in the war and of his return to good health, all came to see him. As they stood there, each one said, “Oh what good luck!” The Taoist farmer replied, “Maybe.”
This morning I was in a conversation about SWOT analysis and strategic planning. I told this story as an example of why SWOT analysis has extremely limited application to planning. Contexts change so fast that what was a threat one moment is an opoortunity the next. What seems to be a weakness can become a strength.
I think SWOT analysis might apply in situations of extreme complexity, right close to a crisis situation. You need to do a quick assessment of where you are in order to act. Beyond that though it becomes dangerous to rely on an assessment that was accurate in one context but is useless when the context changes.
I don’t know why or how this became a key part of strategic planning, especially in non-profits, but it’s probably time to retire it in favour of better sense making and strategy.
The four fold practice meets the Diné healthy communities framework
Harvest from a three hour check in circle this morning, building a social field among 40 health promotion practitioners from across the Navajo Nation. The circle was at times tender and wickedly funny. It built a beautiful field to begin our three day training. Here’s the poem:
Yá’a tééh! It’s a good day.I am here for the wellness of our nations;we have stationed ourselves inside our familieswhere we teach and learnreach each parent and turn aroundtheir minds to a kind of spacethat is safe to facewhat flies over our headsas we sit on our sheepskinsand keep the teachings in the home.It’s a warm feeling, healing evento be basking in being hostedwith a ticker that ticks and keeps on givingand my Converse laced up and I’m ready for livingI love growing the food my family is eatingpreventing cancer and diabeteswhispering the secret of healthy peopleteaching through recreation and schoolsreaching youth so they don’t act like foolsand see peace and respect as cool.I work in recovery which is a kind of discoveryfor the men coming back to us from the penbringing them back to the traditional lifeto be in harmony, connected to familyreceiving the gifts of community and ceremonyto counter the drama of trauma“Lying in the road hurt” means that my work is about healinggetting up and feeling the bodyfeeling the advocacy that I speakfixed by the gaze of a grazing sheepthat reminds me of my grandmother’s teaching:this is the way that it has to beto spread my wings and seehow I can develop me and then how we can move forwardto see possibility and leave our conversations happy.I start with myself, and build out from therecircles of care that come from the sheepskin,the ancient wisdom, and tools that help us weavethe stories that leave us tightly bound.Tighten up your buns, there’s work to be done,Doesn’t matter if it’s your hair or your derriere.And take a look and make sure your corn beef is cooked.I am a believer in hope and changefor a positive exchange of the art of the heartgrounding in respect so we can expectto find out why place matters.I help to bring wholeness with a focus on fooda wholesome and fullsome way to colludewith kids and youth who pick up the positive attitudethat comes from our cultureharmonize our bodies and our eyes.I’m a traveller, an unraveller ofunhealthy ways, weaving teachings about how to raisecommunities, raise gardens and harvest our bestbring our heart to everything we dodeal with our fears so we can be herepresent to what wants to appearwith minds clear.I’m a first generation relocation babythinking maybe I have a giftedness that will lift the peoplebring them to fitnessand give back what I have learned on this rideto see pride inside everyone in our tribes.It all comes down to helping otherscoaching kids, approaching mothers and grandmotherswho share their respect with usI’m from the beach boysand a blond haired grandma and traditional speakerswho infused in me a possibilityto change the dysfunction I see, conversationally,for the benefit of the community, to support the wellness that starts from me.We know our own patterns and carry them in our bloodtransport them everywhere flood of memoriesleaving this world better than how we found itbetter harmony, better family.I might be out of words.Overwhelmed at everything I’ve heardand here to hear with my ears and heartto get a head start on addressing the fearsHere, I can see where my prayers are going,and what has come to my knowing,my leadership is calling me backand I can see that I stack up.The talking happens at the rug,drawing people into the snug corner of the homewhere we share the honest lessons we have learnedpray the prayers that burn in our hearts.All over the world, we understand weaving(even though our sweater doesn’t meet five days from leaving)each one of us is teaching in this roomeach one bringing our strands to the loom.I work in the strugglecreating the space where families can face their challengeswith something as simple as readingor as powerful as seeking out the strengthsor going to great lengthsto build leaders who feed their own learningturning back to the language and values.I am related to the world my relations unfurledlike a ball of yarn that leads us to our toolsa school of weaving leaving us loved and movedcoming back to what was lostas we chased a living across the southnow I’m getting the language in my mouthand find myself at a junctionwhere I support functional communityand do the work of spirit.Yá’a tééh! It’s a good day.and good to start in a beautiful way.
Tenneson Woolf, Caitlin Frost and I are snuggled into the attic rooms at the Capitol Hill Mansion B&B in downtown Denver, listening to some jazz, eating some pasta and salad and finishing up a productive design day together. We are preparing to teach the Art of Hosting to 60 leaders from the community at St. John’s in the Wilderness Cathedral in Denver. St. John’s is a high Anglican Gothic Episcopalian cathedral in the heart of Denver. We have been working with the cathedral community over the past couple of years to build the capacity among the 1700 members to be able to host and engage in conversations that matter.
As we’ve done this work, I’m struck at once by how simple it really is and how little space we make for it in our lives. People are busy, rushed and worried about deadlines and results and as a collective society we tend to defer the slow and clear attention to the quality of how we are together. Quality gets sacrificed at the alter of timely outcomes.
And of course this is no more ironic than in the myriad church communities we have been working with over the years, which, at their best, host a place to slow down and consider the nature of the relationship between peoples and to attend to the sacred quality of the spaces in between.
For me there is something in the richness of returning to the simplest way we know of to slow down and host good conversations. This evening as I write by the fire, Caitlin and Tenneson are preparing a simple teaching of Circle practice. Earlier we were thinking about the simplest way we know of to discuss the relationship of our traditional notions of chaos and order.
While I have been diving deep into the nuanced explorations of the Cynefin framework, it is becoming necessary to find ways to invite people easily into the mind shift that complexity requires. In the Art of Hosting community we have, for a long time, been inspired by Dee Hock’s work on chaordic organization. At the simplest level noticing the polarity of chaos and order, and noticing how our reactions to chaos and uncertainty often take us to high levels of control becomes an entry way into a different way to think about strategies for achieving goals in the complex domain.
So tomorrow, I’m looking forward to Tenneson’s leading on the chaordic path, a simple teaching worth returning to.
Coming back from Campbell River tonight. I was working with a group of Churches who are currently trying to understand their future. The United Church of Canada is in a period of massive restructuring due to all kinds of causes. We are very clear, retrospectively, what these causes are…everything from demographics shifts to the overall decline of Christendom. Most folks I have been working with over the past few years actually welcome these dynamics and realities, even though it means that the Church has plunged into a period of deep uncertainty. For people that are both spiritual AND religious in the liberal tradition of the United Church, this is actually a good thing and an opportunity for practice. In short, an uncertain world is where a spiritual practice comes into it’s own.
And of course from a complexity perspective, this is where the tools of complexity thinking comes into play as well, although that is largely a harder sell. In the United Church, leadership has emerged over several generations firmly in the managerial model. In fact some Churches I have been in don’t even start their board meetings with a prayer, claiming that “this is business.” Which is shocking, actually.
Ironically complexity thinking tools are perhaps in short supply but the scriptural texts contain a fantastic set of heuristics (experienced based principles) with which to understand and live with complexity and change. The New Testament, for example contains letters from various apostles to the new Churches scattered throughout the Levant, Turkey, Greece and Rome. These letters contain guideline after guideline for living together in community true to the message of Jesus, which was essentially that love is the number one heuristic. Practice that and your community thrives. Forget that and things founder. More stories lie that, less like this.
At any rate, despite it being right there, in plain view, I find myself over and over having to reintroduce and reinforce the need to think differently when confronted with the complexity of what is happening to the Church. And make no mistake, this is a dress rehearsal for the inevitable collapse of many social institutions that we take for granted, so doing this work has been illuminating. I have been trying to simplify the Cynefin framework’s distinctions between ordered and unordered systems and, inspired a bit by Dave Snowden’s recent post, have started teaching from a list that invites new strategies for planning. In it I contrast complexity strategy with strategy used to solve technical problems and knowable situations. In Cynefin terms, this is complex vs. complicated.
Here are a few of the contrasts that I talked about today, complexity first and its correlation second:
The basic difference between complex problems and complicated problems comes down to whether a problem is solvable or not. Is there a stable outcome? Is there an end state? Can research and expertise provide us with answers? Is the situation predictable? Answer yes to these questions and you have a complicated problem. Answer no and you have a complex one. It comes down to the difference between building a community and building a building.
- Complex problems aren’t solvable; complicated ones are.
- Address complexity by sense patterns and weak signals and amplifying them; solve complicated problems by analysing data and problem solving.
- In complexity, pay attention to what works and ask why?; for complicated problems, keep your eyes on the prize and study gaps (ask why not?)
- Be informed in your strategy by stories, myths and parables that translate across many contexts; for complicated problems, adopt “best” practices and rule based solutions.
- Employ collaborative leadership to address complexity; employ experts to solve complicated problems.
- In complexity, truth is found in stories; for complicated situations, truth is found in facts.
- Complex planning requires anticipatory awareness, meaning that you have to constantly scan for meaning through the system; a vision won;t help you. In complicated situations a vision is useful and the end state can be achieved with logical, well planned steps.
- In complexity, the future is already here, but it is quiet and hidden in the noise of the culture. in complicated systems the future is not here and it is well understood what it will take to get there from here.
- In complex systems, the solutions will come at you obliquely, out of the blue and in surprising ways, so you need to cultivate processes that allow that to happen. In complicated systems, problems are tackled head on from a position of knowing as much as you can about how to proceed and then choosing the best course of action.
The point of this list is to make a crude distinction in order to have people understand that they need new strategy tools to address the situation they are in. In the Church, leaders have had to confront a situation of such fraught complexity in many generations, and so the leadership that has brought them to this point no longer answers all the questions. This can be a profoundly traumatic experience for people who are used to being able to understand what is going on and influence the situation. So there is lots in this work, and a gentle, clear and fierce introduction to complexity thinking is really needed now. That’s what I’m after here.