One of my favourite concepts from the complexity world is the fallacy of thinking that comes from the truth of retrospective coherence. The mistake is that, because we can look back in time to understand causes of our current condition, we can therefore see forward in time and affect the causes of a future condition. Complex systems are emergent, so we can never be sure what the future holds, regardless of how well we can trace how we got here. Despite the fact that it is illegal to sell an investment instrument without the warning that “past performance does not …
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A small elevator speech I shared on the OSLIST yesterday: Self organization works by a combination of attractors and boundaries. Attractors are things that draw components of a system towards themselves (gravity wells, a pile of money left on the ground, an invitation). Boundaries (or constraints) are barriers that constrain the elements in a system (an atmosphere, the edges of an island, the number of syllables in a haiku) Working together, attractors and boundaries define order where otherwise there is chaos. We can be intentional about some of these, but not all of them. Within complex systems, attractors and constraints …
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Dave is working on a theory of change, which I think is a good thing. In this latest post he has a nice summation of the way to move to action in complex situations (like cultures): So where we are looking at culture change (to take an example), we first map the narrative landscape to see what the current dispositional state is. That allows us to look at where we have the potential to change, and where change would be near impossible to achieve. In those problematic cases we look more to stimulating alternative attractors rather that attempting to deal …
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I have been teaching the Cynefin framework for a number of years now. Like Dave Snowden i learn as much or more from needing to share it than I do from actually deploying it. I find myself sharing the framework for three applications: strategy and decision making, leadership and basic understanding of complexity. Because the framework is both simple to describe and supported by a deep set of theory and practice, it is always a challenge to make my description simple enough to be understood, but full enough to be appreciated. So I thought I would put out some step-by-step …
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I want to invite you to bite down hard and read this article by Rich Lowry, the editor of the National Review: Baltimore, a Great Society Failure: