Why complexity theory matters to me
Complexity, Containers, Facilitation, Featured, Organization
A piece of public art in Berne, Switzerland. Two chairs facing each other in dialogue, but chained to the walls behind them so they can never meet.
At the conclusion of Alicia Juarrero’s new book “Context Changes Everything” she writes:
“Neither puppets nor absolute sovereigns, human beings and the material and social forms of life they induce are true co-creators of their natural and social worlds. We serve as stewards of the metastability, coherence, and evolvability of both of these worlds. Matter matters. History matters. Social and economic policy matters. Most critically, however, because top- down causality as constraint makes room for meaning and value-informed activities, our choices and actions matter tremendously. In acting, we reveal the variables and the values that really matter to us, individually and to the culture in which we are embedded. We must pay attention to what we pay attention to; to which options we facilitate and promote and which we impede and discard. We must pay particular attention to what we do.
The influence of constraints has been dismissed because they do not bring about change energetically. Because they can be tacit and entrenched, their Escher-like characteristics also make them difficult to track. As background constants that go without saying, they have also been taken for granted. Foregrounding these enabling and governing conditions, so different from but as effective as forceful impacts, has been a central goal of this work.
Facilitating the emergence and persistence of validated coherence, of adaptable and evolvable interdependencies that can continue to form and persist in nature, among human beings and between nature and human- kind, is among our most compelling responsibilities. Facilitating the emergence and preservation of a thoroughgoing resilience that affords to both the natural and the human worlds the conditions not only to persist but especially to evolve and thrive is the most pressing moral imperative facing humankind today.
Facilitating the emergence and persistence of validated coherence, of adaptable and evolvable interdependencies that can continue to form and persist in nature, among human beings and between nature and human-kind, is among our most compelling responsibilities. Facilitating the emergence and preservation of a thoroughgoing resilience that affords to both the natural and the human worlds the conditions not only to persist but especially to evolve and thrive is the most pressing moral imperative facing humankind today.”
Alicia Juarrero, Context Changes Everything, p. 237
I think this is a really important point because it brings a moral imperative to understanding and working with complexity, something I have long felt is important for law makers, policy makers and citizens to understand. Without understanding the nature of complex systems, one is at a loss to effectively lead, craft policy or other solutions to emergent problems that plague our world. From planetary climate change to individual mental health, working with complexity dynamics – constraints, and, in my work, containers – is critical to approaching complex problems. It should go without saying I suppose, but it needs saying anyway. And it’s the reason I want these tools and perspectives out in the world in the hands of as many people as possible.
Without doubt it is essential that the concepts constituting complexity theory, including emergence, constraints and containers, be understood and applied by a much wider body of people, including policy makers and managers in organisations and government. Equally important is the need to put determinism in its place, as being relevant in its own circumstances but that it should not be the default position for decision makers. But achieving this state of affairs is a truly wicked problem. Perhaps all we can do as individuals is put forward the ideas and arguments in the hope/expectation that others will take them up.
Absolutely.
In a more or less routine review of some material I wrote back in 2018 as part of a presentation to a group of UK government finance officers I came across this. It strikes me as worth thinking about in relation to my final sentence above. Apologies for the length of this.
Between 2013 and 2015 I made a dozen or so trips to Manila, in the Philippines, as part of a project we were involved in to design a competency framework for finance staff working in government in the country. Most of those missions were characterised by alternating feelings of frustration and deep satisfaction. Satisfaction that comes with the sense of doing something worthwhile and making a difference, frustration because whenever we seemed to be making progress and communicating clearly to government what we believed ought to be done, we subsequently found that decisions we thought had been taken hadn’t; actions that others had agreed to take were left undone; and everything took much longer than planned. As I thought about this I eventually came to realise that, in addition to the “normal” bureaucratic delays that one expects to find in any public sector organisation there was something more fundamental going on. We were encountering *pakikisama*, a Tagalog word encapsulating the essence of a phenomenon that sociologists in the Philippines have come to call *Smooth Interpersonal Relationships*.
The word itself, *pakikisama* has two roots in the Tagalog language: *sama*, which means *to go along with*, so to get along with other people, and *paki*, *please*. So, *please get along with other people*. This manifested itself in two main ways: apparent acquiescence to proposed courses of action; and items being brought back to the project Steering Committee that we thought had been dealt with, but that were returning because some other point of view had been encountered since the last meeting. We were effectively being fooled into thinking our messages were getting across by the ultra-polite nature of Filipinos.
This concept of *pakikisama* encompasses more than simply being polite. It covers the importance of being part of the crowd, of going with the flow, of being deferential to others, particularly elders and staff more senior than yourself. To almost everyone I met in the country I am *SirGordon* and, on the occasion when my now-wife joined me she became forever *Ma’am Fiona*. Unless you understand what is going on, you become increasingly frustrated at the time it takes to do things, and, in extreme cases, can effectively be ostracised. So, achieving significant change in such a complex environment becomes a matter as much of psychology, sociology and anthropology as it does of accounting and auditing.
Wow. Alicia puts a lot of meaning into streamed together words.
“Without understanding the nature of complex systems, one is at a loss to effectively lead, craft policy or other solutions to emergent problems that plague our world. ” Without understanding the nature of complex systems, we are left inert and apathetic or filled with rage and lashing out. Lately I have been thinking of our dear friend Pauline’s book club, Knowing Our Place, and how appropriate that name is in terms of any project. Knowing our place in a world of complexity can help us act more appropriately within it…
Too true my friend. I might have had a little something to do with that name too… 😉