Decision-making, Complexity

Before I say anything else let me say that the reason I am writing about this is that many of our intractable problems cannot be solved with our common ways of thinking and our common tools for dealing with the world.  The common tools I am referring to are our tools for analysis, planning, decision-making, prediction, and science. It is of necessity that I share this as I care deeply about the health and wellbeing of my community (at any scale). Without new ways of seeing our world we will continue to create the same problems.

I will refer you to David Snowden's writing on this topic. (download pdf file of a paper on this topic).  My improved understanding comes from David's writing and discussions. I will also try to relate the usefulness of his perspective. (also see my March 2, 2003 post on David  Snowden.)

To deal with complex and chaotic situations we need to differentiate them from logical situations and merely complicated situations.

Snowden describes five "spaces" of sense-making, decision-making and knowledge management. The approach to understanding, decision-making and organization of people are quite different for each space. Confusion or lack of recognition among these spaces can be more than a little frustrating to everyone effected.

Most business writing, beliefs, and mental models derive from successes in logical and merely complicated spaces. Mechanical situations (understandable cause and effect situations) are well dealt with by the business tools, especially if you add systems thinking and dynamic systems modeling and simulation. All of this is ineffective for dealing with truly complex, meaning non-mechanical or organic complexity. I am referring to complex adaptive systems and organic systems where all the parts are interrelated in ways that are not really model-able or predictable. Where each "part" can make choices that effect all the other parts AND each part is dependent upon the other parts. Sound like a mess but it is the way most of the real world works. It is the way families work. It is the way the human body works. It is the way social systems work. Not surprisingly, scientists and decision makers have avoided this space as long as possible. We now avoid it or at our peril because the whole world has finally become an organism with this kind of connectivity and "complexity". This is way beyond being mechanically complicated.

Don't get your hopes up. Don't think that I have answers to your problems or even my problems, but I will promise you that understanding the difference in these situations or decision spaces can save us all a lot of heartache and frustration. Understanding the differences can also make sense of a lot of popular organizational theories that make little sense otherwise. Trying "new age" or "new sciences" leadership without understanding the relationships of all of these decision spaces creates big problems--empowerment, CQI, partnership, culture change, for example.

 So, with some hesitation on my part (more than six months) let's see if I can say any of this well enough.

The framework has five spaces: Known, Knowable, Complex, Chaos, Disorder. These spaces fit into three domains--Ordered, Unordered and Disordered. The ORDERED domain contains two spaces--Known and Knowable. The unordered domain contains the Complex and Chaotic spaces.  The a characteristic of theOrdered domainis that one can figure out the likely effects when one knows the antecedents the "causes". The  space call KNOWN contains what is proved and written down.  In this space are best practices, policies and procedures, computer algorithms and the like. The space called KNOWABLE, is the space of expertise and experts, things can be really complicated but with enough effort and tools one can rather accurately predict outcomes if you have the antecedents. Decisions are manageable with tools and experts. One can even move knowledge from this space to the KNOWN space if it is worth the cost, simple by writing it down or programming it. Systems thinking and system dynamics are really useful approaches here.

A second domain is one that Snowden calls UNORDERED. UNORDERED is really interesting. It means that there is a really different kind of order than in the ORDERED domain. This domain includes the COMPLEX space which means several things. It means that things here are related in highly interconnected ways.  Intentions, and hidden histories, and temporary mindsets or fleeting attitudes can affect any player and that goes on to effect every other player. You can't predict the behavior of the individuals much less the behavior of the wholes. But much of our experience and existence occurs here. Actually we are pretty comfortable here. This is the space of families, social networks, the "shadow organization", and culture. The relatively new discipline of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) belong to this space. Sense can be made here, is made here--retrospectively. One cannot predict what will happen here but once it does happen one can recognize the patterns that led to the "conclusion". Effect must precede the determination of causes--thus the term retrospective sensemaking. This is numerically the most common way we make sense of the world. We need to bring this more comfortably into business and governmental sensemaking instead of being so heavily influenced by our business and science tools that work well only in the ORDERED spaces.  This the space of pattern recognition, gestalt, improvisation, intuition, networking, and story telling. It is a space where context means everything.  Experience is essential, so long as it does not lead to rigid thinking (doubt must be held along side of action). Kindergarten teachers, mothers, politicians all are comfortable in this space. Recognizing patterns, supporting patterns that you recognize as valuable and removing support from those that are not felt to be valuable are the ways of this space. Sharing information with "like-minded" people and withholding information from people or organizations that are not like-minded is the kind of decision that has influence in this space. There is a whole literature on CASs. Common goals, simple rules, application or removal of resources based upon following the rules or upon outcomes that move toward or away form the agreed upon goal is pretty much the way this complex (CAS) situations are "managed". This situations in this space are "managed" by working with those that can agree upon goals and simple rules of interaction. The freedom of the parts ("agents") to make decisions is not really under control. Adaptation comes from feedback loops that move resources to agents that move toward the goal and feedback loops that conversely redirect resources away from agents who do not move toward the goal. With out this component a complex system is not "adaptive." (US health care is not yet organized to contain this simple component of a complex adaptive system, so we still have a complex non-adaptive or maladaptive system.)

UNORDERED domain also includes the space Snowden calls CHAOTIC space. Again there is much written in the popular press about Chaos. The interesting thing is that there is order here it is just not visible until action is taken and then one looks for patterns. In layman's terms this is going into the unknown. It is going where the surroundings and situations don't make sense. Most people don't enjoy this experience but it is where innovations arise from.

The third domain is one he calls DISORDERED. Disordered means there is literally no discernible order. A place to leave or to leave to someone else if possible. That is what I am going to do here now, leave that topic alone.

More to come...

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