Translating Complexity into Manageable Action

October 11, 2011

We live in an increasingly complex world, but to implement effective solutions, especially on any type of large scale, we need to have relatively simple approaches that a wide range of people can follow.  So much of what we do as practitioners is to translate complex ideas and solutions into simple (without being condescending or simplistic) approaches that others can follow.  I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the gap that all too often exists between those who have time to think about complexity and those that don’t but need to manage it.

Let’s say that as a busy practitioner I actually have time to read an article or book or hear a presentation that presents some in-depth ideas that provoke my thinking. After I’ve read the book or heard the presentation, I may spend some time on and off over the coming weeks thinking about how it might practically apply to my work.  I may bounce ideas off a colleague or two to better articulate my own thinking.  If I am lucky, I may have the opportunity to pursue these ideas with others in my organization in a more structured way. Perhaps we will even develop a pilot project to test out some of these ideas, eventually finding an approach that will fit the organization and help it address the global challenges it aims to resolve.

This can be a relatively long and involved process that takes time and commitment.  And it is often harder than it needs to be as we often do this kind of transitional thinking in short, ‘stolen’ bursts of time, or as individuals in isolation.  What are some of the approaches that can help guide us to better integrate complexity resources in to our day to day challenges and decision-making? Here are some ideas:

1. Encourage your organization to be a learning organization:  There is a lot of useful thinking ‘out there’ that can be extremely helpful to us as practitioners when our organizations value and allow time for reflection.  For example, Donald Schon in “Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action”  talks about “Reflection-in-action”,  an improvisational decision-making approach that professionals can bring to their everyday practices, as they operate under conditions of complexity, uncertainty, uniqueness, and value conflict.   David Snowden has a Cynefin Framework, a similar approach that looks at how we Sense-Analyze-Respond. We take in new data (sense), then we can consider its implications (analyze), and try a new approach or pilot (respond).  Ian Thorpe on his excellent blog, KM (Knowledge management) on a Dollar a Day reflects periodically on what it means to be a learning organization, including this post “Too Much Learning by Doing?”

2. Look for general approaches:  Owen Barder of the Center for Global Development cautions against breaking complex steps into ‘how-to’s that are prescriptive and can be too simplistic.  He suggests that “If we are going to draw lessons, they should not be on how to get things done, but on what kinds of behavior or approach are needed.”  He suggests three of these: a)  Do things which encourage diversity and innovation;b)  Design ways to ‘fail safely’so that you can learn; c)  Have effective feedback loops – find ways to ensure that what you have learned feeds back quickly into your next decision.”

General approaches or core values can help maintain consistency among a large number of stakeholders who may be implementing a program while allowing for necessary local variation and the improvisation that Donald Schon and others describe.

The staffer of an international NGO involved in international development work (who blogs anonymously) moves in a similar direction in a blog post last year using Dave Snowden’s Cynefin Framwork: “Embracing the Chaotic: Cynefin and Humanitarian Response”. He outlines the following approaches: a) Trust. Organizations need to have trust in their personnel, and have confidence that given the responsibility, they will make good decisions in the heat of the moment; b) Processes (and people) need to be motivated not by procedure but by principle; and c) Systems themselves need to become quick, adaptable and light.

3.  Meet people where they are at:  This is one way that practitioners who are able to make time to reflect can help others they work with to translate complexity to manageable action. Deidre Schmidt, former Executive Director of the Affordable Housing Institute describes having discussions with different staff members based on their own learning styles – are they big picture or detail people?  Can graphs and pictures help?  She also notes the importance of the ‘translator’ role when groups have a range of different expertise.  For example, not everyone necessarily needs to understand the details of technical issues as long as they have confidence in other group members to handle them.

4. Create informal learning communities in or outside of our organizations:  If you do not yet work in an organization that values the time it takes for learning, you can seek out those who do share your need to allocate time periodically for reflection that translates to actionable steps and create informal learning communities.  These peers can help us to carve out time for learning and reflection.  We can share and brainstorm our ideas together and serve as each other’s reminders to make this time on a regular basis.

Together as a community that is focused on providing tools to those who are engaging in significant social change, we need to work on ways to break down silos, and the lingo that often prevents information from being shared between different sectors.  How we can create more opportunities for collective learning and sharing across silos, especially between academics and practitioners? Encourage more organizations to allocate time to be ‘learning organizations’?

This is a much bigger (and ‘complex’) topic than can be addressed in one blog post.  I hope that this is a helpful contribution to what will be an on-going and broad based conversation.

Additional reading

Categories: Complexity, Global-local linkages, Resources, Scale-up
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  • http://albordedelcaos.com/ Pablo

    Thanks for the reflection and the links! I think this one also could be helpfull: http://evaluationrevisited.wordpress.com/ There you´ll find the final report of the conference…

  • http://joitskehulsebosch.blogspot.com Joitske Hulsebosch

    Hi Bonnie, thanks, very recognisable, especially the action-oriented nature in development organisations. Maaike Smit did an action-research with the telling title: ‘we’re too much in a to do mode’ http://bit.ly/pjbO2n

  • http://www.goinginternational.com Bonnie Koenig

    Thanks Pablo and Joitske for your comments and the additional links.

  • http://cdegger.com Christine Egger

    This is a great contribution, Bonnie. I’ll be exploring the links you’re offering here.

    Another resource I like is the concept of “gentle action”, which F. David Peat uses to describe the kinds of action that reflect the levels of learning, trusting, and “meeting people where they are” that you’re outlining here.

    For the briefest of primers, see http://www.slideshare.net/ChristineEgger/social-actions-gentle-action-webinar-may23-2009 or visit David’s blog at http://gentleaction.org

  • http://www.architecturefordevelopment.com David Week

    Hi Bonnie

    I have to admit to a certain wariness about what you propose.

    “We live in an increasingly complex world…”

    Do we? Or do we live in a world increasingly cluttered by information, all f which we think we need to take into account. In approaching the housing for a poor community, I now have 50 theories and “requirements” that I (think I) have to take into consideration when thinking about them, whereas 30 years ago maybe I had three. Is their situation more complex? Or is it just my profession that is saturated with too much “knowledge”?

    This is an important distinction.

    “…but to implement effective solutions, especially on any type of large scale, we need to have relatively simple approaches that a wide range of people can follow.”

    Spot on, and I agree. But does your article do this? Or does it ask me take my already full brain and full workload, and add on to my thinking another 8 or 10 “essential” tasks that I “must do” to cope.

    I’d rather you were to strip away 50% of the “must do” tasks I already have! (I’d like to see this article: “10 things you can just stop bothering about, in dealing with a complex world.”)

    I am reminded of the typical American bookshop. It is full of 100 books on “8 steps to wealth mastery”, in a land with the highest Gini coefficient in the OECD; 100 books on “5 ways to burn fat”, in a country where obesity is a plague; 1000 books on happiness, in a country hooked on Prozac; a thousand books titled “11 things you must know to save your relationship” in a country in which, in some parts, the divorce rate is higher than the marriage rate.

    All these lists of “must do” are in fact, on the face it, pretty ineffectual. Because people buy them by the millions, and things just get worse.

    I want to propose an alternative: that what we need instead is more listening to the situation, more mindfulness, more emptiness, and less expert-driven check lists and to do lists, including those which (like yours) are “essential” to dealing with the InfoFlood.

    Let me be clear: I surf the Net daily, if not hourly, and a day doesn’t pass without me reading and thinking about a dozen rich pickings in the Info banquet which our society happens to produce.

    Why would I not? If I were in Italy, I’d be sampling Italian wine and food, instead. :-)

    But taking advantage of what’s available doesn’t mean that I accept it a driver for my work. I would go crazy if, in addition to doing what I do, I worried about creating learning organizations, fast feedback loops, developing trust, and analyzing people in terms of their strengths, failing safely, encouraging diversity, and on and on and on and on. The end result, if I did, would be to do my job worse (because my eye would not be on the ball), and to do none of these things well… if indeed they need to be done at all.

    The key difference here is one of core metaphor.

    In the metaphor of all those “how to” books, success is achieved by applying a method, and that method must be used in order to achieve success. Since they all promise important results, if you have 10 goals, and each requires 8 principles or 12 steps, suddenly you have 100 “must do” steps on your list. Talk about clutter!

    In my metaphor, information is just a useful tool, to applied on an as-need basis. I know about learning orgs (and about human learning), systems theory, trust in economics, systems theory, MBTI and Gallup StrengthsFinder, cultural diversity theory, and on and on and on and on. I feast at the banquet. But it just sits there in my brain, available if an when it might be necessary, which might be never… just like the 1000 books on my bookshelf.

    They are not methods that must be used, or steps that must be taken, or anything essential at all. They are just bits of available knowledge or technique.

    With the postmoderns and the Marxists, I see all of these are “products” which are being sold to me as consumer, and which I can take advantage of, if I find that one might seem useful at a particular time. But I would be both crazy and foolish if I were I to feel that success or results comes from consuming them all.

    In my alternative, pragmatist, tools metaphor, here’s how I cut through the fog:

    1. I first pay attention to listening to the people I am dealing with, watching what’s going on, and understanding their problems and perspectives. I never take the producer perspective, thinking that I must Senge-ify or Cynefin-ify what I am doing.

    2. From listening, some possibilities start suggesting themselves, informed (but not driven) by this library of possible tools I have in the back of my mind (thank you modern world!) But I treat KM and MBTI and BSC and M&E and Social Capital in the same way that I treat All Bran and Corn Flakes and avocado. I do not dream for a moment that you MUST have any of these as part of a complete development breakfast. It’s just good to know about all the 1000 foods that are available to us, when considering one’s breakfast options.

    3. So we talk, my counterparts and I: what might work, and what might not. And then we try.

    In all this I am learning from Tolstoy, who wrote a short story referenced on my blog, which suggests that the solution to cutting through the thousand competing demands of your professional life is this:

    1. The most important time is now.
    2. The most important person is the person in front of you.
    3. The most important thing to do is to help them out.

    Oops. That’s a list. But you don’t have to follow it to achieve anything. You can just put Tolstoy in your mental library, with the other 1000 volumes. That’s where he sits for me. (I pulled him out just now: but I may do so again for another three months.)

    Best

    David

    • http://www.goinginternational.com Bonnie Koenig

      David -Thanks for taking the time to share your perspectives in detail. As we’ve discussed in the past, I wish we had a virtual salon where we could sit in the virtual equivalent of ‘comfy chairs’ for a real give and take on the topic. In lieu of that, just a few thoughts on yours: 1) You raise a good comment about what is ‘complex’ – the world, our ideas, or processing the overload of information? Owen raised a similar question in our e-mail exchange when I was putting together this post. I am not sure there is one answer to that but it is something we need to keep thinking about if we are going to make whatever we do sense as complex, into something more manageable. 2) I completely agree with you that “ information is just a useful tool, to be applied on an as-need basis”. But I do think all of us as individuals, and our organizations, have different ‘learning styles’ and different ways to filter and apply information. You do much of this intuitively, but for individuals who don’t, and for organizations made up of individuals with many different styles, instituting a culture of learning is important. But just as I believe there are more ‘ good’ practices, than ‘best’ ones, I also think there are many different ways to process information and complexity. If I would boil it down to its simplest form, it would be “to simplify in whatever ways work for each of us as individual practitioners, and for our organizations”. Not at all an easy thing to do…. Perhaps one of us will write “10 things you can just stop bothering about, in dealing with a complex world” :-) for as I said, I hope this blog is just one contribution to an on-going discussion to help practitioners in a complex and changing world!

  • http://gravatar.com/wondermentwoman Elmira Bayrasli

    Thanks for this post Bonnie. It’s important that we realize that we are living in a world of complexity, and as David points out one that is saturated with too much information. My one contribution to solving this problem is getting your learning organization to be clear on its focus – and pay attention to that focus. No one has expertise anymore – we’re all generalists, flipping through news and data in order to stay relevant. Depth has never been more necessary in our interconnected globalized world.

    • http://kmonadollaraday.wordpress.com Ian Thorpe

      @elmira your comment about generalists is interesting. My perspective is that as knowledge progresses there are more and more specialists with niche knowledge that is important but often disconnected and not easily understandable to people from another specialty. So I’d say we need more generalists who are able to connect the dots between the different disciplines and make sense out of it and take action without getting bogged down with all the detail or the interdisciplinary arguments about what is the right approach or theory :-)
      I agree that focus on what you are trying to do is essential though if you are trying to do this.

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  • http://www.futurehealthsystems.org jknezovich

    Bonnie, it’s good to see that others are trying to apply complexity. The Future Health Systems program has been trying to do so in its most recent planning cycle. Dr David Peters from Johns Hopkins wrote a good short blog on what it meant for us: http://bit.ly/nloGaI

  • http://www.goinginternational.com Bonnie Koenig

    Elmira – Great comment on importance of focus. Jeff – Thanks for sharing your example.

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  • http://beads-passionforfacilitation.ning.com/ Lucia Nass

    Just read a tweet: the fact that you are not in a community doesn’t mean there isn’t one. And yes, this is a ‘community’ for me!
    I’ll be following your question ‘how to break down silos and create more opportunities for learning’. It fits perfectly with my interest in bridging professional divides.
    I’m currently struggling with creating space for exchange and learning in an international forum that is packed with silo panels & knowledge. Interestingly the organisers want to provide an interactive space, but are they creating the conditions? Maybe I’ll find the space when I get there, but somehow I doubt it.
    Despite the success of methods like Open Space Technology and World cafe, international development gatherings keep using methods which by their nature do not promote exchange and learning. Why is that? Are there not enough good facilitators around who support event and workshop organisers? Are expert ego’s so big that nobody dares to suggest methods that are more effective for exchange and learning than presentation after expert presentation?
    Meanwhile, as a newcomer, I’ll rely on the coffee/tea and lunch breaks to bridge professional divides, build new relationships and trust. Just seems to me that many events, big and small, miss hughe opportunities for real exchange and learning. I look forward to reading about your experiences Bonnie with creating more space for learning.

    • http://www.goinginternational.com Bonnie Koenig

      Lucia – I agree that many international forums, even those that call themselves learning events, still are structured in ‘traditional’ rather than ‘interactive’ approaches. Change often comes slowly to bigger and larger organizations and events. But I do think we are seeing glimmers of change which hopefully will be adopted elsewhere. IFAD (http://ifad.org) is a good example of a ‘newer’ UN organization that has modeled interactive ShareFairs http://www.sharefair.net/share-fair-11-rome/about-the-fair/es/ and sharing facilitation tools http://kstoolkit.org Thanks for being part of this online learning community. I’m glad you found it and I look forward to your on-going learnings.

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  • http://www.vivmcwaters.com.au vivmcwaters

    Hi Bonnie

    This is a good overview and summary of the challenges of dealing with complexity. Here’s a few thoughts (keeping in mind that I don’t actually work in an organisation and am mostly looking in from the fringes).

    I’ve been known to say the same thing about today’s world – it’s complex, messy, unpredictable etc. Someone challenged me recently on this, suggesting that life has always been so. Sure, there’s a lot more noise these days – but maybe just a different sort.

    It seems that connectors play an important role – for those busy doing the work, others can be connecting the dots and providing useful insight. I think this is the great gift of social media – it certainly gives me access to people and ideas I may never have possibly encountered. Of course, it’s still no substitute for good old f2f conversation (but I am increasingly frustrated when organisations actually make time to bring people together they waste that opportunity with sharing information that could be shared much more efficiently electronically and with far less cost in time and money).

    In all of the approaches that you suggest, all great ideas btw, the challenge is the gap between the rhetoric and the reality. I see many organisations talk about being a learning organisation, supporting their staff in making innovative choices, that it’s okay to make mistakes etc and then all of their policies, procedures and manuals are in direct opposition to that. It must just wear people out!

    Agility, responsiveness and encouraging informal (and I’d add serendipitous) learning all comes at a cost. That is the cost of letting go of control, of letting go of KPIs and goals and strategies, and replacing it with trust. I don’t see much evidence of this in most organisations, and certainly not in development agencies (although there seems to be a lot more potential for this in the field).

    I’d add a 5th item to your list too (and this will be of no surprise to anyone who knows me etc). It’s Flex your improv muscle.

    Improvisation can be described as combining your existing skills and knowledge with the resources available to you in the moment (aligns quite well with the cynefin approach methinks :) The principles that underpin improvisation (aka operating in an ensemble) include accepting offers, making your partner look good, letting go of pre-determined outcomes and mistakes (rather than dwelling on them), committing to an action, and noticing more. Many of us have lost these skills and they can be developed with practice (usually by playing fun games with your colleagues, which I think is a huge bonus – plus you get a bonus dose of endorphins!)

    I think the ability to improvise is one of THE major skills for people in any organisation these days – especially when innovation, creativity, novel approaches, and agility are required.

    Sorry for such a long comment – I think this is a really rich area of exploration and I sorta got a bit carried away :)

    Cheers

    Viv

    • http://www.goinginternational.com Bonnie Koenig

      Thanks, Viv, for your input to the discussion. No need to apologize for the length of your comment. As I’ve discussed with David Week, in the absence of a more ‘robust salon’ format these blog discussions will have to serve for now as our salons! Two of your comments that particularly resonated with me: 1) The concept of ‘connectors’ or ‘curators’ of information. Great observation. Yes, in the absence of more formal connections between different ‘sources of knowledge’ and those that are ‘users of knowledge’ technology is allowing for individuals to play those connector and curator roles on a more regular basis than would have been possible in the past. For example, I like the ScoopIt concept: http://www.scoop.it/ 2) Your important concept of improvisation is in some ways an extension of my ‘anonymous’ colleague’s point about Trust in #2 above: Trust. Organizations need to have trust in their personnel, and have confidence that given the responsibility, they will make good decisions in the heat of the moment. That ability to be improvisational is a very important skill, although often underappreciated within traditional lists of skills.

  • http://www.architecturefordevelopment.com David Week

    Hi Bonnie. Thanks for inviting me back to see the results. Very nice. I haven’t heard back from J. So… tomorrow, I shall set up the ABC page, and will count on your help to make it a reality. Best, David

    • http://www.goinginternational.com Bonnie Koenig

      Sounds good, David. Will look forward to the ABC page….

  • http://www.aidontheedge.info Ben Ramalingam

    Hi Bonnie,

    I was at a conference at USAID last week on the topic of complexity and development – summarised on my blog here: http://aidontheedge.info/2011/10/17/usaids-complexity-journey/

    I have also collated details of some previous meetings and conferences on this topic here: http://aidontheedge.info/past-and-future-meetings-on-complexity-and-aid/

    All best,

    Ben

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