Complexity Agents.PDF

Social Innovation & Complexity Let’s pause, let’s think and let’s apply! Questions For the Week What are some of the common elements of complex problems? What are some initial tools that we can use to to organize our thinking and call people into a conversation around complex problems? Let’...

Social Innovation & Complexity Let’s pause, let’s think and let’s apply! Questions For the Week What are some of the common elements of complex problems? What are some initial tools that we can use to to organize our thinking and call people into a conversation around complex problems? Let’s apply some ideas and turn them into tools for sense making and decision making Where We Start THE BAD & the UGLY: Complexity, Interconnectivity seem to be making clarity harder*: What can we do? What should we do? This may be ontological (it feels like things are getting messier) but it makes ethical action feel harder Understanding what is meant by complexity can help us think about what to do about it Why are these problems more challenging than others? And why is this more than (fun) thought experiments? So Complexity? Appears messy, intractable WE LIKE THE LABEL OF COMPLEXITY AND THE REALITY OF SIMPLICITY Appears unpredictable/ “mind of its own” These properties through huge wrenches in the efforts of changemakers May have parts that are solvable/manageable but not the They undermine good faith efforts, they whole alienage possible supporters, waste time & money Personalize/localized/multiple outcomes are okay And, failing to take these dynamics into Solutions can involve years and oodles account can cause more harm of money spent but the problem persists Are there frameworks? Stacey Matrix: Cynefin: *note the actions In terms of problems: Complex problems have Knowns: we know Knowables: we can learn Unknowns: we can’t know or measure these Best practice - novel practice…. https://nigelthurlow.com/key-expertise/co mplexity-thinking/ Let’s appeal to authority for a moment… Control and One size fits all tend to backfire… Let’s start by imaging ourselves… You are a Spanish maritime official in the 17th century; you control the richest ships in all the oceans (each ship carried the equivalent of 1-2% of the Spanish Empire’s GDP), so you want to reduce shipwrecks 1 in 5 ships traveling from the Philippines to Mexico are sinking. What do you know? What could you know? What can’t you know or control? Now let’s look at the details The Spanish are the only European traders with this specific problem: 5-8x more likely to sink Mexico - Philippines journey is fine Merchants might manage 1-2 ships per year; but the Spanish Crown owned the ships and had a ticket-based system to keep volumes low (not overloaded, safer, less likely to sink) Crown insisted you sail before Monsoon season (Late July) The ship’s captain needs to enforce these rules but they are paid based on how much the ship holds… so they broke the rules.  Note: both done well are great! Both done badly are bad & harmful. Social innovators have to do more of this because the complexity is part of the problem Reductive approaches to inquiry seek to isolate phenomena, Basically answer specific questions So we take the mess, look for patterns big and small, and yes, make decisions about what to include and exclude From research to action… Stacey Matrix: Cynefin: *note the actions In terms of problems: What can we reasonably know, suspect, and let go of? Who can we work with? There are no “best” solutions, but better and worse ones; multiple outcomes are okay https://nigelthurlow.com/key-expertise/co mplexity-thinking/ Social innovation is complex ➔ Steps build on one another but also require different roles, capacity and information ◆ What might be useful at these different stages? ➔ Coming back (nonlinearity) often ➔ Unpredictability? Lack of Control? ◆ Where could we see French et al, 2022 that?  Now, shift to the perspective of the Let’s get back ship captain to the Spanish If you could make enough money to retire, and there is only a ⅕ chance official of dying in a storm…would you do it? …Also, bribery What about their decision-making is complex? Shipwrecks suggest they carried 3-4 times the legal limit https://www.npr.org/2024/01/05/1197956371/spanish-shipwr eck-mystery  Let’s take a moment and look for complexity https://www.art-sciencefactory.com/complexity-map_feb09.html Are there areas that surprise you? Are there places complexity should be? How might we shift from research to action? How can this help us live and act in the real world? Complexity all https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= around us... UB2iYzKeej8&t=209s Pay attention to how he uses complexity to dissect a problem So beneath the surface The iceberg heuristic helps us order our thinking about complexity and think about where to act first. Can we map our Spanish official?  Above the surface: what you see Patterns: repeated activities/trends Iceberg Structures: physical &/or social environment If things seem unconnected: Rewards: how are you ❏ You may have knowables rewarded/punished - formally or ❏ You may have unknowns informally? ❏ You may have assumptions that cannot be supported Values & Norms: what are the deeply held beliefs that underpin For an exercise like this, it is best to the whole thing acknowledge and interrogate a gap - you may not be able to fill it right now Developed by a team including Jill Andres - one of our 3305 team! How does this differ from the iceberg? Doing is better than showing (1) We are a complexity advisory group MRU has approached us to help them maintain their changemaker campus 1. What issues do you and your team observe around MRU? 2. Which might have complex elements (Stacey Matrix) 3. SHARE Doing is better than showing (2) We are a complexity advisory group MRU has approached us to help them maintain their changemaker campus 1. Pick one of the behaviours you associate with the complex issue you describe 2. Create an iceberg or Tree diagram 3. Identify on the iceberg/tree where we could act Hang up your icebergs; walk around and look at each other's maps What do you see across diagrams?