Dealing with the uncertainty of the complex
Fresh off of a week spent receiving Cognitive Edge Accreditation with Michael Cheveldave here in Vancouver, its not surprising to me to be seeing the simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic all over the place. We are, as Dave Snowden and company are bound to say, pattern-recognition beings after all.
Three related posts on the problems with applying ordered and simple domain thinking to the complex are worth reading.
First Dave Snowden takes a run at public service reform and the increasing desire to try and implement more rules and measurements in an inherently complex environment (drifting towards the cliff of the chaotic).
Second, Barry Schwartz, author of the wonderful The Paradox of Choice, talks at TED in February 2009 about developing a more practical wisdom (experimenting, innovating, learning from failure [safe-fail probes that guide us from the complex back to the complicated, from the unordered back to order]).
And finally, friend and local Vancouver author, Sanjay Khanna contemplates the role of experts and expertise in the complex and uncertain domain. Expertise works well, according to the CE folks, in the complicated and simple domain. The domains of best practice and good practices. But in the complex, it's anyone's guess.
For more on the simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic, catch this short video put together by former IBM-er and complex sense-maker Shawn Callahan of Anecdote.
Good stuff. Expect more on this topic and the wonderful power of narrative in the near future.
Three related posts on the problems with applying ordered and simple domain thinking to the complex are worth reading.
First Dave Snowden takes a run at public service reform and the increasing desire to try and implement more rules and measurements in an inherently complex environment (drifting towards the cliff of the chaotic).
Second, Barry Schwartz, author of the wonderful The Paradox of Choice, talks at TED in February 2009 about developing a more practical wisdom (experimenting, innovating, learning from failure [safe-fail probes that guide us from the complex back to the complicated, from the unordered back to order]).
And finally, friend and local Vancouver author, Sanjay Khanna contemplates the role of experts and expertise in the complex and uncertain domain. Expertise works well, according to the CE folks, in the complicated and simple domain. The domains of best practice and good practices. But in the complex, it's anyone's guess.
For more on the simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic, catch this short video put together by former IBM-er and complex sense-maker Shawn Callahan of Anecdote.
Good stuff. Expect more on this topic and the wonderful power of narrative in the near future.
1 Comments:
Pattern-recognition beings? Yes but we so easily wander into apophenia that there's entire professional disciplines that have been poisoned by Dave Snowden's beloved anecdotes.
We're so subject to the distorting effects of anecdote and hard cases and outright urban legends that evidence and process control really ought to be considered innocent until proven guilty.
And I think the case for their guilt often comes down to "I dislike being evaluated."
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Ryan, at 10:28 am
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