As you would expect, there is a story behind the name and it is a revealing one.
Rob explains (If you would prefer to hear him explain it instead of read it, click the play button bellow):
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/ccb62dc3-039a-448d-b64f-348b7eb73a44/New_Recording_29.m4a
A couple of years ago, my friend and Oxford colleague Tracey Camilleri asked me to prepare a ‘complexity primer’ to tee up an improv session on a corporate leadership programme.
I have been lucky enough to work with, or alongside, many interesting thinkers in the field, including Richard Pascale, Ralph Stacey, Gareth Morgan and Patricia Shaw. I have taken extensive courses with Fritjof Capra, Margaret Wheatley and David Snowden. I have been reading about and studying complexity science since the early 90’s.
So essentially Tracey was asking me to summarise what I have learned over the course of twenty years, in twenty minutes. But sometimes the ‘impossible’ briefs are the best.
As I looked back over notes and material, I realised two things. First, there was plenty in common across the work of these different thinkers. Their ideas were over-lapping and complementary. There was variation too – differences in language, emphasis or style, but themes and patterns were easy to see.
The second thing was that these authors tended to see the differences not the similarities. I knew this from personal conversations with them. This is natural. Being specialists steeped in a field, often working in academic institutions, their eye will light on what distinguishes one theory from another. For them, those differences are important.
But what I could see, from my vantage point of enthusiastic amateur, was a broad (if variegated) way of thinking that stood in stark contrast to the normal (and therefore invisible) tradition in which we are educated.
So for the ‘complexity primer’ I decided to paint two pictures.
The first was of a way of thinking and being that pays attention to, and gives importance to - abstract thought, analysis, goals, measurement and control. The focus is on problem-solving, and linear predictive models that aspire to high degrees of certainty.
This style of thinking is characterised by either/or, and a focus on objects. It assumes the observer is independent of what they observe. Action occurs at a distance via levers, mechanisms or programmes and effects can be accurately measured. Best practice (based on the past) is highly valued.
We are steeped in this way of thinking. It is the world we all grew up with and though we know it isn’t completely accurate, we assume that the approximations and assumptions are minor imperfections, like friction in a physical system, that don’t change anything fundamental.
The trouble with this kind of thinking is that it assumes it is the only way to think. Indeed that follows from the binary logic on which it is based. Something is either right or wrong. This way of thinking has been useful, so it must be right. And by implications other ways of thinking must therefore be wrong. We are hoist on our own petard - the very success of this approach contains the seeds of its limitations.
In contrast, the complexity theorist sees swampy ground where the path is made by walking. Relationships are more important than objects and the observer is always part of the system they disturb, consciously or unconsciously. In these circumstances the improviser’s maxim ‘Yes, and’ applies. There are many ways of thinking, all of which can be valid and valuable.
All action is local. Everything is messy, inter-connected and in a state of unpredictable, yet creative flux. Here, the job of leaders is to sense and respond, not command and control; to create conditions and hold boundaries so that action can emerge.