Mistaking complex challenges for complicated ones

March 09, 2021

Luke Craven has a new post up that discusses problematic binary thinking in systems’ circles. The following quote reminded me of some challenges I’ve had working in this space.

The struggle forward is always an experimental process, full of contradiction, in which we continually test and retest the limits of possibility and try, as best we can, to create new institutions that will expand those limits themselves. It is not all or nothing.

-Luke Craven

Source

When sharing the possibility offered by a systems approach, I find people who are new to the ideas often expect any such efforts to be transformative. Whatever change is designed, it should wholly address the challenge or opportunity. The new will look nothing like the old. I equate that perspective with an engineering mindset. It’s trying to implement solutions to the Complex domain of the Cynefin Framework as if they were from the Complicated domain. Delivering clean water to homes via a public water system is complicated. Your goal is to deliver one specific thing. Dealing with the multifarious causes through which water is wasted throughout a public water system is complex. Your goal is now to deal with an array of ongoing and historical choices that affect water use. The possibilities for ending water waste are endless. Scrapping and replacing the system with a new technical solution might remove some of the existing opportunities for waste, but it won’t keep the humans who interact with the system from being human. Therefore, the task is as Luke said. We have to propose ideas and test them. We then learn from those tests, review them against our plans and assumptions and go forward from there (often in different directions than expected).

When I’ve run up against this all-or-nothing mindset in the past, I’ve tried to share my perspective to help others understand how I view things, as well as providing examples and relevant reading. Over time, I’ve found that often is not be enough, so I’ve started suggesting that the best way to gain an understanding of the iterative, try and fail and try again approach that’s necessary, is to get people to roll up their sleeves and live through the experience. The goal is varying degrees of better, rather than fixed. If you ask me, trying to wholly change a complex system filled with independent actors, and arrive at a specific, desired outcome, is a recipe for madness.

Maybe getting past that initial perspective is a function of tacit knowledge. I’m still trying to figure it out…