informal coalitions

Iain McGilchrist's hemisphere hypothesis - taking complexity seriously

In a lecture entitled A revolution in thought?¹, which he delivered a few days ago,² as part of the Darwin College Lecture Series, Dr Iain McGilchrist offers a brilliant and thought-provoking commentary on the global crisis facing us all - and to which we are all contributing. 

The wiggly world of COVID-19

Most people view the COVID-19 pandemic as a rare outlier of normal events. An aberration. It is important to recognize, though, that the process through which it emerged as a pandemic was not extraordinary at all.  On the contrary, the direct and indirect transmission of the virus between people was a particularly vivid expression of the complex social process of everyday human interaction. For the most part, of course, this involves small-group and one-to-one conversations, rather than the exchange of potentially deadly, airborne particles!  However, if we were to take our own and others' experience seriously, we would recognise that the pandemic brought into sharp focus our inability to predict and control what happens as a result of the widespread interplay of people's interactions, both locally and across the world. It is through this continuous, interactional process that we are all perpetually creating the future together - in all of its richness and beauty; ugliness and poverty; hope and despair.

Introducing VAR - A clear and obvious error

The recent controversy concerning the performance of the Video Assistant Referee (VAR), in the Premier League match between Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool, is the latest in a catalogue of incidents involving the increasing dominance of the technology in the professional game.  Most tellingly, although the eventual decision made by the VAR favoured his own team, the 'Spurs manager, Ange Postecoglou, was scathing in his condemnation of its use. His concerns appear to be shared by other managers; with England boss, Gareth Southgate, reputedly having said that the game was better pre-VAR.

 

As a one-time engineer, I appreciate the value of technology. But only when it is applied in an appropriate context. The fact that a particular technology exists doesn’t mean that it automatically adds value - less still that it leads to ‘correct’ decision-making in the context of association football.  The game is a complex, fast-moving process. VAR is not simply flawed in its practice but in its basic concept.  Things that happen in football are not reducible to pseudo-scientific decision-making.  Apparently, many onfield decisions are so clearly and obviously mistaken that it often takes several minutes for those operating the technology  to reach their decisions. As part of this, they use slow-motion replays and views from multiple angles that bear no relationship to the complex social reality of the in-the-moment interactions that took place on the pitch.

 

The only thing that is clear and obvious to me is that it is not simply the way in which the technology is being applied that is flawed. Its very use is fundamentally ill-conceived.

 

Reflections on "Complexity is not supposed to be complex"

Well-known writer and speaker on organizational complexity, Sonja Blignaut, recently set out her thoughts on the need to normalize complexity as a fundamental aspect of everyday human life. Her excellent post can be found here.

Complexity is often dismissed as something that we need to get rid of. But Sonja, quite rightly, disagrees with this. In her introduction to the post, she states her view that she is "convinced of the need to make the wisdom of complexity available more broadly".  At the same time, she says that she is, "increasingly frustrated by how we obfuscate it with big words, theoretical constructs, and increasing intellectual debates". Instead, she argues, "the challenges of our times invite us to reconsider, to reframe our learned dislike for complexity and reconnect with our inate ability to dance with it...".

I see many common threads between the eight points that Sonja makes in her post, and my own view of what's going on from a "Wiggly World/Muddling Through" perspective. I've set out a few of these below, using Sonia's headline point in each case. 

Rewiggling Organization

Given my description of organization - and life more generally - as “wiggly”, I was attracted by an article in The Times (15 February, 2023) entitled, “Why ‘rewiggling’ rivers could solve Britain’s water crisis”.

Rather than meandering naturally across the land - in a self-organizing and emergent way, of course (!) - many rivers have been straightened out and deepened over the years, with the aim of releasing the surrounding marshland for grazing. This, though, has adversely affected water quality and wildlife habitats, and reduced the diversity and wellbeing of fish. It has also increased the risk of flooding, and had other detrimental effects on land- and water-management. Action is therefore being taken to “rewiggle” a number of rivers; allowing these to re-establish their natural pathways and flow patterns, and helping to deal with the “water crisis”.

Collaborating with AI

 

Is anyone else concerned about the increasingly pervasive notion of humans “collaborating” with AI? 

Relationship of mutuality

Collaboration - whatever its diverse motivations and means of expression - is a relationship of mutuality between living and breathing human beings. Properly perceived and applied, so-called “artificial intelligence” undoubtedly has a lot to offer us in support of the living of our lives. But it needs to be seen as a technological aid to our human being, doing and becoming; not as in any way equivalent to it.

From CoCoNuke to ReStCoNuke?

Whilst thumbing through some old papers recently, I came across the above mind map that I had drawn in the mid-1970s. At that time, I was a young engineer in what was then the UK’s publicly owned Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB). The ‘map’ summarises the company’s energy policy of the time, which was referred to as “CoCoNuke”; emphasising its three central elements of coal, conservation and nuclear.  I thought I'd share it here, with a few quick reflections on some of the shifts that have taken place in this area over the past 50 years or so.

Remembering Ralph - A personal reflection

Ralph Stacey 10/9/1942 - 4/9/2021

A unique and unparalleled contribution to the understanding of organizational dynamics from a complexity perspective

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Since Ralph Stacey’s sudden and untimely death, there have been many tributes to his life and work from friends, colleagues and others (see here, for example).  I’m sure that there will be many more. In sending him a personal copy of my new book in May, I was lucky enough to be able to thank him for the significant influence that he has had on my thinking and practice for the past 30 years.  He was generous, as always, in his response and looked forward to our meeting up again at next year’s Complexity and Management Conference.  Sadly, that will not now happen.

A passionate 'muddler througher'

    

Every Sunday, during the Pienaar's Politics programme on BBC Radio 5Live, there is a section entitled, Backbenchers Questions. Yesterday, it was the turn of Bob Stewart, MP for Beckenham and one-time Colonel in the British Army, to take the hot seat.

At one point, stand-in host Chris Mason asked him whether or not he was confident about the forthcoming negotiations on Brexit.

"In the end," he replied, "We always muddle through and get something."

"Is muddle through good enough, though?" challenged Mason.

"That's what happens in life," said Stewart, with a hint of incredulity in his voice that anyone should ask such a question.

And so it is.  Muddling through is what happens in life.  It's what all of us do. All of the time.

Mason signed-off the section by describing Colonel Stewart as, “A passionate ‘muddler througher’”. 

The folly of promising a ‘cast-in-concrete’ future

In today’s copy of The Times, Matthew Parris comments on the outcry that has followed the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer’s decision to raise a particular tax on small businesses. Under the headline, “When it’s right to break political promises,” he supports the rationale for breaking the Conservative Party’s 2015 commitment not to raise National Insurance Contributions (NICs) for the self-employed. At the same time, he criticizes what he sees as the inept manner in which the change in policy has been introduced.

Surely, though, there is a wider issue here. The real problem is not so much with what Philip Hammond has done in policy terms. Or the fact that the proposed changes break a promise in the manifesto. It is with the very notion of making firm manifesto commitments in the first place.

In the run-up to the 2015 election, candidates of all parties were constantly asked by interviewers to explain precisely what things would be like at the end of the five-year parliament, based on the pledges made in their party manifestos.  In the main, they duly obliged (as politicians always do!). 

As things turned out, of course, their inability to predict what would happen in the future was laid bare on election night itself.  Politicians, pundits, and pollsters alike all expected the election to result in a so-called “hung parliament”, with a coalition between the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties being the most likely means of forming a viable Government.  In the event, the Conservatives gained an overall majority and a triumphant David Cameron put together his Government, with a seemingly unobstructed path ahead of him and his colleagues for the next five years.  Eighteen months on, the rest – like David Cameron’s premiership – is history.