Complexity, Change and Wellbeing

or the wisdom of clouds

Mike Bell, Mutual Inspiration CIC

At the end of today you will:

• Understand the distinction between complexity and complication

• Have a range of tools for evaluating complex/ complicated situations and decisions

• Experience a range of learning approaches relevant to complexity

• Have explored how this new understanding has applications for your Wellbeing projects.

"In an increasingly dynamic, interdependent and unpredictable

world, it is simply no longer possible for anyone to figure it all out at the top“

Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline

“Many change programmes fail – and the traditional assessment of failure is 75% of the attempts – often because they do not take

into account that they are working with a living system and

not a machine.”

Prof Keith Grint, 2008

Some challenges are Clocks and others are Clouds.

If they are Clocks, they are complicated.

But the interconnected parts can be understood and their actions predicted.

Clock problems are solvable by logic and deduction.

They are diffuse and complex and do not yield to logic and deduction.

Many of today’s problems are Clouds.

They are complex because they’re made up of myriad interconnected parts.

These interdependent relationships are difficult to grasp – like the weather, an eco-system, or a human organisation.

Complex problems, when they involve people, are adaptive.

As people learn they change, and then what appeared to work yesterday may not work today.

Complex problems require creativity and innovation, and diverse groups are the

best source of these.

As Charles Leadbeater says in “We-Think”:

“In reality, creativity has always been a highly collaborative, cumulative and social activity in which people with different skills, points of view and insight share and develop ideas together.”

In researching complex systems, Scott Page found that:

“groups made up of many people who think in different ways can

trump groups of people who are very bright

but alike.”

Complex problems are more easily understood and resolved when they are looked at from many vantage points.

The more people looking, the better the diversity of skills and experience.

Alan Kay, an "imagineer" at Disney, said:

"Perspective is worth 80 IQ points."

Complex problems require us to move beyond information and knowledge to access collective intelligence and release our innate wisdom.

Wisdom has to do with intuiting the long-view through understanding systems in the context of their larger whole.

Wisdom is also to do with acting in resonance with what is known to be true and lasting.

Only wisdom can guide effective decisions in how we work with challenging issues in the conditions of what Doug Engelbart calls:

"complexity multiplied by urgency"

In the Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki says:

“Groups do not need to be dominated by exceptionally intelligent people to be smart.

“Even if most of the people within the group are not especially well informed or rational, it can still reach a collectively wise decision.”

Most of the intractable challenges we face today are complex.

The more people we can involve looking at the issues from a range of perspectives, the more likely we are to find wise solutions.

And the people who identify the solutions are more likely to implement them.

Perspectives and Wisdom – 3 Approaches

1. Stacey Diagram

2. Wisdom Council

3. Wilber’s Four Quadrants

Perspective and Wisdom

1. Stacey Diagram

Certainty means the relative level of probability that the outcomes can be predicted

or the cause and effect relationships understood

The degree of agreement in the

group regarding what action should be

taken

Perspective and Wisdom

1. Stacey Diagram

Perspective and Wisdom

1. Stacey Diagram

Perspective and Wisdom

1. Stacey Diagram

Perspective and Wisdom

1. Stacey Diagram

Co-operation

Co-ordination

Collaboration

Perspective and Wisdom

2. Wisdom Council

It is a way to resolve complex challenges by looking from eight perspectives that encompass the total system and make up a sequence of wholeness.

A Wisdom Council is an old form of participative democracy.

www.mutualinspiration.co.uk/WisdomCouncil/

Beliefs Behaviour

Culture Structures

Inner Outer

“I”

“We”

Perspective and Wisdom

3. Wilber’s 4 Quadrants

Knowledge Café

What is needed to improve personal Wellbeing?

Beliefs Behaviour

Culture Structures

Inner Outer

“I”

“We”

“If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works,

the first thing you have on your hands is a

non-working cat.”Douglas Adams

mike@mutualinspiration.co.uk