Coping With Complexity

saraswati, hindu goddess of knowledge, creativity and openness (image online, uncredited)

Some recent comments from readers of my First Principles post led me to revisit one of the first posts I wrote on this blog, nearly seven years ago. It was about a seven-step process for coping with a new situation that Cyndy Roy and I co-developed. Here’s an excerpt:

Sense, Self-control, Understand, Question, Imagine, Offer, Collaborate

We developed this before I started reading and writing about complexity theory, but it occurs to me that this is really a practice (can’t really call it a methodology) for coping with complexity — with situations that have no simple (put the lights on a timer) or merely complicated (include a torque converter in your electric bicycle conversion kit, and make sure you true the wheels before riding). In complex situations, there is no ‘right answer’ — there are too many variables, no clear cause-effect relationships (if you do X, you may or may not get result Y), and no way of predicting what will happen. Most of the ‘problems’ we face are not (complicated) problems (with ‘solutions’) but rather (complex) predicaments that we have to adapt ourselves to.

It seems to me that wild creatures (and perhaps Buddhists) appreciate this, and they appear to use these seven steps to cope with situations over which they (and we) have no real control. I think we would be wise to do likewise. Here’s how these seven steps differ from the normal ‘problem-solution’ process we use in merely complicated situations. As you review them, think about a specific complex situation: Example: Resolving a non-trivial conflict between two people you respect and who both have valid points that cannot be reconciled:

1. Sense: Pay attention to everything that is happening. Don’t try to identify the ‘problem’, or the ’cause’ or the obvious ‘solution’ because in complex situations there are none of these. If we think we see a cause or solution, we’re probably over-simplifying and we will be prone to making erroneous decisions.
2. Self-control: Become aware of your own subjectivity, biases, feelings, and predispositions. Know yourself, and appreciate that you are not separate from this situation or from others trying to cope with it. You are a part of the system and hence of the predicament. You cannot control it (though you probably wish you could and my want to try to); you can only control yourself, and your reaction to it. Appreciate that the situation is a predicament, that you and others need to accommodate and adapt to, not a ‘problem’ that needs to be ‘fixed’. Lower your own and others’ expectations that there are magical or simple ‘answers’ to this situation.
3. Understand: Appreciate that things are the way they are for a reason, and that there’s a reason that this predicament has no simple (or complicated) ‘solution’. Appreciate the situation, and the different knowledge, ideas and perspectives that people have in regard to it. Appreciate not just the ‘intellectual’ content of the situation but also the emotions at play. Sympathize with what and how people feel and understand why they feel that way. Let your senses and intuition inform your understanding.
4. Question: Use questions, of yourself and of others, to explore and deepen your appreciation, and that of others, of the situation. Don’t proffer answers or quick fixes, because if there were a quick fix it would already have occurred to someone and have been done. Ask questions that are not judgemental but which are probing, challenging, and which push past unacknowledged biases or assumptions.
5. Imagine: Surface approaches and possibilities that others have not thought of, and encourage and facilitate others to do so, collaboratively. Hold these approaches and possibilities open. Find different ways to look at the situation. Think about how nature copes with analogous situations and challenges. Hold the creative tension between what is imaginable and what is practicable, by encouraging both creative and critical thinking.
6. Offer: Be generous. Be the first to offer something of value — your time, resources, willingness to talk with others or do research. Give and incite others to give likewise, following your example, your intention. Take responsibility.
7. Collaborate: While there are certain actions that each person will, as a result of the understanding and appreciation they have achieved through this process, do personally, take personal responsibility for, some of the most powerful actions that can come from this practice are collective, collaborative. In collaboration, you do what you do best, and show others what you do, and by watching others you learn from them too. And the collective product is a give and take, a weaving, an adaptation to each other as well as the predicament you are working to address, to adapt yourselves to. Collaboration can produce, unexpectedly and unpredictably, results that outshine what any individual, no matter how brilliant or competent, could ever do alone.

This seven-step practice was itself a collaboration with Cyndy, and despite all I have learned since we developed it, I can’t see how to improve on it, which shows, I think, the value of collaboration.

To remember the seven steps, I created a simple set of hand movements: open and receiving (sense), fingers together contemplatively (self-control), forefingers pointed up in aha! style (understand), left hand open in a receiving gesture (question), fingers  of right hand to temple (imagine), right hand open in giving gesture (offer), hands clasped supportively together (collaborate). Much better than an acronym.

It is a practice, and as such it takes practice, but it seems to work.