A problem can be defined as a mismatch between what we expect and what actually happens in our lives. As we come to identify problems we find that our problems are often linked to an expectation we have imposed on our surroundings. To take this definition further a problem is better thought of as being an expectation that we have that does not match what we presently experience. This means our present experience is defined by our expectations. Reality, is often not what we would like it to be.
Expectations: What are they?
An often easy out for us to say something like: just don’t have any expectations. Unfortunately this is not possible. An expectation is a desire for something you want to come to pass in your own life. That desire, is as much you, as you are you. Most of the time you don’t even realise that expectation is there until the heat of the day (circumstances) reveals it. Expectations are deep down desires that I think need to be cultivated, not ignored. In some circumstances, your expectations need to shift or be changed because some of them are poisonous. Ultimately, the problem you perceive is tied to some kind of expectation you have in your life. Now, we can take our definition of what a problem is even further. A problem is an expectation or desire that has does not match what we expect reality to be. The problem does not lie in reality as such, it lies in causal structures we have mapped over reality. Here’s an example.
The man and the flat tyre parable
There was as man who was driving home from work on a rainy afternoon when suddenly his tyre blew out. Angry at the situation the man slowly edges over to the curb and gets out to assess his problem. He studies his problem and doesn’t see the 18 wheeler approaching from behind. He is hit and killed. Now his problem no longer exists. Why? Because he is dead. Problems are perspectives on events that are tied to deep rooted expectations of what we take things to be. Here is another one.
The stock market problem
The CEO of SuperCompany Inc. (sorry burned out at the moment couldn’t think of a snazzier name), walks into his office one morning to a frantic Chief Financial Officer. He says to the lady, ‘My God Chloe, wants the matter, you look like crap?’ The CFO hands the CEO a piece of paper with a media report that the company is going bankrupt due to bad investments in Australian wheat. The CEO takes one look at the piece of paper and throws it in the bin. The CFO is amazed. ‘Why did you do that,’ she asks. He looks back at her and says, ‘That’s not my problem,’ he says, ‘my problem is that we are going bankrupt and you had to tell me via a media report!’
In this example we can see that neither the CEO or CFO were aware of the problem until it was created for them to believe. These are boundary judgments. Those ideas which we create that form rules and expectations of what we think is the case. In this case the company didn’t think it was going bankrupt. How much of what you hear is ‘actually’ the case? There is a reality and you can be sure it will impact on you but it’s a reality of intersecting ideas and thoughts some of which cause great problems (like the internet bubble burst) and some of which cause smaller ones.
Three ways of exploring a problem by changing your mind
There are three ways I know of problem solving by changing your mind. Here we go:
Doing nothing
When we absolve a problem we actually do nothing. There are times when a ‘wait and see’ approach is called for. Say you are building an adwords campaign to boost traffic to your website. You select a bunch of keywords and wait. They come back with a little bit more traffic everyday than the amount you had before. A bit more, a bit more and a bit more. Imagine if you grew impatient? You then start to muck about with keywords and ruin the campaign. In this case you should do nothing, observe and then take action if required.
Invoke dialectical processes
When you begin to examine life from many angles you begin to see just how limiting your point of view is. If you are facing a problem you can’t solve. Begin to play the devil’s advocate. Take the heart of the contradiction and expose it for what it really is. I recommend using at least four contradictory ideas to analyse the situation. Let’s go back to our stockbroker example above. What if he said the CFO, ‘I don’t believe the report because I trust your judgement… are we going bankrupt?’ He could have also taken the dreamers approach, ‘Now that I have read this report, I believe it will turn out for our good.’ In turn he could have taken a mathematical approach, ‘Show the numbers is this true?’ Then again he could have taken the view of a seasoned old veteran, ‘Listen to me, there is no crisis, people invent nonsense like this all the time. Put out a statement saying we are not going bankrupt and quote some numbers. People will believe that over some half-cocked media report.’ In short, take what you think the problem is and look at it’s enemy. By teasing out the enemy you will be able to see the faults in your own thinking.
Creative problem solving
Creative problem solving is the hardest and least likely to succeed in a problem solving intervention. This is when you take a brand new idea that hasn’t been tried which removes the old one completely. In this version you solve the problem by changing the expectation on which it’s framed. What? I mean you take the initial expectation of the problem, the idea that the problem is a problem and you begin to move into a new way of thinking that gets rid of the problem. In essence you change the rules of the expectation by shifting the ideas it’s built upon to a new solution that removes the need for the old one to exist. For example, our friend with the tyre problem had a death problem which is a nasty creative solution to his tyre problem. The tyre is the least of his worries.
When people create a problem it’s built on expectations and perceptions. Problems often revolve around what we think is the case. I know managers who will not make decisions because of fear. Fear stops creativity because it blocks the flow of anything opposed to it. You need to begin to create rather than do what you think you should. A creative solution is a new idea that moves the old out of the way. If a market problem emerges it’s because of perceptions. If there is a climate crisis, we have found that through our man-made data, analysis and conversations. If we find there isn’t… it’s exactly the same process.
When we change our mind about something new solutions begin to emerge. As we learn to shift the perspectives that hold us back we will change our mind and new more creative solutions will spring up.
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Good points Luke. I like what you mentioned..
“when we change our mind about something new solutions begin to emerge. As we learn to shift the perspectives that hold us back we will change our mind and new more creative solutions will spring up.”
Best
Gamy
[...] your problem cannot be solved? What do you do then? In previous articles I have spoken about ‘perspective shifting‘ and the art of solving problems by changing your mind. What I want to share with you today [...]
[...] you solve problems by changing your mind, you are doing various combinations of the things I have already spoken of above. In this way of [...]
I am absolutely charmed by your scientific honesty, sense of humor and profound systems thinking. I guess that the concept of perceiving certain problems like “messy”, you have incorporated from Prof. Russell L. Ackoff, as well as “problem dissolving”. unfortunately lately this is not enough any more. It will be interesting to hear your comments on “Interactive Complexity” counter to “Structural Complexity”, something that Ackoff does not seem to be able to comprehend. Maybe Nassim Taleb in his “The BLACK SWAN” sheds some light to this rather complicated issue with unexpectedly serious and difficult to practically predict consequences.
Hi Michael,
I am a big fan of Ackoff… but I am also a big fan of the complexity guys. I was introduced to Stacey recently (well three years ago) and I really like that idea of complex adaptive processes… especially when it comes to learning… I think he makes an important point. I guess in that sense I am more familiar with the European complexity “strategy” people than the Americans. Though, after what you have written I now have more to look up! I have followed the debate surrounding Ackoff and complexity… I need to look it up to respond with more intelligence!
Thanks for your comment,
Luke
Hi Luke,
I would take the opportunity to wish you a brilliant New Year-2009!
I am really interested in your comments, although I can not precisely specify who exactly do you mean or include as a fan of the “complexity guys”? I have to admit that Stacey,that you quote is not familiar to me and I am truly exited to learn more about his work. What exactly do you understand by and how do you diagnose a complex adaptive process? Is it essentially predictable? Can you specify your assumption that the European complexity “strategy” people(a term I meet,for the first time and sounds a bit vague)seem to differ from their American counterparts? By “Interactive Complexity” I and Russell’s assistant Prof. John Pourdehnad understand, the phenomena close to the “Butterfly Effect”, where apparently insignificant(in the retrospective sense of the word) interactions interactions between minor elements in a holistic system suddenly have a tremendous impact,never observed before and the conventional management instrumentality to deal with the new unknown phenomena turns out to be obsolete. How do we proceed from this point? We don’t want to fit in the witty definition of an economist-”An economist is a person, who if by chance happens to notice that something seems to work in practice picks it up and tries hard to make it work in theory.” How do we learn to recognize patterns and cope with new realities? How do we unlearn, what is obsolete, etc.? Think about these things and how you can justify your existence in these terms of thought and Welcome to our “Club of Non-linear thinkers!” In philosophy it is possible to invent something that does not objectively exist according to our senses! So starting from Churchman’s and Russell’s assumption that “we must be able to make philosophy bake bread!”, can’t we invent a new reality that is to be born and where yesterdays and today’s unpredictable events can be foreseen and adequately handled?
Happy New Year! I think I am understanding what you are saying and where you are coming from. It is very similar to me to another American thinker by the name of Wheatley. You can read her stuff here… http://www.margaretwheatley.com/articles/pleasedisturb.html though I think she is much more about using the concepts of complexity science to understand management issues. Stacey essentially looks to understand how the ideas of complexity science help us to understand strategy. His stuff is really interesting to me as I think it helps to explain the way in which phenomena emerge from very simple starting points or connections: http://www.margaretwheatley.com/articles/pleasedisturb.html. As for recognising patterns I am not sure you can in advance because they are emergent phenomena. Although I would like to think at some point that we could make it work if we wanted to. I am not sure we can but I think through ‘non-linear’ thinking you can create new patterns that can help explain emergent phenomena. One of things I am working on at the moment is to try and understand web traffic and what kind of patterns emerge here. It would interesting as an experiment to see if any of the ideas of interactive complexity (as you call it) could help!
Thanks for the comment… I hope this helps!
Luke
Luke,
I would like to subscribe to your blog but I seem to have problems endlessly filling some numbers in the Feed Burner.Can you kindly arrange things for me, so that i can follow your blog, through official notification?!Please add me to your network! MIKE.
I tried to work it out… let me know if you get an email!
Luke
Michael Yanakiev Says:
Thanks a lot Luke.I received an email subscription link and I think that I am already on your list. At least I received the expected email confirmation. I hope that I didn’t cause too much trouble. It feels so good to be on the list of such an interesting and complex person like you. Please forgive me for insisting but I would like to a quaint myself with the work of Stacey, that you quote. Is it possible to send me a link, the way you did for Wheatley, although from what I managed to monitor, similarity between me and her sounds a bit strong and not exactly precise. Apparently I have to try to explain to you more precisely what I and Johnie(Russ) are doing. Give me a few days and I will deliver. Very briefly we are involved in Trans-Disciplinary Design Thinking. Interactive Complexity started to interest us deeply from the context of “Complex Project Management”, which we are developing as an educational product,about 2 years ago. But as you well know, appetite starts by eating and we started addressing interactive complexity in a broader context and were able to predict the financial and economic crises at a time when nearly nobody was willing to listen(Except Nassim Taleb, Dr. Doom,etc.). Our views on what happened are very similar with the idea of the “Black Swan”, a concept introduced philosophically by Nassim Taleb.In a nutshell our understanding is the following:
Systems Thinking and Interactive Planning
A method of planning that eliminates the need for forecasting, and
substitutes the use of assumptions and contingency planning in its place, because the
ability to forecast and predict is deteriorating at an alarming rate:
1- The society is changing at an accelerating rate, and
2- Complexity is growing at an increasing rate
Assumptions are about possibilities; predictions and forecasts are about
probabilities.
Therefore, any method of planning that is critically dependent on the
accuracy of forecasting is doomed to fail.
Internal Markets, Multi-Dimensional Structure and Planning Boards
Three different design ideas that make an organization to work as a system.
In particular, the three design ideas that enhance and facilitate
interactions among organizational units.
Internal Markets: Large proportion of units in most of organizations are
bureaucratic monopolies supported by allocation of resources from top
management. Their customers do not have the choice of alternative sources. These units
have the following characteristics. Internal market structure mirrors the
success of market economy.
The Circular Organization : Today people are generally the most
underutilized resources in corporations. To capture the underutilized potential of
educated workers, managers must learn to rely less on ???power over??? and more on ???
power to???. The organizational structure and processes of most corporations
preclude effective management of interactions; they are structured for the
supervision of actions. We pursue democracy in the public sphere but accept
autocracy in our corporations. The circular organization is a design for
participative organizational planning. In order for the external as well as internal
stakeholders of an organization to be able to participate in the decision
making process, a structure is needed to institutionalize participation and
organizational learning.
The Multidimensional Organization: The Multidimensional concept of
organization eliminates the needs for reorganization when the relative importance of
the criteria for dividing labor changes:
All three activities, input, output, and market are used at each level of
the organization,
Therefore, changing priorities can be reflected by reallocation of resources
among organizational units without changing the organization??™s structure,
The multidimensional organization structure also makes it easy to add or
subtract units without serious disruption of the organization.
Problem Solving Strategies
There are several problem strategies. Theses include:
1.To absolve — is to ignore a problem and hope it will go away or solve
itself.
2.To resolve — is to select a course of action which yields an outcome
which is good enough, one which “satisfices” the need and objectives of the
system., I.E., Clinical approach.
3.To solve — is to select the course of action that is believed to yield
the best possible outcome, the one that “optimizes.???, I.E.,Research approach.
4.To dissolve — is to change the nature of either the system with the
problem or its environment, so as to, in effect, ???remove the problem.???, I.E.,
Design approach.
Business Model Innovation — Idealized design as an “open innovation” process
In industry after industry, companies with superior performance are
displaying innovation in the totality of the way they are doing business. This
explains why a recent _IBM survey_
(http://www-1.ibm.com/services/us/bcs/html/bcs_ceostudy2006.html) of over 765 CEOs shows: Business Model Innovation is on the
top of their list. In the absence of a single genius entrepreneur/leader,
one of the challenges confronting the businesses today is to develop a process
of ???open innovation,??? that taps into the creativity of the stakeholders and
in particular the employees of the organization to create a successful
business model. Traditional models of innovation, which relied solely on “creative
types,” usually within R&D functions, are being replaced with “open
innovation???. One of the most potent open innovation processes, is idealized design.
Originally conceived as an internal process to facilitate corporate planning,
idealized design thinking is now being used for opportunity recognition.
Transformative Leadership
Radical transformations are seldom easy. For things to happen there is a
need to transform management from the old style, command and control, to the new
style, inspiring leadership. Leadership consists of guiding, encouraging, and
facilitating the pursuit by others of ends using means, both of which they
have personally selected or the selection of which they approve. In this
formulation, leadership requires an ability to bring the will of followers into
consonance with that of the leader so they follow him or her voluntarily, with
enthusiasm and dedication.
Development vs. Growth
Growth and development are not the same thing. Neither is necessary for the
other. Nevertheless, many managers take development to be the same as growth.
Most efforts directed at corporate development are actually directed at
corporate growth. To grow is to increase in size or number. To develop is to
increase one??™s ability and desire to satisfy one??™s own needs and legitimate
desires and those of others. A legitimate desire is one that, when satisfied,
does not impede the development of anyone else. Development of individuals and
corporations is more a matter of learning than earning. It has less to do
with how much one has than how much one can do with whatever one has.
Development is better reflected in quality of life than in standard of
living. Therefore, the level of development of a corporation is better reflected
in the quality of work life it provides its employees than in its
profit-and-loss statement. If an undeveloped country or corporation was flooded with
money it would be richer but no more developed. On the other hand, if a well
developed country or corporation was suddenly deprived of wealth, it would not
be less developed. A well-developed country or corporation can do more with
its resources than one that is less developed. This is not to say that the
amount of resources available is irrelevant. Resources can be used to accelerate
development and improve quality of life, but they can best be used for these
purposes by those who are developed.
Integrative (Synthetic) Project Management (for complex project managers)
Despite significant progress in the development of computer-aided project
management tools to help plan and manage projects, “more often than not capital
projects overrun their budgets, fall behind schedule, and fail to meet their
business objectives.” This apparent paradox stems from the nature of the
“traditional paradigm applied to project management, which relies on existing
knowledge – knowledge gained from studying traditional approaches.”
The current approach has limitations. Generally, it is good for doing
projects in a stable environment. The problem with project performance is
paradigmatic, i.e. using a wrong mindset. The new approach requires the project
managers to mange the interaction of the parts of the project rather than managing
each part separately.
Recreating Capital Projects
Effective capital project management is an important discipline for
international bodies, governments, and corporations because capital projects
typically require large investments and involve significant potential benefits and
risks. A large number of project management techniques and tools have been
developed but this proliferation has not led to great project success. In fact,
the governmental project that meets or exceeds expectations seems almost the
exception rather than the rule. Large corporations do not seem to be doing much
better. Using systems thinking to show how the capital project can be
re-created and improved through integrating successful aspects of various
real-world projects within a systemic framework to develop an improved project
system.
Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management (including the use of
channels and platforms To tap into the rich tacit knowledge (knowledge that
resides in people??™s heads)
Why do corporations, on average, have shorter life spans than the people who
populate them? Because, say the theorists, people are more capable of
learning from experience than are corporations.
With change the only constant in today’s economy, the key to competitiveness
is the ability to adapt to changes we can’t control and to learn about the
ones we can control. The decline of some well-established firms and the
diminishing competitive power of others have made learning an essential competence
for organizational success.
Organizational learning (OL) is the set of processes and structures that
help people create new knowledge, share their understanding, and continuously
improve themselves and the results of the enterprise. OL builds competencies
for supporting transformation throughout the organizational system. Most
important, it considers human, operational, and technical issues at work,
including ways to build processes and structures that deal with philosophical,
psychological, and sociological forces at play in every organization.
???Building Corporate ???Black Boxes??™: A Different Perspective on.
Organizational
Learning.???
Most of us are familiar with the role of ???black boxes??? as they exist in
aircraft. We know that they are there to help us learn from mistakes and
thereby improve the performance of aircraft and the aviation system as a whole.
Imagine what would happen if the aviation system did not learn and adapt to
changes quickly and efficiently. Unfortunately, this is the case with most
organizations. Nevertheless, a number of corporations have successfully built
learning and adaptive systems.
Unlearning/Learning Organizations ??“ The Role of Mindset
Most learning by adults and organizations occurs when something new replaces
in the
mind that which was previously thought to be known, that is, unlearning.
Unlearning
must frequently precede or at least occur simultaneously with learning.
Nevertheless, the
literature on organizational learning has virtually ignored the unlearning
process until
recently when few authors have given it some attention. Research in the
field of
organizational learning and knowledge management shows that learning and
adaptation
takes place much more easily within the prevailing mindset (view of the
world) than
outside of it.
Unlearning is a challenge because the human tendency to preserve a
particular view of
the world is very strong and the change to a new paradigm not only requires
an ultimate
act of learning but also of unlearning.
Our assumptions about the nature of reality can impose the most severe
restrictions on
our ability to learn. Unlearning these assumptions requires raising them to
consciousness
and this can occur only when we confront the dilemmas that they create.
Therefore,
raising our worldview to consciousness is among the most important things we
can do to
enhance our learning and unlearning. It is possible to design systems that
not only facilitate learning and unlearning within the prevailing worldview
but it can generate questions about the adequacy of the assumptions that make
up that concept of reality.
Michael,
That’s for the response. Especially what you said about being on my list. It’s so nice when people leave comments that are encouraging… especially at a time when things are down for me! Good on you you made my day. Here is a more comprehensive link on Stacey: http://www.new-paradigm.co.uk/complexity.htm
You predicted the crisis that’s interesting. I have found that I have intuitive sense of being able to predict things like that as well. I predicted the current housing and rental crisis (In Australia at least… where things are slightly different) and was lucky enough to predict downturns in various industries but HAVE NO IDEA how I did it!
I am not sure what’s happening here but my phd was basically a case study on how changing consciousness (or concept[ual] frame as my supervisor called it) leads to new ways of seeing problems. Put simply, I used a model based on synthesis that sought to understand how when new concepts come and a new consciousness emerges we can begin to frame problems differently. I called it “concept shifting” or “perspective shifting” a term my phd supervisor Mike Metcalfe applied to my work. I did two case studies (empirics being what they are in research projects) one on aid organisation and one on an organisation that was in government. In short, I found that synthesis is a requirement of concept shifting and this means that new perspectives are required in messy problems in order to progress. We knew that already courtesy of ackoff’s work but my work put it into a practical process. Which I only realised six months after I got my phd!
If you want to contact me more directly I have an email address: houghtonic[at]gmail dot com or luke[at]lukehoughton dot com I would love to help out with the project if I can or even if you want me to. It sounds very interesting.
Luke
Clearly I’m out of my league here, guys. But I have a pretty unerring instinct for the difference between good sense and bullshit. And my “good sense” antennae are waving wildly. Well, I’d just like to throw a couple of thoughts into the arena. 1. The idea of a project is a faulty mindset when, as is generally the case, it is a nexus of conflicting objectives (achieving objectives while conserving resources being an almost universal conflict). 2. A better idea is a complex objective function, the most obvious example of which is the law of diminishing returns… but dealing with more than two objectives simultaneously proves difficult in practice. 3. The most useful ideas I have encountered in this arena are those of Tom Gilb (www.gilb.com). He is no academic and there is a lack of sophistication and rigour in what he says… But he’s worth paying attention to. 4. The organisation as a concept is a special case of the project (or vice versa) ditto an economy…discuss. 5. Budgets cause overruns, of course… they also cause projects… but the net effect of managing budgets is overwhelmingly negative…
Thank you both for sharing your thinking.
Some interesting fuel for thought. I am reading that site. I think good ideas are good ideas… if you know what I mean. I am seriously disfranchised with the academic world at the moment… most of it seems to be the “paper is too long (haha!)” or that you can’t do this or that. In my short life I have never come up against a commitment to a lack of innovation as much as I have in universities. It’s stifling, frustrating and very confusing given that intellectual innovation SHOULD be an endeavor worth pursuing. As a matter of fact one of my goals this year to look around and see what I can learn about ideas and begin to test them out a bit more. I am bored with them and I am bored with the rest of the issues that come with it. Ok mini rant over and now to your comment!
You remind me of a friend of mine who is retired army person (Major?) from the British army. He often said that projects were impossible in organisations because the real agendas and reasons where hidden… and the ensuing witchhunt (read: “failure”) was a better way of uncovering objectives! There is another guy who is also a consultant… he is Jeff Conklin. He wrote a book on this about using information systems to structure complex decision making called: Dialogue Mapping. I found it to be very interesting. He talks about how projects often those their goals because of social complexity (hidden motives, political agendas etc etc etc). Interesting thoughts… I have come to realise that most decisions are made for reasons that beyond of level of competence/understanding!
Thanks Alan!
Luke, it seems I may have said something that Tom might find offensive. For his ideas are rigorously explored and as sophisticated as he has found it necessary or possible to make them. They are, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me saying, the work of an engineer rather than a physicist; practical with a solid enough theoretical foundation, but (and this is what I was driving at) lacking the dead weight of academic authority for the blindingly obvious, or elaboration into more rarefied intellectual posturing. I know Tom is a big man with a big heart and I trust he will forgive me my ill-considered words.
It is a point well made and your intentions are fairly clear. You always have something interesting to say!
Hey. I got a 502 gateway error earlier today when I tried to access this page. Anyone else had the problem?