Hi -

Thanks for the hilarious "A brief aside on illegitimate approaches."

Ironically, if I was so naive to partition this way it would be precisely the opposite! On the contrary, data are chaotic and wisdom is simple.

Wow. People work so hard to know so little.

-j

The statements "Boundaries are necessary for human sense-making" and "We are not good with gradients" are you-say-potato-I-say-potato statements. I work better with gradients than boundaries, myself, and I'm human, last I checked. Even as a child when people asked me did I like this or that I said "I like this one 80% better than that one today" or "I'm 66% sure of that" or some such gradient. And I've met many another who shared the same preference. It takes all kinds, so maybe it takes all kinds of approaches.

What I don't like about boundaries, whether they are preset or created during sensemaking, is that it seems like the moment people have boundaries (even if they just created them) they start building them up higher and higher and hiding behind them. I'm okay with boundaries if people can work with AND without them as the need and context arise. But most of the time that's not what I see. What I see is people clinging to boundaries to avoid thinking through difficult things, and that's dangerous.

We had this same conversation years ago! But both views are still relevant and worth bringing out. If you want to say that SOME people are not good with gradients, and that boundaries are necessary for SOME people and in SOME contexts and for SOME purposes, I'm all with you. You can go to town with that.

You're right that it's one of those fertile conversations we kept coming back to (and which I miss). I think it started when John and Wendy organised a discussion group in Hawthorn about an earlier statement I made, towit that a paranoid attention to boundaries was key in decision making.

I'm prepared to qualify it as "In organisations boundaries are necessary ...." and to defend that position which means I am creating a context. Remember also that the whole idea of emergent boundaries in Cynefin is to ensure that the boundaries used are contextualised from day one.

The danger with boundaries is when people use them to exclude "the other", to live within boundaries rather than to transcend them. The point of the Cynefin model is to allow people to live on both sides of the boundaries and to behave appropriately depending on context. I get as worried by people who argue that everything is complex as I do my people who can only live in order. The trouble with a gradient (in that context) is that people will naturally gravitate to their comfort zone.

Remember the work we did on defining different types of boundary to overcome the "building them higher"; I'll be coming to that in the next post in the series. Critically if people cross boundaries on a regular basis, then we can mitigate wall building.

It's also the case that we need to be very cautious about individual capability. You remain about the only person who I have met who can make grounded theory near objective, but I would not build a research approach or a decision support framework which assumed the presence of that ability without validation.

If I was the only person who could make grounded theory near objective, grounded theory would not exist. And people HAVE built research approaches on it, which are certainly not ALL invalid, though some are (but that's true for any approach). I agree that we need to "be very cautious about individual capability" -- the ability to "live on both sides of the boundaries and to behave appropriately depending on context" may be similarly limited to few who can pull that off -- perhaps to you alone. You've always dragged out that "you are the only person who thinks like you in the whole world" argument but I didn't buy it then and I don't buy it now -- my experiences with too many people have proved it to be a simplistic dismissal of neurological diversity.

Boundaries and gradients are BOTH necessary in organizations. I also don't believe that gradients cause people to "naturally gravitate to their comfort zone" -- at least I've never seen it happen any more than with bounded regions. Maybe they cause SOME people to gravitate to a comfort zone, in SOME contexts, at SOME times. But I usually find the reverse happens to me: gradients free my mind to swim about the whole space and think more clearly, while boundaries tend to "box off" areas that I would otherwise enter freely. My feeling is that some people think more naturally with gradients and some think more naturally with bounded regions. The most sophisticated development of sensemaking skill is to work on operating with maximum effectiveness in BOTH environments when the context calls for them. People comfortable with gradients should improve their skill with bounded regions and vice versa. But making blanket statements about how "humans" think is not useful to ANY of us. I'm reminded of that every time I get yet another bruise from an object designed only for right-handed people. We don't all need to think the same way, and we don't all need to use frameworks and techniques in the same way. We'll be much more effective if we don't try to.

Nasrudin found a weary falcon sitting one day on his window-sill. He had never seen a bird like this before. "You poor thing", he said, "how ever were you to allowed to get into this state?" He clipped the falcon's talons and cut its beak straight, and trimmed its feathers. "Now you look more like a bird," said Nasrudin.

Boundaries: Every system has a boundary. It may be porous, and indeed a complex system must have "ports" or "dendrites" to interact with the environment. Context is a function of boundaries. Personally I do not like gradients, because soon everything is relative (and nothing has position then) and when that happens anything goes and I do not get closer to solutions either. With ports and dendrites there is no crossing of boundaries, it is what helps the system interact and it can be truncated or extended or narrowed or widened in specific ways to allow for the process of experimentation, which is also core to sense-making.
This remains an important discussion, because today I will be facing a typical situation where a client is unable to write a requirement for his socio-technical "system", because of fear of leaving something out.
I'll listen out for feedback here.
Jan

Well I am going to tackle the question of boundaries in a blog later today, but I am going to stick to my position that boundaries are critical. I'd argue it from a science base as well, if you look at the way language has developed or many aspects of cognition require us to make distinctions. Given that I think there is more potential to work with types of boundaries (see today's blog). So I with Jan here.

Now to qualify this, and to come back to something we share which is a preference for baths over showers. There are times when you need to remove boundaries or constraints to allow fluid interactions for exploration of new space and ideas. In Cynefin terms that means shifting to fully unconstrained or partially constrained domains of unorder. Gradient models have utility for exploration but they are poor when it comes to exploitation

Its also unfair to represent that position as saying that everyone should think the same which is simply not true, in fact diversity of perspective is key for problem solving. However diversity of thinking is not the opposite of the value of boundaries - apples and pears. I am also being very careful to make statements about organisational interventions rather than focusing on the individual. Mind you that is another difference we have talked about in the past, you come from a culture and education system which emphasises the individual while mine is communitarian in nature.

As to grounded research, I'm sticking to my guns here. I have heard a lot of people claim to use this approach to avoid cultural and cognitive bias. You are still the only person I have met (and I have met a lot) who gets anywhere close. I am sure there are other people, but I wouldn't predicate a decision support system on such an ability being naturally present, or being capable of generation by training.

I know this is getting a bit old now - since we are up to part 6. But can anyone give me some sources for the concepts of "gradient" used here and whether or not we are good at that sort of thing. I naturally read gradient differently and I'm obviously not thinking of the term as it is used in cognitive science. I saw it as our abilities to see changes that would enable us to see us approaching boundaries or leaving them. Our sensitivity to noticing (either naturally or by use of sensemaking artefacts). This type of gradient (the meaning I take from vector calculus, which is probably why I read it incorrectly) seems important to me. Like a sensitivity analysis around boundaries. Is this a valid idea?

Great series of blogs!

To add to the talk regarding distinction and boundary, and reiterate a great Buddhist story:

Distinction, boundary, the self, organization, pattern... should be thought of like a raft in a river... use it to cross the river... but then abandon it on the shores as you continue on.

The problem which I believe Cynthia highlighted, is that humans tend to want to perpetuate the need to reside within the raft on the river (secure symbolic social constructs / boundaries) as long as possible... creating pressure against the ever changing reality. The longer you stay in the raft, the harder and more catastrophic it will be to get out.

This contemplation of permanence, and meditation of security is what Buddhists believe suffering arises from.

I think CAS theorists need to take some harder looks into Buddhist principles as well as Quantum Physics and the research Noetics is doing in regards to Quantum Consciousness, also "social entropy" (and vice versa)... it may just be me, but they are all saying the same thing in a different language.

Problems arise when the world moves on while select pockets of population are still holding on to a particular past, projecting it into the present and future as if it still exists...

So this is why I would advocate that social construction and alignment of distinction and boundary between individuals can be valuable, as well as be exploited... it can never and will never last though, and the resulting problems almost always has to do with DECONSTRUCTION of the previous culture, in order to be able to move forward.

I havent once heard someone talk about DECONSTRUCTING previous constructs, moving to a shared state of discombobulation, and then "ordering" yourselves out of it, utilizing some of the more pattern amplication and dampening techniques... end in a place completeable unknowable and unpredictable beforehand, but contextually relevant to the dominant patterns and emergent identities reacting (to borrow from Mary Douglas quote).

Bottomline, the only which allow distinction to have value in human society is assumption on the part of the individuals in regards to everyone else still having the same distinction in the same way... allowing exploitation to occur. It is a mutual investment in shared constructs, but is self-fulfilling not something evident in the system independent of the individuals.

Another great area of study is on noun-based languages vs. verb-based languages. Individuals from noun-based languages tend to grasp at the self, grasp at distinction, etc... leading to suffering regarding fairness, ownership, change, etc... Complexity Theory as well as CAS and many others are using another language to deal with this same problem... each offers great insight to the other.

Great series of blogs!

To add to the talk regarding distinction and boundary, and reiterate a great Buddhist story:

Distinction, boundary, the self, organization, pattern... should be thought of like a raft in a river... use it to cross the river... but then abandon it on the shores as you continue on.

The problem which I believe Cynthia highlighted, is that humans tend to want to perpetuate the need to reside within the raft on the river (secure symbolic social constructs / boundaries) as long as possible... creating pressure against the ever changing reality. The longer you stay in the raft, the harder and more catastrophic it will be to get out.

This contemplation of permanence, and meditation of security is what Buddhists believe suffering arises from.

CAS theory I think would benefit by looking more into Buddhist principles as well as Quantum Physics and the research Noetics is doing in regards to Quantum Consciousness, also "social entropy" (and vice versa)... it may just be me, but they are all saying the same thing in a different language.

Problems arise when the world moves on while select pockets of population are still holding on to a particular past, projecting it into the present and future as if it still exists...

So this is why I would advocate that social construction and alignment of distinction and boundary between individuals can be valuable, as well as be exploited... it can never and will never last though, and the resulting problems almost always has to do with DECONSTRUCTION of the previous culture, in order to be able to move forward.

I havent once heard someone talk about DECONSTRUCTING previous constructs, moving to a shared state of discombobulation, and then "ordering" yourselves out of it, utilizing some of the more pattern amplication and dampening techniques... end in a place completeable unknowable and unpredictable beforehand, but contextually relevant to the dominant patterns and emergent identities reacting (to borrow from Mary Douglas quote).

Bottomline, the only which allow distinction to have value in human society is assumption on the part of the individuals in regards to everyone else still having the same distinction in the same way... allowing exploitation to occur. It is a mutual investment in shared constructs, but is self-fulfilling not something evident in the system independent of the individuals.

Another great area of study is on noun-based languages vs. verb-based languages. Individuals from noun-based languages tend to grasp at the self, grasp at distinction, etc... leading to suffering regarding fairness, ownership, change, etc... Complexity Theory as well as CAS and many others are using another language to deal with this same problem I believe... each offers great insight to the other.

Peter - I'll pick up on the gradient point in my final post tomorrow

Mark, some quick points:

• I like the raft story, and I think I have emphasised (but will do so again) that boundaries are useful when they enable us to move between domains (and behave differently on either side), but if they allow us to stay in one place they are a mistake
• I'm happy to agree that religions that accept non-causal systems (Taoism, Buddism, some strands of Catholic thinking) have a hge amount to offer complexity thinking if we don't get too new age about it. A lot of western people for example interpret guru in the context of a western understanding of leader and that leads to cults.
• I'm more interested in the ideas of distributed consciousness which are coming from cognitive science, less sure of Noetic theory which I regard with distrust, it has aspects of new agism that worry me (including Dan Brown's involvement) and to be honest I think Bruno and Leibniz would laugh modern advocates out of court. Nous on the other hand is interesting.
• People live in an evolutionary stream of consciousness and pockets of the population will always move on at different rates. Deconstructionism is a cute idea, the trouble is who does the deconstruction? I know a few post-modernism narrative workers (Boje is a good example) whose application of the technique is in my view deeply ideological and gives far too much power to the analyst.
• We've had the individual v collective debate before and I haven't moved my position
• In language the big distinction is between the context focused pictorial languages and object focused ones like English. There are known cognitive and scanning differences between those two groups that are interesting. There are also differences between cultures that tend to categorise and those who use relationships. Using verbs now nouns in linguistic analysis produces good results. None of that implies that there are noun based and verb based languages. One can only exist with the other and vice versa.

@PeterStanbridge: Others will jump in on this, but my take on the gradient vs. distinction is something I relate back to my use of noun- vs. verb- based languages, evident in the cultural switch in human history from nomadic to agricultural existence.

The tough part I have regarding distinction is convincing people that it is something evident in people's mind, but not a characteristic of the system. Such as a hurricane being a problem to New Orleans, or cities along the coast and rising tides, because people chose to live there in one place over time... whereas nomadic tribes would move on as the context suggested. So it becomes a self-fulfilling notion of security, which over time, normally only a few generations, we get a sense of entitlement and start blaming the system.

So when someone says that they are more gradient, I feel they are more flowing than rigid.

When Snowden refers to people being more distinct, I would agree that the tendency is towards this (pattern entrainment). This is why the hardest thing can be to abandon patterns that once gave you security.

So yes, boundaries are necessary for human sense-making, and I believe that is because sense-making is a self-fulfilling endeavour, which many tiems ends up being confused with "knowledge" (objective) of the system, rather than a reflection of your relation and agitation with said phenomena.

Interesting discussion. There is a great danger in codifying (establishing boundaries) to an extent that permits people to put aside personal capacity to think and focus more on the rule than its underlying purpose. This is painfully visible in many rights sensitive societies where individual cases (which rarely fit the normative model) are judged against the purported norm instead of within their unique context, guided by that ideal boundary.

Is the definition of boundaries necessary? Of course. Is that sufficient to ensure effective navigation in the challenges of organizational (societal) living? Hardly.

Gradients, as referred to here, seem to me to be about nuanced understanding, a reflective and (one hopes) self-aware grasp of variables. For me, the comfort zone varies with context. I do not really have a comfort zone (perhaps I am uncomfortable generally as I see each engagement, whatever the construct, to be fraught with opportunity and risk).

To me, a boundary provides a mechanism for navigation, a guideline that should be within reach, but not held onto as that impedes progress and restricts learning.

Gradients do not imply relativism. And while context does indicate a frame or boundary within which context can be understood, the problem with boundaries is that the ones applied are sometimes not the ones that shape the actual context of a case. The ones applied are a separate construct representing an ideal (or reacting to a perception) that may not recognize the reality of a given situation.

Mark, I think you've hit on something with reference to Buddhism. As a tangential thought in terms of putting theory into practice in child rearing, we do our best to spare our children suffering. Success means that children may not develop attributes that make them worth knowing.

I'm interested in how theory is lived out in reality. What happens around the water cooler, the dinner table, in the performance review and policy decision to provide or reduce services. Theory is a boundary. Action is gradient.

I was generally in agreement John but the last phrase puzzled me. Theory is theory, it can be a boundary but it can also break them and lead to action. Gradients are gradients, they may lead to inaction.

Surely a boundary is just a long steep gradient?

Ok, forgive me for being ignorant. But I don't get it.

I now understand the constraints in this process are:

- 4 points for extreme narratives
- Their spatial positioning
- The need for domains and boundaries

It seems obvious that, whatever the people do, the result will be the familiar picture of the Cynefin framework.

How is this emergence?

Allow me to quote from Stacey:

"This amounts to a negation of self-organization and emergence. If managers are choosing what “emerges,” then it is not emerging. If they have a blue-print guiding self-organization then it is not self-organization – that is, it is not agents acting purely on the basis of their own local organizing principles, but rather on the basis of simple rules chosen for them."

Note that I don't question the Cynefin framework here. It seems like a great model. I just wonder why you say that it is "emerging" from the data. Because I think it doesn't. It's already there.

The key point is that the boundaries emerge from the data and are defined by the narratives of the group. As in all complex systems some constraint is necessary, the only constraints in this case are the domain definitions. So Cynefin does not emerge as Cynefin each time, but the boundaries of Cynefin emerge.

Ralph confuses self-organisation with emergence and fails to account for constraints, its too ideological a position

Thanks for the reply. I'm still not entirely sure about the emergence of the boundaries. An alternative explanation seems to me that the placement of the narratives emerges, not the boundaries. Because the boundaries are depicted the same in every picture.

But I'll need to think about it for a while. Perhaps I'm just wondering, not so much questioning...

OK will leave you to think. The boundary structure is a constraint, its definition is emergent.

Re "The boundaries are drawn around those items which are unambiguously in one of the four states described in step 1 above. We can now see disorder, and as illustrated, it is normally a very large domain at this stage. Our objective is to reduce disorder to allow an authentic and ontologically aware decision making process so we move onto the next stage."

I think "disorder" is an unfortunate choice of words. This zone might be better labelled "uncertainty", because it is in the middle of four extremes whose exemplars have been identified

The trouble with uncertainty is that a complex system is by its nature uncertain. I played with ideas around inauthentic at one point and that is still the more accurate word and links to Satre's concept of bad faith as well as false consciousness. The trouble is you can't assume people will understand the history of such terms.

Always interested in ideas for it though, its still not satisfactory