Are we seeing the world, or just the blood vessels in our eye

Are we seeing the world, or just the blood vessels in our eye? Reflections on how to make good change https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_complexity-activity-7350828625828429826-TQdG Ultimately, if a model stops inviting inquiry and demands our loyalty, whose agenda is it truly serving?

Are we seeing the world, or just the blood vessels in our eye?

It’s often talk of #complexity which conceals dogmas. ‘Acceptance’ of messy, emergent change lives side-by-side with real-life discomfort.

The easy solution? A model which talks of complexity, but reflects our own assumptions back to us. We advocate nuance, but reward the simplest narratives.

Just like the stargazer seeing his own blood vessels, some frameworks merely reflect our own thinking back at us as ‘fresh insight’. A model that only validates questions we already wanted answered is just a mirror.

But that’s a psychological answer– easy to dismiss– especially if you have a playbook to sell.

At the heart of my work is the question: how can we change things for the better?

> Outcome-based approaches– declaring how people should behave– or claiming that we already do– will be gamed.

> The model ‘paradigms-beliefs-thinking-behaviour-outcomes’ is horribly simplistic, and depends on ‘making people be wrong’– partly true, almost wholly unhelpful.

Telling people you have a better approach, making them feel incompetent, and then having them follow you– well, that’s gooroo behaviour, not shared learning.

Heinz von Foerster said: “All theories are correct in the sense of the questions they allow us to ask.” Every framework is simply a lens focusing certain questions and dimming others.

There are at least four other ways to change:

1) create temporary conditions– suspend ‘ordinary rules’, and have people behave directly. This can be powerful, particularly if you enable people to approach with curiosity– to learn. But beware of taking the fish out of the dirty tank for their periodic cleaning!

2) change day-to-day conditions– the constraints and enablers– that shape the system. This is great, if you have the power/authority/opportunity– and if the changes are not reverted by thinking, behaviours, or practice.

3) turn the implicit explicit by objectifying what we do, why, and the implications of this – allow people to explicitly reflect and change. Great, if amenable to surfacing and explicit change.

4) implement practices that build some of the above into the way things are done– this works well, but only if the practices really work and there’s underlying good intent. May need fixed constraints to be shifted ‘just enough’ by other approaches.

What is needed is all four change approaches in the right dose at the right time, based on the context: changing behaviour triggers; focusing on learning experiences; making the undiscussable discussable. And providing the tools to learn from the reflection in the telescope about both your own vision and the system being observed.

(Then, somewhere along the way, some people might become skilled at reflecting on their perceptions and behaviours, and helping others to do so).

Ultimately, if a model stops inviting inquiry and demands our loyalty, whose agenda is it truly serving?