Meeting the challenges of complexity: a neurophysiological perspective
A dynamic, adaptive organisation is a place in which people engage in joyous, meaningful work together. These two things — dynamism / adaptivity & joyous, meaningful work together — are not separate things that can coexist, but two facets of the same thing. A dynamic, adaptive organisation is people engaged in joyous, meaningful work together.
Unfortunately the ways of working that many of us are familiar with inadvertently stifle the emergence of opportunities for joyous, meaningful work together. The outcome is that many of us are left disengaged from our work and our organisation can change only by design and management diktat.
Let’s take a real example of a middle-manager in a large software firm:
She joined a meeting that brought a group of peers from across the organisation together to try to resolve a problem in the way that different departments were working together. It was a highly charged topic, but the group was slowly finding a way to feel safe enough to socially engage with each other. As they all became more confident in their ability to say what they felt needed to be said, and hear what needed to be heard, more energy began to emerge and they began to creatively explore the situation.
In this creative exploration of the problem, underpinned by a collective sense of safety, things were said that hadn’t been said before. The conversation was beginning to move beyond simply repeating familiar things. Something new was emerging and the group were learning together.
Unfortunately this level of safety was eroded as the conversation progressed and opinions were expressed in emotional and heated ways. The productive conversation couldn’t be sustained and typical ways of working again became the order of the day. As the time ticked by, the pressure to close the meeting with “tangible” outcome increased. The creative exploration of the problem concluded before it was fully understood and the group moved to the next agenda item as outlined in the meeting schedule . The actions they came up with were familiar: change process, create a new role, deliver training.
The opportunity to learn something previously unknown had passed, restricting change to that which is designed in advance and imposed from outside.
Let’s take a deeper look at what was really going on and perhaps find an alternative way of working together in which each of us feels more connected and generates better outcomes for the business.
What is really going on?
Viewed as a whole, an organisation is a group of people bound together in relationships and patterns of dialogue that in totality can be viewed as a network. A network is the optimal organisational structure for working in complex environments, because it can be dynamic and adaptive in a way that a formal hierarchy can’t. In a network, individuals and teams are continuously making decisions about who to connect to and how to engage. The sum of these decisions is the network, which is not a fixed thing but an ever-forming and reforming set of interactions. It is a living process.
The network has a structure and the relationship between it and various aspects of organisational performance is a hot topic fuelled by an increasingly large and complex body of work. The development of Organisational Network Analysis (ONA) and related research has done much to further what humankind knows about the relationship between network structure and both performance and wellbeing.
However, the view typically taken when analysing why organisations have a particular network over another is from a psychological perspective (for example, Amy Edmondson and The Fearless Organisation). It is rare, if not unheard of, to see human physiology brought into the discussion. A new, physiologically based perspective is offered by Dr. Stephen Porges, creator of Polyvagal Theory, which opens up the discussion of network structure in ways that can be instructive. Polyvagal Theory posits the notion that our behaviour is governed, in part, by how safe or unsafe we feel at any given moment.
Signals of threat and/or cues of safety are sensed through the body, in a process called “neuroception.” If signals of threat are sufficiently low and signals of safety are sufficiently high, the individual will be able to socially engage with others and, in the process, send cues of safety to the person(s) with whom they are communicating. In other words, one’s sense of safety will be silently and automatically passed from one nervous system to another (a process called co-regulation).
When socially engaged, we are less inhibited by fear and can think more freely and creatively because our prefrontal cortex is more fully available. Connections naturally form “horizontally” between peers across organisational boundaries, and autonomy plays an important role in the decision-making process.
By contrast, if people do not feel safe enough they will automatically and subconsciously socially disengage. They will place a higher priority on authoritative power, rely more on a rules-based approach to decision making and make sense of what is happening in less complex ways. Network connections tend to form “vertically” within organisational boundaries towards those perceived to be more senior.
In our own work at Adaptavist, using Organisational Network Analysis (ONA) with our own organisations and our clients, we’ve found an inverse correlation between the proportion of vertical connections and employee engagement (which we take as a proxy for both wellbeing and performance). The higher the proportion of vertical connections, the lower the level of employee engagement (and, we assume, a physiological sense of safety).
If there is a sufficient sense of safety, people tend to reach out to peers across organisational boundaries in experiments to find new ways of creating value. If not, they tend to rely on hierarchical relationships with those they perceive to have more power. These tendencies then lock themselves in via self-reinforcing loops, ensuring the status-quo remains.
A high proportion of horizontal ties in a network is more likely to lead to a dynamic, adaptive network optimised for learning. A high proportion of vertical ties is likely to lead to a rigid network that doesn’t learn on its own and changes only by instruction. The latter can be very efficient in “complicated” environments, in which most of that which needs to be known is known, but it doesn’t work well in “complex” environments in which much is unknown and learning is at a premium.
With sufficient psychological and physiological safety people can and will socially engage, which is a prerequisite for the emergence of things like shared meaning and purpose, connection and belonging, collaboration and innovation, and network structure itself. That is to say, they will form horizontal connections and the network will be dynamic and adaptive. Without sufficient safety the only way work can be coordinated is by management diktat, process, rules, standards and instruction. Vertical connections will dominate and organisations might be efficient, but will also be rigid.
Ways of working designed for efficiency are typical in most organisations and work very well in environments in which most of what needs to be known is, or at least can be, known. This is the domain of the subject matter expert and, as Michael Hamman said in his book Evolvagility, a “predict-and-plan” approach to leadership and management.
But in complex environments, where much is unknown and organisational learning is therefore at a premium, these typical ways of working inevitably reduce safety.
Most organisations favour efficient, traditional working methods that excel in environments where knowledge is accessible. However, these approaches falter in complex environments, where they inadvertently hinder the emergence of novel ideas and a sense of safety. We’re so entrenched in these routines that we often overlook their downsides. Michael Hamman’s “sense-and-respond” approach, better suited for complex environments, struggles to surface amidst the entrenched patterns of the past.
In complex working environments, we require a different approach to collaboration because change is emergent. To realise this change, we must first comprehend the limitations of “typical ways of doing things” and how they unintentionally stifle novelty, including a sense of safety.
How might we extend our awareness and ways of working to incorporate existing practices and also make them fit for purpose when we need to collaborate and innovate together?
A Retroflexive approaching to working together
In complex environments we must attend to the pre-verbal, pre-conceptual meaning inherent in all situations. While it is essential to document objectives, agendas, plans and actions, these documents do not capture all meaning. Meaningful information is carried in the documents, but it also exists outside them, in relationships and inner perceptions, for example. This is information we might call “tacit” or “implicit.”
Silence is often packed with meaning even though we might also think of it as an absence of sound. You have probably experienced both comfortable and uncomfortable silences, which you were aware of without any words being shared.
Silence, too, carries meaning, whether comfortable or uncomfortable. It’s not merely the absence of sound, but a rich source of information. To work with pre-verbal, pre-conceptual meaning, we require both psychological and physiological safety — a prerequisite for the emergence of other crucial elements like energy, motivation, connection, shared purpose, and a dynamic network structure.
A Retroflexive approach places this embodied sense of safety and meaning at its core, driven by two key principles that can transform how we collaborate:
Interaction-first: Instead of prioritising tangible elements like plans or known concepts, we focus first on the interaction itself. This shift is vital in complex environments, as it frees us from predefined notions and enhances our capacity to create new approaches.
Embodied Sense: We let our embodied sense of a situation guide us, alongside intellectual and cognitive considerations.
By taking these two principles seriously, we allow everything else necessary for any situation to emerge. Neglecting them hinders progress.
Returning to the earlier example: As emotions intensified in the meeting, the manager, guided by an awareness of the interaction’s dynamics and her embodied sense of the situation, recognized her growing anger. She understood that her words, regardless of how careful she was, might escalate tension due to her “fight or flight” response. To maintain engagement without further conflict, she calmed the room and led participants through breathing exercises to regulate their nervous systems.
To her surprise, this approach worked, leading to an unexpected apology that was genuinely accepted. In this version of the story, the group learned to navigate conflict, using it as a signal to pause, seek a sense of embodied safety, and sustain discomfort to foster the emergence of new ideas.
This is the essence of Experiencing Retroflexive Working.
Thanks
I have deliberately written these words without reference to others so that they might be consumable and not pseudo-academic. However, my thinking is certainly not entirely original. After all, everything we do is built on the shoulders of giants. The intellectual giants in this case are two of my teachers — Jan Winhall and Evelyn Fendler-Lee and their teachers, Eugene T Gendlin & Stephen Porges. Also, thanks to Randall Redfield for encouraging me to write this piece.
