Complexity is a collective opportunity
The Complexus manifesto
Cet article a été traduit depuis la version originale en Français.
Do you remember the last time you did a 3+ years plan ? Now, where are you at ? Anywhere else? Despite all your qualifications, your data gathering practices , the best analysts and their models as complicated as their expertise, nothing seems to matter : reality defies all expectations. Well then, your world isn’t complicated but complex !
So let’s start with the bad news
- Complexity implies an uncertainty that often is a source of fear. Fear negatively impacts the quality of our judgments, decision making capacities and collaborative practices. 😨. Yes, but…
- We aren’t left alone ! Complexity doesn’t stop us from acting, on the contrary, it constitutes a fantastic opportunity !😌 🤗 😃 (So much so that it means hugs in latin, check it for yourself !)
Since it can’t be grasped neither by anyone on its own nor by an isolated logic, a complex situation offers a fantastic incentive to towards the collective.
If diverse enough, each collective member offers a particular set of resources to move forth.
- Faced with a complex situation, we all have our own and specific points of views, sensitivity, ways of thinking and habits.
We so perceive divergent signals : different and complementary, that collectively help project a better image of reality. - Cross-matching those, even if it means dealing with conflicts, generates creativity and innovative emergent solutions.
- At the end of the line, each individual adopts much more smoothly any resulting decision. This convergence provokes action.
Upheld by the collective and a truthful apprehension of reality, you’ll know how to constantly adjust yourself in an agile manner, and go forth with confidence.
Since your team’s interactions and organisations might become a shortfall, you can count on collective intelligence methodologies , and even better on a facilitator to seize this opportunity.
Where Complexity lies.
“Complexity exists when our knowledge level doesn’t allow us to grasp the entirety of available information” — Edgar Morin, French philosopher and thinker.
To go deeper and translate that concretely, here are an example and a model !
Meetings are complex
According to Edgar Morin The whole is both more and less than the sum of its parts. Let’s put that in perspective with meetings. When you join a group, you hereby renounce to individual opportunities. Meanwhile you also enrich yourself through everything that would have been impossible to you without it.
- Inhibition : again the same subject with no results. Everything has already been said, nothing done, and we still again schedule another meeting to “go forth” ! Half of the room stares at a phone… And worst of all you could have used this time to finalize this urgent project.
- Emergence : the meeting is thrilling, with such high stakes, that everyone is 100% there. You perceive synergies at play : skills and viewpoints that complement and enrich each other. You couldn’t have thought about that solution alone !
Collective intelligence in practice, renders the 1+1>2 equation true : emergences surpass inhibitions.
Is it complex or complicated ?
In a complex environment, even the extent of the unknown is unknown.
Our actions can backfire since causality can only be understood while looking backwards, never forward. We can only collectively perceive patterns and allow oursevles to fail quickly and safely : test, probe, observe and act in an agile manner.
I dare you to tell me where each sapghetti will be placed before your next bite.
Dave Snowden, a former IBM consultant distinguishes such situation from complicated environments, dear to our analysts’ hearts, but also from obvious or chaotic situations. Each situation calls for another course of action.
Going forth in complexity
In complexity, letting go and letting come appears as the only reasonable choice if one’s constitutes a proper team. More precisely we should neither fall for our tendency for control nor drop everything, but instead open our fist and support.
A fertile acceptation of uncertainty
Denying the complex nature of your situation and pretending to reduce it to a sum of indicators that only reflect a limited part of reality, will give you a comfortably dangerous illusion of being in control.
Accepting as part of reality, the inherent risk of the uncertain environment for a decision, is a much better practice.
Once shared with the collective, the decision maker is more able to carry this responsibility with the team support.
We all end up strengthened by the mobilisation of our team members, a truthful relationship to reality, a well-grounded knowledge of stakeholders and their interactions, that will allow them to constantly adjust.
Prevent risks and dare to hope
Placing your hopes in the collective is not without risks : diverging interests, good but ill-considered intentions, blindspots, the lack of a common language, the lack of affinity, the lack of authenticity, power games and egos, or as many shortfalls to the quality of your meetings and the survival of your team and projects.
How to go from I to us, from Illness to WEllness, from EGO-system to ECO-system ?
Through a supporting frame and processes that a facilitator safeguards while also preserving its neutrality, collective intelligence practices offer a way to prevent these shortfalls.
These nurturing environments, allow for a surge in energy, the transformation of conflicts into sources of value, interactions are multiplied and eventually a collective creation comes into shape.
The facilitator acts as a space holder, a catalyser that allows the team to reveal its own answer to its current problematics. Alongside a coach that anchors new soft-skills, the expert that brings along knowledge, the consultant that brings along solutions… we can count on many different professions to support our collectives.
Complexity is a collective opportunity. Let’s seize it !
Collective Intelligence facilitator, enthusiast and founder of Complexus, I allow collectives motivated by a common purpose to accept reality as it is and go forth.
I so serve our raison d’être : support change making organisations and actors’s autonomy. In the context of our ecological and societal transition, I reveal the quality of your doing and being at the service of a desirable future.
FX Pasquier 💭❤️👐
