Coherence, Constraint & Complexity — notes on the Meetup with Prof Dave Snowden

On Monday at Hotels.com we hosted a meetup with Prof Dave Snowden, and as usual, he was brilliant. For those who don’t know, apart from being a computer science pioneer, a founder of a consultancy and a research centre and passionate speaker, Dave is also well known for developing the Cynefin framework.

Cynefin is a sensemaking framework for selecting the best solutions within different contexts. It is very useful to describe elements of a situation that influence our thoughts and decisions in ways we that are not clear to us, allowing us to assess the situation more accurately and devise appropriate actions.

If you are interested to know what Cynefin is, please watch Dave’s short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7oz366X0-8 . For more in-depth understanding, try Dave’s website: http://cognitive-edge.com/resources/ .

Ok, what have I learned from the talk. As the topic was the complexity and its constraints, the main point was much about how the complexity is only possible to be managed as a flow, and not in the traditional outcome based system thinking way, which is more appropriate for static systems. Complex systems, are those where the relationship between cause and effect can only be perceived retrospectively, but not in advance. This is the realm of unknown unknowns, and basically the majority of human issues can often fit here. In systems thinking, we define the ideal future state (the goal) and try to get there, which only works when you have a high level of predictability, i.e. in a complicated or simple domain. In complexity, we describe the present and see what is possible to change, defining a direction, not a destination, setting ourselves on a discovery journey.

If you have a set goal, you will miss the opportunities as we simply do not see what we do not expect to see. As an example, Dave mentioned a research where a group of radiologists were given a batch of xrays and asked to look for anomalies. One of them was an x-ray of a gorilla, and even though the difference is overwhelming 80% of professionals couldn’t see it. We only see things that match our expectations of reality.

Dave claims, that the best solutions do not always win — context is everything. It is potentially misleading to learn from the success stories as people remember things very differently when succeed than when they fail and none of them is close to the truth. On top of that, Dave believes that every company that succeeded did exactly the same things that those that failed did. So there is no point in replicating success without understanding the reasons behind it: “If you don’t understand why, you shouldn’t replicate what.”

What about user research? Is that the way to go? Actually, not necessarily. From cognitive psychology, Dave showed that after three interviews, the interviewer forms a subconscious hypothesis and then only pays attention to the things that confirm it. So it is hard to trust the research to be objective or really understand what users need. At the same time, the users don’t know what they need either. Not helpful.

What is the solution? — Complex adaptive systems — running multiple small probes, safe-to-fail experiments with clear boundaries, amplifying what works well and reducing the negative effects of what doesn’t, maximizing evolutionary potential of the present moment and adjusting on the way. And of course, the major competitive advantage is an ability to repurpose existing systems. A good example, is when a Ratheon engineer noticed that a chocolate bar melted in their pockets while maintaining the magneto of a radar machine, which lead to microwave ovens.

Dave’s Tips:

Optimise the granularity of the ‘objects’

Distribute sense-making

Disintermediate decision making

Create interaction protocols

All structures to emerge from the interactions

Learn early, fail less.

In the end — “All paths up are different. All paths down are the same. ”

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I would like to add a few words about Psychology of Agile Scrum Meetup Group. Accredited by Scrum Alliance and hosted by @Hotels.com monthly, we are independent friendly group, focused on the real people in software development. Please read about us more at https://www.meetup.com/London-Scrum-Meetup/ .

Hope to see you at our next event!