Systems Thinking: Trust Your Gut
For this week’s Friday Learning Note we are excited to have our first ever guest post from Rob Ricigliano, Systems and Complexity Coach for The Omidyar Group!
A key question teams are asked when vetting their strategy is, “how did you protect against baking your assumptions into your analysis?”
This is particularly important in systems-based work, which relies heavily on getting a holistic and more objective understanding of the environments in which we operate. But our unexamined preconceptions can lead us to just hear what we want to hear, seek out only those voices that are closest and most familiar to us, or fly over critical information or dynamics.
But assumptions, intuition, and “gut feel” are also critically important. We all have them, and for good reason. They can be our best friends — guiding our work and even distinguishing the value we each bring to an initiative. Some research concludes that intuition is the brain drawing on past experiences and external cues to make a decision, often on a subconscious level, and in certain situations it is as good as or better than more conscious thought processes.
On the other hand, basic assumptions, intuition, and “feel” can also be our worst enemies. They can miss the mark or become outdated. They can blind us to new opportunities, block learning, and trap us in ruts that block innovation. Even worse, they can keep us on a path that we should have abandoned long ago.
So how do we harness the benefits of our assumptions and intuitions while protecting against potential negative consequences?
First, we need to recognize two things:
- As humans, our brains are wired to form and run on assumptions and intuitive knowledge; and
- It is difficult for individuals and groups to challenge their own assumptions.
While it can sometimes be challenging to test our assumptions, there are several things we can do to handle them with the appropriate level of care.
Within a Team
Assign a “designated questioner”: One way to avoid the tendency of groups to stay locked in their own assumptions is to give a member of the team the role of spotting “certainty” or assumptions that the team might surface and question, even if only to make our implicit assumptions more explicit and testable.
Broaden your horizons: Build processes that include diverse voices and perspectives independent of your organization or team. Whether you include “outside” perspectives into group meetings (such as a systems mapping session), have one-to-one meetings, focus groups, or some combination of the three, including diverse perspectives, experiences, and expertise will help surface the assumptions you are making as well as expose the team to different ways of looking at the world or an issue.
Scaffold team learning: The biggest danger is that your assumptions block you from hearing and acting on important feedback. To mitigate this risk, empower your team to benefit from its experience with a scaffold for learning, which might include:
• Asking up front, “how will we know if our assumptions about our context or our program are working or not?”
• Asking, “what if we are wrong?” and then being sensitive to the signs that our assumptions are off.
• Taking a portfolio approach, focusing part of your investments on alternative hypotheses about how to be effective.
Within an Organization
Cultivate a culture of openness: No one person can dictate an organization’s culture, but each of us is in a position to promote or influence its development. Efforts to surface and test our assumptions work best if there is an underlying organizational culture that:
•Promotes tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty, if even just for a while.
• Has openness to being wrong and sees expertise as being skilled at learning.
• Values curiosity, feedback, and the ability to have difficult conversations and challenge the views of one another. To the extent possible, we can each note when we are acting in ways that are in contrast to these norms and find ways to discuss how to address them.
Stress test organizational structures and incentives: Organizational structures influence behaviors and, over time, shape organizational culture. And while organizational structures are outside the control of most individuals in the organization, we can each call out the times when structures — particularly incentives — make it difficult to test our assumptions. For example, we can form teams in ways that build in a diversity of views, structure strategy development processes in ways that provide time and space for listening, curiosity, and deliberation, and evaluate and reward behaviors that promote learning, questioning, and smart adaptation.
Our Friday Learning Notes series is designed to share insights from Omidyar Network’s journey to become a best-in-class learning organization. Grab a cup of coffee and start your own Friday morning learning journey! *warning: side effects of regular reading may include improved mood, upswing in dinner party conversation, and/or increased desire to cultivate learning for social impact
