Latest / Complexity Cogitators Podcast / #015 - "Some" Thoughts on Complexity
Transcript
- Joakim von Prónay: What is an enabling constraint? Why is it so difficult to talk about direction in organizations? And how come some thoughts around diversity in organizations are still controversial? Today, we have Anders Wengerlin as a guest. Anders is CEO and management consultant at Friktion, a small consultancy specializing in nonlinear methods and approaches to change and transformation in organizations. He recently published a book, 12 thoughts on complexity. So that is what we are talking about today on complexity cogitators. My name is Joakim von Prånaj and together with Marko Ahumada-Juntunen and today featuring Anders Wenglin, we try to make sense of organizational behavior. Marco Marco: You a kim. Joakim von Prónay: We are finally back. Good to see you. Marco: See you. It's been a long summer. Joakim von Prónay: And today is a very special day because we are not alone. We have Andes Vengelin with us. Hello Andesh. Anders Wengelin: Hello, Your Game, and Michael. Joakim von Prónay: Very nice to have you. So, this is our first experiment of having a guest in our conversation. So, let's see how that goes. And the reason we have you as our guest is because you quite recently published a very interesting thing. So, you published a book in Swedish, however, that's called 12 Thoughts on Complexity. And It's a thin book, but a heavy book. Content wise, it gives you a lot of food for thought. And we we we really like all of these twelve thoughts, so we thought, let's bring Andershan and and talk about some of them. I think that will be very, very interesting. and as preparation for this conversation, we all choose one thought each out of these twelve. And Andes, you said you had a backup as well. And I Marco also he he kind of listed his favorites, so he also has more than one. But I think we'll we'll use three of them as a starting point, I believe. Or how does that sound? Anders Wengelin: Sounds lovely. Thanks for having me, by the way. Joakim von Prónay: Yeah, and thanks for thanks for joining. Marco, should we allow the guest to go first to share the thought that he brought? Or maybe we do like this. Maybe I quickly or maybe you Marco, you read out the twelve thoughts. Marco: I I need to you know what I'm a little bit surprised. I'm going to translate this on the fly because yeah the book should be said is written in Swedish. So I'm going to try my best to translate them while I read them out. so the first thought about complexity is to Look backward to move forward. i'll leave them like the titles because it's feels feels cryptic Joakim von Prónay: Yeah, yeah. Marco: and fun yeah and thought number two is create conditions preconditions not plans yeah Anders Wengelin: conditions. Yeah. Marco: third is create frames not rules so constraints Anders Wengelin: strengths. Marco: yeah number four is prod and see what happens prod with a stick pocket with a stick better. Poke it with a stick and see what happens. Let patterns not plans show the way is number five. A set a direction instead of a detailed goal. Six. Anders Wengelin: This one is hard to translate. Yes. Let's see. Let's see how Marco: cre create mean yes meaning Anders Wengelin: you do it. Marco: is it purpose yeah so create meaning instead of more slides and sheet and spreadsheets. So purpose. Anders Wengelin: Yeah, I mean, this thought, it comes from sense making, making sense. But the word sense here is translated to a word meaning that's, that's more directly translated to, meaning. But I would say, make more sense, instead of making more spreadsheets and slides, perhaps something like Marco: That's a nice triple S alliteration if you intranslate it to swing which makes sense instead of spreadsheets Anders Wengelin: It is. Marco: and slides. Very siblant. Anyway, number eight then is diversity and creativity create capacity for adaptation. Something like that. Nine, round safe to fail experiments. 10. Don't just do projects, maintain a portfolio. Eleven, complex and complicated are not the same thing. And finally, number twelve, how you recognize complexity. Anders Wengelin: Good job, Marco: So Anders Wengelin: Mike. Marco: thank you. Joakim von Prónay: Yeah, well done. I also would have to translate them on the fly. So I'm happy you took that on. Maybe we give it to our then we give it to our guest, I think. Andesh, which one of these did you explicitly bring? Anders Wengelin: Yeah, I got the assignment to choose one and I decided to choose number eight about diversity and creativity that creates adaptivity or the ability to adapt. And the reason I chose it or am I supposed to talk about it now or was it? Yeah, Joakim von Prónay: No, you can explain the r reason why you chose it, yes, sure. Marco: It's a good teaser. Anders Wengelin: Yeah, the reason why I chose it. once because to me, sort of getting my complexity glasses helped me understand a value that I've been carrying for a long time. The value of sort of the diversity in, for example, in a teen. is something that we should strive for. And when we talk about why we should strive for diversity, there are sort of two camps. The camp that argues that diversity is an ethical principle and therefore self-evident. And the camp that argues that there is some sort of ROI on diversity in... for example, teams and organizations. And my complexity glasses sort of gave me the words to sort of describe the logics behind why it's a good idea apart from just the ethical principle that diversity is self-evident. We don't have to dive all the way into Ashby's law of requisite variety to describe this reasoning. And I guess that's sort of what I've tried to do in this thought number eight in the book, describe why it's a good idea, even if you don't really care about diversity from sort of an ethics perspective. That's why I chose it. Joakim von Prónay: Mm. Cool. Anders Wengelin: helps me understand the world. Joakim von Prónay: Yeah, absolutely. I think we have been we have been touching upon those things in previous conversations as well, Marco and I. Marco: I think Ashby's Laws has been mentioned at least twice so it's a favourite Joakim von Prónay: Yep. Marco: of ours, you could say. Joakim von Prónay: Yes. Marco, which one did you choose? Marco: I took thought number six because you know how much I like strategy. Yeah, so set a direction instead of a goal or a destination. And simply because I spend a lot of time thinking about this. So we have a lot of people trying to achieve something. How do we make something better than we could have done individually that still feels meaningful and valuable? how do we get there and how do we organize for it? Joakim von Prónay: Yep. I hear you. And me, I chose number three. But I wrote it down here as create boundaries, not rules. Boundaries within which you can operate. So you translated it to frames, create frames, not rules. But the reason why I did that is I generally want to talk about enabling constraints because I find that incredibly fascinating. And I wrote down two main questions around these. What is it that they should enable? We are talking about constraining something to enable what? How does that dynamic w actually work? And what do they look like? Do you have examples? I believe I have a few examples on my own, but I would love to get some more examples. Just in organizations, more practically, what does an enabling constraint look like? And how does it function and what does it actually enable? If you have some experience and stories around that. That would be interesting. Cool. I think we have our Anders Wengelin: It was a good selection, I think. Joakim von Prónay: Yeah, we have our starting point. Anders Wengelin: I'm no overlap. Joakim von Prónay: No overlap. No. We don't need to go to our Marco: Good spreading. Joakim von Prónay: backups. Good. Where do we start? Do we start with number three? Because Marco: Mm-hmm. Joakim von Prónay: that's the lowest lowest number in the order that you have published them, or do you have a different selection criteria? Anders Wengelin: it's a good idea. Joakim von Prónay: Marco? Marco: I quite like the idea of starting with the constraints because I think those could get relevant for the later topics. Joakim von Prónay: Mm. But then we do that. And since we are all very Swedish, we like consensus in our conversations. So and here we have our first consensus point. Marco: management by Canelbulle, except it was a very short loop. Joakim von Prónay: Yep. True. So where do we start? What what should they enable? What is an enabling constraint in your words? Anders Wengelin: I'll say there's a very quick answer to your first question. What it should enable? It should enable the desired behaviors. And when we talk about complex systems in general, those behaviors can be explained in various ways. We're talking about the behaviors of the agents in the system. But in organizations, it's generally much more simple than that. And in my everyday work, it's much more simple than that. It's the behavior of the people. in the team and in the surrounding organizations, like stakeholders and other agents that they interact. That's what we're looking for. or at least early signals that the right behaviors are about to emerge. That could be another question. Joakim von Prónay: Yep. Marco, what do you say? Marco: Yeah. Well one one way of looking at it What is it that they constrain? Well, I think of decisions more than more than behaviors in general, but they're roughly the same thing. what they should enable is coherence in decision making. So we want some way of knowing if we're doing the right thing. So setting up constraints is a way to limit our understanding of the decision space. and through that we get some kind of coherence. and the way I think about enabling constraints is in relation to well, Snowden likes to talk about the the kind of a contrast to them as governing constraints. and the relation I think between them is that enabling constraints are more like a endoskeleton. There's something that you can you use to rotate from. And then governing constraints are more like a an exoskeleton. So sort of more focused to contain. Joakim von Prónay: Yeah, I'm sitting here kinda nodding and and and agreeing with what both of you are saying. Because I also see I also see enabling constraints as it it is supposed to enable coherent decision making. So this is Marcus and I when we talk about strategy as some essentially that's always everything is strategy as we know. So this language also sneaks its way into this. But it it's supposed to enable coherent decision making and then If I continue that thought, coherent decision making especially will be seen in the right behaviors. And then we can go into judge and how do we measure and judge what a right and correct behavior is. Well, let's not go there right now. But essentially that that that's the core to me as well. An enabling constraint is something that limits to some degree decision making or directs it and makes sure that. There is coherence across multiple individuals, groups, and departments in the organization. So the thing that they generate then is the behaviors that move the organization in a shared direction. So that like that's kind of the meta meta speak that I have about it. Anders Wengelin: So I'm interested to hear why you're making this distinction between behaviors and decisions. The way I tend to speak, talk about it is decisions as a subset of behaviors. What ends up producing value in organizations is people doing stuff. And of course, the more complex the work is, the more should we call it cognitively intensivist, the more decision making is involved in everyday doing, but in the end what produces the value is some sort of doing with your hands often in some way. And the environment we're in, the constraints in our system also governs that. Whether I make my PowerPoint presentation long and detailed or whether I make it short and to the point. Or then of course is that the decision we're talking about the micro decision I'm making when I'm deciding whether I'm going to make it short or long. Marco: Yes. Joakim von Prónay: Hmm. Anders Wengelin: Okay. Joakim von Prónay: Yeah, essentially. I'm I'm I I usually view it in my head when I think about it as a hierarchy from the other direction. So essentially I see decisions coming from the top in the organization and and going down. And then I see this this in the moment individual decision making as the the lower part of this hierarchy. But we are essentially talking about the the same thing. Yes. Anders Wengelin: Okay. Marco: Yeah. I I think Anders Wengelin: My decision to go right or left around the pillar in the the warehouse is also a decision. Okay. Joakim von Prónay: Yes. Marco: Absolutely. I think of behavior as a result of decision making process. Anders Wengelin: Then agree. Then we're in the same page. Marco: So behavior is just observable part of the decision. The decision is an information process and behavior is an actuation of that process in a way. If that makes sense. So Joakim von Prónay: But then to my second part of this topic, what do the enabling constraints look like? In what form or utterance have you experienced them or used them in the organizations? Anders Wengelin: Wow, the hardest question of all. Not the exact one you're asking, but please give me examples, a question when you're used to speak in abstractions. Okay, Joakim von Prónay: Yeah. Anders Wengelin: so my first answer to the question is a bit meta and back to the same point. Decisions, decisions as the constraints. What your managers tells you about what you're supposed to do, how you're allowed to do it, and what resources you are allowed to utilize. Perhaps the most important one is the level of detail in the problem you're given to solve. Are you given a problem to solve that is, please give me this? Or are you given a problem to solve that is, please provide me these results. That will be the first thing I'm thinking of. How do you frame the work? Joakim von Prónay: Mm. Yeah, that's good, yeah. Marco: Frames again. Joakim von Prónay: To start. Marco, what do you say? Marco: How does it look in practice? Well, I think I'm c I come to a similar distinction, like a governing constraint. So if you're talking to a software development team, is well, you're going to make a web service, you're gonna use Java, it doesn't say anything about what is valuable within that decision space. Yeah, so an enabling constraint would be rather let's build a system that does these things for the users. So that creates a decision space around so these bring us some to closer to some kind of value, whereas these governing constraints that and that text choices and that kind of stuff, they create a kind of they're not useful for Joakim von Prónay: Hmm. Marco: Meaning. Joakim von Prónay: Yeah. Interesting. Because some thoughts that immediately popped into my head now is that when I speak about organizational context, essentially what industry is the organization in, what are the products, what are their services, who are they, the what's their target audience? All of these can be or are enabling constraints. Because they are constraints to your decision making and what you should be doing and should be thinking about. It's more a matter of the and this is the first time I'm thinking about it. So but it would be it would be interesting to phrase these or frame frame again, phrase these in a way such so that it reads as an enabling constraint. Just an open thought. We don't have to explore that more right now. But also to me, enabling constraints is also goes back to our conversations on strategy, Marco. And I y partly see them as these strategic dichotomies, so things that you weigh against each other, where you essentially use as as judgments in your decision making. We'd rather go left than right. We'd rather go right than left. That was a very bad example. And I hope I can Yeah. Exactly. Marco: Always choose the cheapest is a example. Joakim von Prónay: Always choose the cheapest. Or I don't remember which book I read this in, but one that all like always stuck with me was one of the larger aircraft manufacturers, either Airbus or Boeing. Don't remember which one. And I don't remember which model it was. But they were on a tight schedule to create this new model and then they gave decision freedom to the different levels of the organization, so to speak. So an individual engineer or working or an individual factory worker working on a particular component was free to make adjustments and changes if it didn't cost more than maybe 2,000 euros per produced unit. So if the cost estimate were le was less than that, Feel free to make the decision that will get us the product out as fast as possible at the quality that we demand. But if, and then you had your team manager that oversees a larger part of the budget, and so to speak, he can or she can make decisions up to maybe 20,000 euros or a hundred thousand. And if it we're talking in the hundreds of thousands and millions, then we need to have a like a big meeting with. more people involved just because it has a higher impact on the and end product's price. But it's essentially that that's one of the examples that I've read about that has stuck with me. Like because I I think it it and the reason why they did that was to speed up decision making. You don't need to ask permission to make a decision that does not cost more than 2,000 euros per produced airplane. So if it costs less than that, you just go ahead. And I think that's that's such a powerful example. But so is there anything that concrete that you have seen or used or come across? Anders Wengelin: We shall talk about this Marco: No, but I Anders Wengelin: in advance. I didn't. Joakim von Prónay: But that's that's the fun of the conversation. Anders Wengelin: haha And yeah. Marco: I think that example is from the book Brave New Works. And and the the principle is called if you're gonna make a hole in a boat, as long as you do it above the water, it's fine. which is a fun kind of constraint. Joakim von Prónay: No, because w w when I start to think about it myself, I I struggle to have such clear examples from my own experience of what I would call or deem an enabling constraint. And I believe as we talked about it quite on in general terms here, I believe they are everywhere, but I don't believe we're using them in the most powerful way. So this is my criticism to myself at least. Marco: So have you ever helped the team make a definition of done or a working agreement? Joakim von Prónay: Yes. Marco: Have you thought about what kind of constraints those are? Joakim von Prónay: No. Anders Wengelin: I assume you have my. Marco: yeah, on occasion. but if you if you think about it, when a group agrees on some kind of accepted behaviors in our group, they are essentially agreeing on constraints for behaviors, right? So so it it's it's it's not something that a leader creates and passes down into an organization. These things happen or they emerge more or less organically from the group and its needs. Not all of constraints are of strategic nature, some of them are social. And then when we sit down with a team and have them create a definition of done, we're essentially describing their software development process and how they understand the quality of what they're producing. So slightly more governing in nature, in the sense that do not move outside of these lines of quality. Yeah, but the definition of done doesn't say so much about what are we going to do inside the process. Sure. we want to peer review all of our code, but that this doesn't necessarily say how we do that. I like how the in in the book I think you use traffic lines as a as an example of that. So stay within these lines. so that's kind of how I think about a little bit. But then there are other kinds of agreements that we do with our team that where are less that are less of that nature. I'm trying to to come up with a good example but drawing blanks. Unless you can come up with one. Anders Wengelin: So with the definition of done, we're saying we don't know exactly where we're going to end up. We don't know exactly how we're going to get there. But we're probably going to know together that we're there when we see it. We're to see that we're there when we are there, because that's when we have fulfilled our definition of done. If this is true, then we are done. So yeah, I would agree absolutely that done right, are enabling in the sense that the team knows what direction to move in, but not told how to do it. Good example. Joakim von Prónay: Cool. But then you could also say that The definition of done could be used to set a direction, instead of acting as a detailed goal. Because the next thought would be set a direction instead of a detailed goal. So I th I f I felt like we're we were kind of bridging into that conversation. Marco: yeah. You're right, Wilbert. Anders Wengelin: You had a perfect segue Marco: so I chose thought number six, which I read and I was like, wow, strategy. That's that's fun. And and and the title is talk about directions more than where we're going. Because one of the things about complex systems is you're going to struggle with this describing a future state and and then creating a good explanation up front for how to get there because the thing about trying to do that is even if you try to fix some variables or some aspects of that future, there's a lot of others that are going to get in the in in your way that you can't predict. so that's that that's kind of why I like to agree with this. This it's one of my favorites in this domain. How about you? Anders Wengelin: I agree. talk about this a lot. Also one of my favorites talking about maybe perhaps it's a very difficult talk about because I don't know. going to, I'm going to try and define why it might be so very difficult to talk about this because per definition, when we talk about the direction, we're talking about what's between two states without talking too much about the actual states. We're describing a vector between point A and point B. And we're not supposed to say that much about at least not point B. And in the real world, when we talk about, say for example, the vector where I'm traveling, what I'm gonna say is the road between city A and city B and that's how you're going to understand where I'm driving. Say for example, you call me and I'm in a car and you ask me where are you? I'm going to say I'm somewhere between this place and that place. I'm going to use the two places to describe where I am but I'm going to describe the vector, the direction in my strategy without talking about the... metaphorical city where I'm headed. It's difficult to do and even more difficult to do what I often tend to do, describe what you're supposed to do. I mean, describing what a direction is, is difficult. And that's what I've tried to do here in this, in the text, the thought number six in the book. I don't know if I succeeded. Joakim von Prónay: No, but with these two Anders Wengelin: I guess my question is, do you agree that it's difficult to describe to someone what a direction is? How do you do it? How do you describe what a direction is in an organizational setting, strategic setting? Joakim von Prónay: Yeah, I mean in in an organizational context it is it is difficult. And here just to contrast these two examples or the the the the situation that you start with, if you are traveling physically in a car, in a the bus, in a train, we have fixed points to orient against. And it's not and then Anders Wengelin: Yeah, cities, for example. Joakim von Prónay: and yeah, and then it is very useful to say, I am between these two points. I am between these two cities. Instead of saying, Well, I'm currently travelling north. And I have been traveling for two hours. Okay, okay. Then you can be pretty much anywhere. But this is the type of that would be more useful in an organizational context. And I think what you bring up, what you bring up in the in your text is that you talk about maybe it's not even under this point, even, but you you talk about a direction as having more of something as an example. That is a direction that we're moving in. We are being We are currently more of this than we were before. So we are moving in a direction where we increase our capability or capacity of doing this thing. So I think that to me is at least a useful description of direction of the current efforts within an organization. So one example you have here become a more client oriented and prioritize client value more in internal processes. Yeah, that's that's a that's a good framing. That's a good phrasing. How how can we make sure that we do more of this? Because that's the direction that we want to go to, because we believe that the results and the outcomes that come from doing that or moving in that direction will be beneficial. And then we measure those outcomes in a different way. But so I I like that way that you phrase direction here. But as I said, when we have fixed points to reference against, like cities. Like d yeah, we can just use those. Anders Wengelin: How do you do it, Marco? And how do you answer my question about the difficulty of describing directions in a strategic or organizational setting? Marco: I mean the reason it is difficult is because we're so entrenched is this idea of there being a geometry. let's say that we only accept goals that are measurable. what we're doing then is that we're creating a kind of coordinate system that that we that we think that we're navigating. And as you put it in the book, this is an illusion of of control. Not everything can be measured or should be measured, yeah, because a lot of times we just end up with proxies that are not necessarily what we're trying to to do anyway. so one of the things that makes it difficult for me, in my experience, to talk about goals is the expectation of everything being measurable. in general I like the way that that that these examples have been put as well, more of this and less of that is kind of a direction or at least is this is a difference that we can explain of today. It doesn't say so much about where we're going, it's just a description of a future based on what we know about the present. And then from that we create movement. and this movement will be directed towards something that we f feel is more valuable and away from something that we want less of. so direction if anything is a result of that movement. Are we getting more of a thing that we've described as desirable and less of the stuff that we don't. And of course all of these changes compound into something that we like to call direction, but direction itself is a geometric understanding of change. Which trips me up at least. Anders Wengelin: It is. I guess I'm quite prone on wanting to describe direction very direct in a sentence or two or three at the top because to me direction is very, closely connected to the strategy. So basically our direction almost or at least in many cases is the same as the strategy. What is our strategy? Our strategy is to become more customer oriented, for example. It implies that we have defined a situation, a current state that is something else than customer oriented. For example, we are very tech oriented or process oriented or something like that, which makes us slow and which makes us not attentive to our customers needs, which makes them leave us, for example. So we are saying in order to become more relevant, we need to be more customer oriented. That's our strategy, more customer oriented. And then describing what that entails, what we want to see more and less of. as we move in that direction, sort of behaviors. That needs a few more sentences and that tends to change over time or become more nuanced or become more sophisticated over time. For example, we see people coming back from meetings with customers surprised that they talked about the customer's needs instead of our own tech for example. Let's say story, a behavior, a pattern we want to see more of. It's not necessarily quantifiable but we know it when we see it. That's what we wanted. Great we're moving in the right direction. customers falling asleep because we're tiring them by talking about our tech. Not a good thing. That's what we want to see less of. But to me, the direction is that first sentence, the one where we capture. In the best of words, we capture our strategy in one or two or tops three sentences, which is hard, not always realistic, but almost always desired. Joakim von Prónay: Think when I sit here and and Anders Wengelin: Do you agree that you want to capture it in... in one sentence. Joakim von Prónay: I would agree that it is useful. Marco: In and by capturing in one sentence, you mean the strategy or like a strategic intent? Joakim von Prónay: yeah, the strategic intent as in the direction. Anders Wengelin: Yeah, exactly. Marco: Yeah. Anders Wengelin: The answer to the Joakim von Prónay: Because what? Anders Wengelin: question, what's our strategy? Our strategy is, and you're supposed to be able to capture that in one to three sentences, then of course there's always new answers. And we're going to do this by, and we know that we're moving in the directions when we see this and that. But you want everyone in a team to be able to answer to. to sort of finish the sentence, our strategy is two. And that's Joakim von Prónay: Yeah. Anders Wengelin: the direction. Joakim von Prónay: Yeah. And I I believe when I when I sit here and listen to both of you speak about this, I can just nod nod in agreement and say, Yes, I I like this and I try to do this, but then I realize in Almost all organisations I've worked with, I have really struggled with this. Because even if they claim we want to do more of this, then my first question is, Okay, how much of that do you currently do? we don't know. Or no, that's like we don't have time to figure that out or have that conversation. Okay, how would we then know that we are doing more tomorrow? And then that's where that conversation dies. And organizations that are reluctant to try and to put in the work to try to phrase this in a in a in a catchy sentence or something that be can actually be be used, perhaps as an enabling constraint. Who knows? they usually reject this because they have their detailed goal. I remember many, many organizations have been in and like what what are we trying to do here? Like we just need to release this product. Okay. and what does that mean? that means closing all the tickets in the ticketing system. Okay. But at the current rate of ticket creation, we are Creating more tickets than closing them currently. So we will never re release this product. So what is the goal then? What are we trying to do? No, that is the goal to release the products. Like, okay, but then you are by definition, by your definition, you're not going to succeed. And then you try to move the conversation in this directional manner. What is this product supposed to do for the customers? Like, no, we don't have time to dig into that. That has been set long ago. We have a vision, we have that on paper, blah, blah, blah. Okay, where can I find it? I don't know. Ask someone else. So this is oftentimes the the way that these conversations go to me when I try to well help them help me understand what the direction is and then what they're trying to do. And then hopefully try to simplify their decision making. But it's a yeah, I ma many, many frustrating examples of of failing at just this. Marco: The way I think of strategy is that it's it's a distributed decision-making process. So we have this organization full of people, they're all making decisions all the time. how do we create we use the word coherence. So when these all of these people make decisions that sort of queer and and and create some kind of shared com shared movement, that's that's a good thing to have and and that's kind of what we like to have with strategy. The problem with a lot of strategy we see and this I maybe this this ties into the idea of having a too detailed goal, is that if you have too much detail, the strategy is not portable. The strategy does not travel out into the organization and inform decisions that all of these people make. So the strength of having something that you can express in one sentence is that it travels and gets stickier into all of these distribute decision-making processes across the organization. So I I would say yeah that's that's that's one of the most important things when it comes to strategy and then what the the thing that that Joachim also points out that this strategy or this intent also comes into contact with reality and habit and culture and politics. where part of the work is that that's underestimated is how do we at least not fight the strategy. Yeah. Because in at least a few of organizations I've been in, there's a expressed strategic intent, but then the habits and the cultures are so entrenched in ways that counteract the strategy when it comes to tech choices or I don't know, unwillingness is the wrong word, but it's hard to to change how people do their work. And if that kind of gets in the way of the strategy, But anyway, I digress from the point that I certainly agree with. A short strategy is good as long as it can carry the details to make decisions closer to the ground. Anders Wengelin: Other way of putting it, the the the typical strategy, the strategy that we see in many organizations is like the the stuff for managers. it's PowerPoints presentations with a lot of detail about about what Marco: Okay. Anders Wengelin: decisions are are supposed to be made by whom at what point of time and what strategic initiatives are supposed to be carried out by whom. And for the rest of the organization that doesn't really doesn't really apply. Because what they have to do is wait until one of those decisions is made above their heads so they get to know what they what they're supposed to do. the type of of strategic phrasing that I'm talking about is something that you can act upon directly. So it is strategy s that we are supposed to be more we're gonna succeed by becoming more customer oriented and care more about our customers and needs than our own tech. Then I can make an interpretation about that tomorrow and at least start, if not doing, then at least start thinking about and talking, maybe mainly talking about what that means for me and my colleagues tomorrow. And then from that the pattern can emerge of what sort of strategic initiatives we need to put in place to enable that. But we can start tomorrow. We don't have to wait. It's one way of seeing. Joakim von Prónay: Yeah. Yeah. It sounds to me like one thing you would need for all of this is capacity for adaptation, right? Adaptability. And one thing that creates adaptability or capacity to adapt is diversity and creativity. Right, Andesh? Anders Wengelin: This is a so a a perfect segue that we're not gonna ruin for you, you actually. Joakim von Prónay: Thank you, because your chosen thought was Anders Wengelin: My chosen thought was I'm gonna go back to my the because I now I forgot the number, but the number was eight, right? Joakim von Prónay: Number eight, Anders Wengelin: that diversity and creativity creates adaptivity, or at least is a requirement for adaptivity. so that's sort of defined. By complexity theory, and the question then is why? Why do we need diversity and creativity in order to achieve adaptivity? and as soon as it's like laid on the table and explained, it's so it sounds very, very obvious. but for me it was coin drop moment when I realized why it's why it's true the things you hear. If you're interested in diversity and equity in organizations, for example a management team with not only men will lead organizations that are more profitable or a team with people of diverse backgrounds will come up with better solutions and therefore be more successful stuff like that. sounds self-evident, but what's the explanation? And complexity theory answers that. And that's what I try to do in the in the text. And it's all about renewal and the the variety of ideas and solutions to problems. If we agree that in a complex and unpredictable system we need to renew ourselves in order to stay relevant and become more relevant over time, we need to try new stuff. And in order to try new stuff, we need the ideas and the perspectives of stuff to try. And if the people coming up with those ideas Are the same people that created the current system and are very alike, the ideas will be born from that system and therefore not be able to meet the variety from the system outside. And when you put it like that, it's very, very sounds very, very obvious. So then the question is: why is it still so controversial? Because the other side of that coin, if we are alike if we think the same work this work in the same way have the same values and so on then we will understand each other work better together end up in less conflicts and therefore be more efficient so that's yeah that's that's the other side of the coin and feels very often that's the that's the side of the coin that many organizations choose for example with values like a Choosing people with a cultural fit, for example, hiring people that fits into the organization, and so on. When the other side of the coin is so very self evident. Sorry for rant, end of rant. Marco: That was a good rant. Joakim von Prónay: Here, here. Anders Wengelin: Thank you. Should should we even Marco: Yeah but why Anders Wengelin: argue the the rationale behind the behind diversity in organizations or are are just making a bad case for it? Should it just should we just let it be self evident that diversity in organizations is a good idea? Joakim von Prónay: Think you can argue this from different perspectives. Because even though I've been in many organizations, especially the enterprise ones, of many hundreds and and sometimes many thousands of employees, even though the teams and the people are diverse from a background experience, education, gender, so on and so forth, even though they are diverse. The structures and processes are squashing the creativity that could arise. So I don't I don't think we should let it be self evident because just the hiring aspect of it is not enough. Even if you are hiring for diversity to improve or increase your internal variety and your increase your your diversity, you also need to enable that. You need to have the processes and the structures To have those creative conflicts, to have to to essentially hash it out. If you have a disagreement, excellent. That's what we're looking for. Like it's very unswedish of us to say like we don't want people to only get along. No, we need to we we are not seeking consensus. We are seeking a space where we can disagree and have a creative dialogue around that. And then we well, then we disagree, perhaps disagree and commit, but we we commit and move forward. But that's a different part of the process. Marco: Talking about the ten or tension, not necessarily tension, but the difference between diversity and inclusion, right? So diversity is being allowed to be on the dance floor, but inclusion is being invited to dance, right? and diversity is an easy goal to have because in theory it's measurable, at least if you define define the how you measure it ahead of time. Inclusion is a little bit harder to to measure in a way, but it shows up as a cultural experience of the organization rather. Joakim von Prónay: Yeah, but at a at a disco it would be easy to measure. I mean, if people are there but not dancing, right? Then you You can see it in the we Marco: Yeah. How many are dancing by themselves? Joakim von Prónay: can see it in the behavior. Marco: Right. Is it the case simply that efficiency is very important in our organization and the conflict is not efficient? Joakim von Prónay: It depends on the time horizon you are measuring that on, I would argue. Marco: Yeah I Joakim von Prónay: But but yes, yes. Marco: I don't know the temperature of the take, but it seems to me that this avoidance of conflict is that we i either it's socially uncomfortable, I think we problematize the idea of conflict too much. We need conflict, at least generative conflict to come up with ideas that we couldn't have had without it. So I I think some degree of conflict is is necessary to adapt. otherwise it would always go with dominant dominant people's ideas or dominant demographies ideas. but it takes a lot of effort and time to to get the value and energy out of those those conflicts to get the value of the diversity. and one take is that we're we're too efficiency focused to sort of see past that sometimes on some scales, like you say. Anders Wengelin: Quite often. Because I think we need to remind ourselves what's the what's the important stuff here in in order to be in order to be adapted. What we need is not diversity of people. What we need is the diversity of ideas at the table that hopefully that the diversity of t of of the people brings. Just because we bring in other people into the room will not make our decisions better if those people are not sharing their perspectives, ideas are formed from that and those ideas are taken seriously. and I would say sometimes the effect can even be the opposite. We are inviting people that are different than us into the room. Just to have an excuse to say that we have taken diversity into account and therefore our the ideas that came out from this room they are quality assured now. So j just to silence the potential critique that we're not diverse enough. so then the question is I mean, we can we can measure diversity in some aspects of People, we can count stuff like gender and ethnicity and and age. But how do we measure the diversity of ideas and the amount to which they are taken into account and taken seriously? That's much harder. Especially if we don't want to. I mean, if we are a group of homogeneous people it might be very little in our interest to see that. And I guess that's a catch, twenty two. Joakim von Prónay: I know that I have at least been on the other side of that coin. I have when I've managed to get myself into the room, I have I have talked myself out of it in the sense that I do share seemingly outrageous thoughts and ideas and I never want w w have been seen as never wanting to drive the conversation towards a decision. So I have I have talked my Anders Wengelin: Just wanting to add more perspectives. Joakim von Prónay: yeah, just well not not ad infinitum, but to the point where I was just not re invited anymore. Has happened. Marco: Have you heard the term premature convergence? Joakim von Prónay: can't say that it rings a bell. I it rings a bell, but not not that I could Marco: so so to converge on a decision. Sometimes meetings seem like we enter and we have this set of ideas and then we select from them and try to converge. but when we add when we take these ideas and combine them and add our perspectives, we are starting to diverge to increase the decision space. so one model I have of decision meetings is that How much time do we spend on on diverging, on opening the discussion and decision space to find new decisions that we couldn't have done before? If we were just taking this little information that we had and not discuss this, or just we had this PowerPoint presentation and then everyone votes on on their favorites and then we converge on one, then we'd haven't had a discussion. You see that how that's a completely no-divergence strategy for that meeting? Yeah. So I think a little bit about that dynamic in the room. So premature convergence is a term for when you take a decision too quickly without taking into account the information available at the decision point. Joakim von Prónay: I could have guessed that. Anders Wengelin: You said you time box it, how much time do we need? how much time should we spend on diverging before we're converging? Marco: definitely in some workshops I have structures like if you if you run a design sprint, some exercises are designed to diverge, and then you do that, and then you have something that drives the decision forward from the new information, and you have this diverge-converge loop. And so depending on how much structure I want in the in in these sessions, I work strategically with that. Retrospectives are built around that. So like the classic retrospective that model is that you sit down, you s you write down all of the notes. Wham, diverge all of this stuff, and then you have a quick convergence exercise where you maybe you prioritize if you have a lot of notes, you narrow down the decision making space again, and then you discuss there's new what are the options for our actions, and you keep doing that kind of expand, contract. Anders Wengelin: Yeah, I s I see what you mean. It w which is a good thing when you're in a a creative space, some sort of sandboxing space, or or when it's internal processes in a team, for example, a a retrospective something like that. The other side of the coin where it really gets premature is when you allow the time at hand to define how much time you have to diverge. Say, for example, you're in a board meeting. you have an hour to discuss an important an important topic, you realise after forty five minutes that we are nowhere near having explored the nuances of this topic but someone often the highest income person in the room says only five minutes left on this topic what should we do? Or let's just do this and then converges just because we have too little time. I think that's something many teams need to to practice, just admitting to yourself that we need to diverge more. if we're not mature to converge yet, then just admit another meeting might be a good idea, even though in some in some organizational cultures proposing another meeting is frowned upon because that's what people do for the wrong reasons. But sometimes proposing a new meeting is exactly what you need to do if you haven't explored the nuances or the perspectives yet. I I know Marco that that's not what you what you said. You're your y Marco: Very close. Anders Wengelin: your ex your examples make perfectly sense for when you when it's a good idea to to time box divergence before before convergence. Joakim von Prónay: And on on the on the same topic, the the management teams that I've worked most successful with on these things, we have had discussions on the timeliness of the decisions. So when is the last possible moment when we need to make a decision on this thing? And if you also bring that up and say, well, we need to have a decision by tomorrow, okay, then we have to do that, then we have to do it today. Or Yeah, okay, this is not something that's going to be relevant this quarter. Okay, good. Then we don't have to, then we don't have to converge today. We can open up this box, we can touch it a little bit and see where it goes, but then we will follow up and continue. But in many organizations, in in many in many teams, it's unclear when the decisions actually have to be made. And sometimes you just take for granted, well, we are in a meeting right now, let's just make a decision and move forward. Anders Wengelin: Yeah, because decisiveness is very celebrated and very promoted in in organizations. Being the person that says let's just make a decision and move on. Get celebrated. I I like the phrase I think it's Poppendike, does that ring a bell? where they say e exact Marco: or d Tom and Mary Poppendike there. Anders Wengelin: yeah exactly and it's some sort of software book. I I I think it's an important one, but I don't read that much software literature. Anyways, the the phrasing to converge at the last responsible moment. Instead of, as in many organizations, converging as soon as possible is the most responsible thing you can do. but instead converging as lately as possible, unless it's too late, then it's too late. So if you don't need the decision now, then do it on the next meeting because you will have learned stuff until next time. It we're we're very much drifting off from from diversity now, but still we're on we're on decision making and that's very interesting. Marco: We've used the word divergence many times, which is shares the same root. but Joakim von Prónay: Yeah. Exactly. But Anders Wengelin: True, true. Joakim von Prónay: but speaking of convergence, we are getting to a point where we will need to wrap up our conversation. So I think that was a a good little tangent from Andesh to to end on. And I would simply then invite you to share your final thoughts. Marco, do you have any? Marco: well my first final thought is I'm really happy to have a a guest, such an esteemed one at that. happy you could join us today on this. I hope you will join us again some other time. when it comes to the conversation, I'm always happy to get to talk about complexity. And I and I'm reminded when I read this book again ahead of this session that it's it's been such a useful tool b for me because I have gotten some formulations that I can use in my organization. but I've also because it's such a nice handy little thing, it's been very useful to Just lend out and you were kind enough to give me two copies so I could have one flying about the organization. and it's been I suggest everyone takes a look in it that that has a chance. So especially the practical examples of it. My favorite one is getting dressed in dressing the kids for the morning routine. Yeah, how the same tricks don't work every time. I thought it was complexity in a nutshell and highly related. Joakim von Prónay: Yep, absolutely. Marco: happy to get the chance to discuss it as well. Joakim von Prónay: Andesh, on my screen you are not moving. Are you still with us? Anders Wengelin: I am, I can hear you and I can see you. and I am moving slightly here in my chair. first of all, thanks for having me. Talking about complexity is w one of my one of my favorite things to do in the world. and this is the first time I've done it in this format with some great companies. So thanks for having me. And if you want me back, I'm happy to come back. I especially like the conversation. I am happy, Michael, that you chose the the thoughts about about direction, that conversation we just had was very helpful for me because I am struggling about how to talk about direction with others. in a theoretical space when I w when I like explain and we talk about complexity, but also in concrete terms. terms in organizations when we talk strategy and how to phrase a strategy and I and a direction. That's something I would like to talk even more about that someday. So let's but with that thanks for having. Joakim von Prónay: Cool. And my final thoughts echo what the two of you already said. Very nice to have a guest, so thank you for joining us, Andesh. I was a bit not skeptical, afraid is also not the word. I was interested to see how the dynamic would play out with a third person. Because Michael and I have done a few episodes, we've kind of settled into our our our dynamic work and it it it was interesting to have it a little bit disrupted, but I think I don't think it was too disruptive. I think it was a breeze of fresh air. Marco: I think it was generative divergence from the usual shape. Joakim von Prónay: It was generative divergence. Thank you, Marco. And as of the contents, what we talked about, my thoughts go back to enabling constraints. I'm st I'm gonna continue to to think about enabling constraints and framing framing more things as enabling constraints, as I kind of touched upon a little bit in my in my thinking earlier. Because I thought that was interesting. And also with the with the direction, how to speak about direction and W why it's so hard to talk about direction in organizations and why it's so easy when you're traveling by car or by train. because they are very different landscapes. But hm, food for thought as always. And I think with that Marco and Anders, thank you for the conversation. Anders Wengelin: Thank you. Marco: Thank you. And see you later. Joakim von Prónay: Until next time. Ciao. Thank you for listening to the whole episode. If you enjoyed the conversation, please consider leaving a review and sharing the episode with at least one other person who you believe will also enjoy it. It truly helps us reach more people. And if you don't follow us already, please consider subscribing to our Substack on complexitycogitators.substack.com. And if you have a topic that you want us to talk about, drop us a message. We are more than happy to receive suggestions. Bye for now.