EU Field Guide Summary

I was asked for a succinct summary of the various approaches described in that Guide so this is it. And it is high level 🙂

Getting ready for things you cannot anticipate

There are seven basic steps to map where we are, three pervasive practices, and three things to which we need to pay attention. All of the methods and approaches here are documented in the field guide and are available in our open-source Wiki so I am just summarising them here. There is a lot of other material there – the lists of what can be managed and what can be monitored in a complex system being one as well as a host of methods associated with descriptive self-awareness, making people aware of differences which I will blog on later this month. So assume there is more material to use. You can search on the wiki or on this blog for the key terms. If I get time next week I may edit the blog to create the links but I don’t have time now.

Mapping the evolutionary potential of the here and now

1. Constraint mapping is a key technique using the typology of constraints that has been developed over the last few years. Constraints can contain or connect, they can be resilient or robust among other characteristics but overall they allow us to understand the nature of where we are.
2. Once the constraints are determined we can map the counter-factual space (I am drawing on constructor theory here), which is to say we start by defining what is not possible, rather than what we would desire. Cultural mapping is a key tool here and it’s use is linked with the assemblage point below.
3. Once complete we look at the temporal aspects of our counter-factual statements – what constraints could be changed at what risk? What changes in those constraints can we make anyway? Which if changed, would open up more desirable future pathways. This creates a where we are, and a set of stages of where we could go in the future and we set those up for review at key future check points.
4. The aporetic turn in the field guide gives us different pathways to explore different Cynefin Domains. Where the nature of the expertise is obvious then we deploy expertise and analysis. Where there are conflicting experts we use a short cycle Tripticon to resolve those conflicts, where we have inadequate hypotheses we deploy human sensor networks (see later), and if it is complex (and most of it will be) then we move to stage 5
5. We then seek to create constructors (and map what exists). Constructors resolve uncertainty as they produce replicable outcomes. So a machine once running produces identical products. In human systems rituals and tropes do something similar. Understanding what we have got, and then creating safe-to-fail probes to see which are possible, sustainable, and advantageous allows us to understand the pathways available to us
6. This activity allows us to see how the ecosystem is evolving and allows us to reinforce desirable results, distrust those which are not desirable. Vector theory of change comes in here with its more like these, fewer like those approaches to engagement.
7. We use our human sensor networks to provide real-time feedback loops and also to capture learning and ideas in real-time into a narrative database. That becomes a repository of learning and allows us to continue to evolve the system

In all of this, we are working with a very basic fact; if the energy cost of sin is less than that of virtue then sin is what you will get. If you want to change, you have to make the energy cost of your desired pathway less than that of the alternatives. This simple statement is a radical change from the last thirty years. We are creating an ecosystem where the cost of learning is less than the cost of ignorance and seeking to prevent the game playing that accommodates top-down approaches to change that seek compliance and alignment.

Pervasive practices

1. Build informal networks, or if you want a fancier term context-free information channels. Entangled Trios and Social Network Stimulation are methods here. Informal networks keep the formal system operating and they are much neglected which means they too easily get perverted to an old boys (or girls) network. Deliberate stimulation avoids that.
2. Map what your knowledge in order to radically repurpose it under conditions of stress or simply use it better in practice. The granularity by which you store this is key and narrative databases, decision-information mapping, and ASHEN all form a body of methods for this.
3. Create human sensor networks, of your employees and if you can citizens, customers, and so on. This is one of the main uses of SenseMaker® with MassSense and distributed scenario planning and situational assessment. it also includes outlier identification and weak signal detection as well as real-time monitoring

Things to pay attention to

I will be writing more posts on this so take this as a marker:

1. Determine what or who has agency in the organisation and in what contexts. Trio based decision making, Crews, and a range of other techniques are available here but in general its not about individuals it’s about groups, connections and interactions.
2. What are the affordances available to you? This is a byproduct of constraint mapping and counterfactuals but is important in itself
3. What assemblages or entrained patterns of thinking are present and which can be changed? What are the lines of the flight, the ligne de fuite that are available, and at what cost?