Complexity ScienceAnd Design Studio for Product Teams

@semanticwillsemanticwill

This talk is an MPV

• The Meetup.com page was the “Pitch MVP”• 85 people signed up• So I wrote the talk this 2 weeks ago• To learn to give this talk• This talk is how we think & manage at

TLCLabs• This is the second time I have given this

talk

3

(Minimum Viable Presentation)

Take-aways

• Context matters – good leaders are adept at knowing which context they are in

• Different contexts (ontologies) require different epistemologies

• Best practice is always past practice• Beware of “complexity bias” or

“complexity fetishism”• Praxis makes perfect

4

“There is no coming to consciousness There is no coming to consciousness

without pain.without pain.- Carl Jung- Carl Jung

5

contextWe always begin with

6

Narrative fragments

• You have an idea for a startup• A customer wants to unsubscribe from your

emails• You just hired an amazing user experience

designer• 9 of your 13 load-balancing nodes have just

gone down• You have lost 6 of your best platform engineers

in the past month• You and your board of directors have decided to

take your company public

Problem Statement

• All too often, leaders, managers, teams, rely on common approaches that may work well in one context, and fail in another

• Too often, we assume the work we do is determinist and ordered, with a degree of predictability

• Products designed for one context (US market), rarely solve problems in a different context (Asia)

8

Epistemology

9

The study of knowledge and justified belief.

•What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge?•What are its sources? •How are we to understand the concept of justification?•What makes beliefs justified?•Is justification internal or external to one’s own mind?

Naturizing sense-making

• How do we make sense of the world so that we can act in it?

• Rejecting idealism and the myth of the right answer.

• Evidence based strategy using natural sciences and humanities– Complex adaptive systems theory– The cognitive sciences

From anticipation – to anticipatory

awareness

11

Complex adaptive systems On the nature of complex adaptive systems.

12

The nature of systems

• A system is any network that has coherence

it may be fuzzy, it may or may not have a purpose

• An agent is anything which acts within the system

13

The nature of systems

Three types:•Ordered: system constrains agents, reductionism and rules, deterministic, observer independence, clear causality•Chaotic System: agents unconstrained and independent of each other•Complex System: lightly constrains agents, agents modify the system by their interaction with it and each other. They co-evolve.

14

Distributed cognition

15

Lightly constrained system

16

Centralized cognitionTightly constrained system

Constraint based definition

20

Aspects of complex systems• Highly sensitive to small changes• Proximity and connectivity of nodes

is key• Meaning emerges through interaction• Think of coalescence, not categories• Hindsight does not lead to foresight• Shift from fail-safe design to safe-to-

fail experimentation

22

Cynefin model

23

Sense-making

NOT CATEGORIZATION

24

25

Cynefin

The place of your multiple belongings.

26

Cynefin

27

Un-Order Order

28

Simple

29

Complicated

30

Complex

31

Chaotic

32

Disorder

Meaning exist in the interaction between

things, not in the things themselves

Alicia Juarrero

33

34

Cynefin

35

Cynefin

36

CynefinEmergentPractice

Good Practice

Best PracticeNovel

37

CynefinEmergent Good Practice

Best PracticeNovel

ProbeSense

Respond

SenseAnalyzeRespond

SenseCategorizeRespond

ActSense

Respond

38

CynefinTrust that individualsare doing their best

Trust the expert

Trust the fuckingmanual

Trust Leadership

39

Agency

Com

mun

icati

on

Agency

Com

mun

icati

on

Agency

Com

mun

icati

on

Agency

Com

mun

icati

on

40

41

When ontologies change, so too does epistemology.

Both the nature of the system and our awareness of that nature (they are not the same thing), result in a need to shift the nature of our acts of knowing or epistemologies.

Dave Snowden

Narrative fragments

Narrative Fragments

43

It’s 930am on Monday morning, and you’ve sent out your email newsletter to 5 million subscribers.

At 937, 9 of your 13 load-balancing nodes go down.

Narrative Fragments

44

You just hired an amazing user experience designer. Today is her first day of work.

Narrative Fragments

45

You and your board of directors have decided to take your company public.

Narrative Fragments

46

Over the past two months, you have lost 6 of your top platform engineers.

47

CynefinEmergent Good Practice

Best PracticeNovel

ProbeSense

Respond

SenseAnalyzeRespond

SenseCategorizeRespond

ActSense

Respond

48

Cynefin

Complex Complicated

SimpleChaos

49

Cynefin

Tools to Manage in a Complex Context

50

Design Studio for Complexity Thinking

• Relax constraints• Open up for discussion & debate• Rapid, generative ideation (abductive thinking)• Set barriers (once barriers are set, people can self-

regulate) – time boxes, rules of engagement• Amplify positive patterns• Encourage dissent & diversity (ritual

dissent/assent)• Manage through constraints • Avoid “premature convergence”• Run multiple, contradictory experiments

51

52

Collaboration, cohererence, consensus, and premature convergence

53

Fail-safe versusSafe-to-Fail

54

Multiple hypothesis testing

55

Ritual assent | Ritual dissent

Active decision-making model

Take-aways

• Context matters – good leaders are adept at knowing which context they are in

• Different contexts (ontologies) require different epistemologies

• Best practice is always past practice• Beware of “complexity bias” or

“complexity fetishism”• Praxis makes perfect

57

58

Cynefin

60

@semanticwill

61