Cognitive Edge: Reflections on Complexity, Chaos and COVID-19 == * ###### tags: `complexity` `webinar` `covid19` ### Links * https://cognitive-edge.com/blog/reflections-complexity-chaos-covid19/ * https://cognitive-edge.com/videos/complexity-chaos-covid-19/ ### What Leading thinkers in the field of complexity explore where we are from different perspectives. Alicia Juarerro, Ann Pendleton-Jullian, Valdis Krebs and Dave Snowden in a 90-minute conversation ### Notes Bits from the session I find useful and interesting - (18:23) getting the language right - (23:45) From a networks perspective, the things we have done to create this Just-in-Time world, i.e. to shorten the network paths to facilitate more efficient flow of information and resources, are working against us now as it also enables the virus to spread faster. How do we lengthen the paths for the virus while maintaining adequate information and resource flow. - (27:27) we're doing things very linearly now, in the world. need a way to entangle more coherently - (36:00) how to take swift decisions, about how human organise ourselves - (01:01:20) daoism is the closest religion to complexity - (01:01:40) decision is only a decision only if you can't resolve it. we structure day to day operation that are not decision. decisions are when you just don't know what you should do. when there's complete ambiguity (cynefin then?) and the lack of linearity - (01:04:15) there are things you can manage and there are things you can monitor in a complex system. and the trouble is in discerning them. what can be managed: constraints, rituals, energy allocation. need to have a degree of permeability. need to get people to focus on constraint management, upfront. - (01:06:10) the more dense a network is, the more noisy it became. how to help reduce noise / amplify the signals? need the just right amount of diversity. need a sense making process - (01:09:16) how to make meaning from all this - place making, epistemic injustice, epistemic exclusion - (01:20:45) philosophy has been thought in a contextless way, but marrying it with storytelling gives context to the content - (01:23:10) innovation happens at the intersection, so must try and find ways to open / enable that diversity. be aware of the clusters of knowledge around you. don't reject it, make sense of it. the adjacent possible. - (01:24:40) exciting time for leaders to create org change. transition the frame / window of the world from enlightenment (knowable bounded certain world) to the notion of more entangled world (non linear). - (01:27:12) how to know "enough" to act to create a resilient future, collectively. less dichotomy, more dialectics. theory-informed practice to cope with uncertainty. - After the pandemic, there will be a lot of so-called retrospective coherence. We will connect dots in ways that ==satisfy our need for linear cause and effect and create stories that make sense to attribute success and justify failure==. To learn effectively from this crisis, we need to capture the learning ==as it happens, in-situ==. And **we cannot afford not to learn**, this will not be our last pandemic, and global warming is already becoming a crisis with even more potential impact than COVID-19. ### Notes - the video player allows you to skip backward and forward using your keyboard arrow buttons (need to click on the bottom bar perhaps). hit space to play and pause