Rethinking Complexity

Conscious Evolution

We are at the portal of what systems scientist Béla Bánáthy called the "fourth generation" humans.

What distinguishes this fourth generation from its predecessors is evolutionary consciousness, according to Bánáthy, a professor emeritus at Saybrook University until his death in 2003.

Bánáthy defined evolutionary consciousness as the knowledge and awareness of how we get to a point in our human history from the perspectives of our consciousness, our cognition, and our social systems.

We are the first generation of humans that have access to concrete information regarding the human trajectory and the knowledge of where this trajectory can lead unless we decide to consciously participate in the evolution of our planet.

To make this concept clear, we need to start with the first three human generations identified by Bánáthy and other social scientists.

Evolutionary Leadership: The Embodiment of Systems Being

In a previous post, I presented the need to move from systems thinking to systems being.

There is a reason for that: I believe that it is through systems being that we will be able to truly transform our world. And transforming the world is the task of leaders. However, the most prevalent understanding of leadership is narrow and hierarchical: one leader on top and many followers below; few with power and many powerless.

As members of society and organizations, we have accepted a passive, victim stance in the face of complex challenges while we point fingers hoping that elected officials and business executives take care of our problems. Our behavior represents a relinquishing of our power. We suffer the problems but we don’t see ourselves as part of the solutions. And if we find ourselves dissatisfied about our leaders, we act as if we can’t do anything about it.

This distorted concept of leadership needs to be revised and expanded, because it is not very useful and it may be dangerous in today’s world. By our mere participation in social structures through our daily lives, we are creating our future. But we haven’t done so consciously.

Peter Senge shares the view that "ultimately, leadership is about creating new realities." He once said, "Because of our obsession with how leaders behave and with the interactions of leaders and followers, we forget that in its essence, leadership is about learning how to shape the future.... Leadership exists when people are no longer victims of circumstances but participate in creating new circumstances. Leadership is about creating a domain in which human beings continually deepen their understanding of reality and become more capable of participating in the unfolding of the world.”

Rethinking the Complexity of Learning Organizations

Today’s educational system is wrought with complexity—from the work of educating students to the lack of financing in heated political climates.

Working in the educational system can be complex, but it can also be rewarding.

The challenge is finding the right people with the right passion who are able to view the world from a systemic view—people who are willing to fearlessly delve into the chaos of the current system and make sense of it.

I work in an office that focuses on career and technical education programs. Even though our role is limited to vocational education, we try to keep a whole-student view of the educational system—a view that makes student success the primary focus supported by a system that encourages this success.

Earlier this year, I had a long conversation at work with two of my colleagues for a Saybrook class paper concerning complexity in the workplace. Our discussion helped me see that a lack of clarity seems to be fueling the complexity issues affecting the current educational system.

Some employees don't have a clear understanding of the expectations they're required to meet while others find themselves struggling to figure out how to move the system forward holistically rather than just focusing on individual pieces.

Life Choices and Commitments: A Reinforcing Loop

Our life choices and commitments feed on each other causing them to form a reinforcing loop. This type of loop is the causal relationship of two variables that affect each other in the same direction. If one grows the other does as well.

The opposite is also true: the reduction in one variable causes the other to diminish.

The choices we make in our lives often lead to commitments than, in turn, propel us to additional life choices that reinforce our commitments. This cycle can only be changed by different life choices that modify or lower our commitments.

An example of the reinforcing relationship between life choice and commitments is living a lavish lifestyle. This includes owning the nice, large house, which brings an equivalent set of large commitments for its upkeep, and owning the luxury car that requires the expensive insurance policy and the high lease payments. The list of related high lifestyle choices goes on with commitments that could potentially impact happiness, the ability to afford the lifestyle, and the complexity associated with keeping it all going.

Helping students “get a voice” through collective courage

I have been working with Laurie Mandel, Ed.D., founder and Executive Director of Get-A-Voice™, recently. As I dove deeply into her philosophy, I ended up revisiting elements of systems knowledge intermingled with a motivation to establish conscious school cultures—from the student level!

After nearly two months of work, these foundational systems Laurie “suspected” would spark cultures of acceptance have been interconnected through a comprehensive plan to bring Get-A-Voice™ (or GAV) to the national market. The GAV systems may appear to skirt around the real issue it intends to address—bullying in schools—but it doesn't. Instead, Dr. Mandel has opted for a systemic way to address human relationship building in the formation years of social interactions.

By contrast, last year I witnessed a school in a bit of a half-witted attempt—though I'm sure, well-intentioned—attack and reward students in a Pavlovian manner. It struck how the administrators were over-rewarding children with “blue slips” for standard behaviors—didn’t anyone read Ed Deci and Rich Ryan’s seminal work on self-determinism theory and human motivation? How unaware are administrators in establishing systems of sustaining humanistic values? What systems are baked into our schools that breed visions of limitation and reduction versus possibility and potential? Students are not dogs and blue slips aren’t biscuits.

Systems Archetypes and Their Application

Systems archetypes are common and usually reoccurring patterns of behavior in organizations.  These patterns almost always result in negative consequences.

Systems archetypes were first studied in the 1960s and 1970s by Jay Forrester, Dennis Meadows, Donella Meadows and others in the nascent field of systems thinking.

In his popular 1990 book, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Peter Senge explored systems archetypes and, along with Michael Goodman, Charles Kiefer, and Jenny Kemeny, documented the most common set of patterns of behavior in organizations that have the tendency of reoccurring. These systems thinking researchers leveraged the annotations of John Sterman, a pioneer in system dynamics. The structures and graphical language of system dynamics allowed Senge and his colleges to document these common systems archetypes and make them accessible to the average reader.

First Things First: Who Are We?

Today's buzzwords are collaboration, community engagement, and networked leadership across several industries. There's a lot of talk about adapting a systems perspective and moving away from linear approaches to change. These views and processes are all well and good. As a matter of fact, they hold the promise of a more holistic pathway towards ecological consciousness and societal transformation.

But what if a well-rooted identity with an ecological ancestry as well as a present day sense of place do not first exist?

Recently, I was called upon to facilitate a community collaborative aimed both at promoting the value and supporting the preservation of a rare ecosystem and at cultivating relationships in order to establish a well-founded sense of place within the Oak Openings Region of Northwest Ohio. The hosting non-profit group consists of scientists representing various organizations such as The Black Swamp Conservancy, Toledo Metroparks, the Department of Natural Resources, The Nature Conservancy, University of Toledo, and others. These agencies hope that community residents will share the same values of conservation with them and act in accordance to protect nature.

An interesting twist occurred after a series of sessions and dialogues. The locals were completely unaware that they live in what The Nature Conservancy deemed "one of the most important ecosystems in the U.S." and "one of the last great places on Earth." They also lacked a sense of shared identity.

The Practices of Systemic Sustainability

Systemic sustainability is a process of development—individual, organizational, or societal—involving an adaptive strategy of emergence that ensures the evolutionary maintenance of an increasingly robust and supportive environment. Systemic sustainability goes beyond the triple bottom line and embraces “the possibility that human and other forms of life will flourish on the Earth forever” as beautifully expressed by John Ehrenfeld. Adam Werbach defines a sustainable business as one capable of “thriving in perpetuity.” Systemic sustainability is about developing this capacity so that all human systems can co-exist in partnership with the living systems of our planet.

Systemic sustainability starts with each individual in an organization or community. It recognizes that change happens through us.  Integrating systemic sustainability into the cultural fabric of an organization requires the development of practices at least four levels of intentional action.

"...In the hardest of moments, we can also live the fullest of lives."

While perusing my Facebook page this afternoon, I learned that the friend of a friend—a woman named Maria—was recently hospitalized in her battle against an inoperable brain tumor.

Maria's name sounded familiar so I looked her up. I know her, I thought. But I don't know her. At least not formally.

I remembered her as Mari—her high school nickname. In my memory, she was one of those popular upperclasmen who roamed the halls of St. Brendan High School oblivious to people like me—the outcasts who generally blended into non-existence—more than 15 years ago.

That past became irrelevant as I read my friend's plea to keep Mari in our thoughts and prayers. Within minutes of reading the request, this same friend posted a link to Mari's blog, Grace, Joy, and Healing. I followed the link and read what Mari's written about her illness.

In 2008, Mari began experiencing neck pains that, over time, spread to other regions of her body and increased in severity. She began experiencing headaches, shoulder pain, a limited range of motion in her neck and right shoulder, a weakness in the right side of her face, hearing loss, pain in her jaw, and dizziness. "The symptoms," Mari wrote, "would come on gradually causing me to wonder if I had done something to cause myself an injury. There came a point where it was undeniable that something was not right."

Will the real systemic leaders please stand up?

Last night on CNN, Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy of South Carolina used the "s" word to describe the kind of change he wants to see in Washington, D.C., to end the recurring debt-default issue once and for all.

The "s" word he used was systemic.

"Systemic change," Mr. Gowdy said, is the change he'd like to approve. But no one's offered it yet, according to the congressman.

Hearing a Capitol Hill politician utter the word "systemic" surprised me. With all due respect to Mr. Gowdy, Washington logic doesn't seem to favor systems thinking. This country has, after all, been on a collision course with fiscal disaster for quite some time, relying on short-term fixes that fail to resolve underlying, systemic problems in the long run.

I felt compelled this morning to answer Mr. Gowdy's plea for systemic change by offering an apolitical, bipartisan response from a systems perspective. I turned to authors Annabel Beerel and Donella H. Meadows for help.

A system, according to Meadows' 2008 book Thinking in Systems: A Primer, "is an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something." A system, Meadows wrote, consists of elements, interconnections, and a function or purpose.

When a problem arises, many organizations nowadays typically hone in on the element that seems to be causing the problem and try to fix the element on its own as a separate entity. Isolating the troubled element, however, ignores all of its interconnections within the system. So changing one element in the system will—in some way—affect all of the other elements in the system too. When that happens, the function or purpose of the system will also change.