Embracing complexity: Sense-making, reflecting and connecting (July 2024 explorations)

It recently occurred to me that my monthly updates are, in effect, a sense-making process through which, on the basis of my explorations, I spot patterns in the world and in my practice, reflect on those patterns and their causes, use the insights from that reflection to inform my decisions about future explorations, and share some of those insights and associated resources with others.

As well as providing a helpful framing for my monthly updates, this realization might excuse the sometimes unpolished nature of my sharing (the sensemaking and sharing matters more than the polish), and motivate me to invest additional time in this process in future. There we go, embracing complexity: Explorations -> Sense-making -> Reflection -> Learning + Sharing -> Action -> Boom! In what follows, I try to make sense of July, to inform my actions in August and beyond.

With a couple of projects winding down, July has been a time of transition. I've been busy preparing to share some insights on "Ecosystems and emergence: Implications for funders", exploring potential new collaborations around learning in complexity, and improving my ability to craft questions and prompts which effectively enlist the help of artificial intelligence for aspects of my knowledge gardening (the prompt engineering basics course I'm doing is great). I've also been giving some time to reflecting - across all aspects of my life - on whether I can even more fully align what I'm doing, the questions I'm exploring, and the connections I am making, with my sense of purpose, values, interests, priorities and desires.

Inspired also by my participation in a wonderful People need people event (there's one on 15th August - give it a go!), this reflection has already begun to bear fruit. I've deliberately stretched beyond my reading/thinking/writing comfort zone and volunteered to participate in more collaborative endeavours, with more facilitative roles, and in ways which extend to implementing and testing the value of ideas rather more than some of my recent exploring has done.

Last month this included contributing to a Systems Innovation network co-creation workshop on Rethinking philanthropy and charity with systems thinking (thanks to Joss Colchester for the opportunity - Miro here, video here, write up here), and helping to facilitate a UNDP-led sense-making workshop about Tackling transnationally-enabled corruption (thanks to S?ren Haldrup for the opportunity). As a result of the anti-corruption workshop, I'm now glad to be in touch with people working on the implications of offshore financial centres (aka tax, secrecy and money laundering havens) - the focus of my 30 year old Ph.D. - for the political economy dynamics of developing countries! (See, for instance, this great piece on Researching Africa and the offshore world by Ricardo Soares de Oliveira).

In addition to these avenues of focused exploration, I also organised the first meeting of Sussex Systems Socials (Competing with Coastal Complexity Capers in the name-stakes). This meeting, by the beach in Brighton, brought together friends and colleagues of mine in the Brighton-ish area, with no purpose or agenda beyond connecting (thanks for the enthusiastic responses and to all who trusted me enough to show up!).

I've also joined a new co-working space and am glad to be making fresh connections there, including through a beautifully hippy Connection Jam, facilitated wonderfully by Mags Houston and Dan Simpson, which is about "meeting others in playful authenticity". Finally, to further inform my reflection and learning, I've now started keeping track, both of the connections I make between people, and the notes of appreciation I receive (something my Dad always did to encourage and support his future self).

The various things that I read, watched and listened to over the course of July as I've been going/growing with the flow, along with links and summaries, can be found here. I dive deeper into some of the things I found most interesting below.

Power to the People, by Danny Sriskandarajah (video)

• An insightful discussion of a new book by the former director of Civicus, CEO of Oxfam GB and now head of the New Economics Foundation, which focuses on the potential for civic and democratic renewal (a set of issues that my kind and inspiring friend Simon Burall, who very sadly died last month, dedicated much of his life to, putting citizens at the heart of public policy - obituary here).

• This timely discussion took place a few days after a UK election in which people - not a huge portion of the population but enough to deliver a much-needed change of Government - put their trust in the Labour Party to do what they can to change the landscape of power. This included the election of my friend, former colleague and open government enthusiast, Joe Powell, to be the Member of Parliament for Kensington and Bayswater, and now the Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Anti-Corruption and Responsible Tax.
• My note to self for future exploration having watched the discussion was that "the ways in which things (society, economy, politics, lives) work is about how power is exercised, including how we exercise our own power, and how that might be changed, including through our own actions. That is why this book - Danny Sriskandarajah's Power to the People - is particularly important. This makes me think that it might be fruitful to explore the connections between the theme of this book and thinking about the dynamics of complex social systems and how those dynamics might be changed." And, to actually read the book!

Theories of change in reality: Strengths, limitations and future directions, edited by Andrew Koleros, Marie-Hélène Adrien and Tony Tyrell

• An excellent book, available on open access, which includes a wealth of rich and reflective chapters by an outstanding cast of authors. The chapters explore three purposes that theories of change are, and might be, used for: to develop a causal model of how things work; to co-develop shared model(s) of how we think things work to guide learning and adaptation; and, to co-develop a shared vision of desirable future(s).
• Given my ongoing engagement about how funders think about and support social change, I was particularly interested in Andrew Koleros's call for funders to adopt actor-based approaches to developing their theories of change. See also, the new Actor-Based Change website on the complexity-aware, behaviour-focused, agency-strengthening (thanks to Sumaya Saluja of the Asia Foundation for reminding me of this), and eminently practical Actor-Based Change methodology and this recent post on Making theories of change as easy as ABC.

Exploring causal pathways amid complexity, by Jewlya Lynn and Marina Apgar

• This important and engaging paper by Jewlya and Marina, of PolicySolve and the Institute for Development Studies respectively, explores an increasingly important evaluation dilemma: if and how do [and might] evaluators attend to causality amid complexity. Making the case for greater attention to causal analysis and inference in order to test assumptions and support effective learning, the authors contribute to a hugely important area of thinking and practice - frankly, an area of considerable confusion in discussions around complex processes of social change. They argue that "a deeper exploration of causality is necessary to evaluate rigorously amid complexity". See also the Causal Pathways initiative, which the co-authors of this piece are both very involved in.

Why intervening on the environment is so important for supporting change in complex systems, by Anna Panagiotou and Beth Smith

• This interesting piece considers the findings from an authoritative synthesis of analyses on the "determinants of behaviour and their efficacy as targets of behavioural change interventions". This synthesis suggests that altering the environment or context in which people and organisations operate and interact - enabling people to circumvent obstacles to enacting desirable behaviours - is more effective than targeting beliefs or knowledge.
• This is very much in line with the Estuarine Mapping approach to understanding and supporting complex processes of social change, developed by Dave Snowden and his Cynefin colleagues, including Anna and Beth. As Alexander Den Heijer - quoted by the co-authors, beautifully noted, “When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.” Pairs nicely with Kiley Arroyo's piece on how to be a soil keeper, from 2021.

Governance in and for complexity, by Ingrid Burkett and Joanne McNeill

• Written by co-authors from the Griffith Centre for Systems Innovation, this paper offers a very helpful typology for understanding the various roles that intermediary organisations can play in supporting the emergence of collaborative ecosystems focused on systemic change and complex goals, such as the Sustainable Development Goals.
• This typology might then be used to support the intentional design of organisations, and specifically their governance, so that they can play these roles more effectively. Perhaps this will enable others to do a better job of charting the course for and clarifying the contribution of intermediary organisations they are part of than I managed to do with Global Integrity. This was part one of a three part series which is definitely worth keeping an eye on. Pairs nicely with the ecological organisations framework by Anna-Marie Swan.

Making connections across an emerging landscape of ideas, by Jess Daggers

• This piece explores and seeks to make connections between the ideas and approaches of two organisations working in the landscape of economic and social transformation, the TransCap Initiative (which Jess works with) and the Deep Transitions Lab, specifically their work on Transformative Investment. I LOVE the focus on the landscape, connections, and learning, rather than the presentation of one set of ideas, or an organisation, as the solution to a complex social challenge.
• I love this because it's very much line with my increasingly strong sense - a feeling, at least as much as a thought - of the hugely important role that connections and relationships amongst people and organisations play in shaping lives and societies, by giving meaning, supporting learning, and enabling change. Eco-systems, not ego-systems. And the wonderful image generated for Jess's blog-post suggests I have much to learn about effective prompting! I eagerly await news of forthcoming joining the dots initiatives.

Looking ahead over the coming weeks, I'm excited about: a webinar on Embracing an ecosystems approach to philanthropy on August 20th (register here); the Systems Innovation network conference on 6th and 7th September (I went two years ago and it was great!); the publication of Jean Boulton's new book on The Dao of Complexity (book info here; launch event on 21st October here; my notes from her 2015 book on Embracing Complexity, here).

I'm also contemplating attending the European Evaluation Society meeting in Rimini, Italy. If you've been before, and think it might be up my street, or are going and would like to meet (and go mountain biking afterwards?!) give me a shout. Last but not least, I'm hoping to find and create some relatively fallow and regenerative time, for rest and further reflection over the coming weeks.

If you'd like to learn more about what I've been exploring, or to discuss how I might support your work, just give me a shout. I'll be very happy to connect. If you're interested in seeing more of what I've been up to in recent months, my various articles and posts are collated here. And, if you'd like to receive my occasional - monthly, more or less - updates by email, please sign up here.