Embrace the complex
What an alien might think of Linkedin
If I were an alien (who somehow understood human language) and gained access to Linkedin for the first time, I'd be led to believe a lot of different things about humanity. One thing I might believe is that humans seem to have a lot figured out. All of these complex topics, neatly summarised with headlines such as, ‘Here are the 5 steps to become a millionaire;’ or ‘6 easy steps to solve your mental health’ (both real headlines I’ve seen recently on Linkedin). ‘What an evolved set of beings I’ve discovered,’ I might think. ‘We have so much to learn from them.’
But if I went on to follow that advice I might soon become a disillusioned alien - broke and struggling with anxiety, despite having followed the steps religiously. ‘It must be something I did. Clearly it’s worked for these other people so I must be getting it wrong.’ I might soon start to fall into this cycle of questioning myself and my competence and internalising a narrative that I’M the problem here.
Welcome to humanity my alien friend - you’ll fit right in.
The troubles that our alien friend has experienced are common amongst people too. In a sea of information, it seems that our collective response has been to optimise for information that is ‘simple’, ‘digestible’ and ‘actionable’. The type of information that draws straight lines from point A to point B and portrays us as being in the driving seat for the whole journey. Whilst there is huge skill and value in synthesising information - when highly complex topics are boiled down to that level, I believe it creates a false narrative that has the potential to do as much harm as good, when reality inevitably gets in the way of a snappy piece of content.
I know the algorithms won’t like this, but there are a couple of important things I believe to be true:
I believe that some things are inherently complex and require different ways of thinking.
I believe that people have the capacity, not just to cope, but to thrive in the face of complexity when they acknowledge it for what it is.
Don’t despair yet my alien friend. There may still be hope!
I’ve been reading around the topic of ‘complexity’ quite a bit recently, exploring ‘emergent/complex adaptive systems’ in particular. An emergent system is one in which you have individuals making their own decisions about their own actions; those individuals and their actions interact with one another; and the system overall becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Think of an ant colony for example - each ant is doing its own thing, but if you look at the colony as a whole it seems to be an organism unto itself, which you can’t fully understand by analysing the behaviour of any one ant.
But what does an ant colony have to do with human behaviour?
Well, as people, we are embedded in endless complex systems. Not just one ant colony, but many of them all at once. You could even argue that the different parts of ourselves make up a complex, emergent system. And complex systems require different approaches - we have to acknowledge that we don’t have full control; we have to stop pretending there are ‘6 easy steps to…’; we have to adapt our mindset to thrive in the face of complexity.
This is where frameworks like ‘Cynefin’ come in. Cynefin is a framework (depicted below) created by a guy called Dave Snowden (here’s a 12 minute explainer video if you want to learn a little bit more.) The Cynefin framework is a useful way to outline different types of systems, and what might be an appropriate response in each system. Only in an ‘obvious’ system where there are fixed constraints, is there such thing as ‘best practice’ e.g. ‘6 easy steps to achieve X’.
If we stop misclassifying things as ‘obvious’ when they are in fact ‘complex’ or even ‘chaotic’ then we start to free ourselves from the notion that there’s a ‘right way’ to be doing things. We spend less time trying to analyse and categorise, and more time probing and acting and then responding to what happens next.
For our alien friend it means he cuts himself a bit of slack. He pays less attention to advice that tries to portray complex systems as obvious, and he starts to act within the system to see what emerges. It doesn’t mean he necessarily becomes a millionaire; or that he never experiences anxiety, but it allows him to work with the systems in which he finds himself rather than against them. Hopefully it makes his trip worthwhile.