In some recent work I have been doing, it occurred to me that Open Space Technology might provide a framework for capturing the Wisdom of Crowds
to resolve complex problems. This draws together three very timely
business concepts, and I thought it might be worth exploring this
further on these pages. Here's what I've come up with.
First, a recap: A complex problem or
situation is substantially different from a merely complicated one.
Here's how you know a problem is complex:
- There are too many
interrelated variables to manageably map and show causal relationships
between. In other words it is far from perfectly 'knowable'.
- It's intractable -- it has defied previous attempts to resolve it satisfactorily.
- It entails many human factors and hence is subject more to human nature than definable rules.
- Clarity about the problem co-emerges with ideas for its possible resolution.
A simple example can be found in the accounting profession. Accounting is complicated
-- there are a set number of well-defined rules and principles that the
accounts either conform to, or do not. By contrast, auditing -- the art
of verifying whether errors or fraud have occurred in the accounts --
is complex. The new
Sarbanes-Oxley rules notwithstanding, there is no set of procedures
that can be performed that will definitively determine whether errors
or fraud have occurred, and there are an infinite number of ways such
errors or fraud can arise.
Another simple example concerns the
occurrence of earthquakes. Designing a bridge that can withstand a 9.0
magnitude earthquake is a complicated
problem -- there are a finite number of considerations, so engineers
can state with a high degree of certainty that the bridge will stand up
to such a test. Predicting when and where a 9.0 magnitude earthquake
will occur is a complex
problem -- at least with today's science, there are simply too many
variables, and their interrelationship too indeterminate, to make a
prediction with any useful degree of reliability.
This is the
challenge we currently face with another complex problem -- global
warming. There are so many variables, and causality is so difficult to
determine, that some industry spokespeople have even been able to deny
it is occurring at all, or, if it is, to deny that human industrial
activity causes it or affects it significantly. Even though there is
much compelling evidence of correlation between CO2 emissions and
average surface temperatures, its very complexity provides enough
'wiggle room' for skeptics and procrastinators to forestall any
meaningful action to address climate change. Similar challenges face us
in grappling with other complex, 'wicked' problems and intractable problems
like designing an effective health care or education system, resolving
crime, security issues, poverty, and our propensity for violence, and
achieving sustainable energy self-sufficiency..
Dave Snowden,
who I think is the leading expert on the application of social
complexity theory to business, has suggested that Open Space Technology
offers a methodology that might be well-suited to addressing complex
problems. Here is how I think such an approach might work:
- Invitation:
The people invited to an Open Space event would be selected in such a
way that they meet the criteria of a 'crowd' specified by James
Surowiecki in his book The Wisdom of Crowds: mutually independent, objective-minded, reasonably informed, and diverse.
- Focus and Framework:
The conversations and stories that occur during the Open Space event
would be focused on surfacing a broad understanding of what is
happening in the system, including an awareness of previously-ignored
externalities -- factors and variables that have an impact on the issue
at hand but are usually considered to be irrelevant, inconsequential or
outside the control or responsibility of the people addressing the
issue. To do that, a framework to define the 'topology' of the issue
would be drafted before the start of the Open Space event, sketching
out an incomplete set of aspects of the issue, and 'creating space' for each aspect or characteristic for problem articulations and missing data ("what we don't know"), stories, relevant data, observed patterns, correlations, and measures ("what we do know"), and hypotheses, assumptions, ideas, theories, models, approaches, and potential resolution methods ("what we suppose"). Open Space events, after the formal introduction of the issue or problem, normally begin
with participants rising in turn and suggesting an aspect (or facet) of
the issue they think needs to be explored, and the 'convening' of
scheduled conversations on each aspect so identified, which
participants can then 'sign up' for. I'm suggesting that these aspects
should also be 'mapped' onto the topology framework for the event at
the same time, both to give participants a sense of how each
conversation could contribute to the resolution of the overall issue,
and to identify aspects of the issue that have not yet been scheduled
for conversation (and perhaps should be discussed). The topology map
might well evolve as the participants point out aspects of the issue
that were overlooked when the topology framework was drafted.
- Training: The participants would be taught to recognize and appreciate different frames of reference and perspectives of participants, how to probe the system, and how to recognize existing and design new attractors and barriers that currently influence, or could influence, the system.
- Responsibility & Trust:
Participants would be responsible and trusted to self-organize, to
identify and perform the optimal actions, individually and
collectively, to resolve the issue at hand.
In an audit, there
is no 'invitation' per se. The audit team interviews client personnel,
asks them questions about internal controls (barriers to error and
fraud) and conducts analytical and other tests on the accounting
records, and 'reasonability' tests on 'soft numbers' that rely on
subjective estimates. Recently, as a result of the Enron fraud, some
additional standard tests have been mandated under Sarbanes-Oxley and
similar audit regulations. These procedures, however, have the effect
of trying to reduce the complex audit 'problem' (detecting any material
errors or frauds) to a merely complicated problem. There remain many
opportunities for material errors and frauds to occur, though
experienced auditors tend to use a variety of intuitive and judgemental
procedures in addition to prescribed ones. Even in the aftermath of
Sarbanes-Oxley, the number of financial statement 'restatements'
(mostly downwards) of prior year results attests to the inadequacy of
'complicated problem' checklists to resolve a complex problem. And
we'll certainly see some big frauds that these procedures failed to
catch.
If we wanted to address the challenge of global warming
sensibly, we might use the Open Space process above. The invitation
would include anyone who cared about and was reasonably informed about
the problem, including the
skeptics -- any point of view is welcome if it is engaged by the
invitation. A partial framework or topology of the entire global
warming issue would be sketched out by the event facilitators, and
enhanced and mapped to the 'convened' conversations as different
aspects of the issue were selected and scheduled for discussion. And
the 'scribes' for the conversations might structure their notes on each
aspect according to the nature of the contributions made during the
conversations: problem articulations and missing data ("what we don't know"), stories, relevant data, observed patterns, correlations, and measures ("what we do know"), and hypotheses, assumptions, ideas, theories, models, approaches, and potential resolution methods ("what we suppose").
Participants would be trained to recognize and appreciate ("open themselves to") different frames of understanding, perspectives and points of view. They would need to learn to develop critical capacities
to understanding complex systems, and to appreciate those capacities in
others. And they would be taught to recognize and seek the probes, attractors and barriers
through which complex systems are explored and influenced, so that, in
starting to put together personal and collective action plans, they
would talk specifically of probes (that would 'test' the "what we suppose" assumptions about global warming and solicit further information to resolve "what we don't know"), and of attractors and barriers
that would appear, respectively, to encourage behaviour that the
participants believe would help ameliorate global warming, or to
discourage behaviour that they believe would aggravate it. This,
according to social complexity theory, is as close as one can get to
'solving' a complex problem -- which is why they are so intractable.
Near
the end of most Open Space sessions, there is an opportunity for each
participant to reflect on the conversations in which s/he has been
involved, put together a personal action plan based on the
understandings that have emerged, and then approach others to combine,
where it makes sense, personal actions into collective actions.
In their book Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner studied
exhaustive data sets that confirm the most compelling correlation with
(and most likely cause of) the decline of crime rates in many urban
areas of the US in the last few decades is the Roe vs. Wade
decision, which finally opened opportunities for legal abortions to
many of America's urban poor. While this assertion is highly
contentious, I wonder if an Open Space event focused on similar types
of complex mysteries might be able to reveal other astonishing and
unsuspected correlations with far-reaching implications, in areas where
statistical data is much harder or even impossible to find?
If
we used the approach suggested above, the overall structure of a
Complex Problem Open Space event might look something like this:
- Advance Work
- Crafting and Sending the Invitation: to meet Wisdom of Crowds specifications for diversity etc.
- Drafting the Issue Topology Framework:
to suggest the breadth of the problem, possible aspects to address, and
types of "what we know", "what we don't know" and "what we suppose"
information that might surface during the event
- Day 1
- Training: in Open Space method and practices, complexity theory, frames and capacities
- Opening session: issue statement, opportunity for participants to suggest aspects of the problems or issue for 'conversations',
assigning time and place for each conversation, mapping scheduled
conversations to the pre-developed topology framework for the issue
- Marketplace: time to review which conversations are where & when and discuss and decide which to attend
- Working sessions:
conversations, each with an assigned scribe keeping notes using the
"what we know/suppose/don't know" framework, and governed by the 'vote
with your feet' rule (you can move from one conversation to another
that seems to be more valuable or to which you feel you can contribute
more, without repurcussions or causing offense)
- Evening news circle: logistics, comments, ideas, feedback
- Day 2
- Morning news circle: facilitators and others suggest additional 'conversations', possible re-groupings of other conversations
- Working sessions: as in day 1, all day
- Evening news circle: as in day 1
- Day 3
- Results circle: complete 'journal' of day 1 &2 conversations is handed out to each participant
- Reflections period: reading and setting personal action agendas, done by each person alone
- Re-opening circle: suggestions
for collective and collaborative actions are proposed by all (after
contemplating which items in your personal action agenda would need or
benefit from involvement of others in its realization)
- Action project conversations: people volunteer for proposed collective & collaborative actions/projects
- Closing circle: individuals' comments, assessments of the process, and farewells
Conceptually,
this seems to me to be an ideal melding of the best of social
Complexity Theory, Open Space Technology and the Wisdom of Crowds
principles, and bringing in learnings from Lakoff's Frames theories and
Freakonomics methodology, to provide a means by which intractable
problems could be addressed in a flexible, constructive, and yet highly
disciplined way, so that a broad and deep understanding of the issue
could emerge, and where resolutions that might never be revealed in
more traditional 'problem-solving' venues might be identified and
pursued by those 'responsible', in a self-organizing and very fluid and
dynamic setting.
What do you think?
This
is a convergence of ideas suggested to me by Chris Corrigan, Michael
Herman, my business partner John Sutherland, George Lakoff, Dave
Snowden, Steven Levitt, Stephen Dubner and James Surowiecki, all of
whom I thank, and to whom I apologize for any misrepresentation or
misapplication of their concepts or practices. |
9:01:15 PM 
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