Accountability and adapting to surprises

August 27, 2019September 10, 2019 Community Member Concepts Accountability, Adaptation, Author - Patricia Hirl Longstaff, Complex adaptive system, Partner - Defence Science and Technology, Surprise, Unknowns

By Patricia Hirl Longstaff

Image of Patricia Hirl Longstaff — Patricia Hirl Longstaff (biography)

We have all been there: something bad happens and somebody (maybe an innocent somebody) has their career ruined in order to prove that the problem has been fixed. When is blame appropriate? When is the blame game not only the wrong response, but damaging for long-term decision making?

In a complex and adapting world, errors and failure are not avoidable. The challenges decision-makers and organizations face are sometimes predictable but sometimes brand new. Adapting to surprises requires more flexibility, fewer unbreakable rules, more improvisation and deductive tinkering, and a lot more information about what’s going right and going wrong. But getting there is not easy because this challenges some very closely held assumptions about how the world works and our desire to control things. Continue reading →

Adaptive social learning for systemic leadership

April 23, 2019May 7, 2019 Community Member Concepts Adaptation, Author - Catherine Hobbs, Complexity, Critical system heuristics, Leadership, Operations research, Social learning, Soft systems methodology, Systems, Systems thinking, Viable system model

Community member post by Catherine Hobbs

What’s involved in developing human capacity to address complexity, taking a mid- to longer-term viewpoint than is usual? How can we create the conditions in which people can cope with the daily challenges of living in a complex world and flourish? What form of leadership is required to inspire and catalyse this transformation?

Framework for adaptive social learning

The need for systems thinking is often referred to, but rarely considered, as a rich and comprehensive resource which could be developed further and applied. Continue reading →

Bringing the Immunity-to-Change™ process to the scientific community

July 4, 2017July 18, 2017 Community Member Methods Adaptation, Author - Cheryl Vaughan, Author - Erica Lawlor, Change, Collaboration, Science of team science, Teams

Community member post by Erica Lawlor and Cheryl Vaughan

How can scientists whose careers were formed in an incentive system that cultivates competitive and territorial behaviors be helped to meet the expectations of collaborative research frameworks? A team-based approach that transcends disciplinary boundaries may be a tall order for scientists who “grew up” in a system where funding and promotion are based upon a proven record of individual contributions to a field of research. But that is the direction in which much of science is heading. Continue reading →

Keys to transformation: Interactions of values, rules and knowledge

June 20, 2017July 4, 2017 Community Member Concepts Adaptation, Author - Matthew Colloff, Author - Michael Dunlop, Author - Russell Gorddard, Author - Russell Wise, Decision context, Knowledge, Research impact, Research implementation, Rules, Values, Vrk heuristic

Community member post by Russell Gorddard, Matthew Colloff, Russell Wise and Michael Dunlop

Adapting to climate change can require profound alterations in environmental management and policy. However the social context of a decision process limits options and resists change, often dooming attempts to adapt to climate change even before they begin. How can decision makers in policy and management more effectively see the institutional and social water they swim in, in order to better drive change?

Values, rules and knowledge (vrk) provide a useful heuristic to help decision makers analyze how the social system shapes their decision context. Put simply, decisions require:

knowledge of options and their implications
values to assess the options
rules that enable implementation.

gorddard_values-rules-knowledge — Figure adapted from original in Gordardd *et al*. (2016)

Viewing the decision context as an interconnected system of values, rules and knowledge can reveal limits to adaptation and suggest strategies for addressing them (Gorddard et al. 2016).

Values are the set of ethical precepts that determine the way people select actions and evaluate events.

Rules are both rules-in-use (norms, practices, habits, heuristics) and rules-in-form (regulations, laws, directives).

Knowledge is both evidence-based (scientific and technical) knowledge and experiential knowledge.

Decision context is the subset of interacting subsystems that are at play in a particular decision process. One core idea is that the decision context may exclude relevant values, knowledge or rules from being considered in decisions. Adaptation may therefore involve change in the decision context.

russell-gorddard — Russell Gorddard (biography)

matt-colloff — Matthew Colloff (biography)

michael-dunlop — Michael Dunlop (biography)

Continue reading →

Model complexity – What is the right amount?

November 3, 2016November 10, 2016 Community Member Methods Adaptation, Author - Pete Loucks, Complexity, Modelling, Stakeholders, Trust

Community member post by Pete Loucks

How does a modeler know the ’optimal’ level of complexity needed in a model when those desiring to gain insights from the use of such a model aren’t sure what information they will eventually need? In other words, what level of model complexity is needed to do a job when the information needs of that job are uncertain and changing? Continue reading →

Research impact: Six kinds of change

March 29, 2016March 17, 2017 Community Member Methods Adaptation, Author - Gabriele Bammer, Change, Mitigation, Research impact, Research implementation

Community member post by Gabriele Bammer

What kinds of change can implementation of research findings contribute to? Sometimes the aim is to make change happen, while at other times research implementation is in response to particular proposed or ongoing change.

Making change happen

Two ways of making change happen that are important for research impact are: 1) contributing to the on-going quest for improvement and 2) combatting practices or behaviours that have negative outcomes for individuals or society. Continue reading →

Integration and Implementation Insights

Research resources for understanding and acting on complex real-world problems

Adaptation

Accountability and adapting to surprises

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