Painting Pan & Avoiding Panic

Painting in the outdoors, or “plein air,” is a popular past-time for artists and great practice for everyone who wants to learn to appreciate their surroundings with new eyes. I am most likely to be found doing this on weekends when I have painting pals who want to be outdoors.  But a few (most, actually) of the people with whom I correspond do not have much time to paint whether in or out of doors, so I thought I’d write a post about what art is teaching me about readiness for the unexpected.

The other day, I found myself in a setting devoted to sustainable gardening and wild meadows where my subject turned out to be a small garden statue of the ancient Greek god of the wilds, fields, and flocks, Pan, with his man-like body and a goat’s hind legs.  The word “panic” is derived, I’ve since learned, from Pan’s name.

Illustration:  Photo of garden statue of Pan at the River Farm, Alexandria, Virginia

This subject promised to be challenging, especially given changing circumstances. Sunlight vied with overcast skies, changing the shadows on the figure every few minutes.  In addition, a wedding was scheduled for these very grounds in a short time, so planning ahead was of the essence.  First off was a quick sketch to familiarize myself with this scene, and gain some idea of lights and darks.

Illustration:  Quick sketch in terracotta watercolor pencil by Black Elephant Blog author

Such a sketch can boost confidence for the next step, though it is true that you never know how a sketch is going to turn out and many sketchbooks, like diaries, are private partly for this reason.  Nor, increasingly, do we know what we will face, so sketching (or  a rehearsal or a “scenario”of any kind) is a way to increase our readiness for the unexpected, a subject that received more attention in the early days of this blog.

Seeing Things Differently and Avoiding Panic  Learning how to see in different ways, sometimes very quickly–including connecting with others who see things differently–is fundamental to survival, not only for the artist.  It has been called various things including cognitive agility, mindfulness, and “rapid reflection.” But I’ve observed that it often doesn’t get the attention you’d expect for something so critical.  In fact, in too many places, people are incentivized to ignore the unfamiliar and to treat it as irrelevant until an altogether too-obvious change in the status quo forces (some of) them to reconsider…and sometimes that is too late.   (Even in the absence of crisis, such a disinterest in the world can harden into a lack of curiosity which calcifies one’s situational awareness at a dangerously low level.  This has proven in the past to be particularly bad for living species of all kinds–not to mention modern-age businesses–and is especially risky in today’s world where we–and all our things, such as watches, cars, and phones–are more interconnected than ever before.)

Illustration:  Watercolor on Arches Hot Press by Black Elephant Blog author

Topping off this day  of plein air painting was the opportunity to see the movie, “Sully,” on the inspirational pilot and the first responders on that incredible day when a fully-loaded passenger plan had to land on the Hudson River.  From painting Pan in the wilds, I was confronted with wild scenes that would leave most of us panic-stricken if we were in the midst of them.

Illustration: Photo from indiewire: http://www.indiewire.com/

But this is a film of human strength and prowess, strong team work, and genuine leadership.  From the pilot and his co-pilot, to the crew, the ferryboat operators, air traffic control, and many other responders, the rapid response to this unprecedented event demonstrated the value of consciously preparing (across disciplines, stovepipes, and other boundaries) for the unexpected.    In this case, one imagines that such pre-crisis teamwork contributed to enhancing preparedness for an unprecedented situation.  Remembering the importance of the  “human factor”, as per Sully when he explains himself to the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board), is the critical difference.  His performance seems to be an example of “rapid reflection” crisis management in action; this film carefully adheres to the facts of the crisis as it actually unfolded and, therefore, truly is a “must-see” for all those in top management, whatever the field.

I’ve been reminded regularly that true artists respect unintended consequences  whereas experts of other stripes too often don’t.  Artists regularly experiment with techniques and materials, and absorb others’ approaches like sponges; many experts of other stripes too often don’t. There is seemingly an important paradox in this.

In an age when many clearly believe it is more acceptable to bash experts than to emulate them, the aspiring artist knows that study of others’ solidly perfected techniques–and, beyond this, historical appreciation as to what has been humanly possible and achieved over time–leads to greater consciousness of our individual shortcomings and more rapid recognition of the truly exceptional (as the film, Sully, also reminds us).  Recognizing these gaps can inspire us to be more curious and to learn more.  At the same time, experts themselves must prepare for circumstances never before seen (and, thus, for which there is no sketch, textbook or field of expertise). Indeed, a certain cognitive and doctrinal flexibility seems necessary, at a minimum, lest very deep expertise lead us to think that everything can be scripted, measured, and predicted ahead of time–as the differences between the NTSB and Sully demonstrated in the film.

The artist with skill in applying paint (or ink or any other medium) to paper or canvas–and expertise such as pilot Sully’s extraordinary tacit knowledge of the limits of his airplane, his ability to derive quickly from different inputs the most sensible course of action, as well as his abiding awareness of the value of human life–demonstrate human capacities  that total reliance on computers, for instance, or checklists can never achieve.

So, while it is true that you generally don’t want the pilot of your commercial jet to be creative in getting you from point A to B, the movie, Sully, does show us that adaptation in the face of the unexpected requires a degree of mindfulness  (and openness to ongoing learning) that cannot be assumed.  At their best, therefore, artists and experts of all types, whether commercially successful or not, seem to combine deep knowledge with a degree of cognitive flexibility that is hard to sustain from deep within “stovepipes” of all types, from academia to industry.  Dealing effectively with this conundrum seems to me to one of the most important things we could do these days.

“Creativity, Inc.”, Innovation, and an “Energy Miracle”

At last, we are underway with our classes at the university, with the onset of a “Spring” semester which, delayed by some wintry weather, has so far not felt very spring-like.  With inclement weather, though, it’s been easier to get some work done on projects related to what we are covering in class, and a chance to compose a blog post on some of this. Hence, this post is a bit less about sketching present every-day scenes and more about designing alternative frameworks for the future.  (The eventual goal is to combine both in an accessible format for different audiences.)

Illustration: Watercolor and pen and ink study for “Waiting for Spring” by Black Elephant Blog author

We have moved rapidly through diverse science and security-related issues and zoomed across the land masses of the planet to understand different climatic zones, the extent of challenges to arable land, and how incidents or policy changes at a local or national level–even on the other side of the world– can have global impacts. Not yet a month into the semester, therefore, we are confronting the realization that past experience will no longer be a reliable guide to managing many looming challenges, including the necessary transition to no-carbon and low-cost sources of energy.  Innovation thus is inescapably urgent.

None other than Bill Gates, who describes himself as an “impatient optimist,” admits that “time is not on our side” when it comes to globally applicable means of reducing carbon emissions to zero.  He puts his hopes on a “miracle” in energy R& D even as it’s plain to see investment in energy research by developed nations remains far below that in other areas.  (Gates says that the scale of innovation needed requires government investment as it involves risks that the private sector is poorly equipped to assume.) Conventional approaches to problem-solving in this area simply will not work.

Illustration:  OECD chart

Already in our class there is focus on the social,  institutional, and cross-boundary aspects, as well as cognitive and psychological facets, of the problem. (It seems that, even this early in the semester, we are beginning to hear more readily the overly specialized or “silo’ed” limitations in the thinking on offer at some conference panels around town.) What does it take to harness innovative ingenuity on a global scale?  What can we learn from those who have studied processes of innovation and creativity?  Where do these subjects enter most conversations and efforts about transitioning rapidly to a low-carbon, or no-carbon, energy system?  While proposals on the global “table”, as it were, have merit, how to ensure that the collective “we” is not “betting the farm” on a strategy that will not pay-off?  Whose responsibility is it to even consider these things?  (Such are the issues we are dealing with in the classroom.)

Innovative approaches to solving complex problems, including developing the “energy miracle” Bill Gates has called for, require more than technological investment and novel financial arrangements.  They require organizations to invest in developing and sustaining creativity and strategic thinking in the workplace.  But who knows how to do this?  And have we any idea on how to be creatively collaborative across myriad institutions?  It seems that much of the material published on these topics is aimed at managers or, less often, educators.  But that may be too late for most people.  The concepts  involved must be introduced earlier in people’s careers so they have time to evaluate and internalize them with their peers. Thus such material is worked into our course at the graduate school level where students typically already have a few years of professional work experience. Understanding the obstacles to innovation–and its “fuel,” creativity–is fundamental to making progress on the complex problems, (especially “super-wicked” problems s0-called because they require the engagement of society as a whole), of today.

In many workplaces, however, the efforts of talented people are typically stifled in “myriad unseen ways,” according to Ed Catmull, President of Pixar Animation and Disney Animation in his book, Creativity, Inc., Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration,  (Random House, 2014).  Despite constant emphasis (belatedly in many cases) these days on the need for innovation (and creativity, and disruptive breakthroughs), rarely is any thought given to how such creative work is nurtured, evaluated and sustained…to say the least.  So it seems timely to take a few notes from the book, Creativity, Inc., to see how these issues are dealt with in an industry (producer of the films, “Toy Story,” “Up,” and “Ratatouille,” among others) that most everyone assumes exemplifies the best of creative workplaces.

Catmull credits his experience as a graduate student at the University of Utah, where he received his Ph.D in 1974,  with introducing him to the importance of leaders who understand how “to create a fertile laboratory.”  Much of the research in the university’s computer science department was funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the Department of Defense (now known as DARPA).  The university laboratory leaders understood “they had to assemble different kinds of thinkers and then encourage their autonomy.” Catmull writes that the most valuable thing he gained from the university “was the model my teachers provided for how to lead and inspire other creative thinkers.”  One of the lessons from ARPA that stayed with Catmull was:  “When faced with a challenge, get smarter.”  He thus knew that, in order to “attract the sharpest minds,” he needed to put his own insecurities away.  When starting out as the lab director at the New York Institute of Technology while still in his 20s, therefore, one of his first hires was someone who seemed to Catmull more qualified to lead the lab than he was.

Catmull’s book is the story of his journey in learning to sustain a creative work environment.  Nearly every page contains a memorable lesson applicable in other fields, such as:  “Always take a chance on better, even if it seems threatening.”  The challenge for him and his colleagues in the mid-1970s was to solve technical problems involved in applying computer animation to the film industry.  There were a few companies working on these problems and most, Catmull writes, “embraced a culture of strictly enforced, even CIA-like, secrecy.”  By contrast, Catmull and his colleagues decided to share their work with the outside world instead; his view was that “we were all so far from achieving our goal that to hoard ideas only impeded our ability to get to the finish line. [emphasis added]”   (Might this view be relevant as well to the energy challenge mentioned at the start of this post?)  Catmull notes that the “benefit of this transparency was not immediately felt” but that the “relations and connections we formed, over time, proved far more valuable than we could have imagined, fueling our technical innovation and our understanding of creativity in general.”

As his project teams grew, Catmull had to move his organization from a flat team-like structure to more of a hierarchical approach.  He realized that his team at the New York Institute of Technology actually functioned more “like a collection of grad students–independent thinkers with individual projects–rather than a team with a common goal.”  Catmull describes the influence of “Starwars” and George Lucas on the field of computer animation, and traces the trajectory of his own career, and long partnership with Steve Jobs, through the lessons he learned along the way.

To give some sense of these lessons and their broad applicability, here are a few from the book:

1. “There is nothing quite like ignorance combined with a driving need to succeed to force rapid learning.”
2. Books with advice like “Dare to fail” divert people from addressing “the far harder problem: deciding what they should be focusing on.”
3. “Being on the lookout for problems…was not the same as seeing problems.”…”The good stuff was hiding the bad stuff.”
4. “Originality is fragile.”
5. “We realized that our purpose was not merely to build a studio that made films but to foster a creative culture that would continually ask questions.”
6. “Figuring out how to build a sustainable creative culture…was a day-in-day-out, full-time job.”
7. “Ideas come from people.  Therefore, people are more important than ideas.”
8. “The hallmark of a healthy creative culture is that its people feel free to share ideas, opinions, and criticisms.”
9. “…without the critical ingredient that is candor, there can be no trust.  And without trust, creative collaboration is not possible.”
10. “The key is to look at the viewpoints being offered, in any successful feedback group, as additive, not competitive.
11.  “By resisting the beginner’s mind, you make yourself more prone to repeat yourself than to create something new.  The attempt to avoid failure, in other words, makes failure more likely.”
12. “The pressure to create–and quickly!–happens at many companies…and its unintended effect is always the same: It lessens quality across the board.”
13. “When we put setbacks into two buckets–the “business-as-usual” bucket and the “holy cow” bucket–and use a different mindset for each, we are signing up for trouble.”

Illustration: Watercolor wash and pen-and-ink sketch by Black Elephant Blog author

Dealing with “The Hidden”  Catmull’s book is exceptional for its sophisticated treatment of many tough management issues that arise in virtually any field, including learning to see “hidden” issues in the corporation and, just as important, realizing that just because you don’t see them doesn’t mean they do not exist.  He says that one of his core management beliefs is “If you don’t try to cover what is unseen and understand its nature, you will be ill-prepared to lead.” He also emphasizes that our ignorance about randomness affects our ability to face the unknown.  Catmull writes, for instance:

“We are quite adept at working with repeatable events and at understanding bell-shaped variance…[But] how can we think clearly about unexpected events that are lurking out there that don’t fit any of our existing models?  Catmull notes that there is a “human tendency to treat big events fundamentally different from smaller ones.”   This sets us up for failure, he explains, because we fail to realize that some of the small problems have long-term consequences and are, therefore, “big problems in the making.”

In another excellent section, “Learning to See,” Catmull describes how he hired an art teacher to come in to the organization to teach everyone “how to heighten our powers of observation.”   People who draw better than the rest of us, he says, “are setting aside their preconceptions” and everyone can learn to do that.  His point is that there are ways of learning to overcome biases while considering a problem.

In Sum:  It is easy to forget that the lessons in this book are derived from managing computer graphics and animation laboratories and not from the daily occurrences in organizations closer to one’s own experience.  It is thus relevant for people trying to move their organizations into a mode that makes the most of the talent within, and without (!)–or outside–, them. Understanding the forces that block our inspiration and effective creative collaboration both inside and beyond our organizations today  is key to moving forward on the many formidable challenges (some of them metaphorical“black elephants” ) facing the globe. (This is why, earlier on this blog–such as here and here and here— there has been a focus on the work of various experts regarding the barriers we face to even thinking effectively about these problems.)  Facing as many unconventional and complex challenges as we do today, it’s safe to say there are not enough books like this one and, for many people, not enough time to read and absorb them.  Some of the needed changes might not be “news-worthy” but still hugely impactful: Learning to draw, counterintuitively, may be part of the solution at the societal level, to inculcate ways, per Catmull, to overcome our ingrained biases and to sidestep cross-cultural barriers.

 

 

 

 

 

Burghers of Calais Sketch

Illustration: Touched up watercolor sketch of the Burghers of Calais

Photo: Scene at the Hirschhorn on an Indian Summer day

Indian summer is a time of surprises, that’s for sure!

One cannot tell what season it is but it is a tremendous light for sketching.  Those who can will stop and enjoy the view, surely.

Illustration: Watercolor and Platinum Carbon ink sketch in Stillman & Birn Alpha series sketchbook at Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.

Superforecasters and Dragonfly Eyes: Booknotes

Despite my best intentions to get through an ever-growing stack of books, a brand new one crept into the mix and demanded my immediate attention, so here goes, with a few notes on it:

Illustration: Watercolor and Platinum Carbon black pen and ink sketch by Black Elephant Blog author

Superforecasting:  The Art and Science of Prediction, by Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner, (Crown Publishers: New York, 2015).

In this book, the authors, Tetlock, a professor of psychology, political science and business and Gardner, a journalist and author, note that “we are all forecasters,” in the sense that we need to make decisions that involve uncertainty (as when we buy a home or make an investment or decide to relocate, etc.).

When it comes to really big events, like market crashes, wars, etc., however, we expect to turn to “experts.” Unfortunately,  according to the authors’  research results, the experts we might most expect to be able to “forecast” events with precision are less able to do so (against certain types of problems) than “ordinary” well-informed people who are not experts in the subject matter.

These “ordinary” people have some extraordinary characteristics, the authors realized when they analyzed their research results.  These include an ability to step outside of themselves and get a different view of reality, something the authors note is really hard to do.  But the ordinary people who did the best in the forecasting tournaments run by the authors, exhibited a remarkable ability to do just this:

“Whether by virtue of temperament or habit or conscious effort, they [the successful forecasters] tend to engage in the hard work of consulting other perspectives.”

In conducting U.S. government-backed research, the authors found that people such as a retired computer programmer with no special expertise in international affairs  could successfully answer very specific questions such as “Will the London Gold Market Fixing price of gold (USD per ounce) exceed $1850 on 30 September 2011?” People they worked with, such as this individual,  were enabled by the rules of the research project to update their forecasts in real time, incorporating new information in their estimates as they came across it.  (The process is explained in detail in the book.)  Over time, “superforecasters,” such as this retired computer programmer stood out among the pack.  Such people, write the authors:

“…have somehow managed to set the performance bar so high that even the professionals have struggled to get over it…”

The results made the authors inquire into the reasons for the “superforecasters'” better performance.  They write that “It’s hard not to suspect that [so-and-so’s] remarkable mind explains his remarkable results.”

Indeed, some of their superforecasters have multiple degrees in various subjects from various top-notch universities, speak several languages, and lived or worked abroad, and are voracious readers.  But, assuming that knowledge and intelligence drive strong forecasting performance would send us down the wrong path, concluded the researchers.  To be a superforecaster “does not require a Harvard PhD and the ability to speak five languages,” they concluded.  Many very well-educated and intelligent participants in their study “fell far short of super forecaster accuracy.”  They continue:  “And history is replete with brilliant people who “made forecasts that proved considerably less than prescient [citing Robert McNamara — defense secretary under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson as one example].”  So, the authors conclude:

“Ultimately, it’s not the [data/brain etc] crunching power that counts. It’s how you use it.”

Well, duh, you might say.  Isn’t this obvious?  Apparently not.

Dragonfly Forecasting So how do these superforecasters do it?  What do they have in common?  The authors survey a number of case studies from their research to provide some insights.  What they discovered is a capability they call “dragonfly forecasting.”  The researchers observed that the super forecasters, while “ordinary” people, have an ability to synthesize a large number of perspectives and to cope with a lot of “dissonant information.”  They have more than two hands, write the authors, because they are not limiting themselves to “on the one hand or the other hand thinking.” (Sidebar:  I just attended a seminar on energy and climate challenges where one of the speakers, an engaging, colorful and normally compelling orator, clearly), made the comment that “on one hand you have total environmental disaster or, on the other hand, total commercial disaster,” concluding that “we need to get on the right side of this.”

Illustration: Seminar sketch using Black Sharpie pen on Stone Journal notepaper by Black Elephant Blog author

This sort of binary thinking can be quite limiting, particularly when there is no “right side” as is the case, more often than not, when facing a world of increasingly complex challenges.  I heard more examples of this “either-or” thinking problem again just yesterday in an all-day conference, with people literally saying that they don’t see an option beyond the frame they’re in.)

“I’ve Looked At Things From Both Sides Now” 

By contrast, the dragonfly eye in operation, according to the authors, is “mentally demanding.”  (Already,in this mere statement, we run up against some cultural and cognitive realities in many large organizations where everyday urgent matters and matters only perceived as urgent (possibly because of this very binary winners vs. losers thinking) take up almost all available bandwidth.)

Superforecasters “often think thrice–and sometimes they are just warming up to do a deeper-dive analysis.”  Forecasting is their hobby, write the authors.  They do it for fun and also because they score high in “need-for-cognition” tests.  These tests rate people who have a tendency to “engage in and enjoy hard mental slogs.”

There also is an element of personality likely involved, they conclude.  The traits involve “openness to experience” which includes “preference for variety and intellectual curiosity.”

The authors conclude, however, that this dragonfly eye capability, which involves synthesizing a growing number of perspectives, has “less to do with the traits someone possesses and more to do with behavior.”  These behaviors include “an appetite for questioning basic, emotionally charged beliefs.”  Interestingly, the researchers have concluded that, without this behavior, individuals (forecasters or not) “will often be at a disadvantage relative to a less intelligent person who has a greater capacity for self-critical thinking.  [emphasis added]”

Those with a dragonfly eye cultivate their ability to encounter different perspectives.  They are “actively open-minded,” write the authors.  There is an actual psychological concept around this cognitive behavior.  For superforecasters, therefore, “beliefs are hypotheses to be tested, not treasured to be guarded,” conclude the authors.

There are too many implications of this work–important implications–to cover in a blogpost.  But it must be said that the book raises implicitly at least as many questions about how to proceed in a complex interconnected world as it attempts to answer.  For instance, fewer enduring problems of real consequence can be addressed with a simple forecast, no matter how accurate, in a bounded time-wise constraint.  Inherently complex “super wicked problems” discussed earlier on this blog do not lend themselves to this sort of forecasting.  Tougher choices involve immersing ourselves in deeper questions of values and longer-term perspectives.

Nonetheless, what the authors have demonstrated with their research offers us the opportunity to pursue these challenges with greater awareness of individuals’ different cognitive and philosophical outlooks, and perhaps–from a corporate human resources point of view–to allocate jobs and tasks to people based on comparative evaluations of their cognitive and behavioral strengths.

As more and more issues require deeper thinking and appreciation of systemic interconnections, it may become ever more important (even if not acknowledged in organizational priorities) to find ways to incorporate “dragonfly eye” sense-making behaviors.   The authors have observed that “belief perseverance” can make people “astonishingly intransigent–and capable of rationalizing like crazy to avoid acknowledging new information that upsets their settled beliefs.”  When people have a greater investment in their beliefs, it is harder for them to change their views.

There is important stuff in this book which requires a great deal more reflection. So, this thread of inquiry will continue in the next post’s look at another new book called Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing, by Jamie Holmes (Crown Publishers, New York, 2015).    Not at all “nonsense,” thinking about thinking matters.  Even if these books fail to provide us with concrete next steps, the relevance of these works to current challenges facing decisionmakers, and their advisors, in all sectors cannot be overstated.

Reading in a New Fiscal Year

Illustration: Watercolor and ink by Black Elephant Blog author

Today begins a new month, a new fiscal year even, and fall is in the air. Since every now and then, someone asks what I am reading, I have turned my attention to the question myself.  Some books on innovation have been covered earlier on this blog, particularly here.   But, why begin with innovation if we are not sure where, when or why, it matters?  Context can be helpful.

Upcoming on this blog, therefore, will be a few brief overviews of some important, and possibly even provocative, books which provide fresh optics on historical contexts, and which were published in the last year.  Some of these books review how we got to now and make suggestions for how to move forward.

These include:

The Shape of the New:  Four Ideas and How They Made the Modern World, by Scott L. Montgomery and Daniel Chirot.

Fields of Blood:  Religion and the History of Violence, by Karen Armstrong, an expert on comparative religion.

This Changes Everything:  Capitalism vs. The Climate, by Naomi Klein, who may be familiar to some for her investigation into “disaster capitalism.”  This book is so sweeping “and of such consequence,”  in the view of The New York Times,  that it is “almost unreviewable.”

But, to lighten the load, some fun reading is also in order.  I recommend:

Illustration: Painting of Madame Marthe de Florian by Giovanni Boldini (1888) – Wikipedia

A Paris Apartment, by Michelle Gable, a book which also came out last year. It is based on the true story of an apartment the contents of which came to light in 2010, 70 years after its tenant had hurriedly left Paris.

Illustration: Self-portrait of Giovanni Boldini (1892), from Wikipedia

In the apartment among antiques and other valuables, which had been untouched or unseen by anyone in all this time, was an original painting of a beautiful lady. Martha de Florian, by Giovanni Boldini.  Boldini was a contemporary of Edgar Degas, whose life and works was discussed earlier on this blog, in mid- and late-19th century Parisian artistic circles.

The painting depicts Madame Marthe de Florian whose diaries also were in the apartment when it was opened in 2010.

The novel, A Paris Apartment, recreates this true story in a fictional modern context.  The author has a fresh writing style which makes the most of her talents for creating realistic dialogue and alternating between periods of time separated by more than a century. Boldini himself–not to mention Madame de Florian–come alive here in a story that includes other better known figures of their time.  All this…a true story…and a fictional story…because of one real-life dusty old apartment filled with stuff no one wanted for nearly a century.

Ottawa Outlooks

Last week, an unusually good workshop on “Climate, Defense, and Security” occurred in downtown Ottawa sponsored by the Canadian Defense Association.  The purpose of the workshop was to assess the security risks or threats of climate change impacts.  The speakers and the audience deftly covered a wide range of relevant, forward-looking themes in the half-day allotted to the workshop.

Illustration: Watercolor and pen and ink sketch of the War of 1812 Monument at sunset in downtown Ottawa by Black Elephant Blog author

I was one of several invitees to attend. The audience was composed of former Canadian diplomats and military officials, academics, members of the media and a few representatives from European embassies, notably UK, Germany and France.  The format featured a panel of three speakers, followed by audience Q&A with the panel, and a luncheon at the French Embassy.  (The morning session was introduced as “on-the-record.”)

Illustration: Photo of notes pages in a stone journal

I jotted down key points I heard in a new “stone paper” journal I’d picked up out of curiosity at the gift shop in the National Gallery of Canada.  (Stone paper, as the name suggests, involves no trees and is made of “crushed stone.”  It has a different texture and is heavier, of course, than a paper journal.  Is it, therefore, more environmentally friendly?  I don’t know enough about it to say for sure, but it is fun to try out.)

These key points were:

• Crisis is the “new normal.”  We don’t know what will hit us; “that’s the essence of crisis.”
•  Climate change is a “ubiquitous complication” which is “not directed at you” and, therefore, “very difficult to understand with the tools that we have.”
• Considering climate change impacts as a “national security issue” does not make sense in a German context where security issues are seen as
  collective” ones.
• We are facing “governance issues.”  There is “virtually no leadership” on these issues.
• “The pace of climate change is much more rapid than anyone was predicting 10 years ago.”
• Defense agencies can be very much part of the solution, if they can be engaged in reducing fuel consumption.
•  Since the Industrial Revolution, we have now pierced through what has been the highest level of CO2 emissions [ever]:  We are going into a place where we haven’t been in 400,000 years.
•  The processes of climate science consistently underestimate the rate and scale of these changes.
• “It’s not just what has to be done but who has to do it.”  There must be “mini-lateralism” in addition to multilateralism.
• We are failing at assessing risks.  (An audience member recommended a new report out from the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office:  “Climate Change:  A Risk Assessment.”)

Ottawa itself looked its best in the bright September sunlight, a wonderful gift for those with some time to walk around.  I wondered if the workshop signaled some sort of shift in the climate around the issue of climate change.

Illustration: Sketch in watercolor, pen and ink, and gouache depicting fountain in Confederation Park in downtown Ottawa by Black Elephant Blog author

The last time I was in Ottawa in September was on 9-11-2001 when the geostrategic climate suddenly changed dramatically, in ways we are still living with today.  On the visit this week, the weather was seemingly similar to the day I recall with such heaviness 14 years ago: brilliant blue skies and buildings gleaming in the sunshine.

It was a real pleasure to be able at last to stroll around the city and take in the many gorgeous sights, from the locks along the canal (of both varieties: canal locks and locks locked to the railings of a pedestrian bridge over the Rideau Canal) to sculptures, fountains, the Byward Market, and an independent bookstore (they still exist!) on Eglin Street.

Illustration: Photo of locks on pedestrian bridge over Rideau Canal in downtown Ottawa

Some of the sculptures brought me to a standstill, including the one of Canadian jazz legend Oscar Peterson on a corner next to the National Arts Center, where the sound of his piano playing (coming from speakers around the sculpture) soothes your nerves while you’re waiting to cross the street.

Illustration: Photo of sculpture of legendary jazz musician, Oscar Peterson, in downtown Ottawa

Despite all the sights competing for my attention, I managed to get a few sketches started while exploring, adding color later.

It remains to do be seen what will be done about the climate challenges identified at the workshop, and by whom.  Given the shortcomings of traditional approaches highlighted in the workshop, some innovations in governance, science, and diplomacy seem necessary to cope with the novelties involved in understanding the risks and threats related to climate change impacts.

Drawing From Life

In an open life studio, where all types of artists gather to practice drawing or painting from a professional model’s pose, it is striking how differently the participants depict the model in their artwork. No “analytical objectivity” is possible here; everyone sees the same model quite differently.  It  is impossible for any two people’s drawing to be alike, or even for the same person to repeat exactly the same drawing a second time.

Illustration: Watercolor and pen and ink by Black Elephant Blog author

In what ways might this process of deciding what to draw, and how, be related to “design thinking”?  From considering the future of countries and even economics, there seems to be more attention being paid to the need for thinking differently, if not even ahead. Some experts on international affairs seem to be exercising design thinking, for instance, when they posit alternative futures for a country like the United States, as in the new book by Ian Bremmer, Superpower: Three Choices for America’s Role in the World (2015). What is different about the thinking processes that enable us to consider alternative futures or to plan for the consequences of unpredictable developments?

Certainly art students are encouraged to have a plan and to think ahead to where their brush is going, where the light is coming from, what kind of paper they have, and to pay attention to the shadows, “cools” and “warm” values. Splashing colors on a page may work for some but for most of us learning how to think about techniques, and gaining confidence through practice, are necessary. It’s a sort of strategic thought process. It is difficult to get the hang of it at first.  Being comfortable with taking risks is part of the process, clearly: an ink blot here or a dribble of water there might damage what seemed before to be coming along just fine. Alternatively, that ink blot or water stain might make this painting really special!

In art as in life, the decisions that must be made seem endless, and each one bears heavily on the final result.  But the artist gets to make his or her own decisions usually, and must live with the results.

In a more populated context with many people potentially affected by the outcome of decisions, what is the process of consultation and deliberation that must be followed? How to deal with the inevitable inkblots, and their unintended consequences?  Is the factory-model of organization helpful or hurtful in such times; what are the alternatives?  With highly integrated challenges mounting (along with the rise of intricately networked systems riding on technologies few people really understand), what insights could we be drawing now to build upon in the future? Who will create these insights, and how?  How will we know where the brush is going, and to what end? Who will be wielding the brush in an interconnected age such as ours? …  Per request a future post or two will list some reading possibilities.

Bridging Old and New in Frame Innovation

According to the author, Kees Dorst, of Frame Innovation:  Create New Thinking By Design,  (The MIT Press, 2015), we are “collectively being tripped up by today’s problems.”  Tackling emerging complex, dynamic and networked problems with old approaches makes no sense, he writes; “the trusted routines just don’t work anymore.”  They require a “radically different response.”  But what do those responses look like, and how do organizations large and small mobilize them?

Sketch by Black Elephant Blog author

Dorst argues that the interest in “design thinking” up to now has often led to ineffective responses.  He says that this is because, up to now, we have tended to turn to the “designers” to generate solutions, “rather than [recognize and enlist]…the key ability of expert designers to create new approaches to problem situations,” or “framing.”

The creation of new “frames” to approach problem situations is the key, and a special element of designers’ problem-solving practices, writes Dorst (citing Whitbeck 1998).  Dorst’s book introduces fresh practices based on lessons learned so far on how to link sound design approaches to real-world problems in different domains.  From designing high-speed rail links to dealing with challenges involved in social housing and reducing crime rates, he shows how designers are confronting the complexity of a situation head-on.  From elegant 19th century-era hotels in places which tend to attract large numbers of people with 21st century tastes to large government institutions struggling to adapt to cross-sector challenges, devising cost-effective and future-sensitive ways to update our problem-solving approaches seems like a ‘no-brainer,’ doesn’t it?  But it turns out that, while obviously necessary, it is far from easy, especially for those working in long-established organizations.

Illustration: Watercolor, pen, ink wash, Faber- Castell gold Pitt artist’s pen, and Gelly Roll white pen (view from a park in Baden-Baden, Germany) on Stillman & Birn paper Alpha-series by Black Elephant Blog author

 In Dorst’s view, “we have an unprecedented need to extend our problem-solving repertoire so that it can address these issues.  Future posts on this blog will look at some of these strategies, but–in the meantime–those who are interested in this subject will find  Dorst’s book useful. (So, in a belated response to the reader who asked on this blog some weeks ago something like, “is this really anything new?”, it appears that Dorst’s answer would be: yes, we are dealing (or, failing to deal) with a new class of problems that are highly complex and cannot be solved by those working within a single sector.)

Coming up, a bit more on this, and some recommendations for related books and links.

Sketching and Frame Innovation

Anyone who sketches or attempts to create anything new is attempting to create a new way of seeing something, even if just for themselves, in their own sketchbooks, or–as I did last night–on the back of an envelope.  They are, to varying degrees, storytellers.   Urban sketchers certainly are storytellers or, if you will, citizen reporters, and “plein aire” artists, drawing and coloring what they see! Those who tell stories about their sketches, their sculptures, their jewelry-making projects, their workshops, or other sorts of creative endeavor are providing narratives to put a frame around the effort.  So sketching leads straight to frame innovation…which is getting serious attention in some business and academic circles.

Illustration: Watercolor, gouache, and ink by Black Elephant Blog author

It appears that artists have a lot to teach those of us who have depended primarily (so far…) on our analytic brains to carry us forward. And who, after all, isn’t an artist, given a chance? What happens when our analytic brains are simply not up to the challenges (some of which may be “black elephants”) ahead?  A few posts back began to look at a book on this subject published by MIT Press recently.

This post thus will segue back into the discussion of frame innovation raised a few weeks ago here on this blog (and to which there may be a few more unanswered questions by now).  One question so far raised, for instance, is whether the ideas behind “frame innovation” are, in fact, anything new?  The next few posts will consider this and related issues.

Living Laboratories of Biodiversity

Bright sunshine today in Washington, D.C., where many were observing Memorial Day by exploring beautiful sights away from the crowds.

Illustration: Watercolor and pen and ink by Black Elephant Blog author

Frame Innovation in Change-Resistant Organizations

An important book has accompanied the traveler/doodler author of this blog, making it possible, at least, to consider taking some notes on it.  The book is called Frame Innovation:  Create New Thinking By Design, by Kees Dorst (The MIT Press, 2015).  Dorst is a Professor of Design Innovation at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia and at Endhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands.

Sketchbook on-site illustrations: Pen and ink and watercolor by Black Elephant Blog author

As one reads the book, it is clear that the book’s author has been researching and developing case studies of the concept of design thinking–as applied to practical and often seemingly intractable social and urban problems–for many years.  Although the text of this book is necessarily abstract in places–explaining, for instance, the difference between traditional analytic approaches of “deduction,” and “induction” and design thinking approaches of “abduction” and design abduction”–the author is quick to remedy this through his use of case studies and helpful word-graphics. ((To fast-forward a moment to the topic of a future blog post or two, the basic issue here is a very big and momentous idea.  It is that our traditional methods of analytical reasoning, deduction and induction, “are not enough if we want to make something. If we want to create new things–or new circumstances–we need different approaches, for which even “normal abduction” (the reasoning pattern behind conventional problem-solving using tried and tested patterns of relationships) is insufficient.))

As explained in the series foreword by the editors of this new MIT Press series on design thinking and theory, design challenges today “require new frameworks of theory and research to address contemporary problem areas.”  Often problem-solving for modern challenges requires “interdisciplinary teams with a transdisciplinary focus.”  According to the editors, three contextual challenges define the nature of many design problems today.  These issues affect many of the major design problems that face us in whatever field we’re working.  They include:

–a complex environment in which many projects or products cross the boundaries of several organizations and stakeholder, producer, and user groups;

–projects or products that must meet the expectations of many organizations, stakeholders, producers, and users; and

–demands at every level of production, distribution, reception, and control.

Past environments “were simpler,” write the editors, and “made simpler demands.”   To meet modern challenges, experience and development are still necessary, but “they are no longer sufficient.”  “Most of today’s design challenges require analytic and synthetic planning skills that cannot be developed through practice alone,” they write.  What is needed, they say, is “a qualitatively different form of professional practice that emerges in response to the demands of the information society and the knowledge economy to which it gives rise.”

Designers today confront complex social and political issues, the editors note, quoting the work of Donald Norman, (“Why Design Education Must Change,” 2010).  What the authors are talking about is the fact that education today is not training professionals in ways to take integrated approaches to solve complex, inter-sector problems and imagining new futures.  The book by Kees Dorst is the first in the series and, based on this writer’s close reading of it, it represents an excellent start to this ambitious (and profoundly needed) project.

Dorst argues that society today is being “tripped up” by the “emergence of a radically new species of problem:  problems that are so open, complex, dynamic and networked that they seem impervious to solution.”  He writes:  “What all the news stories show us is that it makes no sense to keep trying to tackle these problems the way we used to.  The trusted routines just don’t work anymore.  These new types of problems require a radically different response.”

In the spirit of the focus of this blog–understanding “surprise” and the ways and whys for when we get “tripped up”–future posts will examine some of the important ideas in Dorst’s book.

The Art of Looking Ahead

As the semester draws to a close, students in my course are considering a “super wicked problem,” meaning a highly complex crisis, in the form of a single scenario.  They are working separately in two subgroups; one, on a “before-crisis contingency planning” team; and the other, on a “post-crisis rapid response” team.  In our final class, they will present their findings.

Frankly, the challenges they must wrestle with are simply enormous.  Impossibly enormous, but then again when we look around the world today, such impossibly enormous challenges seem to be the “new normal”.  This scenario-based approach is meant to incorporate much of what we’ve been learning this year about complexity and resilience.  Without this experience, there is a danger we might apply old methods of problem-solving to new classes of challenges.

Illustration: Pencil and pen and ink by Black Elephant Blog author

Such thinking requires what some variously call “the art of looking ahead,” “applied forward reasoning,” contingency planning, or–most recently–“frame innovation.”  It turns out that these skills generally are not ones that business schools or other forms of higher education traditionally emphasize.  Are such skills needed in the workplace today?  As luck would have it, some new books are just out on the subject, and this blog will look at them.

First up is a new book called Anticipate:  The Art of Leading Through Looking Ahead (American Management Association, 2015), by Rob-Jan de Jong, who is a faculty member of Wharton’s “Global Strategic Leadership” executive program.  There are useful tips in this book, so it’s worth giving a flavor of them here.

Early in the book, de Jong notes that “leaders need the ability to look ahead [but] there’s very little understanding of how to develop this competence and improve visionary capacity.”  Many people mistakenly believe it takes too much time, or you’re either born with this capacity or you aren’t.  Summing up wide-ranging research in leadership and business strategy, de Jong notes that sensitivity to context (aka “context sensitivity”), or something leadership expert Warren Benning, calls “adaptive capacity,” is essential for leaders.  Companies that had a “strong sense of sensitivity to their environment” outlasted many which did not, according to work by Arie de Geus, author of The Living Company.

“Short-termism” is  more typical in the business world, and it’s a disease, according to de Jong.  It means valuing short-term gains “above long-term, somewhat foreseeable, consequences,” he writes. Unfortunately, according to McKinsey research five years after the 2008 financial crisis, “little of that learning” about the need to keep a “clear future-oriented perspective” has occurred in many companies it studied.  de Jong concludes:  “Short-termism is the biggest enemy of developing visionary capacity for both the organization and the individual leader.”  So what can be done? de Jong says it starts with “personal vision.”  This matters, he writes, because without vision, there is no hope.

The Elements of Vision include that it is “future-oriented.”  Many people find it difficult to exercise imagination about the future and to promote beliefs that “cannot be backed up by factual experiences, research, and other quantifiable data.”

Yet, a powerful vision moves “beyond the obvious into the unknown,” according to de Jong. It also challenges the status quo and “breaks through existing paradigms.”  de Jong cites IKEA’s founder, Ingvar Kamprad, as an example; Kamprad built the IKEA empire on the idea that “design furniture should not only be accessible to the happy few.”  A vision also energizes and mobilizes.   According to management and leadership expert, Abraham Zaleznik, whose work de Jong cites, managerial leadership–as of the time he wrote his article in 1977 on the difference been leaders and managers–does “not necessarily ensure imagination, creativity, or ethical behavior in guiding the destinies of corporate enterprises.”  de Jong proceeds to investigate the qualities of “visionary leaders.”

First, it is necessary to enhance one’s ability to “tap the imagination,” and de Jong cites, with examples, the work of world-renown creativity guru and expert on “lateral thinking,” Edward de Bono, in this section.  The needed imagination depends on “perceptual capacity.”  When we are too busy to notice changes in our surroundings, we can be said to be living in the “permanent present,” de Jong writes, which was the state of man in the earliest stage of human evolution.  Fortunately the development of the “frontal lobe” over time enabled more reflective (and strategic) thinking capacities (so the basic equipment is there).

Based on his own extensive research and interviews with hundreds of senior leaders, de Jong has concluded there are two critical developmental dimensions for growing your “visionary capacity.”  They are:

1) Your ability to see things early–those “faint warning signals” often “at the periphery of our attention.”

2) Your ability to “connect the dots” and to create “coherence in the future you face and turn it into a ‘bigger picture’ story”.

de Jong quotes Alan Mulally, a former CEO of Ford:  “The first thing a leader does is to facilitate connections between the organization and the outside world.”  Mullaly, as CEO, took steps to institutionalize the process of “context scanning” through the creation of a weekly Business Plan Review meeting.

The second step of connecting the dots involves more than detecting things that might be changing. It involves connecting and integrating these signs into a larger coherent context of future possibilities. “Trend hoppers” are different from “visionary leaders,” de Jong explains, and “historians” and “followers” are also different in important ways.  There are, moreover some real dangers in “over-reliance on the past,” he writes, in a section that deserves a lot of attention these days.

de Jong notes that making sense of the weak signals in the noise is harder because “the average person consumes about 34 gigabytes of content” and 100,000 words of information in a single day.” He continues:

“Without specific effort, you will only be able to identify events that were early manifestations of change in retrospect.  But that’s usually when it’s too late.”  Therefore, the effort to “connect the dots” must be focused on the implications of changing  realities for one’s business or other professional or life endeavor.

It is necessary to have “context intelligence” to identify and make sense of early signals of change, de Jong writes. The people who do this with the highest levels of adaptive capacity are called “first-class noticers” by leadership and management experts he cites, including Warren Bennis.  Strategic advantage depends on this adaptive capacity.

Developing our ability to notice novelties or things we typically filter out takes effort, even training.  There are many methods for this, and de Jong has created some of his own.  In general, however, he recommends methods for envisioning future facts, and discusses the power of scenario planning, as developed by Pierre Wack and Kees van der Heijden, as central to promoting strategic conversation and awareness. He identifies the psychological obstacles to strategic capacity as including “frame blindness,” or a loss of peripheral vision.  Overconfidence is another culprit.  “Mindlessness” occurs when we “are trapped by categories,” run on “automatic behavior” or operate from a single perspective, according to Harvard psychologist, Ellen Langer, whose work de Jong cites. Such mindlessness can occur–indeed, might be more likely to occur–when we are fully focused and aware of what we are doing.

Clearly, the art of looking ahead requires some practice but is indispensable in tumultuous times.  Next, this blog will look at another new book: Frame Innovation:  Create New Thinking by Design.

Oyster Heartbeats at the World Bank

Yesterday an international audience of development, media, business, NGO, and technology experts attending a session of the 2015 Meetings of the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund listened to an oyster’s heart beating.  It was a surprising session in many ways, and relevant to this blog’s focus.

Illustration: Pen and ink by Black Elephant Blog author

The session was “Big Data for a More Resilient World,” (video coverage here) where one of the keynote speakers, Ros Harvey, Chief Strategy Advisor of the Knowledge Economy Institute, described how the “Internet of Things” enables oyster farmers in Tasmania to integrate data about the heartbeats and other biorhythms of oysters to weather and water temperature data. Harvey’s presentation, as well as those of other speakers–from Intel, Google, the World Economic Forum, Caribou Digital as well as the author of Resilience-Why Things Bounce Back, Andrew Zolli–all emphasized the need for those grappling with so-called “big data” to find ways to put that data to use by the people generating it.

One take-away, definitely, was a sense of the embryonic nature of this topic for people, even specialists (if there are any yet) in “big data,” in all industries. A strong dose of humility about mankind’s collective readiness for this world–surprisingly (and certainly refreshingly)–was evident throughout the session, in this attendee’s view. Presentations and comments toggled frequently between the opportunities and dangers involved.  All speakers emphasized the need to move beyond “data” to focusing on “information,” complex systems and business models, thus tying the subject to the topic of resilience, a topic explored earlier on this blog.  Hence, the post about this event, with regard to some of the most thought-provoking insights from the event’s speakers.

Image credit: Photo of Andrew Zolli’s presentation given at the World Bank on Big Data and The Future of Resilience, 15 April 2015

The organizers noted that Big Data is one of the most important topics in the development world today but more than half of development experts think their sector is not prepared to use these possibilities.  Zolli presented a slide showing the “grand synthesis” of the elements of Big Data (a photo of which taken at the event is provided here).

Zolli, the author who has recently joined Planet Labs (where, he noted, one of the first employees of the companies was an “artist-in-residence”), noted that “we live in this world of super wicked problems, entangled, complicated..”  How people can persist, recover, and thrive in this world is “our collective resilience challenge.”  The challenge is that change is happening all around us and we can’t see it, he said.  Zolli demonstrated our inability to see this change with a short visual game he played with the audience.

In a world “dominated by the giant hairball” (of complexity), data has a role to play in helping us to be resilient. But what’s important, he says, is that we want to move from the “realm of big data” to the “realm of big indicators.” The Elements of Resilience–each of which is interconnected with the others–presented by Zolli include:

Building Regenerative Capacity

Sensing Emerging Risks

Responding to Disruption

Learning and Transformation

To move to the “realm of big indicators,” Zolli emphasized that “entirely new social architectures” need to be built and that we “need to reengineer relationships as much as we have to reengineer our institutions.” Some of the examples he cited of this at work, in addition to Planet Labs, were other geospatial providers, such as Digital Global and Zooniverse, which he described as “sophisticated crowdsourcing platforms”.  These are using citizen science for disaster response, such as Planet Labs’ work before and after the Tacloban disaster in the Philippines.

Wicked problems, said Zolli, “resist mere cleverness.”  Big Data is not simply “push-the-button.” It is necessary to drag unconventional players into the effort, into “adhocracies.”  Only in this way, might wicked problems “yield to mass cleverness.”

Illustration: Pencil and ink by Black Elephant Blog author

Harvey was next up, with a short video of the oyster farmers at work in Tasmania. She said:  that big data is not only about connecting people, processes, and things but also animals.   Being able to measure the oysters’ heart rates and integrate that data with weather and water conditions, for instance, epitomized the potential of the “Internet of Things,” she said. The challenge is “how do we ‘architect’ technology so the benefits accrue to the many?”  How can we create public good with private effort?  According to Harvey, “It is the new business models that will drive the disruption from the technology.”   Working together from a common data source creates new value, but there is a need to design systems based on 3 principles, known in shorthand as “SOS:”

Sustainable

Open Innovation

Scalable

“We need to understand that much of the world’s data is in the private sector” but “open innovation” requires that many people work on the problems.  Also the efforts must be sustainable.  They should not depend on funding that “comes and goes.” The Knowledge Economy Institute where Harvey works  focuses on such ways to solve complex problems through collaboration and innovation.

Nigel Snoad from Google, was next and said his work is focused on how to make critical information more accessible in times of crisis.  Snoad noted that the unexpected happens when you give people an “open tool” and “open APIs” are “where we’re going.” He cited Google Flu Trends as an example, but emphasized the Big Data is not a silver bullet.  This is because Big Data comes from “very complex systems.”  It is therefore necessary to “understand the systems” behind Big Data.

The moderated panel closing the session featured the founder of Caribou Digital, Chris Locke; Associate Director of the World Economic Forum’s Telecommunications Industry William Hoffman; and Senior Principal Engineer of the Strategy Group at Intel, Tony Salvador.  Key highlights among their comments included:

• The poor don’t need more surveillance;
• We need to get data on things that the people on the ground actually care about.
• It’s not a technology problem; it’s a business model problem.
• These technologies have ‘interpretive flexibility’ that can be used to concentrate power.
• We are just beginning to understand this.  Now we understand that it’s about complex systems.
• We need to talk about “information” and understand that it is a social construct.
• There is a growing recognition of public-private partnerships.
• The potential is there but it’s about Governance. This is in the next set of ‘grand challenges’.
• We need to examine some of the fundamentals that underline the systems we have today.
• What is the context of production [of Big Data] and what is the context of analysis once we have that data?
• Sometimes we are looking through the wrong end of the telescope.
• How can we unlock that data and make it valuable to the people it’s coming from?
• We need to listen. We don’t want to go down the path of reinventing our own assumptions.
• Big data is potentially big power…These [business] models need to be liberated from, and [sustained?] above, the level of individual institutions.
• We will see models emerge that will be surprising.
• We need to follow up with social encouragement and deep engagements.
• APIs that speak up out of the platforms
• Data can have value and merit right where it’s being collected
• Due process is an important topic. Things will go wrong. What will the most vulnerable do when things go wrong?

All in all, a rich hour-and-a-half session at the World Bank Headquarters yesterday, and a contribution to the state of understanding on this topic which affects everyone, even oysters.

Framing the Global

Illustration: Watercolor and ink by Black Elephant Blog author

With the rise of global studies and institutes, a new book has come along that features the research of diverse experts into differences between “global” and “international” studies. Framing the Global: Entry Points for Research (2014, Indiana University Press), edited by Hilary Kahn, Director of the Center for the Study of Global Change at Indiana University, includes a foreword by Saskia Sassen,  a specialist on globalization and human migration issues and Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and Centennial visiting Professor at the London School of Economics.

Each of its 14 chapters presents research that represents a different “entry point” into global studies.  These entry points are different slices of the reality of global interactions, much as traditional slices, such as economics, political science, and military affairs, have characterized distinct disciplinary approaches to “international studies” (or the studies of relations between nations).

The main point of this work seems to be that traditional disciplines and analytic methodologies do not produce global studies, though specialized regional and functional knowledge are necessary ingredients.  Major inherited categories of analysis can “veil or distort…our epoch…,” according to Sassen.  “The challenge is to make new categories that help us theorize the current conditions,” she writes.  “This book can then be read as an experiment in expanding the analytic terrain for understanding and representing what we have come to name globalization.”

Indeed, writes editor Kahn, global studies “does not have a master concept around which theory and method can take shape, like sociology has in society, or political science has in politics.” The emerging discipline of global studies “is a commitment to empirical research and search for previously unrecognized arrangements, patterns, and productive connections and disconnections,” writes Kahn. Such patterns and connections form the “entry points” for global research. Each heads up a different chapter, including “affect,” “displacement,” “forms,” “frames”, “genealogies,” “land,” “location,” “materiality,” “the particular,” “rights,” “rules, “scale,” etc.

Interestingly and perhaps overdue, this text challenges the methodological sufficiency of state-centric approaches to social sciences and analysis generally.  The concept of “global” as something which lies outside the “framing” of national issues is not accurate, according to Sassen:

“Many of our major current categories [of research and analysis] have inherited their status from a time and place when they emerged out of analytic work…My concern here with particularly with some of the major categories we use in the social sciences–economy, polity, society, justice, inequality, state, globalization, immigration.  They are all powerful in that they are widely used to explain the realities they represent.  Yet those realities are mutants…,” according to Sassen.

The “entry points” in subsequent chapters “have emerged in the course of each contributor’s engagement with existing approaches to global studies…,” according to Kahn.  These offer a “conceptual toolkit for global research in the twenty-first century” while investigating a wide range of themes, including global financial gold markets, transnational labor migration, public art in China, and the global significance of 1968.  Kahn emphasizes that the contributors to the book move beyond comparative approaches to “probe the complex interplay among locales, practices, policies, and people.”  “Relational comparisons” emphasize how entities are formed in relation to one another as well as vis-a-vis broader contexts.  “This shifts the focus from isolated units of inquiry to the transactions and relations in which they are constituted,” according to Kahn.

In a sense, these different entry points constitute alternative ontological frames, or ways of looking at the world.  The chapter on “Reframing Oceania” is particularly interesting for its reframing of the study of the Pacific, including the 28 nation-states considered to make up that region.  All of the chapters reveal sensitivity to issues of scale, flow, and subnational interconnectivity. All in all, there are at least 14 different ways to re-imagine the globe in this unique book.  It is not hard to imagine a whole new field of global scholarship emerging, one that references but does not depend upon traditional international relations concepts for its categories and “units” of analysis.  The entry points approach of this book, as Kahn notes, “slice reality differently, opening up new modes of understanding.”  Much to explore here!

AntiFragility in a World of Disorder

In today’s class, we discussed the topic of forced or “distressed” migration in connection with environmental stresses or shocks and–whether or not related to environmental issues–violent conflict.  We quickly discovered there is almost no issue which is not connected to this issue of distressed migration.  From food security to public health, and drought to early childhood education, a complex web of factors must be considered.  (Indeed, even recent findings in neuroscience on the relationship between cognitive development in children and poverty had a place in our discussion.)  The students concluded that even very local issues have global consequences. They debated ways to soundly approach the complexity of the issues involved.

Sketch: Pencil and ink by Black Elephant Blog author

The relevance of the topic, given news headlines these days, was obvious.  Some students emphasized the importance of adaptability, or resilience, in home countries for dealing with stresses and disasters.  Sometimes, however ,the stresses are too large, too many, and too frequent–and the basic functioning of the country too weak–for needed adaptation. It is mainly in such cases, when few other options exist, that people take the step of leaving their homes in search of a better future.  (These issues, said the students, include internally displaced people who must move elsewhere inside their country and exiles or migrants who are forced to leave, and who may even face the prospect of being “stateless.”)

Whether these people are called exiles, migrants, or refugees–or something else–sometimes depends on what international law covers, or not.  But, labels aside, these are people, said the students today, who probably would not be leaving their homes if they did not have to.  With more frequent and extreme weather events alone, however, freedom of mobility and opportunities for migration are poised to become larger issues around the world, observed some in the class today.

In connection with the issues of “anti fragility” or resilience, one might say that distressed migration occurs when countries become vulnerable and overextended.  While, in class, we consulted the work of known experts on human migration issues, outside of class literature unrelated to that specialized area can help reframe the issues involved.

For instance, the emerging concepts of “fragility” and “anti fragility,” as applied by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the book Antifragile, can help consider issues of migration (not the subject of his book) in different lights.  According to Taleb, systems such as societies and economies sometimes become fragile because “top-down” approaches make them so.  He writes: ” If about everything top-down fragilizes and blocks anti fragility and growth, everything bottom-up thrives under the right amount of stress and disorder.  The process of discovery (or innovation, or technological progress) itself depends on anti fragile tinkering, aggressive risk-bearing rather than formal education.”  In other words, highly static societies–even seemly highly stable ones–can be highly fragile, or subject to breakdowns.

Following such logic, it appears that nation-states can become more fragile due to policies imposed on them either by internal or external actors.  According to Taleb, in heavily top-down systems, this fragility sometimes can be masked, sometimes for a long time.  Some societal systems, he writes, “become antifragile at the expense of others by getting the upside (or gains) from volatility, variations, and disorder and exposing others to the downside risks of losses or harm.”  The masking of this fragility equates to what he calls “blow-up risks,” writing:

“…as we discovered during the financial crisis that started in 2008, these blowup risks-to-others are easily concealed owing to the growing complexity of modern institutions and political affairs.”  In his view, a few are benefiting from “anti fragility at the expense of the fragility of others.”

He also says that the “rare events” or “black swans”–(that are, in part, the subject of this blog)–paradoxically are increasing largely due to the increase of more complex man-made systems.  While technological know-how may be increasing, these same advances are “making things a lot more unpredictable.”  Modernity itself “makes us build Black Swan-vulnerable systems,” he writes.  And societal tendencies to focus on things we can estimate and measure encourage us to mistakenly think that we can calculate the risks and probabilities of shocks and rare events.  As he explains, we can’t but that doesn’t stop people (and entire industries) from convincing themselves and others that we can.

As the book, Antifragile, itself is composed of seven books, there is little point in trying to capture all of its key points in a blog post.  For purposes of this blog, the main thought in the book to explore further has to do with the interactions of complex systems leading to an increasing number of “rare events,” also known as unpredictable “Black Swans.”  Taleb writes: “The odds of rare events are simply not computable.  We know a lot less about hundred-year floods than five-year floods–model error swells when it comes to small probabilities.”

The students today were considering what makes countries more, or less, adaptable (or, to approximate what Taleb is addressing, “anti-fragile”) on the assumption that forced migration does not occur if solutions to problems are readily found at home.   Understanding how societies become and remain adaptive–particularly in a world of more frequent “rare events”–seems fundamental to finding more effective ways to deal with issues related to forced, or distressed, migration.  The real-life urgency of these issues for many people close by and far away is clear. In class, we will continue to grapple with the concepts involved and consider where things might be headed under different scenarios.

Anti-Fragility and Resilience

As the literature on “resilience” expands, some of the concepts addressed might appear to clash. This post will begin a look at some of these differences–to see if they really are differences. There generally is agreement, however, that the roots of resilience thinking are found in ecology and more broadly speaking the natural or biological sciences.  This material refreshes our understanding of the interactions of causes and effects in simple, complicated, OR complex systems, powerfully reminding those who are receptive that sometimes addressing problems with the wrong “solutions” or means can actually make them worse.

Judith Rodin, author of The Resilience Dividend, introduced in the previous post, examines the conceptual roots of resilience thinking in a number of fields.  She has interviewed many of the leaders in this arena, who represent disciplines as varied as engineering, psychology, business management, and city planning.  She reports that these people, while experts in their original fields, are “coming together into an approach to resilience building that can be broadly applied across many domains…as well as many scales…”

One of the experts she cites is Brian Walker whom she quotes as writing, “Resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic function.”  A plant ecologist, Walker has come to understand, as Rodin writes, that “resilience is not about not changing.”  The forests and savannas that he originally focused on survive disruptions–such as fire, drought, development,and pestilence–only by changing.  Walker extended this thinking to include human systems.  Walker found that the “idea of retaining basic function through disruption”–when applied to systems of humans and nature–“has far-reaching consequences.”  As Rodin writes:

One of the consequences is that the “systems of nature and the systems of humans are very much intertwined, and the resilience characteristics of one affect the other.”

In engineering, too, notes Rodin, “the concept of shock absorption without basic loss of function is central.”  Quoting the director of international development at Arup, a global firm of designers, planners, engineers, consultants, and technical specialists, Jo da Silva, the experience of “witnessing how communities recover from physical collapse, such as the Indian Ocean tsunami, or social breakdown, such as the Rwandan genocide” influenced her thinking (and that of her colleagues) to move beyond the traditional paths of engineering to include social systems.

In psychology, as well, there are degrees of resilience, writes Rodin quoting a professor of clinical psychology.  In that profession, only fairly recently has there been a shift away from “dysfunction and pathology” toward “resilience and health.”  There are degrees of resilience in this area too:  some people will struggle more than others in certain types of disruptions.  A lot depends on the circumstances.

These findings are being integrated and adapted into other disciplines, according to Rodin.  “Resilience building is now on the minds of people in a wide range of other fields, including economics, sociology, politics, and governance, health care, education, theology, and the arts, and applied in the burgeoning industries of management consulting as well as personal growth and improvement.”

All of the disciplines at the root of the concept of resilience draw  on systems thinking, according to Rodin.  A system is “a set of interrelated elements that interact with each other within some defined boundary and are organized to perform a function or follow some purpose.”  Systems include the human body, a community, a computer network, a company, a city, and a society, according to Rodin.  An essential element of systems is “the feedback loop.”  The most simple feedback loop involves “cause and effect” closely related in time and space, according Jay Forrestor who founded the Systems Dynamics Group at MIT.  An example of this, he says, is warming your hands at a stove.

In complex systems, however, “cause and effect are not closely related in either time or space,” Forrestor writes.  “In the complex system the cause of a difficulty may lie far back in time from from the symptoms, or in a completely different and remote part of the system.  In fact, causes are usually found, not in prior events, but in the structure and policies of the system.”  According to Rodin, drawing on Forrestor’s work, complex systems, such as cities, “present to us things that look like causes but are, in fact, ‘coincident symptoms’.”  Because we are more cognitively prepared to expect simple cause-and effect situations, “we apply the same thinking to complex systems and, as a result, “treat symptoms, not causes.”  Forrester concludes, according to Rodin, that the outcome of doing this usually “lies between ineffective and detrimental.”  Rodin notes, for instance, that this is why–in the case study of Medellin, Colombia she examines earlier in her book–“Medellin could not break out of its cycle of violence and poverty” until it began addressing causes (such as neighborhood cohesion, transportation, education, access to basic needs, and other elements of the city system) rather than just symptoms.

Illustration: Watercolor and ink by Black Elephant Blog author

The ecological roots of resilience thinking are identified with the work of a Canadian ecologist, C. S. Holling, who maintained that there are two different ways to look at natural systems–as either stable or resilient.  The former is consistent with a traditional engineering view of “consistent non-variable performance in which slight departures from performance goals are immediately counteracted.”  Like the plastic ruler which, bent and then let go, returns to its original shape.

The second view of systems, according to Holling, concerns a property termed “resilience” that is a measure of the persistence of systems and of their ability to absorb change and disturbance and still maintain the same relationships between populations or state variables.” This material is from C.S. Holling’s well-known paper, “Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems,” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 4 (1973) and quoted by Rodin.  Resilience is not about “achieving permanent stability of some standard state but rather about “absorbing”change and disruption…and achieving a new state of stability,” writes Rodin.  Holling continues:  If we are dealing with a system profoundly affected by changes external to it and continually confronted by the unexpected, the constancy of its behavior becomes less important than the persistence of the relationships.”

In a world which some say is more disruptive, getting clarity about the meaning of these concepts is a necessary starting point.  Thus, the concept of “Antifragility,” as developed in a book of the same name (Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder) by former businessman and quantitative trader and current author and professor Nassim Nicholas Taleb, merits attention. For Taleb, “Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness.  The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the anti fragile gets better.”  In what ways is Taleb discussing the same concepts as Rodin, Holling, and others, and in what ways do his concepts differ? A future blog post will take this up.

The Resilience Dividend

Illustration: Watercolor and ink by Black Elephant Blog author (All Rights Reserved)

Island nations have been in the news alot lately, and not just because of the cyclone that hit Vanuatu recently.  There is new interest in islands and the subject of resilience.  It turns out that on this subject, conventional wisdom–as so often is the case–is not quite right.  Islands aren’t always more vulnerable and less resilient, according to some experts who will be speaking at an upcoming event, “Islands as Champions of Resilience,”sponsored by by the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies in Washington, D.C.  At this event, the speakers will discuss replacing the prevailing notion of island nations as victims of climate change to “champions of resilience.”  I know of some people right now in island nations who would be very interested in these proceedings…

And since we have just discussed the concept of resilience in my class, and some people I know are presently preparing materials related to resilience, here are some notes on the subject.  This is a big subject and likely to spill over into a future post or two.

In her new book, The Resilience Dividend, Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation, defines resilience as “the capacity of any entity–an individual, a community, an organization, or a natural system–to prepare for disruptions, to recover from shocks and stresses, and to adapt and grow from a disruptive experience.”  She notes that ideally one becomes more adept at managing disruption and skilled at “resilience building.”

The “resilience dividend,” according to Rodin, refers to new capacity that results from becoming more adept at managing disruption; as a result, one is “able to create and take advantage of new opportunities in good times and bad.”  Thus resilience is most definitely not about snapping back to the status quo ante.  It is not like a plastic ruler bent and then let go.  Instead, Rodin writes, resilience is “about achieving significant transformation that yields benefits even when disruptions are not occurring.”  The capacity for building resilience is one of the most urgent “social and economic issues” today, she writes, “because we live in a world that is defined by disruption”.  These disruptions run the gamut, from cyber-attacks, new strains of virus, a storm, economic surprises, a structural failure, civil disturbances, and so on, notes the author.

While there is nothing new about disruption, there are three disruptive phenomena that are “distinctly modern,” according to Rodin.  These are:  urbanization, climate change, and globalization.  These three factors are “intertwined,” she writes, and affect each other in a “social-ecological-economic nexus.”  And, “because everything is interconnected–a massive system of systems–a single disruption often triggers another, which exacerbates the effects of the first, so that the original shock becomes a cascade of crises.”  Rodin writes:  “A weather disturbance, for example, can cause infrastructural damage that leads to a public health problem that, in turn, disturbs livelihoods and creates widespread economic turmoil, which can lead to a further degrading of basic services, additional health problems, and even political conflict or civil unrest.”

According to Rodin, any entity can build resilience but “too often…resilience thinking does not really take hold until a galvanizing event or a major shock–such as Superstorm Sandy–brings the need into high relief.”  She describes her goal for her book as to help frame and contribute to the process of resilience by proving a template for thinking about, and methods for practicing, resilience.

Five Characteristics of Resilience

Rodin identifies five characteristics of resilience:

• Being Aware
• Diverse (different sources of capacity)
• Integrated (coordination of functions and actions across systems)
• Self-regulating
• Adaptive

Being aware is first because without awareness you have no idea what your strengths and weakness are, what threats and risks you face…and have no concept of all the aspects of a situation, which can include “the infrastructural elements, human dynamics, and natural systems–and how they interconnect.”

Being aware is not a static condition because circumstances can change rapidly with proliferating secondary effects, Rodin writes.  The fluidity of the operating environment for most of us requires what she calls “situational awareness”–which she defines as an “ability and willingness to constantly assess, take in new information, reassess and adjust our understanding of the most critical and relevant strengths and weakness and other factors as they change and develop.”  Rodin describes several methods for enhancing situational awareness, and references what psychologists call “mindfulness,”  Mindfulness is described as “a flexible cognitive state that results from drawing novel distinctions about the situation and the environment.”

In order to be mindful, says one of Rodin’s sources on the subject, one needs to be able to develop “new mental categories, to be open-minded, receptive to different and new perspectives and new information, and to focus on processes rather than outcomes.”  In this way, a “mindful” person is “more able to understand situations as they actually are, not as you assume they should be or always have been” and “thus to respond more quickly and appropriately.”

All this is enormously relevant to people in any field anywhere, given the complexity of the systems that make up modern life and what many are finding is the inadequacy of most inherited frameworks for dealing with that complexity.  Future posts will come back to this subject as it is both central to what we are learning our class this semester and useful material for various projects of mine.