How Individuals Can Win in a Complex World — Part II
Part I discussed the world that we now live in. It is complex, ever changing and uncertain. To succeed in such an environment, one needs to understand it. Part II explores how we must avoid indepth planning if we are in dynamic settings. We need to develop a working model through action to see the true picture of that that we are ‘in’. Yet how can we do that if reality is always changing and how true is true?
Part II — How to Orientate with Action in a Complex World.
As they say, “Good decisions come from experience and experience comes from bad decisions”. That’s the kind of insight that comes from wisdom. And it’s particularly true in a world that is fast paced, dynamic and ever changing. Until a few decades ago, humans had no experience in making decisions under complex conditions. Yet we now live in the midst of whirling complexity.
Achieving success within complexity is skillful and any skill can be developed with time. But in 1989, Captain Al Haynes and his crew, flying a United DC-10 from Denver to Chicago, had little time to solve an almost unsolvable problem. An engine had exploded and severed all the control lines to the wings. All the hydraulic fluid had leaked out, along with their chances of survival. It was an event that was theoretically impossible so there were no Emergency Procedures developed to follow. Ground Engineers were contacted and they too had no ideas. It left the pilots unable to turn their aircraft or control their descent and no way to get out of it.
The crew needed to think quickly and come up with ideas. They tried little tests of creative thinking, under immense pressure. It was a desperate situation but somehow they were able to gain a tiny bit of control over their aircraft. There also happened to be a DC-10 Training Captain, Denny Finch, who was a passenger on the flight. He came onto the flight deck to help. As a team they knew they couldn’t just come up with a plan to land and then do it. They would only have one chance to get their aircraft on the ground, so they had to test their ‘hunches’ first to try and gain control. Something that worked was powering up the engine on one wing, while reducing power on the opposite engine. A modern jet airliner had never been flown like that. But using that random idea, they fought a white knuckled battle to control the aircraft, without any hydraulics.
Forty minutes later and incredibly after some erratic flying, they had managed to line up on an emergency runway at Sioux City Airport. But they couldn’t slow the aircraft down. It was going 100 mph faster than the maximum allowable landing speed. The aircraft crashed on landing that day. But miraculously nearly 200 people survived.
The pilots had completed a task that was, pretty much, impossible. No other aircrew has been able to replicate what they achieved that day in 1989, when tested under the same simulated conditions. The value of trial and error learning was proven in the crucible of real life.
Thankfully few of us will be confronted by such a dire situation, yet we all live in a dynamic and uncertain world. To cope, we usually think in straight lines. We break problems down into their parts. We got man to the moon, one flight at a time. If we can understand the relationship between parts, we can predict outcomes. This works in simple situations. However, often there are too many interacting parts in modern life, to make predictable outcomes.
A complex setting is one with multiple interacting but unpredictable parts. Many modern situations are complex. Yet often we revert to linear processing, thinking that we can predict or control the outcome. The point is illustrated with ‘Start-Up’ ventures. Most fail. So how were we able to predict success in getting to the moon? The moon was reached through a series of sequencial steps. It worked because we were dealing with a ‘complicated’ but predictable set of linear relationships. Complicated situations are predictable with enough understanding of the relationship of the parts. However, something is different when trying to predict success in a disruptive and dynamic space. It is ‘complex’. It is different. Old paradigms of commerce don’t always apply. The internet changed the way social forces work. We ended up in a complex world.
We all face multiple interdependencies now in career paths, businesses and in any long range planning. The situation is seen with novel drug discoveries. Complex interdependencies of biological systems with proteins make exact prediction almost impossible. 10,000 different configurations are often randomly tested before a successful interaction is found. So, how can we succeed in complex and everchanging conditions?
Building more accurate understanding through action.
Normally we make decisions by building maps in our mind of how we think a situation works. It’s how we ‘see’ the world at that point in time. We usually construct these ‘mental models’ subconsciously, based on our observations. But they always start as just a hunch.
Learning is just a series of failures added together.
If the model works in our ‘mind’s eye’, we give it a go and act. Often our action fails. Perhaps our mental model was lacking in some step or a relationship that we didn’t see? But sometimes the action we take, works. Regardless, each time we learn something. Learning then, is a just a series of increasingly better failures. Contrary to popular belief, in complex settings we learn by acting, not by planning or trying to make accurate prediction.
Another reason prediction is impossible is because our observations are always flawed, by just a little. No observer can ever have a perfect picture of the environment they are in. To add to those flaws, the world is always changing. Products, perceptions, emotions and appetites are always in flux. So none of us have a 100% accurate mental model of our situation, all the time. We each have a different ‘lens’ on our environment and the events within it, even when trying to ‘be like water’, or attempting to be integral with our environment.
None of our mental models are 100% accurate, even in the moment we compile them.
In adversarial or commercial situations, the other side also has a mental model. It reflects how they see events. Importantly, their mental model will also be lacking in accuracy. But, if their ‘picture’ is more accurate than ours, they will have the advantage. Likewise, if our understanding is more accurate, we will hold the advantage. So, skill in the process that develops the most accurate orientation, fastest, will lead to success.
Ever since the days of Alexander the Great and Darius III, the battlefield has been a place of great complexity. It was one of the few places where true complexity existed in antiquity. We can use those ancient battles to study the earliest human success under complex conditions. On a battlefield, life or death advantage is gained by the side with the best picture of the land, the weather, the forces and the dispositions at play.
By now, we should be able to see that success in a complex world can only come through action, or more accurately, cyclical action. The great commanders have always known this, if just intuitively. The ability to adapt and shape to unfolding events has always been a trait in battlefield success. Planning cannot determine an outcome with certainty. In a complex world, as on battlefields thousands of years ago, we must ‘act’ in a continuous way, to build, test and rebuild our understanding of the situation. The ‘action’ phase becomes the learning mechanism. The individual that can Observe, Orientate, Decide and Act more quickly, in a learning loop, will eventually be victorious in almost any situation.
This has been called the ‘O-O-D-A loop’. Observe-Orientate-Decide-Act. It is an Action Learning cycle that enables an individual to gain finer and finer understanding of a complex situation. It even works against larger, more powerful foes. History has demonstrated that a smaller force that can develop a more efficient learning cycle, at a higher decision-action tempo, can disrupt a larger enemy.
So take the initiative. Don’t expect success first time. The best course of action is impossible to predict through planning. Be first to act and build an accurate orientation of your situation through continuous testing. Then adapt quickly to each result. That is how the skill of anti-fragile success is built.
So now we have two rules.
Rule No 1 (from article, Part I) — Some aspects of life are linear but most are dynamic and complex. That means the future is unknown, unknowable and constantly changing. We should be mindful that our orientation or understanding of any situation is always flawed. But the advantage goes to the person with the most accurate mental model.
And now we have;
Rule No 2 — Build mental models to understand how the world is working. Like a boxer using a jab, always be testing against reality. Keep evolving your model and thinking based on your testing. This must be continuous. It is how one stays vital, energised and anti-fragile. And remember that the world is always updating its ‘image’.
Part III will give a practical method to do this.
Kris Vette is an Emerging Technology Strategist. He runs Chain Ecosystems, a consultancy that enables organisations to both understand and posture themselves for success in the age of networks.
