Boids, Butterflies and Bacteria

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Boids, Butterflies and Bacteria

• How can insights from the new science of
  complexity help local partnership working?

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What brought me to this?

• Dissatisfaction with traditional explanations of
  how organisations work in real life
• Dominated by machine/military images of
  organisation
• Lacking authenticity - offer simplistic solutions
  based on ideal models
• Ignore importance of context and history
• Based on private sector/multinational/product
  based examples
• Unrealistic expectations of available resources
• Anecdotal studies/lacking in evidence base

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Attraction of Complexity ideas

• Views partnerships as complex adaptive systems
• Interacting with environment
• Provides a language and way of seeing to support
  this perspective
• Accepts that control and knowledge are
  distributed across the system not centrally
  located
• Acknowledges capacity for self organisation
• Stimulates creative thinking/novelty

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Barriers?

• Off putting title but complex does not mean
  complicated
• People are frightened by chaos
• Radical departure well out of comfort zone
• Emergent/incomplete science
• Can be a bit new age
• Very little written on social care/education
• Challenges management orthodoxy
• Challenging to distribution of power

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CAS

• Complex made up of a number of diverse parts
• Adaptive capable of change and adaptation
• System parts are connected and therefore
  interdependent

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A shoal of fish
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A flock of boids
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A stock market
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A colony of ants
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VHA Principles of Management

• Choose appropriate metaphors
• Build good enough vision
• Choose clockware and swarmware
• Tune to the edge
• Uncover and work with paradox
• Go for multiple actions, let direction emerge
• Listen to the shadow system
• Grow the system by chunking
• Mix cooperation with competition

Edgeware Ingights from complexity science for
health care leaders, Zimmerman, Lindberg Plsek
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• All theories of organisation and management are
  based on implicit images or metaphors that
  persuade us to see, understand, and imagine
  situations in partial waysthere can be no single
  theory or metaphor that gives an all-purpose
  point of view."

Gareth Morgan, 1986
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Work is war

• Going over the top
• Keeping your head down
• Command and control
• Loose canons
• Wars on drugs/crime
• Holding the line
• Rear guard action

• Divisions
• Front-line
• Tactics
• Targets
• Strategy
• Campaign
• Officers
• Headquarters
• Frontline

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Life is Theatre

• Centre stage/Back stage/staged event/set the
  stage
• Acting like a
• a role to play
• Rehearse our lines
• Going off script
• Drama queen
• In the spotlight
• Audience
• Theatre
• Performance management
• Director

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Work is a game

• Winners and losers
• Level playing field
• Touching base
• Ideas from left of field
• Balanced scorecard
• state of play

• Ball-park figures
• Game plan
• Coaching
• Moving the goal posts
• Managers being sidelined

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An organisation is a machine

• Human Resources
• Vehicle of change
• Think-tank
• Nuts and bolts
• Fine tuning
• Breakdowns
• Management dashboard
• Quick-fix
• Running smoothly
• Policy launch
• Driving seat

• Delivery mechanism
• Management Tool Kit
• Process re-engineering
• Getting things on track
• Leverage
• Spanner in the works
• Well-oiled machine
• Out of control
• Chains of command
• Hands to the wheel
• Engine room
• Bolting things down

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Limitations of the machine metaphor

• Machines dont learn
• Machines dont adapt
• Machines cant cope with variety
• Machines dont make new friends
• Machines dont have good ideas
• Machines run out of steam
• Machines can be replaced by new models
• Machines dont care...

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Machines cant adapt
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Machines cant cope with variety
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Machines dont have good ideas
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Machines have Fat Controllers
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to control us
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or so they think
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Organisation is a jazz band

• Improvisation rather than song sheets
• Solos and ensemble
• Personal mastery
• Interrupts habit/cliché
• Learn from mistakes
• Listen intently
• Minimal structure
• Informal learning

For further exploration of this idea see
http//www.newdirections.uk.com/Cuttings2051.pdf
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An organisation is a eco-system

• Evolution
• Life cycle
• Growth
• Maturity
• Cross fertilisation
• Root and branch
• Environmental change
• Green shoots

• Nurture
• Test bed
• Fruition
• Cherry picking
• Ripe ideas
• Blight
• Grass-roots
• Roots of a problem
• Over-manuring

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• In all aspects of life ... we define our reality
  in terms of metaphors and then proceed to act on
  the basis of the metaphorswe in part structure
  our experience, consciously and unconsciously, by
  means of metaphor.

Lakoff and Johnson, 1980
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Further possibilities

• Change is an adventure
• Common destination
• Direction of travel
• Uncertainty of what lies ahead
• Team with variety of skills/knowlwdge
• Avoid maps and mapping

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Implications

• Dont assume standardisation of inputs
• Dont expects standardisation of outcome
• Dont expect perfect conformity
• Dont expect perfect communication
• Dont think you can stop when you run out of
  fuel
• We cant predict the future
• We cant specify every step in our plans

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Community strategy
Commissioning Strategy
CYP Plan
Service plans
Team plans
Employee Plans
My Care plan
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Ideas from complexity science

• Planning as you go/good enough planning
• Self organisation
• Values diversity within the system
• Clockware and swarmware
• Acknowledge the inevitability of paradox and
  uncertainty

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What does it mean for planning?

• Light strategic plans to set direction
• Detailed SMART action plans to manage progress
• Borrow from programme planning ideas
• Web-based documents
• Inspectors judge outcomes rather than process -
  or move from archaeology or anthropology
• Manage the shelf life of your data
• Data rich, analysis poor

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Culture

• Changing conversations
• Changing rewards/sanctions
• Create time for reflection
• Sceptical optimism
• Authenticity - Avoid dissemblance
• Choosing appropriate metaphors