[Music] [Music] [Music] uh this is the canavan framework uh pronounced Kavin and for those of you who don't speak Welsh uh the origin of the name itself is deserving of explanation its literal translation is habitat or place but what it actually means is the place of your multiple belongings it's this very sense that you're rooted in many different paths which profoundly influence what you are but of which you can only ever be partially aware and the reason it's a good name for a complexity model is that's a complex system yeah thousands of modulators influenc in the development to the system they influence what you are but you can never fully know what they are a couple of key points to make about the model first of all it's a sensemaking model not a categorization model and the difference there is key a categorization model is a classic 2x two Matrix that you see in consultancy handbooks and in those models the framework precedes the data as a result of which it's very fast because we can just drop the dot the data into the appropriate box and decide accordingly the danger is that actually we won't see subtle differences until they're too late so we'll be caught out right so categorization is good for explo exploitation is pretty poor for exploration or during periods of change a sensemaking framework on the other hand the data precedes the framework the patterns or the framework itself emerges from the data in a social process now for the purpose of this brief explanation I'm going to treat it as a set of categories but that's an important distinction categorization models framework proceeds data sense making models data proceeds framework and of course one can become the other and we'll need resetting from time to time we take the three basic systems here ordered systems complex systems chaotic [Music] systems uh we create a new category called disorder and we divide order into two simple and complicated [Music] in the simple domain um this is an ordered system that means the relationship between cause and effect exists is predictable it can be determined in advance in simple order that relationship is self-evident to any reasonable person as a result of which the decision model is sense categorized respon want we see what's coming in we make it fit previously determined categories we decide what to do um the model here is that we apply best practice a phrase which is legitimate in this domain but illegitimate in other domains in the complicated domain there is a relationship between cause and effect there is a right answer but it's not self-evident so I either have to deploy an analytical method hence sense analyze respond or calling experts who built expertise within that domain who can make the right decision accordingly I don't apply best practice I apply good practice now distinction between good and best practice is actually quite important um in a complicated domain there are several different ways of doing things all of which legitimate if you have the right expertise and trying to force people to adopt one of them is actually quite dangerous it will basically piss people off to be honest to the point where they won't apply best practice where it should be applied right so simple and complicated we're familiar with sense categorize respond sense analyze respond best practice or good practice complexity on the other hand is a system without causality it's a system of like constraints on agents agents modify the system so our decision model here is probe sense respond we conduct safe fail experiments we don't do fail safe design if an experiment succeeds we amplify it if an experiment starts to fail we dampen it in fact we shouldn't even do an experiment unless we've identified our amplification and dampening strategies in advance and of course what happens here is we get emergent order I something which comes out of this is emergent practice it's a new way of doing things it's novel it may be some combination but it's different and it's Unique in a chaotic environment if we enter it deliberately it's for Innovation but if we enter it accidentally then we need to stabilize the position quickly so the decision model is act sense respond we move very quickly to stabilize a situation any practice will be completely novel in terms of the way things work now you'll notice that that gives us a very easy way of deciding how to work but it gives us a Divergent we sometimes call this requisite applicability it basically says dependent on which space you're in you should think differently you should analyze differently rather than a one size fits all which has been a tradition of management Theory now the central space disorder and this is key is the space of not knowing which of the domains you're in and that's where we are most of the time and the trouble then is we will interpret the situation according to our personal preference for Action now the danger is if you spend two or three years of your life in a purely bureaucratic process-based drill then you tend to see all problems as a failure of process if you're a deep expert then any problem is a failure to give you enough time or resource to do analysis uh natural complexity workers Battlefield commanders politicians they their reaction to a crisis is to get lots of different people together from lots of different backgrounds in a desperate hope that somebody will come up with the right Solution that's actually quite a good strategy and of course the fasiest lever crisis because then they can be given absolute command of everybody who has to do what they're told so what you get in a normal decision environment is that people are in the disordered space assessing the situation according to their preference for action one of the main functions of the canian framework is to allow people to say hang on a minute it's complex therefore we probe or hang in a minute that's complicated which expert should we bring to [Music] bear another key aspect of the canian framework which is frequently missed off by people who try and oversimplified is the boundary between simple and chaotic is different from the other boundaries it's actually represented in the Harvard Business review article as a cliff or in other articles as a symbolic type of wave at the bottom yeah the principle here is if you start to believe that things are simple you start to believe that they're ordered you start to believe in your own myths you start to believe that past success means you're invulnerable to Future failure you effectively move to the complacent Zone which is the boundary between simple and chaotic and you fall over the edge in a crisis right all the other boundaries allow for transitions for this you fall over the edge and Recovery is very very expensive it therefore follows that you should manage in the complicated and complex basis and only move a very small amount of material down into the simple because that's actually highly vulnerable to Rapid or accelerated change so the canvan framework is a decision framework it's an analytical framework it's been used for decision Theory it's been used for Knowledge Management it's been used for it design for project management because it recognizes the causal differences that exist between different types of system and gives people a very quick and easy way to flip between them so they can use the appropriate method for the appropriate domain [Music]