Complexity

Tom Geraghty · Complexity & Systems, Ecological Thinking

A newsletter that refuses to let complexity and scale become a reason for inaction. Opens with the starfish parable (from Half the Sky): you can't save them all, but it made a difference to that one — so a single psychological safety practice may not transform an organisation, yet it can matter to some people, and small acts sometimes catalyse self-sustaining movements. Draws on Cynefin and Ralph Stacey's matrix to argue we cannot pre-plan our way through complex organisational change; we can only probe-sense-respond, plan a series of experiments, act and learn. In large complex systems it's often impossible to isolate the effect of any single intervention amid too many variables, which can make impact feel unprovable and so discourage action — but we can still make small improvements to the organisational substrate and know they made a difference to some. Includes Eileen McCarthy's account of bringing the Andon Cord practice into healthcare ambulatory surgery centres after a workshop, with measurable Just Culture survey gains. Threads in Toby Lowe on the 'corruption of data' when complex organisations are forced to prove unique impact, Greg Satell on connecting silos rather than breaking them down, the formal-vs-informal structure distinction, and Fred Hebert on working in complexity — none of which works without psychological safety.

Neighbours (48)

• An Introduction to Cybernetics (paper)
• Complex Adaptive Systems (paper)
• Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (paper)
• More Is Different (paper)
• The Architecture of Complexity (paper)
• A Leader's Framework for Decision Making (paper)
• Complexity and Postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems (paper)
• Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning (paper)
• Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System (paper)
• Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System (paper)
• Looking At Things Properly
• Restricted Complexity, General Complexity (paper)
• Science and Complexity (paper)
• Social-Ecological Systems as Complex Adaptive Systems: Organizing Principles for Advancing Research Methods and Approaches (paper)
• The New Dynamics of Strategy: Sense-Making in a Complex and Complicated World (paper)
• What Sociologists Should Know About Complexity (paper)
• Complexity: A Guided Tour (paper)
• Efficiency vs Resilience
• Emergence & Dynamics of PS
• Four Stages: a Six-Stage Critique
• Lessons from Everest: The Interaction of Cognitive Bias, Psychological Safety, and System Complexity (paper)
• Moving off the Map: How Knowledge of Organizational Operations Empowers and Alienates (paper)
• Organisational Fabric
• Rewetting Organisations
• Science and Method (paper)
• Studying Complexity in Health Services Research: Desperately Seeking an Overdue Paradigm Shift (paper)
• The Science of Complexity: An Alternative Perspective for Strategic Change Processes (paper)
• Adaptive Cycle
• Context Changes Everything: How Constraints Create Coherence (paper)
• Critique of Personality Profiling
• Dr Richard Cook
• Information Theory and the Living System (paper)
• OODA Loops & Strategy (Iterum)
• PS & Artificial Intelligence
• Psychological Safety Books
• Safe to Fail
• Safe-to-Fail Wargames
• Safety Risk Management Methodologies: Overview of SRM Methods and Analysis Based on Systems Thinking (paper)
• Three Horizons of Strategy
• Cognitive Load
• Digital Transformation & PS
• Everything is an Experiment
• Experiments, Bets & Probes
• Nonlinear PS & Performance
• OODA Loop
• Safety Organised Criticality
• Static vs Generative Work
• The PS Knowledge Map