Page 94 - The Complexity Perspective 20 02 18

 Plus, Western culture has a long tradition of the idea of
‘progress’ to an ideal end state an idea typically embedded in

religious dogma (heaven) and practice, thereby emotional
embedded in our consciousness rather than logically.
 There are likely cognitive limitations to our ability to perceive

a boundless context driven by large underlying forces; a sea
on which we simply float but cannot control. The context is
simply unknowable despite our best attempts to enact slices
of it and pretend we can explain the underlying forces.

 Linked to the above, the context is treated as something
separate over which we have limited or no control; in it, we

are mere pawns adapting to contextual change over which we
have limited or no control; this ‘helplessness’ clashes, at some
level, with the concept of ‘free will’.

 Finally, for any business system the cost of context
monitoring is very high. Not only does it involve expensive
data gathering but it requires skillful interpretation. The ones

most skilled at interpretation are often mavericks tasked with
bringing tough news to top leaders. This plus personal or
cultural blindness rooted in preconceptions and training can
simply ‘blind’ an organization to the shifting context.

To paraphrase a ‘hippy’ thought, the Complexity Perspective’ confirms
that we are ‘one with the context”, we as individuals and our
organizations are embedded actors co-evolving the context we swim in.

As we take actions hoping to amend the energy flows from the context;
the actions of others affect us into an undirected co-evolution of the
context. Al this can sound very ‘hippyish’, a return to the ‘flower

power’ generations, and perhaps it is, in part. Another way of looking,
however, is that if we take a Complexity Perspective, business becomes
a ‘game’ played on a dynamic board and open to all; perhaps, the
greatest game of all!!

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©Business Games Works 2018 (Version 1)