Listen to our Futurepod conversation
It was a joy to be hosted by Peter Hayward on FuturePod to talk about the Complex Mess community (June 2024).
You can listen to the conversation or download the transcript here.
"In a complex world that is probably accelerating in both complexity, weirdness, and messiness. How can decision-makers find enough coherence in the mess to chart a way forward, as they must, while also remaining open and skeptical about any temporary coherence they stumbled into. And how do they also handle the psychic burden of such an intellectual high wire act?
"In episode 193, Peter Hayward hosts Meredith Bowden and Dave Godden to discuss their Complex Mess community and what they have learned about supporting people working in complex spaces."
Complex mess gathering reflections
Gathering July 2024
Isn't it funny how a group of people, from very different backgrounds, can have the same sorts of things on their minds? ... Here are some of the themes from our last Complex Mess gathering conversation that stood out for me:
🐾 "Precarity" - sitting with the discomfort of uncertainty especially when things feel precarious, unfulfilled expectations, and "interim times". Is waiting useless, or can there be something quite helpful about waiting? It is a time where patience is required, but people are tired and exhausted - what does that mean for our ability to exercise patience?
🐾 "Crisis of imagination" - we are struggling to survive with the complexity we have created, we are feeling burnt out by our busy lives. We need creativity to face the many challenges ahead (personal, organisational, societal, civilisational), but we don't have much left in the tank - is the real threat a "crisis of imagination"?
🐾 "The mother's skirt" - children need a safe place from which they can go out into the world and explore, when they feel frightened or unsafe they can retreat to their mother's skirt. What is that safe space we can retreat to as adults when things get frightening?
🐾 A paradox - a most (in)convenient paradox of safety and imagination - are we too scared to take the risks associated with imagination?
🐾 "That'll do" - perhaps because we are busy, tired and exhausted, and the many problems seem so enormous, there is an attitude of "that'll do", we do something because something needs to be done, but we don't do anything properly. Because it's too hard, it will take too long, it will cost too much, we don't agree.
🐾 "Home" - in the "housing" discourse, the focus is often on houses, not homes. Of course shelter is important, but surely we all need a home. A safe place where we have some control and peace.
🐾 A big question - how do we come together as groups to achieve our aims? How do we work well with others? The lost art of conversation (which we enjoy practising at our gatherings).
Gathering June 2024
After a fairly heavy-hearted gathering in May as we all tried to make some sort of sense about the problem in our society of violence against women, our gathering last week was quite a bit "lighter".
Here are some insights/themes from our conversation:
🌟 The challenge of recognising the humanity in those we disagree with - "who's the human in there?" Perhaps if we can see the human, we can find new ways forward together, even if we don't agree. Daniel Kahneman talked about "adversarial collaboration" - the notion that I respect you, you're an intelligent/thoughtful/etc person, "we must both be right - let's find out where we're right".
🌟The art of dialogue. Have we lost our "conversational intelligence", our sense of what is appropriate in which contexts? The importance of creating spaces to practice the art, to try out different ways of being and relating in conversation.
🌟We may be social beings, but there is a sense that we've gone from "we" to "I". We need to find ways back from our "solo-selves" to a sense of belonging and togetherness.
🌟Sometimes we forget that words can only take us so far - "the only thing that could change her mind was a new experience".
🌟When you don't know the outcome, focus on the process.
And for anyone interested in a couple of process reflections...:
💡When things get tricky, it can be easy to say "I agree with you". Perhaps we need to get better at noticing when there is too much agreement and get more comfortable with giving and receiving "gentle provocations".
💡We keep forgetting to use the "pause" to slow things down even though we all agree it is important!
💡We're getting better at remembering to "close" our gatherings, and these moments are often the most powerful - reflecting on how we're feeling at the end of the conversation and sharing the things that struck us as we talked.
Gathering May 2024
💜 With rallies around the country the previous weekend, the issue of violence against women in Australia had been playing on our collective mind - it's disheartening to watch the issue get worse not better, and hoping that there will be positive change seems futile. In talking about it, our small group wasn't trying to "solve" the problem, but was trying to make sense of it in some way. A phrase that stood out for me as we talked was "good men" - what does that mean, what does it look like, why is it important? While there was heaviness in our hearts, we understood that sitting with that is an important part of the process of dealing with complex issues, the things that really matter to us.
Some ponderings that came up as we talked about a range of topics:
🦉 "Silver bullets" - we know they don't exist but we're still drawn to trying to find them.
🦉"Safe hands" - with all the current talk of "psychological safety", what does it take to genuinely create safety in groups?
🦉Responsibility - sometimes we are keen to put responsibility onto others, what responsibility do we take ourselves?
🦉Conversations - does a conversation need an outcome, or is it an outcome in itself?
A couple of reflections on processes that supported our conversation:
☄ We only need one question to get the conversation going: "what is front of mind for you?" The group takes it from there.
☄ The power and usefulness of the Pause. As a group, we agreed that anyone could call a "pause" to slow things down. We used it twice - once to help manage when a few people were speaking at once, and once to remind us to start the "closing" process (thankfully, as this is an important process, yet we often run out of time for it!) 😂.
☄ Introducing gentle provocation to avoid premature agreement and to maintain ongoing critical engagement.
☄ Humans thrive on face-to-face interactions with each other.
Gathering April 2024
How groups gather is critical to their sustainable and successful engagement with Complex Messes, yet we often don't put much thought into how we bring people together. It gets lost in other priorities, like venue, room arrangement, tech requirements (will my Mac link to their system???) and catering.
Yes, we are social creatures, we've been gathering for thousands of years, but when we are working on complex problems the quality of group functioning matters. For some reason, we assume that people gather well as if by some kind of magic. But if we want a group of people to be able to see each other's different perspectives, disagree well, explore new possibilities, and learn together, we need to design for that. If we don't, the group is at risk of fracturing or falling apart when the stakes are high. Not ideal.
The Complex Mess community focuses on developing this aspect of our professional work practice - gathering people well through deepening connections and having conversations that are a bit different to our usual conversations.
We have agreed processes that help us to consider how we want to show up, listen to each other with attention, speak with intention, and consider the wellbeing of the group.
At our gathering last week, we talked about how the problems we are facing as a society can be overwhelming at a person level, causing a tension within us between caring and disengagement. We felt disappointment and regret - in the system, in ourselves, in the past behaviours of our generations (the "future-eaters"). There was an expressed sadness that old traditions that we have benefited from (and taken for granted) may not be available to next generations. It was suggested that we need "intergenerational truth telling and reconciliation". We were privileged to hear one of our group read a powerful poem she had written about the dilemma of "advice" (you can find it in the "sandpit" section on the Complex Mess website). There was a call for intergenerational compassion as we engage with this Complex Mess - how else will we find the energy to move forward?
A question that was asked that really struck me was "is doing something always better than doing nothing?" It made me reflect on a number of initiatives I have experienced over the years where the "something" that was done either made no difference at all, or made things worse. It seems to me there is a difference between mindlessly "doing something" and mindfully creating the conditions for possibility to emerge.
Gathering March 2024
Last night we gathered to consider the question “how do we create the conditions for new possibilities to emerge?”. … What we ended up spending most of our time on was the opening question: “why was it important that you were here tonight?”
We were having such a great conversation that we chose to follow the practice wisdom of Peter Hayward that you need to design a great process, then be prepared to throw it out the window!; follow the energy of the group rather than sticking stubbornly to the “plan”. So that is what we did.
I was struck by how quickly a group of people, many of whom had never met before, could establish deep care for, and connection with, each other. How did that happen?
💜 Posing a meaningful and personal question.
💜 Small group conversations.
💜 Lovely environment.
💜 Creating “guardrails” for the conversation – defining the area for the conversation, but not structuring the area.
💜 Most importantly: the way people chose to show up – with unconditional positive regard, curious listening, and an open will.
The “purpose” question came up again, as it does from time to time. Why are we doing this? Is it peer supervision? Are we trying to solve problems? Should we focus on a topic? In a way, we were looking for “how is this useful?”
But the real purpose, and it is often undervalued by groups of people doing important work, was having conversations that are different to our usual conversations, being with others in a different way, connecting with others on a deeper level than typically happens in our day-to-day lives, contributing to others, and being seen by others.
While we didn’t focus on a specific Complex Mess, or come up with any solutions to anything, at the end of the night I felt we could have asked the group to work on something that mattered, that was important and tricky, and they would have rolled their sleeves up and got to work.
And really, while we didn’t have a conversation about how to create the conditions for new possibilities to emerge, we lived it.
Gathering February 2024
The Art of sitting in the Mess. 5 tips from the Complex Mess gathering.
When the “problem” you are engaging with is truly messy – things are fuzzy and all tangled up like a ball of wool – you can have a strong urge to “tidy it up”, find “the solution”. Or to find someone who will do it for you...
But the problem is, usually these messes took a long time to come about, and so they will take a long time (if ever) to be resolved. And you’re a smart person, if the mess was that easy to tidy up, you would have done it already.
It takes courage to sit in the Mess, especially when there are pressures to find answers and to perform. Unfortunately, there are no magic wands, no quick fixes. Instead, the focus needs to be on creating the conditions that allow people (including you!) to continue to engage with the problem for the long-haul, rather than checking-out or giving up.
We asked the question at our last Complex Mess gathering: How would you help someone to sit with the mess? What would that look like? Here are some of our thoughts:
💗 Help them connect with their values – why are they doing this work, why do they even bother? Why is it important and meaningful to them to remain engaged with the Complex Mess?
⬆ Help them to use their values to set a direction, rather than defining an end-state which might be too big, unclear or contested. Defining a “true north” will guide them in their decision-making and choices. They can notice when they are off-track and course-correct. Or not.
💫 Help them to create stronger groups of people who can sit in the mess together through intentionally using processes that create nurturing and open relational spaces between people.
🐢 Help them to resist the urge to jump too quickly into “solution-finding mode” – this generally simplifies complex problems too early in the process.
🐾 Help them to identify small steps they can take in the direction they wish to travel, and see what new information reveals itself so that they can plan the next step.
Gathering December 2023
The Smallest, Kindest Thing
🍒 Our final Complex Mess gathering for the year was a fabulous night! Thanks Dave Godden for creating the space for a reflective dinner conversation last night, based on theodore zeldin's Conversation Dinners. We had 3 conversation "courses" over a delicious Greek meal - first course was "arrival", second course was "reflection", and third course was "prospection", or looking ahead.
My key take-outs:
🎄 The Paradox of Christmas:
"It's the most wonderful time of the year 🎶 ", a meaningful and important time for many, and yet at the same time ... homesickness - yearning for another place ("the place we grow up is in our bones") or another (simpler, carefree?) time; feelings of sadness, grief and loss; weird but accepted incongruity ("snow in Australia in December!").
⭕ Limits:
"Planetary limits" - how do we justly allocate resources?
"Cognitive limits" - there is a limit to what one brain can comprehend.
"Behavioural limits" - kids (humans?) need limits and boundaries otherwise we are floating in space.
👑 Responsibility:
A moral responsibility to show up when times are hard. Valuing elders, bringing back lost experience, unretirement.
👧 The challenge is human:
We might(?) come up with solutions, but things get tricky when humans get involved! Psychologically (anxiety, fear, apathy, wilful ignorance), interpersonally (values, worldviews, agendas, conflict). But building strength in these areas will be our salvation.
A little lesson to share with you to end 2023. As Taryn Buckley, a most dear and insightful community member, reminded me, when we are feeling overwhelmed by the complexity and we don't know what to do, we should ask ourselves "what is the smallest, kindest thing I can do?" And, of course, do it.
So, what is the smallest, kindest thing you can do? Right now.
Gathering October 2023
3 key insights about engaging with Complex Messes from last night’s Complex Mess Community gathering:
1. Dealing with external Complex Messes (see my previous post if you’re not sure what a Complex Mess might be!) creates an internal Complex Mess (anxiety, discomfort). These feelings can add to the external Complex Mess, which can ignite in us a kneejerk bias to action, to simplify the complexity, and to want to solve the problem.
↪ Instead, we need to learn to notice our internal response to the Complex Mess, to resist the kneejerk reactions, and to just sit with these feelings for a bit. Our feelings can’t hurt us.
2. True Complex Messes can never be completely solved. This is because multiple stakeholders are involved with different agendas, timelines are long, dilemmas and tensions abound, causes of problems are not clear, what we should do in response is also unclear or even contested, a “solution” here causes a “problem” there, etc.
↪ Instead of looking for the Big Intervention that will solve the problem, we need an iterative process of “engagement” with the Complex Mess over time. We need to conduct small experiments and identify adaptive moves that will hopefully take us in the direction we want to go. As we make these small moves, new information will emerge that will help us identify the next adaptive move. We need to notice as we go (through reflection and conversation) whether we are moving towards or away from our intention and correct our course accordingly.
3. The work of engaging with Complex Messes involves understanding, and developing our individual and collective ability to engage with, messy and contested intersections between stakeholders. Ideally we need to create alignment, but what do we do when there actually seems to be no alignment or even competing interests? Is it possible to move forward if there is not total agreement? If it’s not possible, do we just stop, give up? What are the implications of that when the stakes are high? Is it just like a hot potato that nobody catches, and everyone just looks at each other saying “I thought you were going to get it"?
↪ If it really matters, instead of stopping, perhaps commitment to the process is actually the most important thing. A goal needs to be established that transcends individual agendas – “we are all trying to…” – and work backwards from there. We need to build organisational capacity to have these conversations, to hold the space open long enough for something new to emerge, and to commit to working towards these higher goals.
Gathering June 2023
The Complex Mess community has taken off! After a false start last month, we met for the first time last Tuesday. We had a great conversation about living and working in complexity. My top three take-aways: reflection, purpose, and platforms.
I know there is a bit of a leap of faith involved in joining this community. I mean, really, what is it about? What do we actually do? Well, to a certain extent, the community will decide a lot of that. Like any good system, how the community works will emerge and evolve over time.
But we are focused on supporting each other to do our best work under conditions of complexity. In coming together, we put into practice the skills and processes that we think are helpful when working on Complex Messes.
My top 3 take-aways from our first gathering about working on Complex Messes:
💠 Reflection. When we work in complexity, it is easy to get swept away by the Waves of Urgency, or to get caught up in the Weeds of Detail. We can lose focus on the bigger picture and find ourselves mindlessly bumping from one whirlpool to the next. So we need to intentionally pause, lift our head out of the water, and take stock. We need to consider “what is actually going on here?”, “what do I need to do?” But how often do we actually do that?
💠 Purpose. It is hard work in the Waves and the Weeds, and it is important to remind ourselves of why we are doing this, why we are engaging with complexity in the first place. When we are connected to our purpose, we are motivated to continue when times get tough, and we can inspire others to join us. But how often do we put our purpose into words?
💠 Platforms. In turbulent waters, we need to find a stable platform, even if it is temporary, that we can stand on to catch our breath and consider our situation. A platform from which we can take the next best (small) step. But how do we go about building them?
The Complex Mess community helps with all three of these practices. We create a safe space to reflect and have conversations that are different to our usual conversations. We explore how we find meaning and purpose in the work that we do. And in coming together, we build a stable platform in the Sea of Complexity.
If you would like to develop your Complex Mess work practice, consider these questions:
❓How do you build pauses for reflection into the work you do?
❓Why are you doing this work? To what end?
❓How can you create temporary but stable platforms in your Complex Mess?