Strange. I like strange.
I'm happy with it because it reminds me never take anything in life for granted. We are all living with Pygmy Falcons and Strange Attractors. Let me explain.
Peoples, animals, insects - indeed every species and individual within them are all drawn to different things. Good job too of course otherwise everyone of them would be watching X-Factor.
However it does make for interesting challenges when developing, transforming and changing anything.
The Sociable Weaver is a bird found all over Southern Africa but particularly common here in Namibia where I'm writing this. When you first see its nest you are struck by the sheer audacity and crazy scale of it. Next your mind admires the beauty of it and then finally the complexity. Each structure hosts many families and a single tree can host many similar thatched constructions.
Like all complex systems it embraces some strange stuff too.
In the case of the Sociable Weaver's 'system' that has to be the Pygmy Falcon. The Pygmy Falcon shares the structure - lives there too. It probably does no work to help the Weavers build it. It mostly eats small insects, grasshoppers and geckos and yet it will also occasionally take one of its hosts as supper.
Anyway, how did the Weavers make this outrageous thing?
Stuck, defying gravity in the fork in a tree or the cross rails of a telegraph pole. How did they all work together to achieve this? How did they know what the end result would look like as they weaver away?
No drawings that I can see.
Well they do and it is an incredible living system. It houses many birds - a social network. In the telegraph pole versions the nest even has data connectivity. Not yet broadband though. Although they are probably too sensible to sign/switch on. The structure creates the perfect temperatures, air cooled to survive the heat and sufficient strength to survive the incredible winds. The downside - with too much rain (not much chance) it can get too heavy and break the branch it's built on.
So, in complexity theory, and given certain important parameters, communities, Birds, Zebra, Ants, Meerkats or Human teams all become self organizing around a mission - or just anyway.
Teams, and the individuals that make them up, become naturally attracted to certain 'flowing states'. These states are effectively the patterns that they make up - which are in turn the system.
These flowing states are known as 'strange attractors' in chaos theory. This metaphor is helpful in understanding the value of the visual frameworks in our work too. Without a frame of reference, or a vision, it is simple to see how easily unintended consequences would show up. We don't really want the Pygmy Falcon but the tax we pay gets us to live gecko free.
By observing the patterns of any organization, and in our case that's typically the people - their knowledge and the data, we can start to gather valuable clues about the business or the community itself. Armed this way we can then begin to map the way in which the 'enterprise' thinks and works.
Initially (and as in the case of the Social Weaver - the need to mate and survive) it starts with identifying the existing strange attractor. And then in our case a Vision or a better outcome. By degree we start to build the frame. As it emerges we are agreeing the shape (or that an existing shape needs to alter in some way).
During the evolution of the framework we - and the Sociable Weavers - are building a new shape - and as each new stick or twig gets added - setting the new course by plotting fresh patterns to operate by. Every season repairs are made to the nest as new families get accepted or new improvements/repairs need to be made.
Somehow the Weavers get there by some instinctive engineering and us by having a proven and logical framework and blueprint.
Not consensus though.
Why? It's not a viable objective in nature - nor is it in business.
There are deaths along the way and fearsome battles. So it's important to figure out how to feel good with disagreement. I watched the Weavers attack each other - Sociably. Fighting for territory and not allowing newcomers access. It gets vicious. It's real life.
Our work in simplifying complexity is creating an agreed vision - the 'strange attractor' - and in some basic way the shared meaning that needs to come with that. It's hard. Many people attack the newcomers. They fight for their territory. Their twigs get criticised. It can get very emotional. Kill your own damn gecko then!
It's worth understanding a working definition of the idea of a shared mission.
We often observe agreement in teams out of the lack of a better idea. Terrifying. An almost last ditch acceptance. People can easily just give up in the face of strong opinion. Good or bad. This is not a good place to be. But at least with a framework in mind it is often better than the opposite. A bland and open vacuum devoid of real thought. I don't know where the Social Weavers get their grand design from but it sure works for them.
I'm sure a new nesting system will see a few blind-eyed Sociable Weavers at the end.
Because in developing our visual framework we attack the ultimate objective (strange attractor) from multiple directions and at different stages, a lack of an answer or agreement earlier on will become the breakthrough idea later.
It's not consensus necessarily but a greater revealing of a shared sense of something. That's a big part of our grand design. It saves on the medical bills.
This 'something' emerges by degrees. Over time it starts to add up more to the participants. It has arisen, surfaced if you like, after leaving some form of positive vacuum of 'good enough' - returning later to a far better thought. It is becoming in some way instinctive.
All this happens because the framework is already there.
It is in our heads and on the wall just and just as present as the grand design exists in the DNA of the Weaver. It insists on each member of the 'team' tackling different dimensions of the same objective. Different patterns start coming together in the search for a 'system' of things that will suit everyone. Well hopefully everyone.
This is the power of reasonable logic. There is an innate energy being applied. Whether natural and instinctive (as in the case of the Sociable Weaver) or us working as a co-creative (if not consensual) team this is the real value of developing 'systems' within visual and logical frameworks.
We are all Sociable Weavers. Bring on that Pygmy Falcon
If you want to be yet more impressed by this bird check this out! http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1170/is_2002_Jan-Feb/ai_80903894/
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