Complexity in Meetings

For a few years now I've been on a list-serve (value networks) with Knowledge Management guru Dave Snowden. I consider him something of a virtual mentor. He recently blogged about one of his better takes on complexity theory on what is one of my favourite blogs.


The video is available here, and please note the following conditions:


The video was created by Candice Mulkey, Melissa Lieurance, and Kenneth Paulino to support teaching activities at the US Naval Postgraduate School's Center for Homeland Defense and Security. We request the video be used within the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 license framework.

It takes a few seconds to download, a few minutes to watch, and the pacing is treacherously slow for someone of my limited patience and attention. Still, I strongly endorse taking the time to watch and appreciate this.

So, without getting too much into a definition of complexity theory that I may well screw up, it's basically the notion that organic systems, including groups of people, can't be mechanically engineered. This means that a rigid expectation of how people will behave is unreasonable and damaging. Rather than try and dictate how people will behave, it makes sense to create conditions that will nurture positive activity.

In the video, the subject matter is a children's party. The way children act and react to plans is unpredictable. The metaphor is an organizational one. Creating rigid expectations and parameters for the way people will interact and work by creating and trying to enforce a "desired state" is no less absurd than marching kids through a set of prescribed agenda items, complete with process checks and metrics.

I'm also intrigued by this complexity acknowledging approach on a meetings specific level. I think people appreciate agendas and structure, but are we over-structuring and forcing a living system into an engineered frameworks? Can we better capitalize on a collective and provide a better experience for them by providing options and tools, instead of structure and format? Where is the breaking point? Do you need a critical mass of leadership mentalities for this approach?

I'll commit here to doing some experimentation along these lines, and will of course report back. In the meantime, one good model I can think of for the latter kind of party (in the video) is Elliot Masie's annual Learning conferences.