Building adaptive capacity in our young people - A Conversation with Glenda Eoyang

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

So part of the prior paradigms that really keep us stuck is that we think we have to know, that we can know, that we should know, that we have to know. We are deeply challenging people's fundamental expectations about what reality is. And in order to do that, that like every paradigm shift, you can't do it by talking about it.

Hi everyone, and thanks for joining me for another episode of the podcast this week. Given everything that's going on in the world, there is a great deal of focus now on how to prepare our young people to deal with uncertainty and complexity. But such conversations don't always end up with clear, actionable strategies that teachers and leaders can use in schools. That's why this week I'm so happy to be able to bring you this episode with Glenda Ouyang. With her team at the Human Systems Dynamics Institute, Glenda for years has been helping support individuals and organisations to build their adaptive capacity so they see patterns in the chaos that surrounds them, understand the patterns in simple and powerful ways, and take practical steps to shift towards coherence. Splendor's published works include scholarly articles in a variety of fields, as well as Radical Rules for Schools: Coping with Chaos in 1996 and Adaptive Action: Leveraging Uncertainty in Your Organization in 2013. Thank you, Glenda.

It's wonderful to see you again. I've had the great privilege of being able to meet you and work with you in different ways through some of the work with IB and Festival of Hope, but I'm really excited to be able to have this conversation today just to begin a bit more actively to share the work that you do with educators, because I think there's incredible need for what you offer out there in the world, and particularly in, in the sense of some of the conversations around complex adaptive systems and complex ecologies and all of these really interesting, sometimes quite dense conversations that I think sometimes people struggle to know exactly what's the next move? What do I do next? So really excited to be able to have this conversation to share some of those things and things you've learned over the, over the last little while you've been doing this work. So thank you.

You're welcome. I'm happy to be with you. Always love your questions and great to come back to this field from different perspectives each time.

So lovely. Great. So I think maybe where we could start is perhaps thinking about if I'm an educator working in a school or a school leader, and I'm, I'm hearing lots of conversations around the complex challenges, the VUCA world and all of, you know, it's been around for a long time. But there's more and more conversation about a time between worlds and, you know, the paradigm shift and all of these different conversations. But trying to understand how do I help my young people navigate that is the, I, for me, it's the question, what's our role there? But also what are some kind of practical moves we can make? So maybe, I don't know, maybe be useful just as a context setting to just give a little bit of your own learning about how Human Systems Dynamics Institute came to be, and just to kind of give it, give people a little bit of a sense of where is this work coming from, and where have you been doing it, not just in education, all over the place?

That's a very big question. It is.

Sorry about that.

No, no, no, it's great, and it's so much like the questions we run into every day in a complex world, right? So it's a ball of many possibilities, and any thread you pull has lots of spaces to go. So it's a lovely question. So often what we do when we run into a question like that is to zoom out and then zoom in. So if I might, just for a moment, zoom out pretty far. So my undergraduate degree was in the history and philosophy of science, reading the great books of the Western world. And one of the things that fascinated me as I read the evolution of science and the evolution of mathematics and of literature and of philosophy was that there were certain points at which old explanations fell away and new ones moved in to take their place. So Copernicus and Galileo and Newton, and you can name them, you can see them in literature, you can see them in arts. But those points in the history of human thought were just fascinating to me. And so I began to look at and think about them, look at how they were similar across disciplines, how they were different across disciplines, the social, political, aspects to them were just fascinating to me. And then of course, I read Thomas Kuhn's magnum opus about paradigm shift. And what I realized was that there were some very fundamental things that happened at each of those. So one was that what people said in theory was no longer relevant. They kept saying more and saying it differently, saying it in more complicated ways to try to make it work. But The theory was simply insufficient for the moment. And the second thing was that the insights for the next paradigm always came from practice. So whether it's data on where the stars really are, or whether it's watching apples fall from the tree, or whether it's rolling balls down an inclined plane, or whether it's authors thinking about their own experience and engaging directly with the world that they live in. That was the second thing, was that the move toward the next always comes from practice. And the third is that it's just hard wherever you are, and that it's fun. So there's one of the things I read was this lovely series of letters between Halley and Newton, while both of them were trying to figure out gravity. And they were just these incredibly poetic letters about dealing with what they were seeing and what they were hearing and what they knew and what didn't work and what might work. And they're just these really lovely letters of inquiry. And I find them quite similar sometimes to the conversations we have wrestling with what we know to be true, what our practice tells us to be true, and seeing that the theory base that we hold is totally insufficient to capture it. And then we keep making the theory base more and more and more and more complicated and just gets messy and hopeless and—

Yeah.

So it's that space that I think is most important and that draws me. I believe that's where we are. And it was that that inspired the work that I do and how I do it in HSD. Then if you zoom way in, I'm essentially a teacher. I got in big trouble in first grade for trying to explain to other people how they should read. I was teaching other people to read in the first grade. I got in real trouble. And so I'm just like fundamentally a teacher. And so in that practice, I saw the same patterns, that children are told something, they have something in their minds, often a misconception that has come from someplace. They live in a world that challenges that. Sometimes they hold on to the old, this is what we call trauma. They hold on to old experience until it doesn't work anymore. And then they are in this tension. And it's in the practice, in the being in the real world, seeing and doing that allows them to finally break down and come to some new insight. And so the process that I saw in my chemistry students and my physics students was very much the same. And so that process of both moving the thought of humankind and the thought of a new reader became the— that process just became totally passionately important for me. And I realized that in order to do that, I also had to do the same thing in myself. I had to see my practice in the real world against what I understand of theory in the real world. And so it became also a deeply internalized practice.

Yeah.

So those were the tensions and the questions that really drove the work that I do.

Amazing. Yeah, I've never made that connection between the kind of the work of the educator in the same way as this zoom out of the big moment that we're in. And that's, yeah, that's fascinating. The, it makes me also just from that point, think of Piaget and disequilibrium and, you know, this kind of getting off balance and then kind of finding the balance again. And yeah, this iterative process of, I mean, you know, that we've been grasping at constantly forever trying to describe learning, right? In all these always insufficient but interesting ways. If, if I can just, cuz what I'd really love to do with the conversation is focus on the practice cuz I think you've got so many amazing practices and tools and, and ways for people to enter this work. So I really would love to talk about that, but I am a little bit of a sucker for the zoom out, right? So just, just for a moment, the, what you said there about that really resonates with me, the kinds of conversations that I'm having across the education landscape now. I mean, broadly, you know, higher education, K-12 education, that the previous theory is not matching the needs of the young people now. I mean, that, that disjuncture is just feels really strong and it comes up in so many ways. And the point that you made about the fact that it's hard, yes, it's fun, but also people are really struggling. I mean, the young, the young people are really struggling with some of that misalignment, right? Between the way that the stories have been told about the theoretical, you know, you don't call it that, but these stories of how to make sense of of the world, they're not quite fitting with the world that they're inhabiting and seeing. And we see that through the Festival of Hope work with the young people. And it's a really interesting— so that hard but fun is, yes, it's hard but fun for the adults and it's probably fun for the young people as well to try to navigate that. But there are, they are, there's a lot of them really struggling. So I just wanted to kind of reflect on that, I suppose. And yeah, invite you to respond.

Yeah, I think that's another scale of the same challenge. Is it socially? Politically and economically and in terms of climate change. We are, as a human race, going through an existential transformation. That is, I think, the place where these kids are wrestling. And we all are, but in very different ways. So when I zoom in to those challenges, and Piaget was one of the first places that I saw, and he was my Bible as I was teaching. And then when I found Prigogine's work in complexity, and realized that he talks about design participative structures, that far-from-equilibrium systems, open systems finding their own self-organizing process. That was one of the connecting points that really was motivating for me as a teacher, was to say, if the universe works this way, and I believe it does, then is it possible that the learning process also works this way? And is there a mechanism inside that that can explain how it works? So part of what's really fascinating to me, and I'm sure this is because of my— I'm more of an engineer than a poet in this work. So how it happens was very important to me. And so as I began to look at how it happens, it, this kind of change, whether it's a child learning or a scientific field moving or a human race finding a way forward, this is the mechanism that we found. And it comes from Prigogine and Perbach and some others who were scientists working in the physical world trying to understand this process in a a way that is an explanation and not just a description. So for me, that distinction is really important. Because a description, it tells you the symptoms of the thing, describes its superficial pictures, is poetic, really. I mean, it's useful, can be quite useful in understanding, but it's not very useful in taking action. An explanation, on the other hand, tells you What is— it states a theory. It's not necessarily true, but it states a hypothesis or a theory base about how stuff is connected together. So how A goes to B goes to C. And so that explanation was what I was looking for. And when I go there with this kind of change, this is the picture that I see, that in the system, any of these systems, there are differences and that there's energy locked in those differences. Like a battery has energy locked in it, or lightning getting ready to shock is there, or a spring stretched, or a waterfall, or all of those differences. Or two people who don't get along, or a mentor and a learner difference there, or two people who see things differently and can work them out politically. So that difference is the underlying reality of our worlds. It's what we live in and move in. It's what we know. It's how we know that that is core and that any difference in order to release that potential energy, there's some spark that goes across it that releases that energy and creates something new. Now that happens within a boundary of some kind, or you don't know what's happening. There's no way really to have it. So that, that process, I believe, is the explanation for complexity as we know it. And it's very simple.

But, but deep and profound and, and we're moving quite fast already, right? I mean, this, this is amazing, but it's when you try to explain those kinds of that we see the manifestation, we describe the manifestation of that complexity in our lives, but to actually go then to that level of explaining is, yeah, it gets challenging. So maybe I've heard you talk about this idea of difference before. Maybe that's a useful weigh in just to focus on that for a moment, because I think that for me was intuitively not obvious, right? And, and I think I heard you say that same and different actually structure at a very deep level, they structure our way of knowing the world. And so everything is same and different, right? Maybe you could, could you say a little bit more about that? Because then that might help people then to think about difference in these other ways.

Yeah. So if you think about when your children were little, and they were beginning to see the world. What was the first thing you did? What's the sound that a cat makes? What's the sound that a cow makes? What's up? What's down? What's you? What's me? What— this belongs to me, this belongs to you. All of those learnings were about distinguishing.

Right.

And if you go back in philosophy, when Plato goes to the very bottom of reality, it's same and different, known and not, and the good. And so it's easy to see historically that that's true. And with children, we see that it's true. And we think about what's in the textbooks, what teachers are, have been told to teach about what's the same, what's the difference, how are things exchanging, how are they, yeah, how do we make distinctions. There's also in neuroscience is seeing that as well. So you perceive Sensory difference goes as a signal into your brain and the neuroprocesses happen. They trigger muscular activity and you do action. And so it's there as well that that potential energy in neurons and the potential in muscles. And it's so fundamental. This is one of the reasons why it's so difficult, Tim. It's that it's a different way of thinking about what reality is, basically. It's not atoms, it's difference and the energy that's held in difference.

So what I'm hearing you saying is that it's, I didn't, I hadn't expected the conversation to go to the fundamental nature of reality, but let's go with it.

Well, it's a pathway into practice. I promise.

What you're saying is, because we've, again, this is coming up in discussions that a lot of focusing on the things, the objects, the atom, the molecule, whatever, is a particular way of framing the world that has been really useful from a kind of post-enlightenment frame. It's been super useful to, I think you talked about, is it control? No, what was it?

Yeah.

Coherence, clarity, and control. The, the idea that like it's much easier to control and be clear about and make coherent when we're focusing on things rather than focusing on an alternative to that is the relational dynamics between them. And to quote Gregory Bateson, the difference that makes a difference, right? The, where the difference is the relating of two things that maybe will, yeah, I don't know, I'm tying myself up even in not talking about it, but.

Well, and it makes sense when we were working in a world of physical objects, then we needed physical metaphors to be able to think about them.

Right.

Now, as we move more and more toward information, and even value is information today, then those assumptions that we could make about physical objects are no longer true in this world of information and energy. And so basic assumptions are shifting. Yes. And the power structures and the decision-making structures and the ways of building infrastructure and knowing what was right are all based on those metaphors and models. And we have layers and layers of layers of understanding that sit there. This is explaining why it's so hard to get to the new place. Exactly. Because that's reinforced by hundreds of years and historical perspective. And even the things before that image, we've gone back to reinterpret in this way. So we think it goes all the way back to the beginning of thought. And this is radically saying that reality is something different. Now, I don't talk to people about that, that reality is totally different. We don't talk about that except with you, of course.

Except on podcasts. Yeah.

Except on podcasts and with you. But the reason I'm saying that is that that's the reason why it's so hard. It's not a trivial step. We are deeply challenging people's fundamental expectations about what reality is.

Yeah.

And in order to do that, I realized very early that like every paradigm shift, you can't do it by talking about it. So talking about it is not going to take anybody there.

And absolutely. And, and that's when I heard you talking about your own path and exploration where you were noticing self-organizing of groups and people just taking action to self-organize around things that cared about. And I was having that exact conversation last week about just in my world, I'm seeing more and more people just saying, we're not gonna wait for these big institutions to move. We're just gonna self-organize. So create new pathways or create new frameworks or a new diploma or, or whatever it is. They're, they're just doing it and they're taking action. And I, so I, that really connects with me what you're saying about the fact that the, the, the alternative way of being actually comes out of the practice, not out of thinking clever thoughts. I think that's— there's something really empowering and important there.

Yeah. And they're able to say in a moment, this is something that motivates me. Either this future moves me forward, or my curiosity about this human being moves me forward, or my discomfort in this moment moves me forward. That the motivation for that kind of change comes from a sense of tension about difference held. Now the challenge is that we have all of these structures that have predetermined what are the differences that count, the differences that make a difference. And if it's not within their frame, they don't even see it. Now, that's a curse, but it's also a blessing, because they, in their institutionalized perspective, discount anything that isn't playing in the institutional world. And so this self-organizing can go very far before it begins to challenge what's there.

Yeah.

So with that world, then what do you do? If this is true, at a really fundamental sense, then what does that mean for me as a human being wanting to accomplish things, whether I'm a teacher, whether I'm a youngster, or whether I'm a parent? What does that mean? Okay, so the first thing is you have to be aware, not in a really deep sense of what's going on, but of the differences that are making a difference in that moment. Bless Bateson. So you wanna see patterns. So you look around yourself and whether they're physical patterns about where things are or emotional patterns about how people feel or about what's possible, what you can imagine, what you remember, what are, what are the differences that are really shaping your perception of this moment? That's the first step. That's the what step of adaptive action. That's the first thing you have to know is to be aware of where is the energy in the system because where the difference is sitting. The second step is, so what? So once you become aware of them, then your capacity to be conscious and conscientious step in, and you can make some choices. Once you see it, you can choose which of those differences you want to amplify, which you want to damp, which you want to ignore, what you want to wonder about, how you want to push those pieces. So you make sense of these patterns that you're seeing. That's the so what. And then once you've done that, you don't quit. So in the 20th century, a lot of what we did when we understood something was say, oh good, we're done.

Done. Yeah.

We're going to quit that. But we know that won't get you where you need to be in any practical sense, or even in a conceptual philosophical sense. It doesn't get you there. And some late 20th century philosophers like Adorno and others, Habermas, began to see that there needed to be action. You can go all the way back to Dewey, right?

Yeah.

So that last step about now that I see it, I'm committed to do something about it. I'm a human being with efficacy and I have to do something about this, not about something that I'm imagining someplace else or what somebody else sees or what somebody else has told me I can see. But what is it that I see in this place and time? And then I can take action. So that's the adaptive action. What? So what? Now what?

That's amazing. So just to kind of set that context for people, I think it's useful that I would love to talk through those, the three kind of main frameworks or methodologies that you use to enable people to take action to, you know, what do I do next? What do I, how do I operate in this space? So adaptive action being the first one, but just if I can, it's really interesting what you were just saying there about the so what phase of, and stopping there, because I think one of the other dangers of stopping there is that we Imagine that we've figured it all out and the hubris enters in the so what stage that we've like, we can take this noticing and we can see these patterns and then we, we build a theory out of it. We take it out of its context and then we have this, this strange misapprehension that we have understood the reality of that thing. But actually the, then the now what, putting it, doing something with it allows you to then see. Well, this, maybe this thing that I thought I don't, I understood this, so what actually maybe looks different when you start dealing with it in context, in actual practice, in the flow of life and into relationships with other things. So it, it guards against some of that hubris of stopping there. I think it's, it's kind of a safe place to stop. Mm-hmm. Because I can, I don't have to test my assumptions in reality. Right. Yeah.

I think there's several things that happen in that so what space when you don't go into now what, and one of them is blaming. So my explanation is that somebody else should be doing something.

Interesting.

Yeah. And I'm the victim. And that's my so what. And then I'm totally stuck. I can't move. And that's one of the risks of staying in that space is if you don't realize that the adaptive action is yours and you can only do your own, you can't do anybody else's, then it's so easy to blame in that space and to project and to make yourself a victim and to feel helpless. That's one thing. The second thing that happens if you get stuck there is a bifurcation. You get really righteous about the way you explain the world, and anybody else who explains it differently is evil and bad and on the other side. And so then all your energy, the difference that makes a difference, is you're right and they're wrong. And then that's where all the energy is in the system. And that doesn't go anywhere. So that's a second thing that happens. And the third thing is fear, I think, Tim, that people are afraid to take action. They think they need to predict what's gonna— because that's part of the— we've got atoms, we've got prediction, we got control. We know what's gonna— I shouldn't do anything unless I know what the consequences are going to be. So people hold fear in that space. And the challenge with that is in this world of emerging transformation, You can never predict. So there's some level of risk in every single thing you do. So how do you hold it lightly? How do you have the stance that allows you to play with what's possible in a very serious way?

Yeah.

So I think those are 3 things that I see happening when people just get so stuck in that space.

Yeah. And that's so interesting because again, it just really resonates with what I see. I mean, I think what we can all see happening, right across the polarization, the fear, the, the stuckness, right? In all sorts of different ways. Yeah, that's really powerful. And then, and then I, I suppose what I was then making the connection with is some of what you can guard against getting stuck is then the second, your second model and method of standing in inquiry. Because it seems like there's a complementarity there. Because if you're doing the next bit, which I'll, I'd love you to talk about that inquiry piece. That would help to avoid some of those stuck dynamics.

Yeah. So part of the prior paradigms that really keep us stuck is that we think we have to know, that we can know, that we should know, that we have to know. And sometimes you can. So I don't wanna say there aren't times that are predictable and controllable, but those aren't giving us trouble. The ones that give us trouble are the ones that are not. And so if you stand in a space of total uncertainty, and you hold on to whatever you think is true, then you're bound not to be effective in that space. So how can you come into that space with open eyes, with an open heart, with open hands, as Otto Scharmer says? How can you ask the question in that space so that you can engage with the world? Now remember, the world is difference in this space, energy locked in differences. And If you don't come to it with questions, then you can't even see what the energy is there. You can't even begin to release it because you're in your own world or your own imagined whatever. So inquiry and a stance of inquiry. So it's not just asking good questions, but it's standing in a place where you're wondering. And then just about any question is a good question. But that letting go of certainty is an existential crisis for many of us. Especially those of us who are teachers, who have our whole identity wrapped up in having the answers, knowing what needs to happen, being really clear, being— that our job is to take answers and to pass them to the next generation.

Right.

And if we see that as our work, it's seeing our work, it's seeing knowledge, it's seeing the relationship as an atomic event, right? I've got this, I'm going to give it to you, then you'll be done, then I'll stamp on your head that you're done. But if instead you see this as a relational, that what's important is the difference between where you're standing and where they're standing, and you've got to get curious about it in order to cross it in a useful way. So that totally reframes the job of a teacher. I want to tell just a really quick story about that. When I was teaching chemistry, I had this student who, bless his heart, had a really, really hard life. It's really bright, but really hard life. So he'd come into chemistry class, he'd sleep. Every day because I knew he was working at night. So he'd just come in and he'd go to sleep and he'd go to sleep. But he kept coming to class. I never could figure out why. And sometimes he'd show up really early because his parents would drop him off at school or whatever, and he was kind of just kind of hanging around the chemistry class. And one day I was just overwhelmed with work. I didn't have time, and I had to get stuff ready for a lab. And I said, could you measure me out a mole of magnesium? And he was like, what, me? Can I? Like, do I know what a mole is? And then it was like, I know what a mole is. He said, yes, I can do that. And off he went to do it. But it was just that moment. And I wouldn't have done it except I had just too much to do that day. So it was kind of an accident. But just that, can you do this for me? And he's like, oh, no, no. Oh, wait a minute. I can. And I don't know if he remembers that moment as I remember that moment. I'm sure he doesn't. But that transformation of simply being in a place of saying, Hey, what's up? And how does that go? And somehow that unlocked in the difference between him and me, which had been 100 million things, in that moment, it was he had the ability to do something I needed to have done, and he did. And it opened that up. So there's the stance of the teacher being in inquiry, and we mean something really concrete about that. We can write poems about inquiry and how wonderful that is and how mystical, magical, how wonderful it is, but we're kind of pragmatic. So we say it's 4 things. So inquiry is turning judgment into curiosity. So if I can sense judgment, and mine always comes in my belly and I feel it move up until it comes out my mouth and something else. If I can turn that into a question before it hits my teeth, then I'm engaged with the reality as it exists. So judgment into curiosity. The second one is conflict into shared exploration. So if you think about the energy in the system being locked in a difference, and that the system's stuck because that energy is caught between the two. If instead I can say we have something shared that we're moving toward together, then that releases that energy. So when I said to Matt, can you get me a mole of magnesium? Suddenly he and I, It wasn't about the difference between us. It was that we were in shared work getting prepared for the lab. And so the energy there was released in a much different way. The third one is turn defensiveness into self-reflection. So I think this is so important in times of change. And I think as an elder, as an old person in this young person's culture, I spent a lot of time in feeling defensive. But it was the right thing to do, but I'm trying to do my best. But, but, but. But if instead I can pause that button and think about what is it that I do want to hold on to? What is it that I can let go of? What is it that I'm assuming or seeing? What is it that I know about possibilities? What is it that I wonder? Then that allows me to move with the energy and not to block it. And then the fourth one is assumptions into questions. So how do I turn assumptions into questions? Oh, and by the way, the assumptions one, you can't, you can't do alone. You have to do that in community because you can't really know your own assumptions. Yeah. And so those four practices help me stand in a space as a teacher or as a leader or as a human being, as a person with a political vote to cast, allows me to be in action in a way that I can't be as long as I think I know. Yeah. And I need to let everybody else know what I know. Which of course is irony because I'm telling you what I know. So there you go.

Well, that, but, but isn't that the tension, right? Isn't that exactly the tension? Because that, I mean, what I was thinking as you were talking there, cuz what has happened in the education space is as soon as you bring in inquiry, you enter into a righteous stuck in the, the so what space. This righteous argument of, well, yeah, but if you're doing inquiry, what about the knowledge? What about Matt needed to know what magnesium was and he need— needed the knowledge and he— so I had to transmit that cuz that's my job as a teacher to transmit. So you get into all those stuck conversations about either knowledge or a stance of inquiry. And what I love about what you're doing is framing out a, a rigorous idea of what inquiry is. But somehow the moving into the now what of actually engaging, taking action, you can't separate those things, right? You can't separate the relating from the knowledge or, you know, so there's something there about in the action, things start coming back together.

Yeah. That's so interesting. So it sounds like almost a meta difference. So there's the difference of the teacher and the learner, but there's also the difference between fact. And inquiry, right? Or something provable and not provable. And that that's a different pair. And the difference between those two is very important. And in a moment, I have to ask myself, is this something that is known and that others need to know and that is factual? Or is this something that is totally unknowable and we need to have a question to move forward with it? And so the action is not just choosing one and standing there, but it's like a tuning fork in between the two.

Right.

So it's like a meta difference within which all the other differences are bubbling up.

Yeah. But because what you end up finding as you then go further in your own education is you end up finding that the thing that your 6th grade science teacher taught you was true is perhaps not as true as when you go deeper into the science. Right. So there's, there's an interesting thing that happens with younger children as well about is it plausible or true enough to be treated as a fact? Because I can't go into the philosophy of science at this point. We're not gonna, we're not gonna go into ontology. And so let's just hold this as it's good enough as a fact.

Yeah. Well, and in a complex system, we'll never have complete information, right? Full stop. It just won't happen. Gödel told us that the open system can never be coherent and a coherent system can never be open. This is an open system. And so we'll, it'll never be complete. So the question is, what's enough? And enough for what? Enough to inform my next wise action. That's all I need. It's just enough to inform the next wise action. And if I think I need more than that, I'm either stuck in an infinite do loop, or I make it up so that it seems like it's true, so that I can move forward on it. So those are my two choices, unless I say no, I don't need complete. I can't have complete. Give it up. What I can have is good enough for whatever the next step is. And that is the secret for moving forward, I think. And that for your young people who feel stuck with wanting and needing action that's outside the frame of what's possible, wanting to do things they don't have power for, wanting to live in a world that's different than they live in. This question about how can they know enough about where they are and about their own efficacy to find their next wise action, whatever that might be. And it is not complaining about old people. And ours is not about complaining about young people. Exactly. I have to say. So what is it? What is it that I can do that's really going to make a difference in the here and the now?

Yeah. But I think just to add to what you were saying earlier about the releasing of the potential energy between the differences, one of the things that we're holding is how do you release that in a way that is good for more people? And I've heard you say this, it's like, because I can release that potential energy in a way that is good for me, like to control or double down on my position or whatever, or, you know, create some false sense of certainty or more for me or whatever. But actually, I think what we're being asked right now is, is how do you release that potential energy in a way that is generative and and genuinely better, whatever that means in context, for more people.

Yeah, that's another one of the blessings of the complex system. So you have the difference, which is holding the energy, but you also have these massively entangled containers. So there's me, and there's the group that I belong to, and there's the larger group, and there's a national group. And even within me, there are my They're my feelings, they're my thoughts. And so in each of those, there's energy that can be released and there's coherence that can be reached in a moment. And so we can zoom in and zoom out. So making any decision that optimizes one of those is gonna be destructive to others. There's just no question about it. If I make a choice at any scale to optimize that scale, I'm going to exploit ones above and below. So I have to ask myself as a conscious, conscientious human being, what are the trade-offs? And if I make a choice in this scale, how is it going to influence, affect ones above and below, to the left and the right? And what am I willing to risk in those other places? And I hold that question. That's part of the reason why we have to stay in inquiry, because we can't know. And we can't think about— it's turtles all the way down. So you can't think about all the different levels. Otherwise you're stuck in so what, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. I know some people are like, well, what if, what if? But what I try to do, and this again is just the pragmatism speaking, is if I'm looking at one scale and I think about the scale above and a scale below, and I can estimate or inquire about what the effect is going to be in those contiguous scales, and I can optimize the 3, then I can begin to build harmony that then goes farther out. Is that too abstract?

Interesting. Yeah, that is pretty abstract. I'm not sure. So let me be an example.

Okay. So I was trying to get the class ready. So I was focusing on the class time. And I saw that in the context, I was stuck. I didn't have time. So I could have gone up and to say, what's going to happen to the classroom if I just don't do this? That's not a good solution. I could go down and say, what are the resources in this space that I might be able to use that would be helpful where my solution can be a multi-solver solution? So I asked him to do this as a multi-solver solution. Maybe he couldn't do it. Maybe he wouldn't have done it. But I was looking for a solution that could solve this level and the one above and below. And if I did one that would have exploited him or exploited the rest of the class or been dangerous for the class or made me crazy, crazier than I was, neurotic, more neurotic than I was at the moment. Um, and there's not a good, there's not an absolute answer to that, but that's a question I need to hold is if I make this choice, what are the possibilities and resources outside it and within it? That are going to be affected by it. And so that's one of the kind of muscles for this work that we help people build, is zooming out and zooming in, we call it, so that in a moment you can get a sense of those. Or as a group, you can talk about those. Often in a group that's in disagreement, it's because they're optimizing or trying to optimize different scales.

Yeah.

And so if they can just be clear, oh, you're trying to optimize that one, I'm trying to optimize this one, is there something we can do that will optimize them both? Or is there some third thing that will move us forward? And so it's a, it's also the being able to choose what's the context in which you're working. And again, this is because you're giving up Adams. Adams said, we're going to privilege these boundaries. We're going to build institutions that privilege these boundaries and none other. But if you can zoom in and zoom out.

Yeah.

So two, two quick things, if I may. I don't, maybe I've said this to you before, but Mary Helen Imordino-Yang at the University of Southern California. Is doing some incredible research about zooming in and zooming out in terms of neural networks and, and how that impacts on longer-term life outcomes for young people. It is fascinating, fascinating stuff.

So can you send me her name? I don't think you've mentioned her before. That would be great.

Absolutely. So, so that was one piece, because the zooming in, the zooming out, I just feel, I, I feel it from the research. It's fascinating., but I also feel it personally, just the, the kind of, you can almost feel yourself doing it, right? You get pulled into the, the focus and then you can kind of zoom out and see yourself in the moment. And there's this, this dance going on between the, the, the toggling back and forth. So I think, yeah, I think you'd really find her work interesting. But the thing that I was thinking while you were speaking, all, about all of those things is just this incredibly well-developed inner dialogue. That I would love for all of the young people we are educating to have, right? If just, even just the way that you were speaking about the, that situation as you're reflecting, you're as the teacher in the room managing the classroom space, you were embodying that, how do I make sense and act in this moment? And that's a really incredibly well-developed dialogue with yourself that you're having. And so that's a whole nother level of competency, or I don't even know what you would necessarily call it, metacognition. It sometimes gets referred to, I think, that self-reflexivity, but that ability to stand in inquiry, but about yourself as the actor in the situation. I mean, it's, it's a really highly interesting and developed competency, right?

And one of the things that makes it so exciting, and this is another thing about paradigm shift, is on the other side of the paradigm, it's very simple. That it's very difficult on this side. It's almost impossible. Once you get to the other side, it's really simple. So adaptive action lets you do that. So you may not understand that you're having a deep and subtle internal conversation. Maybe when you start doing what's a what now what, you're not. But that practice, like mindfulness practice or like going to the gym, just the more you do it, the more deep and subtle it becomes. So we have kindergarten teachers who teach their kids adaptive action. And then the children teach each other how to read. Just what do you see? So what does it mean? I know what they're getting. Now what can I do to help my buddy here figure out what that page says? And so that, as Shakespeare says, you can assume the virtue when you have it not.

Yeah.

You can follow the four rules of inquiry. You can do adaptive action. You can look for difference and containers and connections, exchanges and pattern logic. You can do those things without having any idea. About the incredible power or the underlying philosophical transformation that's going on.

Yeah, exactly. Because that's, that's also a question I've been holding as well. It's like, and I've, I've asked this on a number of occasions on the podcast, like how much do we need to make explicit and how much is just amazing human implicit process that we just need to trust. And that's what I love about what you've done with these three models and methods is they're so simple. So they allow for all of that implicit process to just happen while you are focusing on, you know, you've internalized this what, so what, now what. And, and I think it's worth saying that then is iterative, right? I'm not sure we, we, oh, absolutely. We made that point clearly enough. I wonder like, because the,— the now what then becomes your new what, right? So it's this constantly iterative process, which I think is magic.

In alignment with other ones and other places. So you're doing your what, so what, now what. Every now what then touches the differences that exist in the rest of the system. And so then the world shifts and you're in it again. Yeah, thanks for pointing that out. Yeah, it's the iteration really that makes it a learning possibility. It's not just an action possibility, but that each of those cycles is a learning moment.

And it's also, sorry, I'm having lots of things coming together because the other thing for me there is that it, given the fact that it's iterative, it doesn't require some objective function. Like we are going towards this goal because you're constantly moving and responding. Because I've been, I wrote a post yesterday about conscious purpose and, and goal orientation, and we're obsessed with pre-predicting the outcomes of education and the idea of It's somewhat algorithmic, right? I mean, you know, there, there's some kind of process of what, so what, now what, and then repeating. But the fact that it's iterative means that it doesn't require a preset destination, you know, plugged into the sat nav to make sure that's exactly where we're gonna get and we're gonna optimize only for that thing.

Yeah. On the other hand, you do know the pattern of what you're going for.

You know, oh, interesting. What do you mean by that?

You want, so, If you think about your children, you want them to grow up to be happy and healthy and productive human beings, you know that. And so that pattern becomes your decision algorithm as you're doing your adaptive action. That's where you're testing. What are you seeing? So what? Now what? Is against this pattern that you want to generate. If there's no pattern at all, then there's— you're just going around in circles.

Right. So yeah, your direction lesson. Yes. So there's something, and it makes me think of Dave Snowden, who talks about starting a journey with a sense of direction and then taking the next right move. Right. So, and I've always struggled with that idea of what defines the sense of direction. And, you know, it, it's an interesting question, but what you're saying there is that there's something, there's a pattern that you can somewhat describe or feel, or something that you are moving towards that is something you care about. Maybe it's some, it contains values that you, hold dear. I don't know. I mean, there's something interesting about what that pattern is.

Yeah, it's an imagination.

Yeah.

So it's something that you, in your mind, are capable of imagining. Now, maybe that's because of history you have or experience you're having in this moment, but human beings can imagine stuff. And so there's, there's an imagined future that you have as, uh, it's not a goal because it's not a point attractor pattern. In complexity, it's a strange attractor pattern. It's infinitely possible within, but it's a bounded space and pattern space. So there's a lot of talk about strange attractors, which is not true. But in this case, what it is, is a pattern. And that pattern is generated also by iterative action in a space. What's so what now, right? So it is— I remember so much when I started studying planning. And it seems so weird that we would spend, invest just tremendous time and energy and money in getting a plan with a particular point in 5 years, but we weren't sure what we were going to do tomorrow.

Exactly.

That always seems so weird. But what this does, yeah, what this does is to flip those so that the future, we have a general sense of what the construct is that we want to move toward. We don't know details because the world is going to change before we get there. We We don't know details because we have insufficient information, but we know some of the fundamental differences that we want to make a difference to us out there. And we use those as guides tomorrow to take our next wise action. And then it's not an incremental thing. It's not as if you're moving forward toward it step by step. It's that you're creating it in every moment, just with a little more resolution, a little more clarity.

Which feels much—

That's what that is.

Yeah, it feels much more honoring the way that life actually works. I mean, that's a very general statement, but it feels like it's really much more honoring the reality of how we explore and move through the world rather than this obsession with, because what you were saying, that high definition vision of utopia, it becomes a utopia, right? It, and I talked to Alicia Gerrara about it, it, it becomes this crystalline utopia that, that we then hold onto and that that gets us stuck again in the so what, because we are so obsessed with this destination point that we're not noticing anything around us in the moment because we are so obsessed about getting to that thing that we've pre-articulated at a different moment that is not changing. I mean, that doesn't feel like the way life actually works.

Yeah. You used the word hubris before that I think.

Yeah.

Is arrogance and hubris to say, yep, that's the right place and that's where we're going and we have to go there. On the other hand, that can give you a lot of power, help you feel powerful, help you be powerful in the world. It's seductive.

We see that, right? We see that everywhere.

We do indeed.

No, it's fascinating. And, but I think one of the things I really appreciate your work is also that you hold that stance of inquiry with such commitment that even these categorical statements that we're making now about, you know, future blueprints equal bad, you know, even that is like, well, we need to hold everything everything lightly in a stance of inquiry because it's, you know, it's, it's, it's a challenging, it's a challenging thing to do. But I think that's also really important because otherwise again, we get stuck back into the complexity ideology of this is how you navigate complexity and it becomes a whole set of algorithms and rules again that we—

Yeah. And the solution, the place where what computer scientists call the stopping point is action. So I can think about and talk about, this is possible, that's possible, this is good, that's good. I mean, but when it comes time to act, all of those possibilities collapse into a moment and a particular choice. And then after that choice, they spread out again, and it happens again. But that compelling movement toward doing something useful, that keeps it grounded.

So important. I'd like, I feel, I felt that and my, my amazing colleague Jennifer, who, you know, she does that so beautifully. It's like, you know, it's all well and good to talk, but if you're not building, if you're not putting things into action, you're not really understanding how this thing manifests really in the real world with real people and real dynamics. So stop talking and let's build something, right? You know, it's, it's a really important remembering and I think, You know, you see, again, you see that in other places like the whole agile movement in software, you know, that there was, there's gesturing towards in all sorts of different ways, that kind of good enough idea of let's build something, put it out into the world, test it, see what happens, iterate. So it's like on this side of the paradigm shift, there's so many places where these same kinds of questions are popping up, right? And it's, I don't know, I find it such a fascinating space to be in, right?

Yeah, it's very exciting. This is another thing we see at the major paradigm shifts historically, is that there were lots of possibilities that were playing out at the same time to try to figure out what might work, and then one breaks through, but it only breaks through because all of the others are also pushing at the same space. So I celebrate all the people in all the different ways who are looking at complexity and however they're looking at it, and the people who are acting in these spaces whether or not they have a theory base, because I think all of them are softening that boundary and building a bridge to whatever is going to be next.

Yeah.

And I feel, I feel honored to be a part of that journey. And I'm also feeling a lot of urgency about it. And so I really appreciate, Tim, the work that you do, because I feel like you are consolidating ideas in a way that helps them move forward. And that, that I think is a really important contribution at this moment.

Thank you.

No, I so appreciate that. And I mean, quite honestly, all I'm really doing is my own exploration, right? It's trying to figure this stuff out and, you know, I'm doing my own what now? So what now? What, you know, but I agree.

And doing it in public so the rest of us can benefit.

That's true. But no, I so appreciate, I know I, I mean, I said this at the beginning, but I just wanna reiterate you that there is so much power in the work that you and everybody involved in the Human Systems Dynamics Institute are doing because of the simplicity of, there's a depth of theory and which is clear from this whole conversation. But the fact that a kindergarten child can learn what, so what, now what is, there's so much power in that, that with the, our young people and we, you know, we had a conversation with, with a couple of young people in, in Michigan and you know, they, it really connects with them and it's There's so much power in the simplicity of, they're not simplistic, but they are very simple to enable the action. 'Cause I think again, it's just come back and back. If we don't act, we are staying in this world of description and theory and it's, it's not gonna meet the moment in any way. And so I think the, the idea of, that's what I love from this conversation is sharing. So adaptive action, standing in inquiry and the pattern. Spotting models and methods that I, yeah, I would really invite people to go and look more. And there's training. I know you offer trainings. There's all sorts of things happening to learn those more deeply, get them into the hands of young people. Like think about how we can do that. I would love that.

Leslie and Royce are writing a new book that should be out in the next 6 months about families and finding hope in families. So taking some of these tools and putting them in a kind of workbook so that families can use them internally and externally to help their children and help themselves develop this kind of coherence and skills. It's a lovely little book. I'll send you a copy when it's done.

Please. Yeah, definitely. I'd love to share it as well because I mean, that's a whole separate conversation, but the container of formal education that we've rigidly held to actually is what is— there's so much going on now that needs to break down those boundaries between the whole process of becoming a person, being educated is it takes family and it takes your church or your mosque or your— but it also takes your school and your teacher. You know, it's a huge ecosystem of education, not just this thing we've called formal schooling. So I really appreciate that, like with making those connections across. Yeah, beautiful. Thank you, Glenda.

Amazing.

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