Posts

BREXIT: it’s complex; it’s uncomfortable; and it’s headed our way

by Kate Simpson/

Here in the UK we are living in complex times. Last month we voted to leave the EU; it turns out if being in the EU was complicated, leaving is the definition of complexity.

In the hours following the vote there was profound shock, particularly amongst those of us that voted remain. Certainly I had never imagined this result, though neither perhaps had many that voted leave. The post-mortems are mounting and if no one saw it happening, everyone can now explain why it did. Duncan Green, on his ‘Poverty to Power’ Oxfam blog, offers a great summary of contributing factors and avoids any sort of simplistic explanation. For my own reflections (once past the shock and anger), I try looking through the lens of ‘complex adaptive systems’. These are systems that, as Wasafiri, we seek out to work in, and of course unsurprisingly, find that we also live in. One of the clues to understanding such systems is to look for power; where it moves, where it pools, where it stagnates: “Identifying types of power and where they are located is an essential factor in understanding complex social systems” (1)

Well, in the EU referendum many of us saw power in all the normal places; with the business leaders, with the economists, with the analysts of political and economic impact, with our political leaders. Yet BREXIT was voted for in large numbers by those that live outside of London, by working class voters, by older voters, and above all by people who have, politically and economically, been marginalised for a long time; and it turns out however marginalised individually, collectively they held a power that few truly appreciated, at least for this vote.

And now, from the press to the school playground when I pick up my kids, our conversations are dominated by the what ifs, the maybes and the impossible to knows. What we can know is that we are part of a complex adaptive system; one that right now we are trying to change. Like all complex adaptive systems the issues are emerging and changing; they are too complex for any one person or institution to fully understand; and no one body can control, determine or even ‘lead’, let alone predict, exactly what will happen.

So what might BREXIT mean for the UK’s international aid programme? On paper, the value of our aid budget has just dropped by about $1.4 billion(2). This is due to the drop in the value of the pound and the corresponding drop in the value of our aid budget. But in the coming months, as the pound (hopefully) strengthens, or (terrifyingly) drops further, this number will prove to be what it is – a projection. More significantly, though still off somewhere in a post UK Europe, is that the UK contributes about 2 billion Euros to the EU aid budget – though whether this money ‘disappears’ from international aid, or appears in a different form is, as yet, unknowable. Beyond the money there is also the issue of influence. We already see, in many of the countries in Africa where we work, that the UK government has no monopoly on political influence; we compete for space with other national governments, with the boom in Chinese trade and with regional agendas and bodies. As we leave the EU and cease to be part of that substantial infrastructure of delegations, funding and political access, we may have more freedom to ‘sing our own tune’ but we will be singing it on our own, and not as part of a choir of 27 states.

However, as much as many of us didn’t want or vote for BREXIT, and however much we believe it is wrong for our country, we now have it. We will leave the EU. And we need to work out how to do it well. Doing it well means that the process as well as the outcome matter; and that they are actually one and the same. It means working with the emergent nature of the issues; it means engaging across all the stakeholders – those in our country and beyond –  however contradictory their views, needs and experiences; it means not pretending that any one person or institution can control, predict or, however brilliant they are, ‘save’ the process. It means recognising that we are living in a complex adaptive system and we had better not underestimate the consequences.

References

(1)

http://www.thebrokeronline.eu/Articles/Connecting-the-dots

(2)

p://www.humanosphere.org/opinion/2016/06/brexit-causes-value-of-u-k-foreign-aid-to-drop-by-1-4-billion/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-36618843

 

The IPSI & Creative Associates CVE Symposium: Summary & Reflections

by Kate Simpson/

Scott Hinkle recently joined Wasafiri as our Team Leader for the Regional Countering Violent Extremism Research Unit (RRU).  He started his work with Wasafiri with a quick trip to Washington to attend the CVE Symposium (April 6-7, 2016) and did a great summary write-up for the rest of us left at home. We thought it would be worth sharing more generally, so here it is:

On April 6-7, 2016 I attended a two-day CVE Symposium hosted by the International Peace and Security Institute (IPSI) and Creative Associates in Washington DC. There were around 200-225 CVE analysts, practitioners, and leaders in attendance. It was a very impressive, well-organised and participatory conference with multiple break-out and small group sessions. Here are some of the key themes that resonated for me:

  • Conflict prevention is key. Some of the key speakers were Special Operations Commander of SOCOM, US Senator and Cory Booker, the Secretary General for the US Department of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson and an introduction presented by UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon. All emphasised the need to increase violence prevention measures and capacities of vulnerable communities to address VE.
  • CVE is largely undefined, misunderstood and underfunded. “Resources are the fundamental expression of priorities.” Conflict prevention has been advocated in the VE arena for some time, but only recently has it gained funding traction in the US. Still, compared to Counter Terrorism, CVE is a tiny drop in the bucket of the billions spent per year on the military and intelligence sectors. CVE also suffers from the growing pains of a burgeoning and newly funded field. Lastly, there was little discussion on overarching definitions of VE, or even CVE. Recognition was given to the difficulties in defining both, but that all programmes should operate around what VE/CVE mean at the micro-level.
  • Working in and on the local context was the most prominent point of the conference. “Trust is the strategic and operational capital for CVE programmes.” Understanding the micro, or community-level, environments is the only way CVE is effective. Literally every speaker and discussion mentioned that the local perception of the push factors and, importantly, the “how” of the pull factors, is unique to every area and vulnerable population. Thus, CVE programmes must be community-led, targeted and intentional.
  • Well-thought-out framing of CVE programmes is key to local and international acceptance. “Never use CVE to frame a programme.” “All CVE efforts should be integrated into other community-led programmes.” I completely agree with the first quote, as labelling a programme CVE increases the risk to the community and CVE practitioners. Framing a programme as CVE also has many unintended negative connotations linked to militarisation, oppression and even neo-colonialism that limit community, government, NGO and international cooperation. It is important to bring in broader development and humanitarian coalitions and a CVE label will instantly isolate the programme.
  • CVE programmes must be agile. The flexibility and adaptability of CVE programmes was consistently and boldly emphasised. In VE and fragile contexts, change is the norm. CVE programmes will always be operating with a deficit of information. Thus, programmes must have systems for local contextual analysis and organisational learning that consistently integrate new understanding and contextual changes. 
  • Difficulty of M&E in CVE. Obtaining specific metrics for local-level context and conflict prevention is essential for success and future funding of CVE. However, everyone recognised that utilising tangible and quantifiable indicators expressing “prevention” was often (but not always) difficult to achieve. Avenues to explore, and that donors seemed amenable to, were “plausible correlations” of precursors to violence and the USAID Learning Lab indicator free M&E approaches, such as outcome harvesting and most significant change.

https://usaidlearninglab.org/sites/default/files/resource/files/Complexity%20Aware%20Monitoring%202013-12-11%20FINAL.pdf 

  • Complex systems thinking is the logical approach for CVE but difficult to implement. The intent is to learn and improve activities by learning with the community. The overall question should be, “how does change take place in that community/system?” Once that is understood, then CVE programmes would be effective at integrating into, and thus influencing, the system of change. Below are some bulleted thoughts on this subject:
    • Investigate geographic-focused pull factor systems.
    • Use real-time operational research to identify gaps between project designs and outcomes and inform a learning-by-doing approach.
    • Focus on listening and learning over solutions to problems. The goal of CVE projects should not be to meet predetermined benchmarks, but to learn which elements of one’s initial understanding of the system were right and which were wrong.
    • Use systems thinking and visualisation to demonstrate the multiple and parallel entry/focal points for interventions in a targeted community.
    • Use a continually evolving portfolio of interventions.
    • Answer the questions: 1) How do we gather data to represent the complex environment?; 2) How do we programme better in a complex environment?; 3) How are we going to get quick wins using complex theory?
    • Use mixed methodologies/theories besides and with complex systems.
  • Linear or “problem then solution” Theories of Change (ToCs) are difficult to utilise in the complex and ever-changing VE environments. Thus, the following concepts enhance the effectiveness of ToCs in the CVE arena.
    • The ToC needs to be presented as an overarching framework that explains how the programme intends to work, but without detailing the specific mechanisms of change (i.e. interventions).
    • The first version of ToC should still be fairly general since we cannot yet know much about the intricacies of how change happens. It essentially is the representation of our knowledge and hypotheses we start off with.
    • There should be a ToC that is specifically centered on the flexibility, adaptability and learning of CVE programmes.
  • Use technology to capture local and national context, sentiment and narratives. “What’s in people’s minds becomes actions.” The importance of social media analysis as a component to any CVE programme cannot be understated. The tech analysts expressed over and over that there are so many inexpensive and open-source (free) software programmes that are under-utilised. E.g.
    • Agolo: Summarises large amounts of text in seconds, plug in news sources and subjects and it creates daily/weekly news letters, performs social media analysis. http://www.agolo.com This is one that I have already started the process for.
    • Symantica Pro: network and link analysis, quite complicated.
    • Recorded Future: Sentiment and social media analysis.
    • Open Situation Room Exchange: hashtags that are driving in social media.
    • ICCM Project: collects multiple sources and identifies overlaps.

If you were there then please feel free to share any thoughts, comments and reflections below. These notes are just Scott’s initial reflections and we will share more of our thinking and current work over the coming weeks. As ever, feel free to get in touch if there is anything you’d like to discuss further with us

Bonfire of the Gantt charts (or not quite yet)- Guest blogger Griff Griffiths

by Kate Simpson/

This week we have a guest blogger – Griff Griffiths, who shares some thoughts on wicked problems and complexity thinking, taken from beyond the world of international development.

Griff runs Cocomotion, works in the complex area of People and Organizational Development and describes himself as a ‘surprisingly useful person.’ He has been working, thinking and experimenting with the application of complexity thinking for longer than Wasafiri has existed; and has found himself in the midst of everything from large scale IT projects, to working with young people in Gaza, alongside a whole host of corporate world adventures.

I met Griff during a partially successful experiment to get a whole group of people to imitate a flock of birds – and he filled my head with all sorts of ideas about complexity from a world outside of international development. So, I thought we would invite him along to add some new ideas, perspectives and background to some of thinking we have been exploring at Wasafiri over the last few months.

How do we get to grips with wicked issues?

Our most intractable problems are hard to fix because they contain many more factors than we can hope to count, understand or control; because the factors are interdependent in ways we cannot always discern; and because small changes sometimes have big effects, and vice versa.  And when we do fix these problems, they don’t stay fixed. These are the so-called wicked problems and we have many of them, at all scales of human interaction – societies, communities, organisations and groups; between individuals and within individuals.

We could be better at solving them, but we’ve been focussed on other problems for quite a long time, like going to the moon or flying to Europe for twenty five pounds, which are very complicated, but for which we’ve developed sophisticated and successful techniques of planning and control. Now our wicked issues are beginning to bite hard.

So what can we do? Here are some ideas:

Change the way we think about the world

In their wonderful 2015 overview of wickedness Embracing Complexity: Strategic Perspectives for an Age of Turbulence, Boulton, Allen and Bowman make the case for complexity as a worldview. They point out that the mindset that this involves  – seeing the world as interwoven process rather than interacting objects, or, as a friend of mine said recently, thinking of people as verbs, not nouns – is one which was common in the distant past, but has long fallen out of favour.

When we intervene in such a world,  we’re confronted not only with risk, but with uncertainty – it’s not merely a question of whether our interventions will work or not, it’s that they may result in the appearance of entirely new phenomena that we can’t predict in advance. Boulton et al give the example of SMS, which was a tiny feature in the then-new digital mobile networks designed to notify users of voicemail; what it became was the conduit for an entirely unexpected global phenomenon of short interpersonal messaging, which itself reshaped the way people communicate.

Use metaphor – with care

In her 1993 paper Chaos and Complexity, What Can Science Teach? Margaret Wheatley also refers to the need for a shift in consciousness and draws rich metaphors from complexity science to illustrate how our thinking about organisations can shift from organisation-as-machine to organisation-as-complex-entity. She challenges assumptions that we commonly make about human organisations based on ideas taken from, for example, mechanics (‘change happens as the result of external influences’) and physics (‘things fall apart’ – entropy). She offers alternatives, drawn from complexity science, which describe what we see in organisations in a more useful way, and suggest different ways of working.

But although models from complexity science can help us in this way with metaphor, they can’t just be transplanted in order to explain the complexity we find in human affairs. For example, chaos can mean many things: it’s been used as a beautiful metaphor for the behaviour of flourishing teams, as an obvious metaphor for anarchy, and Wheatley talks about it as breeding self-organisation and creativity. What are we to make of that?

Search for explanations

Metaphor lets us borrow language from complexity science to describe what we see; explanation gives us insight to understand and influence. We need explanatory theories of  complex human interaction to give us a basis upon which to work with wicked problems.

Glenda Eoyang (Human Systems Dynamics) and Ralph Stacey (Complex Responsive Processes) are two thinkers whose work explores the underlying dynamics of human interaction to develop theories which explain those dynamics, and show why human interaction self-organises into observable patterns. Eoyang’s work seeks to build on this to create further specific models which provide more detail for particular domains, such as community engagement or team effectiveness.

Interestingly, both Eoyang and Stacey’s theories apply at any scale of human interaction – within the individual person; in one to one interactions; within groups and in whole societies. This suggests that there might be scale free ways of working with complexity; approaches which we can use with any size of wicked problem.

Develop processes

There’s a three-minute video by Eric Berlow in another post on this blog, in which he talks about standing back, looking for patterns, choosing a sphere of influence and looking for a ‘simple detail that matters most’ as the place to intervene if we want to change things.

We are in a world of massively entangled connections. The ‘simple detail that matters most’ is quite likely a detail that also matters in some other web of connections, not just the one we are focussed on, and our actions to influence in one place may give rise to unintended consequences in another – either within our field of view or outside it.

So if we aren’t sure what the outcomes of our interventions will be, or even where or when they will occur, then we are more or less compelled to work in adaptive cycles rather than following a long term, fixed plan. What might the general features of an adaptive approach be?  Look for pattern. Find the detail that matters most. Act to influence it. See if the patterns change. Look for pattern… and so on.

But working like this presents some challenges. DFID’s report From Best Practice to Best Fit, summarised in another post on this blog, notes that “While [development] programmes exhibiting best fit can readily be described at a conceptual level, they have proved rather harder to operationalise.”

Perhaps that’s partly a question of how long people have been trying. The tech industry operationalised software development to a best fit process (Agile), after years of failing to deliver on time or within budget, or even to deliver what the client actually wanted. Agile recognises that the client’s understanding of what they want emerges as the work progresses, and changes direction as a result of that understanding, and as a result of changing environmental (market) conditions during the work.

Software is much simpler than international development, but even so, it took the industry quite a few years to work out how to do it, and several different approaches have evolved under the same broad process. And despite Agile’s success, the transition to it is by no means complete, partly because of a reluctance to let go of deeply held ideas of control – a quick glance at the Agile Manifesto gives a sense of the letting-go required.

Use what we already know

Finally, it’s worth saying that adopting a complexity worldview doesn’t require a celebratory bonfire of the GANTT charts. Some situations respond well to command and control. Some things can be planned. Some can be predicted. At least for a little while!

For more information about Griff and the work that he does check out: www.griffgrifiths.co.uk 

Understanding wicked problems and what we might be able to do about them

by Kate Simpson/

A review and reflections on the ODI working paper: “From best practice to best fit: understanding wicked problems in international development.”

 

As philosophers, neuroscientists, pop singers and marketeers have known for years, as human beings the things we notice most in the world around us, are the things already in our own heads and own worlds. So it seems as we at Wasafiri have become more interested in how to apply complex systems thinking to our work, suddenly complexity thinking seems to be everywhere.

While there is a lot of interest in complexity based approaches to development issues, most of this ‘interest’ has stayed at a fairly conceptual and theoretical level. Generally, because whilst the theory might make sense, the application has proved, well, complex.

The ODI, working with DFID, have published a working paper that attempts to confront this gap between theory and application. The paper, ‘From best practice to best fit’, examines a number of case studies in using complex systems approaches to deal with ‘wicked problems’ and, whilst acknowledging the limits of seeking generalised lessons, they offer some general points. At 55 pages the paper is far from a quick read – so here is a bit of a premise based on my almost-quick read.

  • Wicked problems are juxtaposed with ‘tame problems’ – (they have a rather nice table comparing the two on page 2). The wicked problems are those where the problem is difficult to define, has many contributing factors, where the solutions are not singular and where there is no ‘end point’ for when the problem is solved. Rather, the aim if to make things ‘better’.
  • Development approaches have been dominated by the logical framework approach – which works well for t­­ame problems (where a linear relationship between problem-inputs-outputs-solution can be mapped), but for problems where there are complex sets of relationships, where the causes of the problem are multiple and where the end point is unclear, logical frameworks have proved limited and are highly criticised.
  • From best practice to best fit – best practice has become a dominant paradigm and assumes that what works in one setting can be applied to another. This approach allows the building of generic tool kits and supports the career paths of ‘technical experts’ (that last bit might be my view). By comparison, best fit emphasises adaptability to local and changing contexts, recognising the imperfect and unique starting point.

So how to work with wicked problems?

The paper cites a number of case studies which give more insight into the messy reality of the work done, in summary:

“dealing with such [wicked problems] requires us to recognise the systemic nature of the issue; understand the interactions among key actors and their behaviours; identify the dynamics and patterns of the issue; pinpoint the range of possible intervention points; work flexibly with a range of approaches; and adapt over time.”

Key specifics they offer include:

  • Use of systems mapping to explore the relationships between actors and make visible the different issues, policies, agencies etc. that impact on the ‘wicked problem’ being explored.
  • A portfolio approach using mapping to identify entry points to influence the problem and then launching multiple, small interventions which act on the problem in different ways.
  • Iteration and real time learning about the impact of interventions, using ongoing monitoring; and being willing to adapt, change and even abandon interventions that don’t seem to have the desired impact.
  • Shorter planning horizons in not expecting to lay out a 5 year plan and keep to it come what may; and rather, knowing “that complexity or wickedness in the environment needs to be 
respected and uncertainty navigated, not retreated from.“ This is a particular challenge to the dominance of well constructed business cases, budgets, plans and the optimism bias to which they lead.

Criticising logical frameworks is a well worn argument; and to be fair, for the right job they are still a good tool. However, finding viable alternatives has proved far from easy.

We have been experimenting for several years with developing ways to work with and not despite the complexity we find in our work. I think a key revelation for us is that the nature of the complexity we face is different. So, when working in conflict affected environments, or on countering violent extremism, the way the environment and context constantly changes and evolves make it a ‘wicked problem’ and real time research becomes very important. In agricultural development the context is often more stable, but the way the stakeholders –such as government, private sector and smallholders– interact with and impact on one another, is often underestimated and even ignored in the meta planning process. So stakeholder engagement platforms become fundamental to creating any change.

Ultimately, whilst we and many others will continue to experiment with systems thinking, complexity and wicked problem based approaches, it may well be that the more radical change is applying such thinking to the frameworks, TORs and M&E requirements that drive the funding of development programmes. Be it from NGOs, national donors, or international organisations, if we all want to see more varied and adaptable approaches to development, then we need more varied and adaptable approaches to commissioning and monitoring our work.

The Global Risks Report – complex problems need complex solutions

by Hamish Wilson/

Our world is insufficiently prepared for an increasingly complex risk environment. This stirring call to arms was recently issued by the World Economic Forum in its Global Risks Report.

The Forum’s study of the planet’s most pressing problems reveals that the underlying nature of the risk is changing. The pace of political, economic, social, environmental and technological change is unprecedented. As never before, we are faced with risks that are increasingly complex, unpredictable and volatile.

The report draws particular attention to a number of concerns that affect us all:

  • Fragile societies under increasing pressure from rising unemployment and inequality;
  • Growing concerns over conflict, in a new era of strategic competition among global powers;
  • A potentially false sense of optimism over the global economic recovery; and
  • The rising dangers of climate change, environmental degradation and resource scarcity.

Yet it is when the interconnections between these risks are mapped, that we begin to understand just how complex an environment we face.

WEF Risks Connections

(Source: World Economic Forum, Global Risks Report)

In Africa, this landscape is posing extraordinary challenges for decision makers at all levels. The risks of climate and economic shocks, the fear of instability and extremism are rising. How do we prepare for and build resilience against such risks? How do we mitigate the consequences? How do we avoid collateral damage and the unintended fallout?

Complex risks transcend borders, politics and spheres of influence. And they require complex solutions. Conventional thinking won’t work. New approaches are required, new collaborations across countries and industries, which forge new partnerships to think and act differently.

Click here to view the full report Global Risks Report