Problems of diversity, inclusion and associated conflict pervade modern society.  To be honest they always did but we are more aware of them.  Also, those excluded from power, subjected to epistemic injustice, prejudice, and often violence are standing up, challenging orthodoxies, and asking difficult questions.  At the same time previous dominant groups can no longer take their position for granted and fall easy victim to populism, often with thinly disguised racism and misogyny becoming normalised, used without shame.

Now I assume that the majority of readers of the blog would not endorse any of that, and there is general agreement that language needs to change, people need to be treated fairly (and that is a word which is itself ambiguous) and hatred leading to violence, poverty, mental breakdown etc. etc. is something that we should eliminate.  And to be clear, any solution that simply conforms the culture of the various minorities with that of the previous/current is really not desirable.  A whole generation in my own country Wales was educated to be ashamed of their language and culture, to quote a witness statement in  Welsh Outlook May 193: The speaking of Welsh in school was strictly forbidden; any boy or girl guilty of the offense was given the Welsh Not, which he or she handed on to the next offender, the unfortunate one who held the Welsh Not at the end of the school session becoming the scapegoat who bore the punishment for the sins of all.  Children were even encouraged to report on their brothers and sisters who spoke Welsh in the home.  I’ve told that story to First Nation people in Canada and Maori in New Zealand to learn that the same thing happened in their own history.  The consequences of this type of behaviour are well summarised in this quote:

Deprive children of stories and you leave them unscripted, anxious stutterers in their actions as in their words. Hence there is no way of giving us an under-standing of any society, including our own, except through the stock of stories which constitute its initial dramatic resources. 

Alasdair MacIntyre

The stories and experiences of childhood are critical to the formation of identity and being seen as second, or third rate and forced to adopt the trappings of the dominant culture is a classic tactic of the Oppressor.  Scarily it may be done with the best of intentions.  The 2002 film Rabbit-Proof Fence is set in the 1930s when children called “half breeds” were forcibly taken away from their mothers (the child often the result of rape) and put in homes as cheap labour, and if allowed to marry then only to white to diminish Aboriginal blood.  The character, brilliantly played by Kenneth Branagh is in charge of the programme and he clearly genuinely feels that he is doing the right thing for the children. The practice continued up to the 1970s and for those who don’t know the indigenous people of Australia were not including in the census until 1971.

The many events which triggered the Black Lives Matter movement will be known to all readers, the vicious racism that followed the Brexit vote in the UK and the failure of Trump to condemn White Supremacists are all part and parcel of a current reality in which we have a worldwide plague and are experiencing the consequences of a failure to act on Climate Change.  It would not be difficult to be pessimistic, but I prefer Terry Eagleton’s concept of Hope without Optimism.   The theological concept of Hope is something I plan to return to, but just hold that phrase for the moment and read the book!

I want to move away from the main subject for a bit raise a general issue about the way people try to achieve change, and I want to use the difference between causality and dispositionally to set up the various approaches I plan to advocate.  The general approach in organisations, as well as society, is to define the type of behavior and outcomes that are to be desired and then set targets and define practices that are to be desired.  If those don’t work, and they generally don’t then the enforcement becomes more draconian and we get into quotas and the like.  The obsession of those engaged in change with workshops also starts to come through with people from different sides of conflict brought to gather to discuss their differences and the like.  Now all of this is mostly harmless but if the context of people’s lives outside of the workshop does not change, or cannot be changed by the actions of the individuals present then it just leads to disillusionment.   But the main problem here is that the outcome itself is assumed and it will generally reflect the aspirations of the dominant culture.  Everything will be fine if you all end up like us ….   My post earlier this month  “… intire of it selfe” is important here and if not familiar I suggest reading it as it summarises the issues with t dominant, enlightenment concept of individuality based on individual rights and obligations.  You can’t change a system one person at a time.

The reality in a complex system is that we can know what we don’t want to be the case, but knowing what future emergent solution is resilient is simply not possible until (sic) it emerges.  The three things we can say with some certainty are that:

• Any intervention will produce unintended consequences, and early detection of those is key, some may also be beneficial.
• Scaling a complex system involves decomposition and recombination, not imitation and as things start to work we need to act accordingly.
• Actors in the system are entangled in such a way as to increase rather than reduce conflict.
• You will not eliminate conflict, not should you, the aim is coherent heterogeneity.
• Any solution will need to be bottom-up and distributed at scale, as far as the possible whole of workforce or whole of the population.

So what can we do about this?  If I am right (and I pretty sure I am on this) then we are dealing with complex ideation patterns and until those changes not better outcome is possible.  In fact, as we know, trying to mandate outcomes in terms of language use and the like may just make matters worse.  Tyrants over the years have always found ways to exploit peoples sense of loss of entitlement and empathetic understanding of the ‘other’ is always going to be more effective than mandating behaviour.

Now there is a broad range of things we can do here and I’ll summarise them as a series of bullet points.  I’m also conscious that I am assuming a degree of familiarity with SenseMaker® and other anthro-complexity methods.  I’ve also linked to previous posts that show fitness landscapes and which outline vector theory of change. The illustration to the right is drawn from that work and is provided as a reminder.  I should also say that this is certainly not complete, there is more to add and more refinements to make.

Mapping ideation patterns & perspectives

1. This is easy to do with the MassSense use of SenseMaker®.  Here we put together an infographic containing news items, statements, and the like and present that for signification (for those used to SenseMaker® we do have sets designed for this purpose that are based in anthropology).  If that is presented to the whole of a workforce ideally within a limited time period and from that, we can draw maps by conflicting groups, by age etc. etc.  As part of the capture, we also gather people’s stories of What it means to me and also How I think it will develop.  To be technical that means a mass engagement in situational assessment and a body of micro-scenarios about the future.
2. The results of that initial work are then presented and reformulated by the different groups into alternative infographic summaries which are then represented to all actors.  So we have group A’s summary interpreted by groups B, C, D, and so on together with Group B’s summary interpreted by groups A, C, D, and so on.   You get the idea.  The results are then fed into workshops (see below) for They see it like this, we see it like that conversations which in turn generate micro-narrative of possible actions that might make a difference.   Those actions feed into a database that is available to all actors, all linked to the original narratives.
3. A separate map is created of areas where there is maximum disagreement and also agreement – what is in common, where are the differences so great that even discussion will create further conflict.  Material from this process can be fed into the trio process below as a problem or opportunity statements.  Ideally, the capability to do this should be given to all actors, not just an elite.

Self ethnography

1. Over the years we have done a lot of work using children as ethnographers.  One approach to this is to ask them to go into their communities and find the people from their parents and grandparents who they most respect and ask for the story of the adult’s life which they think the child should remember.  The equivalent in organisations is to send young people from the community or young employers to older employees and possibly retired employees with a similar question.  We cal these sacred stories and their use in the ideation pattern maps demonstrates long-term influences on attitudes that will be difficult to shift, but which can also be called on to get people to think differently about the problem.
2. The use of cross-cultural trios, putting people into small groups so various combinations of ABD, ADF and so one (lots of overlap) who are charged to work together to investigate different aspects of the situation and gather narratives.  They are investigators, they are not asked to talk about the issue themselves, but they have to work together at a micro-level.  When I have done this one actor in a trio can legitimise the entry of an ‘alien’ into a community that might otherwise be hostile.  Any discussion of differences and reconciliation process is not suggested or prompted but allowed to happen or not happen.  They gather ideas for change as well as situational descriptions.  Determining what the groups are and the degree to which we directly identify conflicting groups is a task with ethical implications and should be undertaken with care.
3. Using cultural venues such as museums, art galleries, sports grounds, and the like.  In one project we used the Liverpool Slavery Museum to present young people with artifacts and situations then gathered their stories about that.  The results were then gathered by different ethnic groups and presented for a similar descriptive self-awareness process to that described in point two in the ideation pattern list above.

Other techniques

1. Anthro-simulation is a human-managed game in which different teams explore options.  In the science-fiction version of this game, we create a metaphorical environment in which the various alien cultures represent the issues we currently face.  My moving into a fictional setting people explore possibilities.   They can also be displaced as actors into a situation where they experience deprivation and prejudice by proxy.  Again there are ethical and process issues here so I’m restricting the detail in a public post.
2. The archetype techniques that I developed, and people like Sonja and Sharon expanded and enhanced, building on a long-standing story tradition.  By creating archetypes of each group, and each group of each other, we create a disclosure technique that allows people to have discussions, and critically thoughts, from another perspective.  The archetypes cal also be used in trans-media interventions.
3. Shifting from language to symbols and the wider use of art.  There will always be a problem with getting the language right so one solution is to avoid language and instead use graffiti, street theatre, and the like to create aporetic moments, situations with ambiguity, and paradoxes that break entrained patterns of thinking.

There really is a lot more here and to be honest, my preference in this type of work is to spend time with those who realise they need to do something, and then do some field ethnography before designing a solution.  We will be adding to this in the methods wiki and also in other forms over the next few months.   Keep an eye on the website for new interventions around climate change, covid, and BLM issues.  We are doing a lot of work here and I hope we can make a difference.

But overall the message is simple – changing the interactions and insights between actors in the system is more effective that pre-determiing the solution.

Acknowledgements

Coffee cups by Nathan Dumlao, banner photo by Womanizer WOW Tech both on Unsplash

A reminder that his blog is my personal opinion and is not an official statement from Cognitive Edge, its staff, partners or network.

There really is only one subject to talk about in our disunited & troubled kingdom today; and the various historical precedents are scary.  We’ve just passed the 200th Anniversary of Peterloo which was a defining moment of its age; it shifted the population to support of the movement for enfranchisement.   Parliament by then had power, but it was not representative.   In contrast, in the early 17th Century, it’s role was largely an advisory one other than its role in raising taxes.   Charles I, chosen to rule by God (in his eyes and those of his followers), used it as little as possible and during eleven years of tyranny did without it all together.  That was in part a response to the Petition of Right he had been forced to accept with its references to Magna Carta.  The Short and then the Long Parliament followed and the essence is the latter is the refusal of the Speaker of the House to be intimidated by the King.  The Commons also passed a Bill of Attainer that imposed the death penalty on one of Charle’s favourites the the Earl of Stafford.   Charles had promised him he would not allow the execution to proceed but fearing for his family allowed the be-heading to go ahead.

I could add in the various other struggles of the 19th and 20th Century, I could go back to the Witenagemot of the Anglo Saxon Kings of the Welsh Parliaments of Owain Glyndŵr.  But the point is made, the force of democracy within the history of this Island is one of representative democracy through the Parliament.   Now in the 21st Century that same Parliament has been prorogued for an  unprecedented period of five weeks, normally it is measured in days.  The clear intention being to prevent scrutiny of the Executive in its drive for a no deal Brexit something that was never on the agenda in what was only ever an advisory referendum.   Our current executive lied and cheated to achieve that result, indeed if the referendum had been mandatory it would have been ruled out of order by the courts.  A Hard Brexit was never on the ballot, instead we were promised the easiest of trade deals, the release of money for the NHS and so on.   Now that the mood has changed with reality a small faction, based on an electorate of under 1% of the population (the increasingly aged members of the Conservative Party) is intent on achieving an unsanctioned and potentially catastrophic result.  It is, in the words of the Financial Times a coup and there is no other word for it.

If Mr Johnson’s prorogation ploy The UK’s constitutional arrangements have long relied on conventions. The danger existed that an unscrupulous leader could trample on such conventions. That has not happened, in the modern era, until now.” ITS A COUP

The whole agenda around Brexit has only ever been about the internal machinations of the Conservative Party.   Cameron (currently the third worst Prime Minister in British History) only offered it to placate his right wing and assumed he would be in a coalition with the Liberal Party who would prevent it.  That having failed he didn’t do the basics for any constitutional change – allowing those over 16 to vote (it is after all their future) as happened in Scotland and requiring more than a simple majority.  The Labour Party was led by a romantic who also cleared wanted out of Europe in the forlorn hope that he could create socialism in one country.  No one took the leave campaign seriously and we had a narrow victory with less than 40% of those eligible to vote.  Then we had the Maybot (The second worst Prime Minister in history in what is an increasing rush to the bottom) who sought to placate the same right wing and failed in consequence.   Usher in the Etonians with the current worst Prime Minister in history, Boris Johnson (whose connection with truth, statesmanship and integrity is only rivalled by his transatlantic twin) and democracy has just been thrown out of the window.   I can only hope that his fellow Etonian, the absurd throwback that is the Rees Mogg will end up in the same position as Stafford.  If there was ever a time to abolish the privilege of the ‘Public’ Schools of Britain it is now, and given its compliance, lets get rid of the monarchy at the same time.  We need  a Head of State prepared to preserve democracy.

Mind you the staff of Eton College seem to have some judgement.  Here we have a letter from Martin Hammond, Master in College at Eton to Boris’s father written in 1982:

Boris really has adopted a disgracefully cavalier (my note – see Charles I) attitude to his classical studies.  It is a question of priorities which most of his colleagues have no difficulty in sorting out.  Boris sometimes seem affronted when criticised for what amounts to a gross failure of responsibility (and surprised at the same time that he was not appointed Captain of the School for next half).  I think he honestly believes that is churlish of us not to regard him as an exception, one who should be free of the network of obligation which binds everyone else.

And in case you think that was a sin of childhood, easily overcome, it is worth noting the views of Max Hastings, his boss at the Daily Telegraph, also from the right politically.  Writing in an article in the Guardian this June he says:

I have known Johnson since the 1980s, when I edited the Daily Telegraph and he was our flamboyant Brussels correspondent. I have argued for a decade that, while he is a brilliant entertainer who made a popular maître d’ for London as its mayor, he is unfit for national office, because it seems he cares for no interest save his own fame and gratification.

So now democracy hangs by a thread with a disjoined opposition, poorly lead, facing a focused, ruthless and well funded far right executive presided over by a lazy narcissist.  Populism has its simple message, its echo chambers and its appalling cynicism, we the people suffer the consequences.  We have hope in a Speaker who is emulating the courage of his 17th Century predecessor and we have politicians on the left and right who understand that something needs to be done, and done quickly; although they are ill supported by their Leaders.  There may yet be hope but there is little unity; a parallel with the Weimar Republic?  

And while all this is going on the world is burning …

I leave the last word to Stephen Fry:

Weep for Britain. A sick, cynical brutal and horribly dangerous coup d’état. Children playing with matches, but spitefully not accidentally: gleefully torching an ancient democracy and any tattered shreds of reputation or standing our poor country had left.

PS: I’m not the only one making a comparison with Charles I – see this in today’s Guardian

Soma is the drug that keeps people happy in Huxley’s dystopian novel Brave New World. It has, to quote, All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects. I was thinking of it this morning on the flight to Tallin to give a keynote at itSMFest2016 on Cynefin Dynamics and Software Design. For those interested the slides are here although there is no podcast, which is a pity. This was one of the good ones: when an audience responds well it feeds the speaker. I sort of kept to the brief, but I opened up with a list of common assumptions and errors. All there on slide two, the one I want to pick up in this post went as follows: Having people engaged at the end of a facilitated workshop may be personally satisfying for the facilitator but it is unlikely to have sustainable impact. I realised from comments the previous day in New York that I may be coming over as anti-workshop which is not the case. I am against heavily facilitated workshops in which success is measured simply by how much people have enjoyed themselves.

To be honest I am increasingly hostile to the whole happiness movement that seems to be springing up. Somehow or other the idea seems to be spreading that success is measured by how delighted people are at the end of a staged event. We’ve got people spinning out a whole keynotes devoid of content, but fun of platitudes, smily face buttons at airport security exits and happiness software in which employees are constantly polled as to their level of contentment. It is a modern form of soma, or to go back to an earlier classic, people want to stay on the island with the Lotus Eaters rather than face up to reality. I’ve seen similar things with some of the popular techniques that have sprung up around Theory U and the like in which the workshops are the be all and end all of the intervention. The assumption is that if people have agreed to think and act differently at the end of a highly intense collective experience then that is all that is required to achieve change. Regrettably its not that easy, if the context surrounding the event doesn’t change then no intensive personal experience is going to make any sustainable difference.

Its time to address real issues, not create a feeling of wanting to do good.

In my post of yesterday I wrote about the loss of purpose in the pursuit of ideology and the lack of connection between tribes, something that was brought to the fore with the recent Brexit vote. To be clear this is no longer a divide between the left and the right, would that it were that simple. We are not building a single wall between two ideological views of the world, but instead we are creating multiple islands separated by income, education, attitude, prejudice and so on and those islands are increasingly unable to communicate or even understand each other.

Back in the years of Thatcher I was a Labour Party election agent in St Albans. I had a really good relationship with my Conservative Party equivalent for a variety of reasons. First we both disliked Thatcher and for similar reasons, she was privileging selfishness over community. He had, to my mind, a paternalistic attitude to service, but he felt that there was a duty of care, there was such a thing as society and it, and the individuals within it had responsibilities. Secondly we both active in politics, equally frustrated by the effort of pulling our vote out, the lack of interest or commitment and the absence of critical thinking. We had many things in common, we disagreed profoundly on others. A decade later the ideological divide had increased.

We have also exacerbated those differences under the banner of freedom. Parental choice in schools has meant that the better schools got better and the worst schools got worse. Those with money moved to areas with good schools (I confess to do that myself) while sink schools in inner city areas with some honourable exceptions got worse. Our children no longer play on the streets, learning to deal with whoever is there, but instead only meet people from the same class and background in highly controlled events. Rises in fees and the costs of higher education mean that those with parents able to subsidise their lives enjoy a different social situation and social interaction that those who don’t. Gaining job experience is easier if your parents can support you in the process and can fund second degrees. And I’m largely talking about middle class differences along.

The divide between multi-cultural cities with high levels of unemployment than increasingly depopulated rural environments and the depression of post-industrial areas is becoming more extreme. Fewer common experiences, fewer encounters, increasing separation. Talking about democratic solution with fellow believers at a Corbyn Rally in London is very different from dealing with the impact of poverty and long term deprivation on the streets of Newport or Tyneside. Selfishness is not confined to neo-liberals, it is also a day to day reality for the modern chattering classes. We really don’t have any sense of common purpose or obligation and acceptance of minimal standards. The press cover benefit fraud which has a minor impact on the economy while corporate tax avoidance receives little attention.

The direct questions of opinion polls produce few meaningful answers. The vast majority of the press no longer pretend to objectivity. We don’t really know what are the underlying beliefs and attitudes that drive people to vote against their own interests as they did in working class areas during the recent advisory (remember that is what is was) referendum. We have little ability or apparently willingness to understand and engage with the day to day problems and issues of people who are are separated by those boundaries.

Last Friday a group of us got together in Bangor, and for Wales at least we want to try and understand those issues, to make the day to day concerns of our small national visible and to articulate solutions that are sustainable with those communities. We want to understand what anthropologists call the ideation culture (the underlying mostly unarticulated believes and needs) of our country. We may or may not be successful, but we intend to try. I hope to announcement something later this week and we will make it available more widely for those interested.

Over a week ago, I knew I would have to write something, or several things, on the Brexit disaster. But I didn’t want to react at the time, nor did I want to say anything until I had something in place with the potential to achieve some redemption (by which I mean both understanding and potential reversal). I thought I would illustrate it with one of my favourite T-shirts – I couldn’t find the selfie, so you are spared that. I grew up in a Labour Family, and my mother was on the far left in her youth. At eleven, I was stuffing election addresses into envelopes and riding my bike between polling stations and the office with numbers on election day. In 1964, I was the Labour Party candidate in the Primary School mock election. I won with the only serious speech: no vacuous promises of no lessons, sweets in every break and the like, but an earnest and passionate plea for justice and equality. At University, I was a leader in the Broad Left, an alliance of the Labour Party, Communist Party and Unaligned Left, which largely opposed Trotskyite Parties of the extreme left – the 70s. I was convenor of the House of Debates, active in the National Organisation of Labour Students and set on a route that would have made me a politician. When I was born, my mother told me that the officiating Doctor had handed me to her, saying, “There you are, a future Socialist MP and prop forward for Wales” (I was a big baby).

I tell you this to provide context before I get to the heart of today’s post; there will be more, and I’ve created a new category for them. So, let’s get to the heart of this. One of the lessons that was drummed into me during my early years was that there was an implicit contract between the intellectual left and those who voted for us. We should never be deluded into believing that they accepted our politics en mass, but as long as we were one of them and seen to be on their side, then there was a sustainable symbiosis. Service to the community was the price you paid for having a chance to influence the direction of society; any sense of entitlement or inevitability was knocked out of you early on.  This is why I never bought into the idealist left, for which everything was an inevitable march to an idealist future, and any setback could be explained by a conspiracy theory (sound familiar in the modern day?). As a student politician, I argued the same; we had to be the best at social welfare, deal with student poverty, and fight the University and Local Government authorities to improve the day-to-day lives of our voters. The ideology and theory of political change were secondary to that primary purpose.  I learnt that forcibly from Mrs E M C Davies, one of the great Labour politicians in Mold, who was also a magistrate.  She sent many of those who voted for her to prison, but she was always fair and made sure their wives and families were looked after during their incarceration.  She also spent her life (and her health) fighting to remove the depravations that gave rise to that crime. Everyone on the council estate she served felt she was one of them. She was only ever known as Mrs E M C Davies, although the inner circle was allowed to call her EMC, and they always waited for permission.   Having decided I had potential as a politician, she took me out for a formal tea.  My mother was nervous, and I didn’t know about Gom Jabbers then, but it was that sort of a moment.  I passed whatever test was being set, and that was when she explained the point in words of one syllable – engage with where they are, never patronise them, realise they have coped with conditions you can’t image, don’t make promises you can’t deliver on and above all engage.

In Wales, the Midlands and the North East, the Labour Party lost that connection. Sending middle-class, well-educated professional politicians to safe seats as representatives allowed neoliberal establishment priorities to take precedence over the needs of their communities during the Blair years. I’m not here to debate if that is right or wrong (although personally, I think it was wrong, and I left the Labour Party during that period); the point is that in that change were sown the seeds that grew into anti-immigrant and neo-fascist ideas gaining roots as a protest against the establishment. In parallel with that, we have a growing young, metropolitan, multi-racial and internationalist group who like to go to rallies and be preached to by the converted. Their interests should be aligned, but they are now at war with each other, and the Little Englander mentality and political opportunism of the right have stepped into that gap. I don’t think they are all happy about exit either, by the way; some of them wanted a narrow loss so they would be seen to be against Europe to gain Conservative party votes for a future leadership election while avoiding the economic and social disaster than any informed person knew Brexit would be.

We live in a fragmented, divided society in Britain these days. Multiple tribes have little insight or understanding of each other, a tendency to desire instant gratification, and a lack of critical capability on all sides, let alone a sense of wider purpose and service.

… to be continued