The more ‘knowledgeable’ I get the more I seemingly abandon the idea of certainty. Is there anything that is 100% certain? It would be possible to ask the opposite question (0% certain) but that gets into a different rabbit hole about how we can ‘identify’ what we don’t know. My early blogging, before I started this site, was focussed mainly on systems thinking as applied to my area of work – this is a bit of a return to that type of topic.
It has been triggered by a discussion on LinkedIn about the “nature” of emergence – specifically the question asked was “What is your perspective on Emergence?” – and as you might expect a lively discussion has emerged – and yes, that was a very deliberate illustration of the self referential nature of the question.
There is much that could be written around that subject, but for this post I intend to concentrate not on the question itself, but on the nature of the answers.
It quickly became clear that the question triggered a wide range of mental models of what is meant by the term emergence. What was also clear was that – for some contributors – this was a good opportunity to hop on their personal hobby horse and espouse a very particular viewpoint. Perhaps I was guilty of that as well…
The result of this was, perhaps, a slightly disjointed discussion – helped by the facilitator keeping things on track and summarising what had been said so that everyone had the same view of that. It is clear – to me at least – that there is an element of impossibility attached to any attempt to “define” terms such as “system”, “emergence” or (especially) “systems thinking”. This makes it very difficult territory for some.
I am quite content to allow everything to be quite loose – whilst at the same time avoiding the “Humpty Dumpty” effect of :
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less’.
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’
Unfortunately, there are some words (and both emergence and systems are in this category) where there are already so many shades of meaning that it is difficult not to sympathise with Alice. As a result of that – the fact that everyone has a differently nuanced understanding – I think that you have to be very understanding in any discussion. It is too easy to jump on a statement that grates with your own ideas – if those ideas are too fixed.
Given that EVERY communication involves a number of steps (and this is nothing new – I am merely outlining other’s ideas here) including the transmitter “imagining” something, then transforming that imagination into words, then saying the words (more – or less – successfully) which are heard by the receiver (or seen if it is written text…) who transforms those words into an image which is then analysed in some way (or perhaps is simply “understood” without any analysis) is a process littered with barriers to understanding.
These steps are predicated – in the first instance – on there being a common language between transmitter and recipient. If not, then more steps are required to perform the translation. All of this adds up to a situation that is no unlike the game “chinese whispers”. The chances that the model in the mind of the recipient matches that which started the journey in the mind of the transmitter is minimal – even if there is a concerted effort to minimise error.
Under ‘normal’ circumstances all of this is complicated further by the fact that the actual act of transmission is subject to information loss – can be for many reasons but the least obvious one to spot is simply that the receiver is not “trying” hard enough to get the right message. How often have you been involved in an argument where the parties are talking at cross purposes – talking past each other – hearing what they ‘expect’ to hear and responding with no regard to what was really said.
Awareness of all of this is of prime importance – we all KNOW that at times it is difficult to make yourself understood – we tend to (conveniently?) forget about that when we accept something we have written or said and “assume” that it will be correctly interpreted by the listener – we forget that the listener brings a whole lot of baggage with them to the exchange.
It can be that we have used words that are either unfamiliar, or used in a ‘different’ way – it could be that the listener is in the ‘wrong’ mood to properly interpret what we say. There are numerous reasons why the exchange may not be as crystal clear as we imagine.
That is where it is important to get feedback in some form or other.
Having ‘transmitted’ a message we need to know that it has been received; that it was complete when received; that the receiver could process it; what the receiver’s reaction to it was. A whole host of things associated with “learning” how effective the communication was. A lack of feedback on these things means that it rapidly becomes very difficult to communicate effectively.
There is only so long that a one sided communication can continue to be relevant, since the transmitter’s “situation awareness” rapidly gets out of date – their local model only gets updated by suppositions, guesses and randomness. That results in an increased likelihood that the communication will do more harm than good – and it tends towards the certainty that any “good” that does come from it will be purely down to chance.
There are some exceptions to this – but for the most part it will require a large degree of good fortune – not to mention limitless perseverance – to attain any useful result. There are, I guess, situations where this is almost accepted as being “part of the job” – I could imagine that those responsible for dealing with people who are suffering from PTSD will almost every time find that there is resistance to giving ‘relevant’ feedback.
Note that the ‘relevant’ part of this is important – there may be plenty of feedback – just that it doesn’t inform anyone about the important aspects of the situation. The PTSD sufferer will talk endlessly about unrelated parts of their life – but will ignore/suppress/avoid the causes of their problems.
Its interesting (to me at least!!) that this entry in my blog has taken off at a bit of a tangent – initially I was talking about how communication failed because of “misunderstandings” which are down to the language used. Latterly – in exploring issues surrounding communication ‘problems’ – I have veered off to situations where only one party is communicating – some sort of monologue I guess. In truth these are not so very different. – the first case often being a sort of merging of two simultaneous (and opposing) instances of the second case – two parties talking (in monologue fashion) whilst ‘pretending’ to be in dialogue.
This is now long enough, however the theme will no doubt be revisited as it would seem that I haven’t yet reached the end of the story.