Dave Pollard on Dave Snowden

link to website

Dave Pollard "...began to realize that appreciating enterprises, organizations and systems as (mostly) complex rather than merely complicated is more than just a basis for re-framing business methodologies, it is a completely different way of sensing and dealing with the world. It changes everything. Here are just a few of the extraordinary paradigm shifts that this reframing provokes:

Complicated World VS
Complex World

Assumption of order ("research this to find out if there's a market for it"
Realization of unorder ("let's explore what might happen if we did this")

Importance of aggressiveness and charisma to "lead the change"
Importance of collaboration and humility to participate in the evolution

Actions driven by authority-based direction
Actions based on learnings from conversations, consensus and freedom to act bounded by personal responsibility

Top-down hierarchical communication and knowledge transfer
Peer-to-peer (networked) communication and knowledge transfer..."

At an Education.au seminar I came across a mention of David Snowden and his notions of social complexity and did a little hunting, then this turned up from Dave Pollard. The article includes a table contrasting a complicated world with a complex one. The Cynefin Centre can be found at http://www.cynefin.net/