Last article of the series on Cynefin, briefly addressing 3 key concepts: exaptation, coherence and co-evolution.
Exaptation
Using something designed for one reason and using it for an entirely different purpose.
Exaptation or "Management for serendipity" is described by an example:
- During the Bangkok floods (predictable 3-4 days in advance), a person used the plastic bag of a large piece of furniture to put his car inside and sealed the end of it to prevent it from being destroyed by the rising waters. Now in Bangkok, each garage has a plastic bag made especially for the occasion and this has created a real industry.
He draws a parallel with Apple, which he describes as the masters of exaptation. Indeed, they don't invent that much but rather find completely different uses than what others have invented for other purposes.
Exaptation is a much more effective strategy for innovation than adaptation because it produces faster change.
It would therefore be interesting to create moments of exaptation in the world of software development through the interaction of software with humans, an essential interaction to generate new or unexpected uses from existing capacities: we could then speak of strategic development. .
This implies that the architecture must also be designed to allow exaptation with good scaffolding, good granularity of objects and smaller elements interacting freely in networked structures.
We should then stop thinking of software development as an industrial process (a linear concept) but rather as a provision based on service, an evolutionary process. The fact is that many Lean Agile methods borrow too much from the industrial world and create linear processes with no real adaptability.
Dave jokingly points out that taking a linear process and drawing it in a circle, or doing it faster doesn't make it less linear!
Nonlinearity requires parallelism and a completely different approach.
Coherence
Consistency is halfway between “we know it's true” and “it's a mystery”.
The example taken to describe this concept is: the spider web early in the morning. We can still see consistent patterns but they are no longer perfect.
Indeed, we often have to make decisions based on evidence that is consistent and not absolute. It is a key concept for example in user requirements because if we have consistency then we experiment and we prototype; if I don't have one, I don't.
Co-evolution
Co-evolution is the formation of patterns during the interaction between one element and another. Once a pattern is formed, there is no going back.
The example taken to describe this concept is the relationship with adolescents:
It's not Ihen your child reaches the age of 15 you must tell yourself that you should have taught him discipline 10 years earlier, it's too late!
You might say to yourself: my strategy for raising my child didn't work, I'm going to call McKinsey to do a strategic audit and we're going to identify our co-abilities. On this basis we will produce a series of clear objectives and a communication plan so that everything between us goes better.
Do you think this works? How can you imagine it being otherwise in companies?
The reality is that we are always dealing with people's present and past perceptions.
We then always deal with the consequences of the multiple co-evolutions of the past.
Conclusion
The 3 notions discussed in this last article make a lot of sense to me in our changes in thought patterns.
Indeed, theexaptation does not seek to reinvent everything but on the contrary, it is based on what we know and opens up a different field of action. In the end, this is what we see a lot today, whether in the fields of technological innovation but also cultural (music, films, etc.): there are few real new ideas but many nuances in what Already exists.
There consistency allows us to keep in mind that as human beings, we do not need to analyze all the information we have to make a decision. Moreover, when we try (to attempt zero risk), we generate behaviors of paralysis of action. Thus, seeking consistency is a basis for being able to make an informed decision and discover as you go, little by little, if this path is the right one.
Finally, the co-evolution is the concept behind the flexible constraints of complex systems. This is for me one of the great challenges of current management systems to allow the maintenance of a coherence of corporate identity and the development of employees in their mission.
References
- Making Sense of complexity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6RfqmTZejU
- Strategic Understanding with Prof. Dave Snowden: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFi9mIlp2NY
- Think new, Act new: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8SayvnfQi0
