sense-making

I recently heard someone use this metaphor for the first time, and found it really interesting. 

In essense, spiders and starfish may look alike, both being multi-legged creatures, but upon investigation prove to be very different.  Cut a leg off a spider, and you get a slightly disabled seven-legged (less effective) creature; cut off its head and you have a dead spider. In contrast, if you cut off the arm of a starfish, it will grow a new one. Even more amazing, but the severed arm can grow an entirely new body.  So, where injury disables on kills a spider, it actually allows a starfish to replicate itself.  The reason why starfish are able to do this is because unlike spiders, they are decentralized; every major organ is replicated across each arm.

Normally, this metaphor is used to describe two different organisational structures.  Hierarchical Spider organisations, have a central command and control (head), and dependent parts (legs). Although relatively strong, it is easy to devise a strategy for attacking and destroying a Spider; survival is impossible without a head.  In contrast, Starfish organisations, on the other hand, have limited central command and control. Typically they have an inspirational leader (or catalyst), and a decentralized, adaptive, organizational structure that is often difficult to define. Because of this, despite a superficial resemblance to a spider, each "leg" is mostly autonomous. So, just like in nature, when a starfish organisation loses a leg, the base will regenerate the leg, and the leg can grow into a new starfish.

I want to suggest that this is also an excellent metaphor for the nature of problems, and making sense of them.  Here's why ... 

Towards the end of 2008 we partnered with Deloitte Consulting on a research project aimed at the field of mine safety. We are painfully aware of how mine safety needs to improve, especially within the South African deep level mining context. Nicolaas Herholdt approached us to partner with him in developing a Point of View that uncovers new and important insights into mine safety that might assist in addressing the way in which safety statistics have plateaued.

The reality is that despite all the focus and attention the media and companies are giving to mine safety, deaths still occur - the improvements have stagnated - and it is clear that we are missing out on something.

We used our narrative research approach and applied the Cynefin Sense-Making Framework to make sense of the results. In general, the research identifies a clear gap between the current initiatives in place and the nature of the problems we are facing. 

Feel free to download the Point of View below or by clicking here. Read, it, discuss it, share it and then contact us for more information.

Kudos to Rob Hooper for some awesome depictions of stories gathered in the process!

Leon from Occam's Donkey alerted me to an article that was published in a recent Scientific American on the impact that the language leaders use when referring to terrorism has on the perception of the general population.   For example, a metaphor of "law enforcement" triggers very different responses than a "war" metaphor.

The article starts with the sentence "How we characterise an issue affects how we think about it".  This is perfectly illustrated by typical responses to occupational safety incidents.  Because people tend to classify these as ordered or simple problems, they apply ordered solutions i.e.  they create rules. 

The Cynefin Sense-making framework is a model we use very often to explain the use of business narrative and complexity in organisations.  I came across this great explanation of it by Shawn Callahan from Anecdote in Australia on the Cognitive Edge guest blog. 

One of the phrases Dave Snowden uses to describe Cognitive Edge and the use of complexity theory in organisations is 'the new simplicity'.  During our course last week, I reflected on this with some of the participants.