Dr. Steele, Ph.D.: Complexity is hard to apprehend, and each one of us has a little piece of it. So being able to integrate the perspectives is super important. Dr. Steele, Ph.D.: Welcome to Changing Conversations, the podcast where we bring you insights on how you can harness the power of conversation to make change happen. My name's Katrina, and I'm here with Steve. Hello. Dr. Steele, Ph.D.: And today, we're talking to Zafar Achi. Hello. Dr. Steele, Ph.D.: Welcome. And we'll be talking about dancing with complexity. So a little about Zafar. He has a background working for 34 years as a consultant at McKinsey, and he now works as a coach for individuals and teams, and as a designer of leadership development interventions. So we've invited Zafar to come and talk to us about complexity so that we have a better understanding of what that really means of what that really means of what that really means and then exploring how that might play out in our conversations and making things happen out in the world. So firstly, thank you so much for joining us. It's my pleasure. Really my pleasure. So short disclaimer, as we get going here, I want to start a bit nerdy with a few definitions so that we can get those in place and use them to get to a place that's more specific in terms of our conversations. But there is some language and definitions around complexity and what is a complicated problem, what's a complex problem that it would be helpful for us to know more about. So I will hand that over to you to enlighten us. Very good. There was a period in our history where we believed that with sufficient math, and modeling and computational power, we could solve any problem, that anything would be simulatable, predictable, solvable. And then sometime in the last 50 years, we realized that there's a thing called computational complexity, meaning that there are fundamental underlying phenomena in mathematics that cannot be solved, that will always be unpredictable. And that thing, that work which happened in the law of the company. And that thing, that thing, that thing, that work, which happened a lot at the Santa Fe Institute, popularized a little bit, the idea, or legitimized the idea that not everything is knowable. And from there on, that concept of computational complexity made it legitimate to talk about other forms of complexity, and particularly complexity in social problems, which are at the heart of what we do. as professional leaders or consultants. And a couple of scholars have developed frameworks around this that have become quite well-known. I think one of them that I imagine you have worked with is the difference between technical challenges and adaptive challenges. This is Ron Heifetz's work. Technical challenge is anything that you can solve out there. It doesn't need you to do anything with yourself. You can solve it out there. And adaptive challenge is something where you need to change in order to be able to tackle it. Think of the difference between complicated and complex in the same way. So complicated and complex is a language that has been introduced and made mainstream by David Snowden, a giant in the field of complexity. And complicated is essentially any problem that is predictable and can be solved without changing the humans who are solving them. Complex is a problem that cannot be predicted, cannot ever be solved. And if it is to be made progress on, then the humans engaging with it have somehow to change as well, somehow to change their perception of reality. Does that help? Yes. And I think maybe I could add, when I read, I think it's Ronald Heifetz who puts forward this example, this helped me at least visualize. He talks about people who are sick with cardiological issues. So heart problems. And then he says that the bit where you have heart surgery, that is the technical challenge, or that's the complicated thing that you're going to try to overcome. It's something that has been done many times before. And of course, it's very, very difficult to do, but it's, we kind of, we kind of have an idea of how we might do that. Whereas the recovery process of the patient then getting better, that is the bit where the human has to change and where you, that's the complex bit, that's the adaptive bit where the person has to change themselves. Come to terms with their new health, their new ability, their new fitness. Yes. So I found that quite helpful to demonstrate the difference between. It's a beautiful example. The two, yeah. It actually, it actually applies easily to if you're a leader or a consultant for that sake. We've used that language before that to be a really, really good, you could say space holder or conversation shaper for as a leader or a consultant, you need to be both a surgeon and a therapist in one. That's right. So you need to, you want to be super sharp on your subject matter and it's, you want something who have done, someone who has done it before. On the other hand, you need someone who acknowledges the, the social or the human or the complex elements of, of that change at the same time that, that, that, that can hold those two seemingly opposing energies in, in, in, in, in the, in the same body. That's exactly right. Yeah. Expertise and the human connection, the human touch, the human perspective. Yeah. And so you have been working with change initiatives your entire career. Um, I guess we all working with change our whole life in some way. Um, but having this distinction between complicated and complex, how has that impacted the way that you work with change, the conversations, that you have with change? So first of all, I must confess that the distinction between complex and complicated came in hindsight for me. So I have sort of learned the hard way that deploying technical tools to solve adaptive problems or deploying complicated tools to solve complex problems backfires, just doesn't work. I've heard it the hard way. It's only after the fact that I discovered after I retired from, mainstream consulting that I discovered the distinction that I discovered the distinction. And in retrospect, it made sense. So, um, I started my career as a professional consultant with two beliefs drilled in me. Belief number one is focus on the answer. There is a right answer. You can find the right answer. Belief number two, if you find the right answer, create a plan to reach that destination pointed to by the answer. There is always a plan. You can always get there. I held those two beliefs very tightly for 15 years and it was hard. And when I looked back 15 years into it, there was a lot of waste. There was a lot of situations where these two sets of beliefs did not produce anything that looked like the impact that I would have. Can I, can I, can I just, I'm curious as to whether you agree on this. Uh, um, it's actually, and I think it's, it's an area where consulting is, uh, is the villain in, in some, in some shape and form. And my point here is that if we look at consulting, I think one of the things that many people will feel is that our industry comes with an extreme arrogance. And, and, and, and, and, and, and we have a tendency to come and, you know, sometimes seduce, uh, an organization by, you know, simplifying something or just, you know, uh, making it a technical solution to something and then it's done. And sometimes not really leaving the organization at a truly better place because the people that we've been dealing with weren't growing and they won't more, they were not more capable when we left. So there's something about, I mean, I think I hear you pointing to us having to hold space for the right conversation here and, and not fall into the trap of seducing anyone. That's, that's very true. And, um, I would say that this, um, technical approach to consulting that has eventually bred arrogance was incredibly helpful. when it first came into play, right? Because it really shed a new light on many problems that companies were facing, but we've overused it and we've extended it into realms in which we as consultants weren't really active. We weren't really active in change management in the 1970s and 80s. That came later. But when we became active in change management, we sort of believed there was a right answer. We believed that we could deploy technical approaches. And that's where things started to become more difficult. And the hardest piece to change is the conversation. The hardest piece to change is how we engage with others. It's much harder than to change the framework. I've worked in situations where we've brought new frameworks, complexity friendly frameworks into client situations, but the way we talked about them, the way we engaged with the client was still with the right answer approach. So it's like self-defeating. And whether you, on which patientigans. you often say, Sti, is talking about what's the invitation that they make. The invitation is shut up and listen to what we're going to do, because now I'm going to tell you how we're going to fix this, if I'm going to put it crudely. And I guess I'm being a bit extreme here, but I feel like that happens often, doesn't it, in organizations that we visit? But what's the way out of it then? Because as I hear you, Safa, it's almost as if you're saying that we need a language or vocabulary for how to differentiate between types of problems, like a more granular language for identifying what type of problem is this, because there are fundamentally different tools to address different types of problems, whether they are simple, complex, and so forth. And I would say that most leaders, including myself also, I don't have a solid language in me around differentiating those problems. Does that resonate? That resonates. And there is a little bit of a miracle little bridge that will almost always work, which is to assume that you're talking to whoever you're talking to, be it a client or a family member or a team member, is an intelligent being. And if the problem was as simple as your fixing solution makes it to be, they would have solved it. So start with the assumption that they are making sense of the problem as a complex adaptive challenge. And you want to honor that for a while. You want to, at least until you get the definition of their real problem, honor the possibility that it might be adaptive and complex. And that gives you space to then take the conversation where it needs to go. That was one of the things that was really lit a light bulb among the people who participated to my session today is the speed at which the fixing reflex comes back. The speed at which, even if we set it up as a learning conversation, as an open-ended learning conversation, complex conversation, the instinct to fix is so quick. Yeah. And so you're actually in that conversation, as I hear you, and it points to another podcast we've done, but you're leading with curiosity. Yes. You're literally going into the conversation saying, there's something here that I don't get. Yes. What is that? Yes. And because you're saying there's something here I don't get, but you're also, I think the appreciation that you're talking about is, that's the bit where you're not just curious, you're also being like, you're also being like, you are very intelligent. You've come this far. Somehow we're getting stuck, but let's explore the stuckness in a really kind way. I think that, that makes a difference. Yeah. It's curiosity and compassion. Yes. It's curiosity and compassion together is really like a form of love almost, right? Yes. You really are trying to get into the skin of that individual and see the world the way they see it. I have this question that's coming into my head and it's actually one that your colleague, Jennifer Garvey-Berger, poses in one of her books. And she says, looking at the situation, how is, how is the person opposite you, the hero in this situation? So that's also kind of nice when you're, so imagine then, imagine Steve, you were my leader and I'd come into you with an issue that I'm facing. Um, if you, if we're going to go the technical way, you might just kind of come at me with a solution, you know, oh, Katrina, just, you know, try that or try this. Um, have you thought about that? Um, have you thought about that? But I suppose the difference here is that I would say, here's my issue. And then you would, you would, I guess, let's, what would, what would Steve do? Sit down, explore it with me? Yes. He would, he would try to figure out, so that, that hero becoming practical. So what Steve would do is try to understand what makes this stuck for you. So he would say, in the way you look at this situation, what is the part that is like naughtiest? What's, what's like the hardest part of this? Yes. So that he, he, he can touch into the place of difficulty for you. And if he managed to do this, then you feel seen and heard, you feel appreciated, you feel respected. And he feels elated, delighted to be able to see the world a little bit like you and therefore expand his own perspective. Why is it important when we are taking on complex issues in the world that that bit is there? Because I think for some people it might sound really soft and really like, oh, let's all have a hug after the meeting. But that's, that, that is not just that. And maybe it's not that at all, but why is that loving side important for taking on, I don't know, climate change? Climate change or whatever the big issues that you're taking on. Beautiful question. Beautiful question. A couple of things come to mind. One is in a complex situation, it's like the proverbial elephant. You want as many blind men describing what they see so that you can put the full picture together and know what you're dealing with. And the step that consists in understanding what the other person sees in the elephant is a perspective taking listening step. I really want to see how you see the problem in order for me to get, in order for all of us to get a better understanding of what we're dealing with. You might have to tell us the proverb because I don't think everyone has heard of that one. So there's an elephant and 10 blind men and the 10 blind men are trying to figure out what this animal is. So one of them touches the trunk and he says to the others, this is a snake. And another one touches the tail and he says, this is a rope. And another one touches a leg and says, this is a tree, the trunk of a tree. Another one touches the ear and says, this is a big fan. So each one of them is partially right, but they are collectively wrong. I think. And this is a good analogy for complexity. Complexity is hard to apprehend and each one of us has a little piece of it. So being able to integrate the perspectives is super important. That approach is important. So can I add a perspective here? So one of the things that we're seeing right now is that the world is faced with so many super complex problems. Societal problems are turning into business problems and we have poly crisis and ESG and all kinds of tensions. And that means that there is so much complexity and that means that we as leaders have to acknowledge and embrace that complexity to actually get anywhere. At the same time, we also need to be able to collapse paradoxes. Like when we have a paradoxical problem that is in some sense unsolvable, contradicting, persistent, really like you can fix it, but it'll look at you 10 minutes later and say, now what? And so we need to be able in organizations to collapse those complex problems or paradoxical problems to actually progress. In doing that, you're actually simplifying the world to get going because otherwise you're just paralyzed. You're not energized out of the complexity. How do you avoid if you take in all that complexity in your life or in your organization or in your team that you don't paralyze? What a great question. So in complexity, the way you act or the way you move, a helpful way to think about it is instead of setting a destination, I want to be in Paris by December 25th, you set a direction, which is I want to travel north. 내가은算 세계입니다. And Crane에서 6 eating Boston. do that this way, then if I'm facing a paradox, I don't necessarily collapse it as in it doesn't exist. But I say in this paradox, now in this moment, this particular side, this particular value is more important than the other. So I'm going to take the step this way. And I know that in three days time, I may take a step that way. Like a tiger walking kind of. I drop walking is a great metaphor. Yes. Something like that. So hold a long term direction expressed in terms of more of less of the things that I want, and then take small steps that are broadly headed that way. And for some leaders, that doesn't sound nice. This doesn't sound leaderly. It doesn't sound. Yeah, it's just like it's it doesn't rhyme with the heroic decision maker who comes out. Here's the plan. This is where we go. It like you're saying that we're going in this direction. And guess what, we're going to have a look at it in a month or two, and we might change direction. So, you know, a lot of leaders will feel fundamentally, a lot of discomfort in holding problems in that way. That's right. What do you do to make me comfortable with discomfort? That's why complexity is an adaptive thing. That's why dealing with complexity requires dealing with yourself. It requires becoming aware of your own limitations, becoming comfortable with your own shadows, and working on yourself constantly to become able to make sense of things on their own terms, not on your own terms. Yes. Because when I declare a vision, yes. Because when I declare a vision, and I say, let's march on, I want the world to march to my tune. But the world won't march on your tune. So how can you change yourself so that you can be in tune with the world? It requires that. Yes. Heroic leadership is not suitable for the times we live in. I agree. So just to kind of recap, because these are some big thoughts, but they have a lot of really interesting applications. There is sometimes we need to take a technical approach. We need to make those plans. We need to have Paris as my destination and I'm going there when that is appropriate. When we're in a situation where this has been faced before. People have gone to Paris before. So let's learn from them. So that's kind of a technical approach that you can use for a complicated problem. And then on the other hand side, if we want to look into the more complex realm, then we need to let go of our plans a little bit. We need to set the direction and we need to have a curiosity and a compassion as we sort of embark on that journey. And when we take it down to the level of conversations, I can just feel that that's, you know, in the technical realm, then our conversations will be a little bit more directive, a little bit more solution orientated where, you know, maybe you, Zafra, can come and actually give me a pretty good solution that I can implement fairly fast. Whereas in this... The pace of conversation is staccato. Yes, faster. I want to diverge a little, then converge quickly. I want to put options on the table and choose among options. That's the kind of conversation. And get on with it. And it happens out there. It happens here. It doesn't happen here. Yeah. And then when we're in that complex, interrelated, messy, paradoxical, the world where, you know, people have never done exactly this thing that we're trying to do. Nobody has solved this exact problem for me personally before, for example, either. Then we need to have a conversation that we move away from the staccato and the telling and here's the solution, but to a conversation that is more explorative, where you're asking more questions and trying to understand what's at stake for the person. Exactly right. You're understanding the sense that the person makes of the situation and mirror that back so that the person sees themselves and in the way they make sense. And with that, they see more possibilities. Those are absolutely wonderful conversations. So to me, conversations that are adaptive or complex tend to diverge much longer without the need to converge. They might converge, but the convergence feels like a ripe fruit falling off a tree. It doesn't feel like forced. Now has to come the time of decision. Let's choose. It feels like, oh. There it was. There it was. Just fell off. Thank you so much for this conversation, Zafar, and exploring these topics with us. Thank you for great questions and great observations. As we close the conversation, we always end with what we'll take into the next one. And for me, it's super clear. So I'm just going to start with mine while you guys think about yours. But it's when we go for these, these challenges that are just super messy and it doesn't seem like there's a clear solution, having a curiosity and a compassion. Those are the two sort of keywords that I will, I'll take with me. Yeah, I'm a little bit the same place here. The way you opened it, Zafar, it inspired me a lot. This thing about, being, I mean, inquiring in the beginning into, you know, what is this really? That is actually being helpful at a, with more consciousness than just trying to, you know, fix it. So there was, there was one for me there. Thank you. Thank you. And for me, the, I, I'm lucky to work mostly with clients on the fringes and then coaches. Um, and the reality, um, and the reality, the prevalence of heroic leadership is something that I don't touch on a daily basis. And this conversation reminded me how much work we need to do in order to shift the prevalent paradigm about what leadership is. That's still work that needs to happen. And it's for all of us to do. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.