CHAPTER 1

WHY SO UNCERTAIN?

It is the bottom of the ninth; the game clock ticks to zero; the goalie has aweak knee; the star forward has five fouls; and the soprano just missed hercue. It is your move; you have the puck. What do you do? What game areyou playing and how can you win? This may sound like the punch line of anightmare, but for many of us it feels more like Tuesday at the office. We oftenfind ourselves in unfamiliar territory, working toward shifting goals, with colleagueswho seem to be from another universe. Today, it is sometimes hard totell who works for whom. Relationships are shaped by inconsistent and oftenconfusing cultural, social, emotional, and business practices. We are neverquite sure what to expect or how (and by whom) our success would be judged.It is increasingly difficult to make sense of complex and uncertain patterns inorganizations. There are questions about goals, rules, equipment, and skillsthat separate winners from losers. Relationships that might have held overthe long haul are challenged by changing expectations and loyalties. Careersdo not follow predictable, predetermined patterns. Economic indicators areconfusing even to the experts. All of us have trouble making sense of the gamewe are playing and figuring out what we have to do to win.

The Infinite Game

What rules prove to be constant in your day-to-day experience at work and athome? If you are anything like our clients or like us, you live and work in anenvironment where new rules are written and old ones are broken every day.James Carse saw the emerging complexity of the world back in the 1980s. Hewrote a lovely little book called Finite and Infinite Games to distinguish predictable,closed-system games from the ones that were open and unpredictable.Traditionally, finite games have shaped our experience and our success.

In a finite game, it is easy to make sense. Everyone agrees on the goal; therules are known; and the field of play has clear boundaries. Baseball, football,and bridge are examples of finite games. At one time in the not-so-distantpast, we expected careers, marriages, parenthood, education, and citizenshipto be finite games. When everyone agrees on the rules, and the consequencesof our actions are undeniable, responsible people plan for what they want,take steps to achieve it, and enjoy the fruits of their labor. We know what ittakes to make sense in a finite game.

Most of us realize that we are playing a very different game. We are playingan infinite game in which the boundaries are unclear or nonexistent, thescorecard is hidden, and the goal is not to win but to keep the game in play.There are still rules, but the rules can change without notice. There are stillplans and playbooks, but many games are going on at the same time, andthe winning plans can seem contradictory. There are still partners and opponents,but it is hard to know who is who, and besides that, the "who is who"changes unexpectedly.

Every day, the newspaper is full of examples of unexpected and sometimesunknowable developments. The mortgage market tanks, an Interstate bridgeacross the Mississippi River collapses, youth in London turn into lawlessmobs, earthquakes hit Washington, D.C., and a tsunami devastates Japan.

In such complex and unpredictable environments, important factors thatshape the future are unknowable. Social, economic, climactic, and politicalchanges erupt without warning. We can plan, but we expect our plans to goawry. We can work toward our goals, but we understand that our work may bein vain. We experience unintended consequences that too often punish whatshould be rewarded and reward what should be punished. We need new waysto make sense in complex organizations. As individuals and organizations, weneed the capacity to adapt to the unexpected. We need adaptive action.

Every day, forces we do not control reshape the landscapes of life in thetwenty-first century. Not only are the rules of the game of life changing, butthe game itself is being transformed. Not only are we playing a different game,but we are called on to play many games at the same time. Not only are weplaying many games, no one knows who will get prizes in the end, and forwhat. It's your move. Life is uncertain. What do you do?

Economic foundations sit on quicksand of derived values and float onbubbles of speculation. Would it be possible to see, understand, and respondto economic turmoil in ways that reduced risk and increase value for us andour organizations?

Cultural and national loyalties shift too quickly or lock in too tightly forcivil stability to be sustained. Might we see early signals of dissatisfaction sowe could understand and influence the public discourse toward peaceful andproductive dialogue?

Technology moves from imagination to reality to obsolescence at breathtakingspeed. Can we consumers, producers, suppliers, and service providersdevelop the capacity to keep up with the pace of technical change?

Massive, ubiquitous, and direct communications contribute to both intractablestability and incomprehensible disruption. Can we read the landscapeand establish media and messages that support the patterns we chooseto reinforce?

Local climactic conditions change more quickly and more unpredictablythan farmers, multinational corporations, or emergency services can manageto respond to. Can we collect data from around the world, consider it rationallyand openly, and take collective action for the good of people and theplanet?

These are the kinds of questions that shape our ability to thrive—perhapseven to survive—in the uncertain world of the future. As individuals, we facesimilar challenges in personal development, home, and health. As communitymembers, such challenges appear in threats of violence and opportunities forcollaborative action. At work, our abilities to manage planning, marketing,human resources, and supply chains all depend on the ability to see, understand,and influence emerging change in complex environments.

We don't think these problems are beyond human intervention. We believethat humans can make sense of patterns in a fast-changing environment andbuild the adaptive capacity they need to thrive in such volatile uncertainty.

We are living and working in a world—indeed in multiple worlds—thatare changing before our very eyes. This massive disruption is no secret. Everyscholarly and practical discipline has tried to describe how these fundamentalchanges affect decision making and action. In our work, we engage withpeople from many sectors: educators, public health professionals, politicians,bureaucrats, military strategists, leaders, health care professionals, technologygurus, industry giants, mechanical engineers, entrepreneurs, productdevelopers, middle managers, academic researchers, funders, and grantees.The particular challenges faced by each of these people are unique. They workwith different resources, conceptual and practical tools, places and times, andshares of the power picture. Still, they have one thing in common: they andtheir organizations all get stuck trying to deal with uncertainty. They struggleto understand and adapt to the ever-changing rules of the game.

Our research and practice, our personal and professional lives point toAdaptive Action as a path through these uncharted territories.

Our Infinite Journey

We are sisters, Royce Jan Holladay and Glenda Kay Holladay Eoyang, so ourshared journey and our infinite game started decades ago. Our parents werein the school business in the Texas Panhandle. Daddy coached high schoolfootball, Mama directed plays, and both taught whatever was needed in ruralclassrooms in the High Plains. That environment introduced us to infinitegames early in our lives. The flat horizon and sparse vegetation introduced usto unbounded spaces on the ground and in the sky, so we became accustomedto seeing and thinking about the unbounded and far-reaching nature of the"big picture."

As a successful football coach, our father was in high demand and movedhis family every year or two from one school to another that was larger, ormore committed to the game, or more prosperous, or any combination of thethree. We became pretty good at learning the rules of a new community, andplaying in ways that always continued the game.

Sitting in the back of the high school auditorium watching play practices,we learned the words and characters of the classics before many of the playersdid. The theater, and its ability to transcend reality, was part of our daily life.Our parents read, so we read. Our parents talked and wondered, so we didtoo. Our family tradition in the United Methodist Church instilled in us alove of singing, a taste for reasoned argument, and a commitment to the commongood. Before we knew anything else, we lived an infinite game.

In late adolescence our paths parted for a time. Royce moved toward thestudy of education, teaching, and school administration. Glenda studied historyand philosophy of science and practiced technical training and entrepreneurship.Royce's path took her to North Carolina, Washington State, andNew York City. Glenda's led to New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Minnesota. Holidaysalways brought us together with family to celebrate and reminisce, but inthe late 1980s something else drew us together. It was a powerful idea, and ithas unfolded over time into the work that generates this book.

Our shared inquiry began over holidays, after we would put the husbandsand kids to bed. Leslie (a third sister and literacy professor, researcher, andscholar) would join us as we all shared what we had learned from our eclecticreading and diverse practice. The fourth Holladay daughter, JoTisa, spent herenergy those days with her own young daughters and has joined our inquiriesin recent years. Our questions in those early years ranged far and wide. Whatlies between positivism and postmodernism? How does one stand in inquirywhile taking action? What does it mean to know, in the realm of the unknowable?How can an individual's actions both influence and be influenced by theactions of a group? What might a theory look like that matched our practiceas master teachers and leaders? What mediates between total randomness andcomplete control? What are the conditions that influence the path, speed, andresults of self-organizing processes? How can we see in ways that are powerful,explain in ways that are compelling, and act with courage and creativity?How can we make sense of uncertainty in organizations? What is AdaptiveAction?

In all its various incarnations, the idea at the heart of those conversationswas about how to thrive in environments that demand action in spite of uncertainty.The question was how to work in local contexts and shape systemicchange. The challenge was to work ethically and responsibly in circumstanceswhere outcomes were unknowable. The driving desire was to play the infinitegame and help others do the same thing.

By the time the idea found us, it had numerous and remarkably diverseroots. The door was opened for us by James Gleick and his Chaos: Makinga New Science. He introduced the sciences and the scientists of a naturalworld shaped by unpredictability and complexity. Behind the door we foundan emerging interdisciplinary tradition that was developing new theory andmethod at the edge of the knowable. Over the decades, various parts of thisfield have emerged under many names, including chaos theory, nonlinear dynamics,and complexity science. Around the world, people have found waysto codify and explain this world at the edge of traditional sciences and mathematics.Ilya Prigogine, Stuart Kauffman, John Holland, Per Bak, MurrayGell-Mann, Ian Stewart, and Jack Cohen were all writers who influencedour early thinking and writing. Management theorists through the years haveabsorbed complexity ideas into practical applications. Ralph Stacey, KevinDooley, Jeff Goldstein, Dave Snowden, Brenda Zimmerman, and MargaretWheatley have seen leadership and management through a complexitylens and shared their perspectives with others. Our work has benefited fromtheir explorations and from rich dialogue among us as all our work evolved.

From a slightly different perspective, our thought and practice have beeninfluenced by the historical conversation around systems theory. In complexenvironments, in infinite games, there is no stable, permanent, reliableboundary to define reality. The only way to think about the world is to thinkabout systems—parts in relationship, forming wholes. Ludwig Von Bertalanffyopened the world of general systems theory, and people such as WernerUlrich, Gerald Midgley, Paulo Freire, and Jurgen Habermas movedthe conversation into meaning making and action in human systems. PeterSenge has led a movement to take systems thinking into action. Bob Williamsapplied a variety of systems approaches to program evaluation. All ofthese have been part of our ongoing inquiry and conversation.

A third thread in our emerging tapestry has been research and practicein the field of cognition and education. We learned very early that learningquickly and well was an essential success strategy. As we became conscious ofour commitment to adaptation and to Adaptive Action, we relied heavily onthose who framed educational theory and practice. Our conversations integratedGlenda's work in history and philosophy of science, Royce's in educationalreform, Leslie's in literacy and teacher research. A question would arisein one and be addressed in another throughout the years of our shared inquiry.

Practical application and emerging praxis also informed our work. At thesame time we were exploring theories from various sources, we continued todevelop in our professions. Each of us, in our own way, engaged with peopleevery day. We influenced and were influenced by people who stood on thefront lines of Adaptive Action. In our various roles, we engaged with leadersin industry and government, educational professionals, community members,researchers and academics, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, and front-line supervisors.In all of those contexts, we saw people who faced unpredictablecomplexity and uncertainty, who made meaning of what they saw, and whotook action to influence the emergent patterns around them. We drew insightsfrom them every day. In them we also saw the urgency of our effortsto improve the theory and practice of adaptive capacity. Many were adaptingwell, but unconsciously. Others were failing in their attempts at adaptation.All were frustrated and sometimes frightened by their inability to make senseof what they saw and the inevitable demand for adaptation that often overwhelmedthe ability to imagine it.

This book is written for them and for you, if you find yourself stuck inthe same struggle. In human systems dynamics (HSD) we have integrated thelearning from across our diverse theories and practices. The result is a collectionof simple and powerful ways to make sense of uncertainty and overcomethe challenges of today's infinite game. We offer models and methodsto generate creative options for action in response to unknown and unknowablechallenges. And we advocate for action as a way to understand and influencepatterns that leave us stuck in times of radical change. We hope to helpthem and you develop the adaptive capacity to see, understand, and influencechange in your own complex human systems.

What Lies Ahead?

The goal of this book is to help you make sense of the uncertainty around youand build adaptive capacity to engage with the self-organizing dynamics of complexadaptive human systems. We know that you face challenges of uncertaintyand change today, and we anticipate that those challenges will only increasein the future. Our experience and the experiences of our clients and studentshave convinced us that what we share here will help you adapt to change as itemerges around you. The models, methods, and concepts in this book will helpyou see patterns as they emerge in real time. They will help you make senseof what you and others see. They will help you explore options for action andchoose wisely in the face of overwhelming uncertainty. At least that is our goal.

Part I, "What Causes Uncertainty? What Can You Do About It?" states thecase for why this book is important in the infinite game required to sustainand thrive in today's complex landscape.

Chapter 1, "Why So Uncertain?" describes the conditions that generatecomplexity for organizations and explains why and how engaging in an infinitegame is the only viable option.

Chapter 2, "What Can You Do?" introduces the Adaptive Action model,describes how it emerged over time, and reveals its usefulness across a widespectrum of challenges and opportunities.

(Continues...)