Bring back hanging out

This is written on the back of the longest recreational break I have had since I left school in the 1960’s. It all began with a week on a canal boat, which was followed by a friend’s 60^th birthday party, then two weddings on the Pacific coast of North America a fortnight apart and, after a further week, a cousin’s 40^th wedding anniversary. There was even a sort of symmetry about it all – two celebrations for oldies flanking two celebrations for the up and coming generation with a subconscious subtext that relates to passing on a baton of some sort. We, of the post war, baby boomer generation may not have resolved the political, economic and social issues of our times but we have been able to watch our children emerge into a social network of family and friends. In a sense they seem to be better at it than we were, certainly more active as this particular community of cousins has established a lively ‘in your Facebook’ relationship.

Why is this important? Here follows a digression rather than a direct answer. Though each of these celebrations involved an event on a particular day, they were each the focus of concerted involvement of family and friends for days before and after the event. Circumstances, principally being on holiday, allowed us to be involved in these pre- and after-shock happenings which ranged from a visit to the manicurist (for some reason blokes didn’t get to do this) through meals, cycle rides, walks to simply hanging out together.

Now hanging out is a term that I associate with teenagers with nothing better to do, so the experience of ‘whole family hanging out’, as conceptualised by American friends was a novelty to me. It needed to be approached with all sorts of British caution and reserve -‘we don’t want to intrude’, ‘they will need family time’ and so on. We were a little slow to allow our friends to know their own minds and to accept their invitation as an invitation.

Why was the experience something of a revelation to me? Perhaps because in recent years I have been far more willing and able to allocate time to a purpose than purpose to a time. By that I mean that the purposes I espoused were largely limited and specific, with some measurable outcome in prospect. This is not to say that I am not aware of the larger purposes in life and that I do not pay lip service to them; however, my behaviour strongly suggests that I prioritise the specific: reading a book, cutting the grass, even writing a blog. This is strange when the outcome I count as most rewarding is that each of our children not only has an established network of friends but that they are firmly established in their community of cousins.

Returning to the question, why is this important? a couple of words that reflect past experience in the pharmaceutical industry come to mind: verification and validation. Verification confirms my identity, that I am who I am and verification has the greatest authority when it is provided by the family from which I come. As a parent it is reassuring to know that your children’s identity will be verified for them long after I am gone by as wide a community as is possible. Verification is important to us all but is often overlooked. Validation on the other hand is more immediately recognised as a need; it affirms our value and can come from any community of friends or family.

Communities are created by building relationships; relationships are built over time and it seems to me that hanging out is all about allocating the purpose of building relationships to a time, whether it be an hour or an afternoon or a week. If this is something we did in our teens, my message to myself is, “Bring back hanging out”.

Old insight, fresh perspective?

When Ralph Stacey looks at the complexity matrix (seen here being used by the medical profession) he drew up some years ago he could be forgiven for feeling a glow of satisfaction. For him it is perhaps ‘old hat’ but for many of the rest of us his matrix provides a helpful fresh perspective on the confusing economic, financial and political climate in which we find ourselves. His matrix suggests that in situations where we are far from agreement and far from certainty having recourse to rational decision making (and this I would qualify to mean linear rational thinking), political decision making or judgement based decision making will not necessarily be very effective. Brenda Zimmerman of York University, Toronto on whose analysis the above reference is based acknowledges that traditional management teaching has concentrated on decision making where (linear) reasoning, politics and judgement can be effective, which focus has left a gap in management teaching. This raises a couple of questions: how useful could the Stacey matrix be in the prevailing circumstances – which can well be described as far from certain and far from agreement? How aware are the current business leaders of this material, given that many of them will have completed their formal education before it was published?

In Stacey’s matrix this region (far from certainty and far from agreement) is divided into two zones, the zone of complexity and the zone of chaos. With reference to the zone of chaos, Zimmerman says, with no little understatement, this is a region ‘… that organizations should avoid as much as possible.’ So, looking on the bright side, let’s assume that we are in the zone of complexity. If traditional management tools are not necessarily effective in this region, what tools are there that we can use?

Some strategic thinkers are looking to see what complexity science can offer in the military sphere and this book by James Moffat serves well as a starting point: Complexity Science and Network Centric Warfare. In amongst the non linear maths there is a wealth of analytical thinking that lays down a foundation for the application of complexity science on which to build models of operations in what is described as the information age.

I don’t want to say more about complexity science here apart from commenting that its use in this context is to help break the mould of traditional command and control structures and to create the philosophical and intellectual framework for de-centralised command and control. Hold the idea of using complexity science in this way while we explore another line of thought.

A recent copy of the Economist includes a special report on the middle class, particularly in emerging markets (Burgeoning Burgeoisie, Economist, 14th February 2009 – to see the link may require a subscription). There is an interesting discussion on who or what are the middle classes but two particular correlations stand out; one between the middle class and economic growth and the other between the middle class and democracy. As the report recognises the former case is easier to make and even it is unlikely to continue without interruption through a recession. Daaron Acemoglu of the Massachussetts Institute of Technology is quoted as attributing the importance of the middle class to growth in the emerging markets to the fact that “… they are more committed than the elite to a mixed, competitive economy.” This is related in the Economist report to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; I suspect that account also needs to be taken of an economy of exclusivity alongside the economy of wealth.  The former is a zero sum economy while the latter is not; as an emerging middle class starts out with little to lose in either economy it does not have to balance a loss of exclusivity against any gains in wealth. This brings us back to complexity science because it provides one of the perspectives for understanding the dynamics of non zero sum economics as is very ably expounded by Eric Beinhocker in his book, The Origin of Wealth.

What puzzles me in the current climate is that with all the scholarship that has gone into complexity science over the past 20 years I am not hearing more reference to its use in responding to the current uncertainties. Perhaps I am listening at the wrong windows; I hope so because I find much to attract me in the philosophical underpinnings of complexity science and much that I would like to investigate as a means of addresssing the difficulties that present themselves to me.

James Moffat acknowledges the role of the Santa Fe Institute in the early development of this field of multidisciplinary research and the institute provides a treasure trove of relevant expertise and reference material. Ralph Stacey is professor at University of Hertfordshire and was recently interviewed here.