Posts Tagged ‘uncertainty’
Douglas Cardinal and Profound Change
Marilyn Herasymowych
Henry and I have always been fascinated with change, specifically with the kind of change that is profound and transformational. In his book, The Dance of Change, Peter Senge defines profound change as “…literally moving toward the fundamental. In profound change there is learning. The organization doesn’t just do something new; it builds its capacity for doing things in a new way – indeed, it builds capacity for ongoing change. … It is not enough to change strategies, structures, and systems, unless the thinking that produced those strategies, structures, and systems also changes (p. 15).” By the late 1990s we had experienced just how hard it was to create the conditions for profound change to occur, and to hold those conditions in place so that the change could be sustained.
On November 6, 1999, we were facilitating an action learning seminar in Ottawa, and were delighted to hear that Douglas Cardinal, a famous Canadian architect, would be the guest speaker in the evening. We had just spent the day with leaders, showing them how action learning is a process that creates profound change, but requires discipline and rules or controls to work. That evening, to our surprise, Douglas Cardinal would support what we had said with his own experience in creating a form of architecture that was itself a profound change. But, it wouldn’t be until I had had two cancer diagnoses that I would reconnect in a much more personal way with what he told us that evening in Ottawa.
In the mid 1960s, Cardinal saw the future in architecture. It was the computer – specifically the computational power of computers. In order for him to continue using his organic curvilinear designs on a larger scale, he would need the help of software that was not yet invented, software that Cardinal himself would help to develop and then beta test, software called computer-aided drafting and design or CADD for short. Cardinal would need one more thing. He would need his architectural and engineering staff to embrace this new way of working.
But his staff did not easily accept this change. They were far too comfortable with their drafting tables and pencils. So, Cardinal removed all of the drafting tables from their offices and broke all their pencils. It was like Cortez burning all of his ships. There would be no way back to the way it was.
Within 10 months of each other, I was diagnosed with two advanced and incurable cancers, both totally unrelated to each other, and both so traumatizing that it would change absolutely everything. Like Cortez, these cancers would burn all of my ships, and like Cardinal they would break all of my pencils. Within days of the first diagnosis, the tumour would almost kill me. The treatment for this cancer would drop a nuclear bomb on my life, creating a landscape with little hope for recovery. The second cancer would nail the coffin shut on what my life used to be. My pencils were now well and truly broken. There was no way back to the way it was.
But like Cardinal’s staff, I would not easily accept my new situation. I would stubbornly hold on to everything I thought my life was supposed to be, including how it was supposed to be after cancer treatment. I would not be swayed from this expectation. I didn’t care that my pencils were broken. I would mend them and life would return to normal. I would get my old life back, and that was it. Even with the death threat of a second cancer diagnosis, I struggled to accept that my life had now changed forever. I knew that acceptance was my only way out of the nuclear wasteland that was now my life, but I just couldn’t go there. Acceptance would require a type of faith that only saints grapple with, and I was not a saint.
Like Cardinal, who never accepted his lot as an architect to build the same old boxes that every other architect seemed to build, I have never accepted myself as a cancer survivor. I don’t want to just survive cancer. I want much more, but what that more now means is still a mystery. Like Cardinal, wanting no boundaries to his dream of building impressive organic buildings, I want a life worth living, regardless of whether or not I survive either of these two diagnoses. And like Cardinal, the software of this new life has not been written yet. I would not only have to write this new software, I would also have to beta-test it, one day at a time.
Today, each day is a struggle to live without my drafting table and with broken pencils. I still wake each morning, believing, for just a moment, that during the night my broken pencils have been mended, and my life is as it was. But then the effort of getting out of bed reminds me that this is not so. Although I still live with my broken pencils, my new future is not about living amongst the wreckage. When cancer broke all of my pencils, surviving was all that I had left. Now I want a life. What that looks like is yet to unfold for me.
Linear and Non-Linear Thinking
Marilyn Herasymowych
From a linear perspective, there is only one truth. We can know it, and thus we act as if it is true. If something tells us that our truth is not true, we easily deflect this by saying that whatever is happening is the problem, not our truth. We easily believe that the stories we tell about the patterns we live are accurate reflections of reality. We believe we know what we need to know about the system, so we operate as if we know enough. We believe that the rules are fixed, and that there is only one way to work within the system, and we must follow that one way.
I knew I had strong linear thinking tendencies, but never realized just how strong they were. My experience with cancer taught me just how deeply linear thinking was ingrained in my ways of operating. I was shell-shocked and deeply wounded by five months of chemo; now I was in “recovery”, a hopeful place, a place of return. I was convinced that I would now regain my ability to think clearly once again, to walk and run and ride my bike, to visit with friends and family, and to go out for evening events like the ballet. I would be myself again. That’s what recovery meant to me. All I needed to do was to figure out when recovery officially started. Then I would be on my way back to health and to work. My last chemo was on July 14, 2009. Add three weeks for the chemo to do its thing. Recovery would start on August 4, 2009. Instead of feeling sicker and sicker, I would now be feeling better and better. That’s what my oncologist told me would happen, so that’s what I expected.
You can hear the linear thinking in my plans to return to normal. There is a normal life that I have, and I will return to it. I even had a time frame as to when this return to normal would start – August 4, 2009. I recall talking with my oncologist and saying I’ll be back at work by October 2009. This was my truth, and to me this was the only truth. But, like everything else in my cancer experience, my recovery would prove to be the exception to the rule.
From a non-linear perspective, truth is an emergent and dynamic property of a system. We cannot know truth, because stories and narratives on which truth rests are socially constructed. The stories we tell about the patterns we live create relational expectations, possibilities, and constraints. We appreciate that we can only understand the partial system, and that stories told cannot be accurate representations of patterns lived. We know little about the system, so we operate as if we do not know everything. We believe that the rules are emergent. The system is dynamic, so we can learn as the system changes. Our learning changes the system, thus creating new rules.
What I had failed to understand was that in my body, in my mind, and in my spirit, something had irrecoverably changed. It would take me more than two years to realize this. I would hold on to my belief that I would get better until the day my belief would be shattered and swept away. I didn’t read the signs very well. How could I? I had never been here before. On the day my recovery started, I actually felt worse, not better. It was almost as if I had had a chemo treatment. What was happening to me was much more complex than I understood at the time. After each chemo, I would complain bitterly about how badly I felt. It felt as if the chemo was still acting on me well after the infusions. But, I was told that the chemo was flushed out of my system in two days, so I was simply feeling the effects from the damage left in the wake of the drugs.
Even though my treatment was over, and the drugs supposedly cleared from my system, the damage from the drugs was still expressing itself. Nobody would tell me why I was feeling worse and not better. After all, most people went back to work within a month of ending this form of chemo.
Being a person who needs a reason for everything, I went in search of an explanation. When I couldn’t find any, I made up my own. What I think happened to me was something I call the cumulative effect. The oncologists do talk about the cumulative effect during chemo, in terms of producing cumulative side effects. In other words, the side effects get worse with each treatment. Oncologists are quick to point out that the side effects start diminishing once treatment is over. But, what if the treatment did more damage to my body because it is so sensitive? What if my body just couldn’t take the cumulative effect that occurred from successive rounds of chemo? What if my body was in breakdown, and the side effects in runaway, like a semi-tractor trailer that loses its brakes as it is going down a hill and can’t stop? My side effects were gaining speed and effect, and there was no exit runaway lane to slow them down. Even though I was no longer receiving chemo, the cumulative effect of six rounds of chemo were still affecting me.
You interpret reality from the stories that you tell, the stories that you live, and the stories yet to be told. These stories are called patterns of meaning and action. When we tell stories about our experience, these stories help us to make sense of our experience. Often, our stories are not that useful in helping us to understand the system in its more complex sense. But they can be useful in helping us to cope with situations in which there are no explanations.
By October 2009, I was so sick that my oncologist was unsure as to whether or not to start me on the two-year maintenance treatment. I was nauseous all of the time. I couldn’t walk without the aid of a walker or canes. I was muddled, unable to think clearly, and having difficulty remembering, and carrying on conversations. I had severe deep muscle hip pain. I had severe neuropathy (a numbness in a glove-and-stocking pattern, from my waist down and from my elbows down). I was always exhausted, no energy even to get through a day without an afternoon nap. I remember asking whether or not doing the two-year maintenance treatment really delayed the cancer coming back. My onocolgist said yes, but was not sure if that was the case in my subtype of cancer. My subtype was so rare that there had not been any studies on it that showed that two years of Rituxin infusions increased the time intervals between cancer flare ups.
Henry and I didn’t know what to do. Before our appointment, we had discussed whether or not it was worth getting sick again with yet another two years of Rituxin. The oncologist said that he wasn’t sure what kind of side effects I would get. He even said most people don’t get any side effects. It was logical to assume that the side effects would be much less, because I was now only taking one drug, not four, and of the four, Rituxin had the least side effects. It was a nightmare. There was no certainty, no stability, and certainly no one truth.
I couldn’t find my way back to the comfort of my linear thinking. All I knew was that I was terrified, terrified of the cancer coming back, terrified of going through chemo again, terrified of yet more treatments with Rituxin for the next two years. We had no data on what would happen to me if I just received Rituxin. So, I closed my eyes and jumped. I took the Rituxin treatment. I was so scared during the infusion that I started reacting to the infusion before it had even started going into my body. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my body was now rebelling. My body was saying no, but I couldn’t hear it. I never recovered, and even though I got a bit better, I never returned to any semblance of normal.
Whether I liked it or not, I was now fully entrenched in the non-linear world of cancer, cancer treatments, recovery, and something called a new normal. My world had changed forever. Even if I got better, I now lived with an incurable cancer that would return again and again about every four to five years. When it came back, I would be subjected to such withering options as more chemo, radiation, and even a stem cell transplant, all of which would probably destroy what little life I now had. I had been too sick to be scared during the chemo. But I was scared now. What if I didn’t get better? What if this was now my life? Henry and I still believed that maybe my recovery would just be slower than other people. It wouldn’t be until Christmas 2009 that it would start to sink in that I was not going to get much better.
In January, 2011, I entered another non-linear hell. I had been experiencing drenching night sweats throughout August-October of 2010, and night sweats were a possible sign that the cancer was coming back. The CT scan showed that I was still clear of any sign of lymphoma, which was really good news. The bad news was that my neuropathy, and lack of ability to walk without aids, was now considered chronic. I now had chronic side effects that would not go away.
Non-linear systems are paradoxical. Ralph D. Stacey, author of Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics, states that cause and effect and interconnections between agents in the system become unclear because non-linear systems are very complex. Even though people are dealing with the system as if it were operating under simple cause-and-effect rules (linear), the system is more complex, and therefore not producing linear effects. It is producing contradictory effects. Therefore, complex systems require counter-intuitive or non-linear thinking.
I have been in recovery from my lymphoma for just over two years. My life has not returned to the old normal, nor has it arrived at a new normal. In January 2010, I was diagnosed with a second cancer, breast cancer. There’s no question that my world fell apart after the second diagnosis. There was no linear thinking left for me to hold on to, and, in August 2011, I finally surrendered to the forces of non-linear thinking. Nothing is as it seems. What worked before, no longer works now. The lesson that I have learned is that the longer and harder I hold to my fixed ideas of truth, the longer and harder it is to move forward.
This is true for all of us, whether we are talking about our families or world affairs. Holding on no matter what it costs is a form of linear thinking. Linear thinking works really well when there is stability, but fails catastrophically when there is too much instability. Everyday, I watch the world suffocating in its rigid linear thinking as it grapples with an economic system that no longer works. For most people, the answer lies in more of the same, and not in something different. Perhaps the world is simply going through its own form of chemo, side effects, and failed recovery to realize that the answers lie somewhere else – in the land of non-linear thinking.
Note: If you’d like to know more about Marilyn’s cancer journey, check out her blog at www.cancerbrokeallmypencils.com.
Solving Real Problems in Real Time: Action Learning
It is an understatement to say that organizations are experiencing more change than ever before. In fact, most of us are finally getting used to the idea that constant change is a part of living and working within organizations. What is less understood is how to work within the uncertainty, instability, confusion, and loss of control that accelerating change creates. To deal with the conditions that change creates, we use all of the skills, knowledge, and experience that we have at our disposal. However, when we try to fix problems, we can make them worse than they were in the first place. Then, we ask ourselves questions to try to make sense of the resulting confusion: “What is going on? What are we doing wrong? Why can’t we make things better? Why do our fixes not work?” Common answers to these questions are even less helpful: “It’s their fault! We didn’t have enough time or resources to do it right! We didn’t get any help! We should have known what to do!”
The reason that we fail to solve these complex problems has little to do with being smart enough to deal with accelerating change. It has more to do with not being smart in a way that works when the degree of complexity is so high. Nothing that we have learned in the past has prepared us to deal with increasing complexity and the change that it creates. Unless we think and act differently, we will continue to struggle with problems we cannot seem to solve.
If we are to match the speed of change, or, perhaps, to slow it down and to change its direction, we need a completely different approach to dealing with complexity. Action learning is such an approach — a way of thinking and acting that enables us to solve real problems in real time, and to create the resilience required to deal with complexity and change.
Complexity, Relationships, Strange Loops: Reflexive Practice
Today, organizations are downsizing, reorganizing, rightsizing, redesigning, and re-engineering in an attempt to be effective in a turbulent and uncertain marketplace. Although meant to help, more often than not, these initiatives do not come close to what is necessary for organizations to thrive in this complex world. They often fall short because they ignore the key aspects of an organization: its people and the relationships they form that allow work to be done effectively. Without people, there is no organization. Without resilient relationships among the people within an organization there is no high performance.
Everything that we do, as individuals and as groups, involves relationships. These relationships can be with our own ideas, assumptions, and values, with other people, with our jobs, or with the organization. Every situation is defined by its relationships. Fragile relationships translate into inefficiencies, ineffectiveness, low productivity, and a lack of innovation. Resilient relationships translate into high levels of effectiveness, productivity, and innovation.
No matter how resilient it is, every relationship experiences ups and downs over time. Like riding a roller coaster, sometimes we feel great in our relationships, and other times we feel overwhelmed by the strange loops these relationships manifest. To create and sustain relationships that work, we need to understand them, and how we, and others, function within them. Reflexive practice helps us to ride the strange loops that relationships create so we can develop and sustain resilience, and be prepared for other relationship roller coasters that may come our way.
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