Category Archives: Adaptation
Cop27 – Climate emergency solved – breed less!
Yes, it IS that easy. Really … “What’s the logic behind that statement?” I hear you ask … Well, global warming and climate change is being accelerated by human activity. So, if there were no humans there would be no … Continue reading
Applying Complexity Thinking to the Real World
PRINCIPLES FOR [BRINGING ABOUT] EFFECTIVE CHANGE IN [REAL-WORLD] PRACTICE The eleven ‘Principles of Practice’ below have been derived from the experiences of practitioners (people who are responsible for bringing about real-world change) which are discussed in a companion book “Complexity … Continue reading
Limits to modelling – Godel’s Incompleteness theorem
Agent-based modelling is often hailed as a way of modelling the future, predicting outcomes in social situations. But there are both hard limitations on what you can predict with modelling, and a lack of understanding of those limitations.This post examines … Continue reading
Possibility, Risk Asessments and dealing with Possible Futures
There is a fundamental flaw in most risk assessments – they are based on past data. That means that they are useless in the face of crises or deep uncertainty, in ambiguous situation or when faced with so-called ‘zero-day’ events. … Continue reading
Transitioning to Adaptive, Forward-looking Ways-of-Working
In previous posts we talked about the different Aspects of adaptation and what this means for the learning that organisations, communities or individuals might have to do. What follows from this is an obvious question – how do you go … Continue reading
How do we define ‘Complexity’ – ways of talking about it
In our book, ‘Complexity Demystified – a Guide for Practitioners‘ (page 8) we differentiate four different ways of talking about complexity: as it is naturally; as academics see it generally in theory; as it is seen objectively when in some … Continue reading
Complexity-Worthiness in a nutshell
Having ‘Complexity-worthiness’ means being able to access, deploy and employ capabilities which are appropriately matched to the nature of things being worked with – and being able to adapt them dynamically as circumstances change. Whether or not you use the … Continue reading
Effective Adaptation involves ‘Quadruple-Loop Learning’
We have been looking at how communities develop their ability to adapt to climate change. This is mostly about learning how to learn from change and for this people mostly talk about the ‘double-loop’ learning that follows from experience. In … Continue reading
Harnessing Dynamic Change 