Communities as Complex Systems
Looking at the principles of the Friedman Thermostat and how it impacts how we think about communities as complex systems
Today, I’m going to tell you a story and not only is the story not mine, the idea behind the story isn’t mine either. The Head of Agile at a company used to work for introduced me to this concept and ever since then its really stuck with me, and whilst at the time we were talking about metrics and measuring Agile delivery teams, I think its an interesting thought piece whilst serving as a warning to those who seek to change, measure, or assess the value of a community of practice that we’re not intimately familiar with.
Today then, I’m going to talk about the Friedman Thermostat.
Milton Friedman was an economist, statistician, and Nobel prize winner. I’ll hold my hands up and say I know very little else about him beyond his concept of the thermostat effect (and even less about economics and statistics), so that’s what I will focus on. Originally coined to demonstrate discretionary fiscal policy being used to combat low spending and output, the story I was told was used in the context of demonstrating the risks of using measures and metrics to measure complex systems without deep understanding.
I will assume that everyone reading this knows what a car is. I’ll also assume that a fair number of you can drive, and that even those that can’t will have an understanding of how to make a car go and stop. Most of us wont understand exactly how the engine, gearbox, or exhaust systems work on a technical level, but at a basic level we understand that stepping on the accelerator makes the car go, and standing on the brake makes the car stop.
We can also understand that if you’re going uphill the car will slow down unless you press a bit harder on the accelerator, and when its going downhill it’ll continue to go faster and faster unless you press a bit harder on the brake.
Everyone with me so far? Good.
Now, let’s imagine a car with two people in it. The one driving is a very good driver, and the one in the passenger seat has never seen a car before in their life. Clearly then, they are the ideal candidate to assess how good a driver the other person is. So off they go, and the driver sets a steady pace at 50mph. They drive calmly along the road, the passenger making notes on his clipboard probably, until they come to a hill. The driver presses on the accelerator as they begin to climb, keeping the speed at 50mph. The passenger scribbles notes onto his clipboard as they reach the top of the hill, and watches as the driver switches from pressing the accelerator to pressing the brake, still keeping the speed at 50mph. They eventually end their journey, shake hands and part, and the passenger scurries into his office where he’s asked to report on how good a job the driver did.
“It was so wasteful” the passenger bemoans “he kept standing on the different peddles and it made no difference whatsoever to the speed we were going. If he didn’t waste time doing that and just used the steering wheel instead he’d save so much energy and effort”
The point made with this story is that when we try to measure something that we don’t understand, we will be drawn to the wrong conclusions if we only look at the tangible outcomes. And the more complex the system, the more likely we are to come to the wrong conclusion.
The reason that I think this is relevant to community leaders is because we are often caught in a relentless tug of war between the astonishingly complex systems that our communities and the relationships and dynamics within them are made up of, and the desire or the demand to measure them. Many of us have seen one community unfavourably compared to another, on the rationale that ‘that community has more members, so its more successful. You should concentrate on adding more members’. We may have also heard the complaint ‘why are you trying to do sessions every fortnight? That community over there is doing them monthly and they’re doing really well, you don’t need to do them fortnightly’. And then you hear the one ‘why are you playing games? We’re all busy and you’re taking everyone away to play games? That community is getting speakers in, they’re sharing success stories, they’re making a difference – why are you wasting people’s time like this?’
If you don’t understand the focus and purpose of the community, you may not understand that suddenly (or even gradually) adding a load of extra members may impact the community’s ability to pursue the change we valued in the first place. If we don’t understand the needs and capability of the community’s members, we may not understand why the members of this community want to meet more or less frequently than that one. We may not understand the demands on the members outside of the community sessions that drew them to it in the first place, and what the consequences there may be if we start denying them that. If we don’t understand the dynamics of the relationships within the community, or the learning preferences of the members, we may not understand the value of building closer interpersonal relationships between the members, and the devastating consequences we bring about by damaging them. One person’s game is another person’s experiential learning workshop.
I suppose the point of sharing this story (besides the fact that I find it interesting) is that it highlights two key responsibilities of the community leader. Firstly, it highlights the importance of the leader’s understanding of the community on a deeper level than the superficial appearances of size shape and cadence. Understanding and appreciating that a group full of people is a complex system, and adding or subtracting anyone or anything to or from it can have significant consequences. Secondly, it highlights the importance of community awareness and understanding– the need for a leader to understand the needs of the community and understand the complexity within it. To have thought about the consequences – both good and bad – of how a change may impact the community, and be prepared and able to articulate that.
Thanks so much for reading, if you’ve enjoyed this post I’d really appreciate it if you could share it - alternatively you could always buy me a coffee :)