Profiling the situation

Most plans mix problems that have answers with problems that do not, and run both on one logic. This move sorts them. It tests each part of the plan for three conditions, names the kind of not-knowing in each complex part, and sets six dials that say what response the situation calls for.

Complexity: the four moves

Move 1 of 4 · Decides which kind of thinking fits

Sort the plan into parts to plan and parts to probe

Time: 90 min
People: 4–8: the plan’s owner, the people who will carry it out, and one person it lands on
You need: The plan as written, index cards, a wall, the test grid and the dial sheet, printed
You leave with: The plan split into parts to plan and parts to probe, and a dated one-page profile on six dials

Start here

The idea

What the move is, and why it works

What the move is

Profiling is a sort, done before anyone chooses a method. Each part of a plan goes through a three-condition test. Parts that fail it are clear or complicated: they have answers, and an expert or a good spreadsheet can find them. Parts that pass get different treatment, and the six dials say which.

The output is small. A list of parts, each marked plan or probe, and a profile of the situation on one page. It should take an afternoon, not a term.

The idea behind it

Complexity thinking has a narrow home. It earns its place when three conditions hold together. Behaviour comes from interaction among the parts. The rules change as things unfold. And the people looking, with their measures and targets, change what they are looking at. Each condition alone belongs to an older discipline. All three together are where plans written as blueprints start to fail.

The dials replace labels such as VUCA. A label says the ground is moving. A dial says what is moving it, so each setting implies a response. High coupling calls for buffers. High reflexivity calls for checking each measure before trusting it. Low reversibility calls for slowing down, or for locking in on purpose.

Why it works

It takes work away before it adds any. Most of a school plan is complicated: dates, rooms, contracts, training slots. Treating those as complex wastes a term on probes nobody needed. Treating the complex parts as complicated is the more common error, and the more expensive one, because the plan then blames implementation when the situation answers back.

It also splits the argument. “It’s complex” and “it’s simple” stop being positions people defend. They become claims about one card, with evidence written on it.

When

When to reach for it, and when not to

Use it when

At the start of any plan with more than a few moving parts.
When someone says “it’s complex” or “it’s a VUCA world” and nobody can say what follows.
When a well-run change fails and implementation is getting the blame.
When the situation has shifted enough that last term’s profile no longer fits.

Skip it when

The decision is small, cheap to undo and owned by one person. Just decide.
The whole thing is plainly technical, such as a timetable rebuild or a software migration with nobody’s habits at stake.
A crisis is under way. Act first to stop the harm, then profile.
The team has already agreed a profile and nothing has changed since its review date.

Before

Before anyone is in the room

Get the plan as written, not as remembered. Every line of it.
Write each line on its own card. Split any line that bundles a purchase with a practice.
Print the test grid and the dial sheet, one of each per pair.
Invite at least one person the plan lands on: a teacher who will carry it, a student, or a parent.
Collect two or three facts from the last month that bear on the plan: a complaint, a figure, a comment in the staffroom.
Decide who owns the profile afterwards and will call the redraw.

Steps

How to run it

6 steps, about 90 min in all. The questions in quotation marks are meant to be read out as they are.

01
Put every part of the plan on a card
10 min
Lay the cards on a table or stick them on a wall. One commitment per card. Where a line mixes a decision with what people will do because of it, split it into two cards, because the two halves often land on different sides of the test.
Ask the room
- What does this line commit us to doing, buying or measuring?
- Is there a purchase or a rule here, and separately a change in what people do?
Watch for Cards that read as aims, such as “raise standards”. Ask what the plan actually does about it, and write that instead.
02
Run the three-condition test on each card
20 min
Take each card in turn and ask the three questions. Mark yes, no or unsure, with a short reason. A card is complex only if all three are yes. One or two yeses means a neighbouring discipline does the job better, and the card is complicated or clear.
Ask the room
- Does what happens here come from many people interacting, more than from any one decision?
- Will the rules or habits change while this runs?
- Will our measure, target or framing change what people do?
- If we wrote a detailed plan for this card, could an expert check it?
Watch for Everything passing. “Complex” sounds more serious than “complicated”, so groups promote cards. Ask for one piece of evidence per yes.
03
Name the kind of not-knowing
15 min
For each complex card, ask what kind of not-knowing it involves. Risk: we know the outcomes and their odds. Uncertainty: we know the outcomes but not the odds. Ambiguity: people dispute what a good outcome would be. Ignorance: we do not know what we do not know. Write the word on the card.
Ask the room
- Do we know what the possible outcomes are?
- Do we know how likely each one is?
- Would everyone in this room agree on what a good result looks like?
- What could happen here that none of us has thought to look for?
Watch for Ambiguity treated as uncertainty. If people disagree about what good looks like, more data will not settle it. Mark it and move on.
04
Set the six dials
25 min
Now profile the situation as a whole. For each dial, mark low, medium or high, and write one sentence of evidence from this term, not from general impressions. Where the room disagrees, record both settings and the reason. A disagreement about a dial often tells you more than the setting.
Ask the room
- Coupling: if one part of this fails, what else fails with it?
- Tempo: what moves faster than our meetings, and what is changing too slowly to notice?
- Incertitude: is this risk, uncertainty, ambiguity or ignorance?
- Reflexivity: how will people respond once they can see our measures?
- Reversibility: which of these moves could we undo next term, and at what cost?
- Legitimacy: who accepts our right to define this, and who does not?
Watch for Dials set from mood. “It feels fast” is not evidence. Ask what happened, when, and who saw it.
05
Read off the response each dial implies
15 min
Go dial by dial and write the response next to the setting. High coupling: build buffers so one failure does not travel. High tempo: agree responses in advance and let people act without waiting for a meeting. High reflexivity: check each measure before reporting it. Low reversibility: slow down and stage, or lock in on purpose. Contested legitimacy: involve people before bringing in experts.
Ask the room
- Given this setting, what would we do differently from what the plan already says?
- Which part of the plan was written for a lower setting than the one we have?
- Which card does this change?
Watch for Responses that repeat the plan. If no dial changes anything, either the plan was already good or the dials were set to agree with it.
06
Date the profile and name what would redraw it
5 min
Dials move. Write today’s date on the profile, a review date, and one or two events that would force a redraw sooner. Name who will notice those events and call the meeting.
Ask the room
- What would have to happen for us to look at this again before the review date?
- Who will notice it first, and who will they tell?
Watch for A profile filed and forgotten. If nobody owns the redraw, the dials become another acronym.

Worksheets

Two sheets to print and fill in

Each one prints on its own sheet of A4. The grey line under each is an example from the worked situation.

Complexity · Profiling the situation · Worksheet

The three-condition test

Sorts each part of the plan into parts to plan properly and parts to probe.

Plan

Date

Who was in the room

Part of the planOne commitment per row	Interaction?Does the behaviour come from many people interacting?	Shifting rules?Will habits or rules change while it runs?	Reflexive?Will our measure change what people do?	Kind of not-knowingRisk, uncertainty, ambiguity or ignorance	Plan or probeAnd who owns it

geraldajam.com/work/toolkit

Complexity · Profiling the situation · Worksheet

The six-dial profile

Sets the situation on six dials, with the evidence for each setting and the response it implies.

Situation

Profile date

Review on

Redraw sooner if

	Dial	Low, medium or high	Evidence from this termWhat happened, when, who saw it	Response it implies	Who watches it
Coupling
Tempo
Incertitude
Reflexivity
Reversibility
Legitimacy

Example Reflexivity | High | Staff still remember triple marking, and the plan reports a book-check compliance figure to the cluster superintendent | Check each measure before it is reported. Ask what it will teach people to do | Mrs Lim

geraldajam.com/work/toolkit

Worked example

Profiling the assessment plan in Term 1, Week 3

One school changes how it assesses

Mrs Lim ran the move on the Friday of Term 1, Week 3 with Mr Ravi, the HOD English, the allied educator for learning support and two Secondary 2 form teachers. The first ratings had gone to parents that week. Most Secondary 2 students were rated Developing, because the scale measures against the end of the year, and the general office was already taking calls from parents who read it as a fall.

Ten cards, then twelve The six lines of the plan became ten cards. Two more came out of the argument. The three-year tracking contract split into the purchase, which is procurement, and what the contract fixes, which is the five-point scale for three years. The marking rule split into what teachers write and what students do with the green pen.
Three cards passed the test The ratings, the green-pen responses and the book check with its 95 per cent target passed all three conditions. The checkpoint dates, the purchase, the training sessions and the app settings did not. Those went to the operations manager and the examinations secretary with deadlines. The form teachers wanted the checkpoints marked complex because students dread them. The group kept them complicated: the dread is real, but the scheduling has an answer. In Term 2, Week 4 Aisyah froze in the timed English checkpoint, and that card looked less settled than it had on the Friday.
The ratings were ambiguity, not uncertainty Nobody disputed that ratings would go out. They disputed what Developing meant. The meeting found that science rated against the end of the year and English against the current unit; students worked that out for themselves in Term 1, Week 4. Mr Ravi called it a data problem. The allied educator called it a question of what the ratings were for. The card was marked ambiguity, which meant more data would not settle it.
The dials Coupling medium: departments are loose, but the app sends every rating to every parent at once. Tempo medium: parents reacted within days, and the plan is reviewed once a year. Incertitude high, mostly ambiguity, with guidance on reporting for lower secondary still awaited. Reflexivity high, on the strength of one memory: two years ago triple marking drove two teachers out of English, and staff heard “every piece of work” and remembered it. Reversibility low for the contract and for ratings already seen. Legitimacy contested among parents by Friday.
What the profile changed High reflexivity put a question against the book check: what will teachers do to pass it? Low reversibility put a question against the contract before its first review in Term 2, Week 6. Contested legitimacy put a question against the app: who explains Developing to a parent? Mrs Lim dated the profile, set a review for Term 1, Week 10, and named two triggers to redraw it sooner: the first book check and the first checkpoint.

What came out of it

Twelve cards: three to probe, nine to plan, and one of the nine flagged as hard to undo. A one-page profile that said in Term 1, Week 3 that the book check and its target would change what teachers wrote. It did. By Term 1, Week 8 teachers were writing feedback for the book check instead of the student. The profile was right and it did not stop that, because nobody changed the book check until Mrs Lim proposed dropping its format check in Term 2, Week 10. Profiling tells you where to look. It does not make anyone act.

Signs

How to tell it is working, and when it has gone hollow

Working

Cards move from complex to complicated during the meeting, and people are relieved.
Each dial setting has a dated fact behind it, and someone can name who saw it.
At least one line of the plan changes because of a dial, before any work starts.
The redraw happens when the trigger fires, not when the calendar says.

Gone hollow

Every card passes the test.
The dials are set in five minutes and agree with the plan as written.
The profile is reported upward as a finding and never redrawn.
“It’s complex” is still used in meetings to end a discussion.

Variations

Other ways to run it

In 30 minutes

Skip the cards. Take the three or four lines of the plan people argue about most, run the three-condition test on those only, and set two dials: reflexivity and reversibility. Those two change most school plans most often.

On your own

Run it on your own plan before you take it to a meeting. Then ask one colleague to set the dials without seeing yours, and compare. Where you differ, you have found what the meeting should discuss.

With students

Give a Secondary 2 or Secondary 3 group the cards for a change that affects them, such as a new homework policy. Ask them only the reflexivity question: what will students do once this counts? They answer it faster than staff, and with examples.

What to do with what you made

Hand the complicated cards to whoever owns them, with a date. Take the complex cards into the next move, and read what the situation is already inclined to do with them before anyone designs anything. Put the redraw triggers in the diary of the person who owns the profile.

Reading the disposition The next move, run on the cards that passed the test.The six dials Each dial in full, with the response it implies and how a setting moves.The three-condition test What each condition means, what the test leaves out, and the ways it fails.

Tools

Tools, templates and guides worth having

Published elsewhere, and worth the time.

Method
Cynefin framework (Snowden & Boone, “A leader’s framework for decision making”, Harvard Business Review, 2007)
Sorts situations into simple (now called clear), complicated, complex and chaotic, with a different way of acting in each. The closest published version of the three-condition test.
Book
Heifetz, Grashow & Linsky, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership (2009)
Practical tools for telling technical problems from adaptive challenges. The same sort, from a leadership angle.
Guide
Stirling, “Keep it complex”, Nature (2010)
Two pages on risk, uncertainty, ambiguity and ignorance, and what each calls for. The source for step 3.
Guide
Bennett & Lemoine, “What VUCA really means for you”, Harvard Business Review (2014)
The careful version of VUCA, with a different response for each letter. Read it to see what the dials keep and what they add.

Reading

Where it comes from

Start with the first on the list.

Kurtz, C. F., & Snowden, D. J. (2003). The new dynamics of strategy: sense-making in a complex and complicated world. IBM Systems Journal, 42(3), 462–483.
The original case for sorting situations by type before choosing how to act.
Heifetz, R. A. (1994). Leadership Without Easy Answers. Harvard University Press.
Technical problems against adaptive challenges. The cleanest test of what is not complex.
Stirling, A. (2010). Keep it complex. Nature, 468, 1029–1031.
Risk, uncertainty, ambiguity and ignorance, in two pages.
Renn, O., Klinke, A., & van Asselt, M. (2011). Coping with complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity in risk governance: a synthesis. Ambio, 40(2), 231–246.
Who should be in the room for each kind of problem.
Bennett, N., & Lemoine, G. J. (2014). What VUCA really means for you. Harvard Business Review, 92(1/2), 27.
The best version of the label the dials replace.

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