Patterns We Don't See

My sweetheart (and wife!) and I went to see Moneyball last night, with Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill (above). It's the story of how Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) changed the face of baseball with the help of a just-out-of-Yale baseball fan and numbers geek (Jonah Hill). Jonah had spotted some underlying and hidden patterns in player stats that significantly affected the odds that a player would get on base. Getting on base was the key to getting runs which was the key to winning games. Pitching, power hitting, and fielding were important; but they paled in comparison to getting on base.

Some weak fielders and below average hitters had much higher statistics for getting on base than star fielders and hitters. Lots of them got there by walks. What the research showed is that it takes a certain kind of player, with extra special discipline, to wait and not swing when the ball is outside the strike zone. The world values "hitters" you see; not "walkers". But walkers get on base, and that, Jonah showed, is what made the difference is generating runs and winning games.

Walkers, it turn out, don't cost nearly as much as hitters; so Jonah helped Brad Pitt/Billy Beane build a winning team with a basement budget. Great fun. I highly recommend the movie.

But what I want to point to here is that there are often hidden patterns that we don't see. In fact, I will say this more definitively: there are always patterns that we do not easily see that represent what is emerging or what could emerge. And sometimes new realities emerge, and the precedent, foundational patterns are not visible until later, like historians coming to turning-point events years later and finding "new" patterns to explain what happened.

Science calls this "emergence", an important part of the study of complexity theory. How do complex systems change and evolve? What does the process look like? Can you make useful predictions in non-linear, complex systems undergoing transformative change?

The answer is a qualified yes. You don't have the predictability that you do in a linear relationship: cause leads to predictable and recurring effect. But you can make educated guesses, some (but not all) of which are worth betting on, as Brad and Jonah did in selecting new players for the Oakland As', a bet that paid off. Many complex, dynamic systems don't always present specific, high leverage quantities (like Moneyball's on base percentage), and you must look to broader, sometimes deeper tendencies in the system. 

Meg Wheatley in Leadership and The New Science and A Simpler Way points to three central characteristics of complex systems around which change tends to orient itself: identity (what is the deep intention, even yearning of the system to do or to be; in business terms, what is the system's mission?); relationship (what is the nature and quality of relationship within the system: optimism and trust support system-wide change; fear inhibits change); and information exchange (do people/units in the system have a free flow of information throughout the system and out/back in from the outside environment?)

So where might I go with all this? Nowhere with total certainty, but we might move towards several important places with at least a hint of looking at what's emerging with fresh eyes. For example, Europe: what is trying to emerge? Ever since the Enlightenment took away God's truth and intervening hand from our analysis of current problems and events, we have become analysts and engineers: what's wrong and how can we fix it? Sometimes the engineering mentality works well: what our problem analysis shows us to be the problem is, in fact, the fulcrum around which something new is trying to emerge. But quite often this is not the case.

I think something new may be trying to emerge in Europe, while most of us are fixated on identifying the problem. Some say the problem is too much debt and profligate spending by the GIIPS countries. Others say the problem is a single currency without a fiscal and political union: everything works when growth is strong; but the system pulls apart when demand disappears.

Solutions vary, as they always do, depending on your view of the problem: the "profligacy" analysts are certain fiscal consolidation (read austerity) is the answer; the "system itself is screwed up" folks say Europe must move to fiscal union or break up.

Complex systems' artists and artisans will have a different take: what is trying to emerge in Europe at the moment? Can we see shared intentions at work? What's the quality of the relationships between the various individual and state actors? Is there sufficient free-flowing information so that individuals and states which want to act together can be working from the same information base?

Quite honestly, I have no clear idea what is emerging, but I suspect it's a higher, more complex, more accepting of diversity form of union that is trying to manifest. Will it succeed in overcoming the good and disciplined North versus the bad and undisciplined South relational divide? I think so; but it is not for sure. The Germans in particular are mad at their southern neighbors. But I think that the intention to be a European Union, combining diverse peoples in a union where all are honored, will survive our current chaos, and the emergent organizational structures will do a better job of allowing and supporting diversity of economic capacity within the Union.

It's a bumpy ride coming up. The Union may appear to break apart for a time. But I predict movement to a more inclusive, diversity-supporting whole, quite possibly through a two-tiered structure (core and periphery, possibly with a second currency flexibly pegged and priced below the current Euro). We shall see.