Cause-alities

Making Sense and "Barabba's Law"

Through the years I've had the good fortune to work on several complex projects for Vince Barabba (more about Vince here and here).  Vince is a true leader -- visionary, creative, and effective.  One of the management approaches he often applied was the use of modeling to help him and his team understand a complex situation and make good decisions.  In fact, I consider Vince the ultimate "model consumer."  That is, he did not write complex systems models -- he used them and guided others in their use and interpretation.  This paper provides one detailed example of how he worked.

Vince had a guiding principle in the application of complex models that became known as "Barabba's Law".  Here it is:

Never Say "The Model Says"
-- Vince Barabba

I've think I've sat in a hundred meetings where we were using a systems simulation model to understand some complex, uncertain, situation and at some point someone would say -- but the model says . . . .  If you where working on a project for Vince (or even if you had EVER worked on a project for Vince) then you knew it was time to pause the action and reflect about what was happening.  Because as soon as those words are uttered then somebody is about to depend on the model as a literal prediction of the future instead of a tool to "make sense" of the situation to support their decision making.

I started writing about sense-making in my last post but here it is again:  Making Sense is the development of situational awareness including an understanding of the future trajectory of the system.

At the time, though, I didn't spend much energy thinking about the underlying philosophy of Barabba's Law.  What I observed is that forcing a different choice of language inherently guided stakeholders towards a different and more effective application of the modeling.  The nature of the team discussion changed from predictive thinking towards evaluating the correctness and completeness of the underlying causal hypothesis that the model represented. 

Barabba's Law closes the, often disastrous, thinking shortcut that allows leaders to abdicate responsibility for understanding the relevant system and its behavior. ( "Gee, we thought we were doing the right thing because the model said we were. . ." )

I think that one of the reasons Vince was so effective in using sophisticated models is that he instinctively understood the difference between prediction and sense making (although I never heard him use exactly those words).  Through his extensive experience he understood how leaders actually make decisions and he knew how to integrate sophisticated modeling into that process.  And he distilled some of that into his law.

Making Sense with Systems Science

When I named Decisio (almost 10 years ago now!) I was casting about for a tag line that extended the "decision motif" to capture the essence of what we do.  I settled on "Making Sense of the Future."  My idea was (and is) that if clients are going to be able to make good decisions in complicated situations then they first had to understand that situation -- they had to "make sense" of what was happening.  Then, they could use that understanding to make good decisions.  The invocation of the "future" in this was intended, firstly, to suggest that comprehending the role of time is important to understand problems.  Secondly, that we make decisions today in order to reap rewards in the future.

This idea of using systems modeling to "make sense" and support decision making was not and still isn't very common.  There seem to be two prevailing ideas about the role of models and modeling.  One common view is that they are sophisticated black box tools that consume data and produce predictions of the future.  My observation is that while good models have predictive qualities the future is slippery. All models are wrong (but some are useful). Decision making based on a "forecast" mentality will not turn out well.  An alternative perspective is that, since forecasting is difficult or impossible, modeling should be used for individual and organizational learning.  Well, that's fine but sooner or later somebody has to make decisions!

I've recently become aware of the science and some of the research around the formal idea of "sensemaking."  Gary Klein, well known in the field, describes sensemaking as "a motivated, continuous effort to understand connections (which can be among people, places, and events) in order to anticipate their trajectories and act effectively".  Well, that's exactly what I help clients accomplish using systems models.  In my projects the modeling activity guides an effective sensemaking process that results in high quality decisions.

Recently, I think I've been guilty of describing my work from the perspective of systems science and modeling to the detriment of the "making sense of the future" perspective.  In fact, successful projects always integrate modeling with the sensemaking perspective.

I think that the intersection of systems modeling and sensemaking is not as well explored as it needs to be so I'll be blogging more about it.   To read more about sensemaking in general try this wikipedia article and publications by Gary Klein and K. E. Weick.