The edge of possible is an approach that unlocks new opportunities for individuals and organisations. Whilst empowering us to navigate challenges with agility. It also breaks us out of cycles of fixing problems. Encouraging us to recognise and seize the opportunities open to us in every situation.
Table of Contents
What Do We Mean By Possible?
What is possible are all the things we believe could happen. In quantum physics, instead of focusing on cause and effect, the emphasis is on the probabilities of events occurring. (Such as the Hilbert Space) This probabilistic approach is now fundamental to physics. It offers a paradigm that shifts our focus from cause and effect solutions to understanding the likelihood of various outcomes when things interact.
What is The Possibility Space
In maths the concept of a possibility space represents are all the potential that could happen in a defined scenario. (Potentialities) We are also able to compare things to each other. Understanding the relationships between different outcomes. This is actually how betting works. The likelihood of different outcomes are calculated and then used to calculate the odds. Interestingly these models are then updated based on what real people living in the real world think is more likely and placing bets. So perception of probability is different from actual probability.
So A Possibility is a Bet on the Future?
In a way yes, possibilities are bets on the future. Now think of your organisational plan. In probability terms it’s actually an accumulator bet. In a plan you are betting that ‘X’ happens resulting in a staff member to do ‘Y’ that causes a customer to do ‘Z’ that results in outcome ‘A’ for the customer.
The Probability of A Plan Coming Together.
To get the probability of getting your outcome ‘A’ from your plan you have to have the probability of ‘Z’ multiplied by the probability ‘Y’ multiplied by the change probability ‘Z’ that hopefully results in the probability outcome ‘A’.
pX x pY x pZ = p A = Probability of A is??
If you do the maths of all those things happening together you realise that your plan now may seem much less likely than you thought. Many businesses invest millions in the belief that one thing will follow another: someone will need X that can be responded to by a staff member with Y that gives the customer product Z that results in an outcome for the customer of A.
High Possibilities of Success Come With High Competition.
This can be pretty likely and predictable if it’s a tried and tested product, like a cup of coffee. But if it’s all tried and tested then everyone else would be doing it. (Which might explain why I currently have 18 dedicated coffee shops within a mile of where I live!). So the competition means that whilst the outcome of a positive customer experience is high, they also have to compete to be which of the 18 places I go for a coffee.
Production Efficiency and Possibility
A Focused Strategy for Providing Services.
The approach to providing services therefore often involves cherry picking things with a higher chance of a positive outcome vs cost. This has the side effect of ignoring the complexity of people’s needs. The problem with this approach is that it creates an increasing mismatch between the services provided and the demands placed on them. (Violating Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety)
Over time this creates what John Seddon describes as failure demand that stifles the organisation dealing with unplanned demand or simply losing out to someone else more responsive to their customers needs. I’ve described how this approach leads to stressful cycles of failure.
A Single Road To Failure.
However, every that’s only if the plan works completely. As every point on the highway creates a potential point of system failure. Every slow down or break down causes the whole of the rest of the single highway become inefficient.
In fact the mathematical modelling shows that traffic jams are inevitable unless everything is moving at exactly the same speed all the time. Furthermore, beyond a certain density of flow the flow becomes unstable and problems amplify throughout the system in what’s described as Phantom Traffic Jams.
Having something arrive ‘just too late’ instead of ‘just in time’ or just having a very dense pathway multiples it’s negative impact across your production. However, we see these and blame external problems, rather than realise that these are natural product of our narrow system design.
Delays Are Not the System Not Working, They Are the System.
When we think of healthcare in the UK the first thing we always think of is delays. With latest estimates that 9.7 million people (staggeringly more than 1in 5 people) are on a hospital waiting list. (The Guardian) Being put on hold to book an appointment, wait to see the GP. Delay for referrals, delays for diagnostics. etc etc.
On paper, it looks very efficient with well planned pathways with staff and machines fully utilised. With every patient having all the right interventions. But delays are the product of the system, not its side effect. In reality, even when one part is working fast. It simply creates a delay elsewhere.
Even when patients finally get to hospital the efficiency does not start. Whilst they can seem like hives of activity with staff rushing around. The reality is that outside of intensive care, the patients spend the majority of their time in hospital simply waiting.
BMC Health Services Research found patients often spend 70-80% of their hospital stay waiting rather than receiving direct treatment. Because of the sheer density of usage it looks fully utilised and busy, but creates a vastly inefficient system in terms of flow.
By focusing only on following plans, hitting targets and the efficient use of capacity we have created an incredibly inefficient flow. Losing sight the value that is being created. To be blunt the NHS plan to maximise efficiency use of capacity has failed. Resulting in the NHS being labelled as official broken by the Health Minister. What we think for and plan for as efficiency is anything but.
If we focus on the targets the strategy the plan and the process it blinds us to the experience of our staff our service users and patients and stops us keeping up with the ever changing reality of the world. A fully utilised route to success may sound efficient, but the reality is a blocked road.
Your Business is Not Just What You Sell.
Similarly in business, the product you offer is not the system, you need to understand the real experience of your customers. Your system is not just your product, it is also the delays the bad experiences, the customers who go elsewhere. Your business is not just everyone who walks through the door and buys a coffee. It’s also everyone that could and doesn’t.
What happens to the possibility of the coffee shop has to be understood by what happens when things go wrong as well as when things go right. If your customer has a poor experience in your coffee shop (maybe it’s too noisy!) then there may be 17 other places for them to go and you would never know as your plan is blind to that. When we focus on targets and sales it can distract us from looking at the possibilities.
No Bets Are Certain So Spread Your Bets.
For new products the chance is much less certain of them finding the right products with the right needs. The point is that organisations need to be understanding that their products services and plans are all in some ways bets on the future. In order to give yourself the best chance of success you need to be making a range of bets so that you can adapt, to the reality of the situation. If something was certain everyone would be doing it.
Why We Can’t Always Just Do What We Know is Possible.
Why We Can’t Stay the Same.
The future is not certain meaning our plans will often fail. (Read here for the science of why) If something is successful, then guess what other people do it too. In fact they keep doing it until a tipping point when suddenly things stop workign. How many more coffee shops will open near me before there won’t be enough coffee drinkers to go around?
The world is constantly changing. So is everyone else. The fact is if we keep moving we can adapt faster than others, grab opportunities faster than others, respond to problems faster than others, we can learn and adapt faster than others and generally stay ahead of the game. If we don’t do that ourselves, someone will do it to us. This is why the lifespan of an average business is now just 21 years.
Why Stagnation is the Enemy?
Organisations have a natural tendency to stagnate. (The Einstellung Effect is where people get we get stuck in a loop of thinking of the same solutions repeatedly.) We desire to stick to the known and predictable. Minimising risk is often a good short term strategy. However, over time it creates a trap where the organisation has to do more and more with less time and resources. With increasing competition and a constant struggle to keep up with a changing environment. Time and effort ends up going into firefighting problems, rather than finding new ways to do things.
Understanding What’s Possible
What is the Adjacent Possible?
The “adjacent possible” is the potential future open to us. It is the set of all potential innovations and changes that are achievable from our current state. It suggests that new ideas and advancements emerge by building on existing ones, and each new development opens up further possibilities. Coined by Stuart Kauffman, it highlights how innovation is a step-by-step process, constrained by what is already known. We use what we know as a jumping off point to continuously expanding the realm of what is possible.
“The “adjacent possible” can be defined as “the set of possibilities available to individuals, communities, institutions, organisms, productive processes, etc., at a given point in time during their evolution”
We All Have An Adjacent Possible
One of the fascinating things about the concept of an adjacent possible is that it is fractal. Everything from the smallest molecules to countries has adjacent possibilities. We all have our very own personal adjacent possible. When we work together we have a new set of possibilities that we don’t have on our own. Your adjacent possible is therefore unique to you and your organisation.
What is the Edge of Possible?
The edge of possible builds on the idea of the adjacent possible. We have limits on the opportunities to us. However, the edge of possible is not a fixed place. It is an edge we can deliberately expand and grow. It is consciously developing an understanding of our space of possibility giving us options for the future and consciously pushing back the edge in a desired direction, to build on future capability.
How the Edge of Possible Builds Resilience?
The Edge of Possible builds our resilience by giving us options and opportunities to respond to threats, issues and risks from our environment. Organizations fail when they run out of options. By giving ourselves a thick edge we can adapt to or avoid the threat.
Possibility Resilience and Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety
Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety tells us that for an organisation to survive it needs to respond to every challenge. But if you are waiting for problems to happen before you respond you are risking harm and damage to your organisation in the meantime. But with a range of possible solutions ready to go they can act as a shock absorber for your organisation, smoothing your organisation flow as it hits the metaphorical bumps and potholes in the road.
(If you would like to read more about Ashby’s Law and organisational change my article is here)
Diversity and the Edge of Possible
Diversity actively increases our edge of possible. Having diversity included in decision making is essential to make good decisions that reflect the variety in our world. The problem a normal planning process has is how to include the diversity of opinion in a single view of the world. But by having a possibility space we allow for a much greater diversity of views to be taken into account in our decisions and actions.
Fear and The Edge Of Possible
Our Niche Lies Within Our Zone of Possibility
Within our possibility space is our niche. This is our comfort zone where we have safety and control. If we expand our edge of possible we also expand our niche. We become capable of doing more things safely. On the other hand, if we don’t push our edge, the changes in technology society and the environment will gradually narrow our niche, making us feel frustrated and trapped.
The Zone of Fear in the Edge of Possible.
Around our comfort zone or niche is a zone of fear. As we approach the unfamiliar and leave that space of comfortable knowing it is very common to have feelings of fear. Fear of uncertainty and the unknown. It is important to recognise these feelings in ourselves and others, as it is only by identifying them rather than having them lurk silently in the background that we can challenge and overcome whether these instinctual fears are rational or not.
What Happens If We Don’t Push the Edge of Possible?
The edges of possibility are constantly changing in an ever changing world. What was possible yesterday is different from today and different again from tomorrow. Some things now can’t happen whereas new things can happen. However, the constant change in technology, society and the environment gradually impinges upon us. Limiting our options and frustrating us. This is why we often feel we don’t have enough time or resources.
How Do We Avoid Analysis Paralysis?
Analysis paralysis could set in if you overload your decision making with options. So don’t do it. Instead, prepare for different scenarios. You only have to execute the scenario that is triggered by the current circumstance. You also de-risk scenarios by using safe to fail solutions that allow you to test and manage the cost of approaches. At the same time, providing an evidence base for future work. The goal is to optimise the flow of decisions and not overpower the system with an excess of information.
The Cyenfin Framework and the Edge of Possible.
Dave Snowden’s Cynefin Framework is a powerful tool for understanding and navigating the complexity of the world. Applying the Cynefin Framework to the Edge of Possible helps us understand there are different elements in our possibility space that track into the future with different levels of certainty. Some things are much more possible than others, although beware nothing is certain.
Agency Affordance and Assemblages
Dave Snowden also uses the powerful idea of agency, affordance, and assemblages to create insights into how individual actions, environmental opportunities, and interconnected elements collectively shape the behavior and evolution of complex adaptive systems. I’ll go into each one and show how it aligns and informs the edge of possible.
Agency And The Edge of Possible
By paying attention and acting on the edge of possible we give ourselves more freedom and agency to act in the world. We simply give ourselves more opportunities to act and make a bigger difference. When we make decisions, and come across opportunities and threats we have options available to us ready to go. Conversely, when we find our edge of possible constrained it limits our agency to adapt and ultimately threatens our survival.
Assemblage And The Edge of Possible.
Deleuze and Guattari’s Assemblage Theory, systems and things are composed of components that interact and form functional wholes. The classic example is that a knight is composed of a man, a sword and a horse. Each element has different capabilities. The elements can be combined in different ways to produce different things. But it is only the unique combination of the man, sword and horse that creates a knight.
These components can be human and non-human, material and immaterial. The possibility space can be seen as a space of combination where we can change what we have by adding or losing components to what we already have. So for example, if we had a man and a horse depending on what object we give him will give him very different capabilities, a bow, a pair of binoculars or a handful of flowers.
Assemblies, Structure and Change.
Understanding change through the lens of assemblage theory helps us to understand most people’s internal; assemblage is accumulated over a life time of learning and experience. It makes it hard for people to unlearn things that have been structured over many years. We instead need to understand assemblage as a process to work with people as they are and build around it rather than expect people to change things that are fundamental to them. Adapting and exploring our possible futures is therefore rooted in the structure of our histories.
What is Affordance and Edge Of Possible
Affordance is a concept that refers to the potential actions or uses that an object or environment inherently provides to an individual. It originates from the field of ecological psychology, introduced by James J. Gibson.
Affordance and Action Possibilities
Affordance describes how the object or the environment opens up ‘Action Possibilities’. In other words, things in our environment enable us to do new things. Affordances are the possible actions that an object or environment offers based on its properties and the capabilities of the user. For example, a chair affords sitting, a button affords pressing, and a staircase affords climbing.
Affordance is therefore about the relationship between an object’s features and the potential actions they enable for users, emphasising the interplay between what we perceive, what are the capabilities available to us, and the environment we are operating in.
Emergence and The Edge of Possible
All these factors come together to enable emergence. Emergence is how you gain new capabilities that you didn’t have before, by bringing things together. Over a period of time of exploring and expanding your possibility, you develop knowledge skills and capabilities to enable new things to emerge, building a new future for yourself.
Diffusion of Innovation and the Edge of Possible
For a new innovation to spread through a system the members of the social system have to change their edge of possible. Looking at the diffusion of innovation through a lens of the edge of possible helps us understand how and why different categories of adopter take more or less time to change with each having different capabilities and desires to explore their possibility space. It also explains why fear is a major limiter of change. While giving us an insight into how we can overcome challenges with the spread of new innovation.
Does This Mean We Should Abandon Old Planning Processes?
High level high structured decisions of course need a proper planning process. The plan though is a framework that sets a direction and structure within which possibilities can be explored. Think of the plan as a trellis along which the vines grows exploring possibilities.
The goal is to create a synergy between the strategy and practical operations where the processes run side by side and flow into one another. The strategy sets a direction for the operational possibilities to explore, which in turn provides information and evidence for further strategy development.
Is this the Same As Agile?
Whilst Agile has some benefits, in not leaving you stuck, it is still backwards looking. You are responding to problems that have occurred and hope you can fix them. Whilst looking at possibilities is all about being in the present and being prepared to grab the moment to change. Like surfing a wave or catching the wind in your sales.
Agile also requires expertise. You have to be an expert in something e.g. building software to in a tight sprint. But when we look at possibilities you prepare in advance for the capabilities you might need.
Surely Working on Possibilities is Going to Create a Lot of Work?
Considering and planning possibilities prepares us for change. We don’t have to implement every solution. We only need to have the potential to respond to a situation as and when it arises.
Transformation at the Edge of Possible
Over time you enable your people and your organisation to transform. You can become ‘Possibly Brilliant’. Rather than being trapped in a loop of reacting to problems with ever less time and resources. You now start to consider the possibilities open to you in each situation. Building options and potential, so rather than being a hostage to fortune you can take the initiative and break the status quo.
It’s Time to Change Your Approach to Planning, Strategy and Implementation.
The average business survive just 21 years. Our public services are locked in doom loops of failure, (Institute for Government). The old planning approaches have failed. The evidence is clear that the old assumptions about strategy and implementation do not work. Instead, we need to open our eyes and find the possibilities in front of us to create a better future.
Conclusion
The edge of possible can empowers you, your team, and organisation to not only be more resilient, but move beyond solving problems, towards identifying and seizing new opportunities and innovating. By understanding our plans as bets on possible futures, we can better prepare for uncertainties and adapt to change. Being ready for the real future as it arrives. This approach fosters resilience, encourages diversity in decision-making, and helps us stay agile and forward-thinking. Embracing the edge of possible is key to thriving in an ever-changing world, ensuring sustainable growth and continuous innovation.
Work with me at the Edge of Possible Consultancy to discover your possibilities to create a better future.
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