Dr.

Sania Zahra Malik

 The world is becoming increasingly complex

◦ Complexity in knowledge

◦ Complexity in technology

◦ Complexity in cultures

◦ Complexity in processes
 Complexity is not just the story of this world

 Complexity is also a story about people.

 It is a story about the fit between the demands of

the world and the capacity of the person or the
organization.

 When we experience the world as “too complex”,

there is a mismatch between the world’s
complexity and our own at that time!
 Can we reduce the complexity of the world?

 Can we increase the complexity of our own

mind?
 Aren’t older people wiser?

 What hard-scientists claimed?

 What social scientists claimed?

 Who is making inferences?

 They weremaking inferences?

 The real thing?

 Does anyone know about neuroplasticity?

 Experience can change the mind’s
◦ Physical structure (anatomy)

◦ Functional organization (physiology)

 With a large enough
sample size, you can
detect a mildly
upward-sloping curve.

 There is a considerable
variation within any
age.
 There are qualitatively different,
discernibly distinct levels (the
“plateaus”). Each level represents
quite a different way of knowing
the world

 Development does not unfold

continuously; there are periods of
stability and periods of change

 The intervals between

transformations to new levels –
“time of a plateau” – gets longer
and longer

 The line gets thinner, representing

fewer and fewer people at the
higher plateaus.
 We are shaped by the definitions and expectations of our
personal environment.

 Our self coheres by its alignment with, and loyalty to, that
with which it identifies.

 This can express itself primarily in our relationships with

people, with “schools of thought” (our ideas and beliefs) or
both.

 Characteristics
◦ Team player
◦ Faithful follower
◦ Aligning
◦ Seeks direction
◦ Reliant
 We are able step back enough from the social environment to
generate an internal “seat of judgement” or personal authority
that evaluates and makes choices about external
expectations.

 Our self coheres by its alignment with its own belief

system/ideology/personal code; by its ability to self-direct,
take stands, set limits, and create and regulate its boundaries
on behalf of its own voice.

 Characteristics
◦ Agenda driving
◦ Leaders learn to lead
◦ Own compass, own frame
◦ Problem solving
◦ Independent
 We can step back from and reflect on the limits of our own
ideology or personal authority; see that any one system or
self-organization is in some way partial or incomplete; be
friendlier towards contradiction and opposites; seek to hold
on to multiple systems rather than projecting all but one onto
the other.

 Our self coheres through its ability not to confuse internal

consistency with wholeness or completeness, and through its
alignment with the dialectic rather than either pole.

 Characteristics
◦ Meta-leader
◦ Leads to learn
◦ Multiframe, holds contradictions
◦ Problem finding
◦ Interdependent