Chris McDermott - I see Social Practices, Social Practices everywhere!

Chris McDermott

co-founder at Contextualise.co

Chris' presentation (video recording)

Q&A

• How does de-contextualising and then re-contextualising a practice relate to documentation? What would be the meaning of documentation in creating practices around a tool? Do agile practices make writing documentation more complex?
  
  
• The tension between practice and use/context?
  
  
• What is the difference between practice and process?
  
  

Complexity theory short introduction

"Before we dive into the murky waters of complex adaptive systems, what is a system? Parts that interact to meet a purpose. The parts that interact are interdependent."

When thinking in systems, the emphasis shifts from the parts to the interactions of the parts. Complex (adaptive) systems are a type of non-ordered systems.

Key attributes of a complex system:
- Emergence
- Dispositionality
- Constraints
- Attractors

Most organizations are complex, socio-technical systems.

How organizations approach change has been ineffective

To change an organization, the old framing to separately affect people, processes and technology is problematic: leads to crucially differing perspectives and activities in how to deliver change. The concurrent parts-approach:

• HR-lead (mindset, culture, company value statements, performance management) -- BUT!

  "looking at the interactions of the parts and integrating the other key fields or the cognition of how knowledge is acquired"

• BizOps-lead (business process reengineering, target operating models) -- BUT!

  "the understanding of complex systems is distributed but we cannot just put all these pieces together to get a clear understanding of the whole system nor design a future state from there"

• Propositional knowledge-based approach (digital transformation, codify rules, algorithmic decisions) -- BUT!

  "need humans in customer interactions to use heuristics and procedural knowledge and perspective"

Acting your way into a new way of thinking

"Anyone wanting to change a culture needs to define the actions and behaviors they desire, then design the work processes that are necessary to reinforce those behaviors." E. Schein

• The example of NUMMI: changed the practice through a material (the chord), which then would evolve new values and attitudes, and create a different culture.
• Significantly change the meaning of work. Trophic cascade: the main predator in the environment changed and that allowed the behaviors to change.

Practice as a central unit of analysis

A social practice is a reproducible, routinized shared behavior.
- Integrating Meaning, Material and Competence.
- Taste: know what good looks like - subjective.

A series of practices integrate together to create a Capability.
Practices have an evolutionary cycle: proto-practice --» practice(changing in time) --» ex-practice.
Re-contextualise: share a practice into a different context. Consider meaning, material and competence in the new environment.

Practice sensibility:

• How we believe we should act
• How we understand what affordances there are within our context that enable us to act and change how we act
• What competencies we have to act and how we might change them.

How can practice theory help you see the world and make informed decisions about change

Maturity mapping: visualize practices for how good they are in their environment, and what change we might want to make to get better outcomes.

• Anchored in the needs of the customer.
• Position as a function of visibility towards customer (capability chain) and taste value (maturity from conceptual through best).
• Practice cards describing its purpose, tools used and how ‘well done’ looks like.

Shift the focus from the individuals to the practices. Work is a site of practices, where workers are practitioners.

"Transformation is the progressive accumulation of habits practices." Andrew Clay Shafer, Chris McDermott, Jabe Bloom