The stuff that comes after fires – the confusing place of complexity in the world of uncertainty
I am reluctant to use the word recovery. This morning I sit here at my kitchen table, listening to the sounds of trucks driving up and down our dirt road, excavators, falling trees, chainsaws, smashing metal, amidst the lingering smell of smoke that reminds me that although a fire came to our door step six Mondays ago, it’s still not over… this all takes the place of crisp summer mornings, long grass under my feet as I feed our guinea pigs and listen to the morning kookaburras and the occasional squeal of one of the kids playing on the tramp before catching the bus to school. That’s how it used to be anyway.
I watch with silent tears as our new boundary fence is built. The ground is being cleared for new posts to ram into the earth. Right in the place where last week we celebrated with the kids about the new black wattle forest being created, with the dozens of new seedlings that have popped up in the charcoal that used to be our yard. We talked about weaving them into an arch, like in the children’s garden at Royal Botanical Gardens in Melbourne. Now destroyed for the second time, squashed by the fat tires of the machinery we organised to put in our fence. It was our decision. But I didn’t think about this consequence. We still can’t believe how unbelievably lucky we are to be able to return to an intact, liveable building. This is something we are overwhelmingly grateful for. But it’s still heart breaking to watch this second round of devastation of something that’s trying so hard to regrow.
Things are getting pretty intense at the moment and no day is straight forward. Actually, things are complex, in the true sense of the word. People talk about recovery, and as the only word I have, then yes, recovery is complex.
Huh? Why is this complex?
Let’s talk about complexity. Before we talk about what needs to happen, we need to understand what kind of problem we are dealing with.
The thing is, there are different kinds of problems. Some people say there are simple problems, and complicated problems, and complex problems. Some people also think there are chaotic problems. It really depends on how you learn about complexity and which schools of thought you’re learning from.
There is one thing everyone agrees with – many of our hardest problems are complex problems. These function differently to, for example, simple problems.
For example, if we were thinking about bushfire recovery as a simple problem, it would be linear, something like out of SmartArt in a Word document. One thing leading neatly onto the next:
If we were going to say that the stuff after fires was a simple problem, we would also say that we do something like this diagram suggests, the same steps, in the same order, every time. And every time, we will get the same outcomes we’re looking for. The causes and effects are clear. They happen the same way every time.
But the reality is the stuff that happens during and after fires can’t fit neatly into a computer document. It’s messy and tangled. It’s complex. And no matter how hard we try to make sense of it, it certainly isn’t linear.
From where I’m sitting, it looks much more like this:
Recognising complexity means that there is no linear process. There are no clear causes or effects. The problem is influenced by lots of parts, so many parts that it’s hard to keep track of them. These parts are connected and interconnected in so many ways that we can’t always predict them. The consequences of these interconnections are often unexpected and can take a really long time to emerge, so long in fact, that sometimes we don’t see them until after they’ve happened.
Looking at a complex problem can become very confusing, very quickly. Throw in a bit of uncertainty, and we’re all in for a pretty big ride.
What’s uncertainty got to do with it?
Uncertainty is an interesting beast. As humans, many people crave certainty and routine in times of stress. And yet, during times of big change, including after disaster, one of the only certainties is that things are uncertain.
As each day passes, I see this playing out in a range of ways.
Uncertainty about programs and funding – do things progress as they did six weeks ago?
Uncertainty about when we get rain – will we get enough or too much?
Uncertainty about if things will dry out again before the summer’s over.
Uncertainty about what our roles are in all of this.
Uncertainty about if we’ll be managing the same things next summer.
Uncertainty about what normal is, and how and when that will ever return.
Uncertainty about what comes next – what will it look like and what will it involve?
The questions that come from uncertainty are endless, and with constant uncertainty comes a nice large helping of stress.
Saying this, there are some things we can do to make this pretty stressful uncertainty feel a little lighter. In the first instance, we can acknowledge it, and start getting comfortable with uncertainty. Over the past few weeks, during fire response and recovery efforts, I have heard a common sentence… ‘things are really dynamic at the moment…’ followed by a sentence along the lines of… ‘so we can’t really…’. If only I had a dollar for every time I’d heard this. It’s not to say that we should rush in without thought and consideration, but the reality is that if we wait for certainty, or for the dynamics to completely calm, it’s likely we will be immobilised, or slowed to the point of inaction.
When paired with adaptation, flexibility, listening deeply and being pretty nimble, uncertainty can be managed, and actually bring remarkable things to the surface. It is these characteristics we can be certain about, we know we have them, they generally don’t cost money and by using them they bring us more certainty.
Why do these things matter in reality?
There is no doubt that the combination of complexity and uncertainty makes for a difficult recipe. It brings a loss of confidence, unpredictability and often confusion about which way things should go. But recognising these characteristics of a problem is critical. It helps us better understand what is driving the problem we're facing, how to address its behaviour and most importantly, ensure that any actions are constantly evolving as the environment and surrounding communities evolve.
Complex problems require complex solutions. We can’t apply simple solutions to a complex problem and expect them to have a significant effect. The web of interactions must constantly be at the forefront so that we can embrace uncertainty, be flexible and adapt our actions as the problems change.
