ABSTRACT
The task of this chapter is to consider how anyone can in a fashion get to grips with a complex of interrelated and emergent issues and dilemmas. It is vital first of all to ensure that the reader fully appreciates the implications of complexity theory introduced in the last chapter for all forms of practice including, to employ traditional terms, decision-making, problem solving, and strategic planning. These forms of practice each develop firm views on future events. Generally speaking, we are supposed to learn all about our current situation, where we are actually going, where we intend to go to improve things, and how to make certain within a small margin of error that we get there. However, as Ralph Stacey points out in his book Managing the Unknowable, traditional strategic thinking holds an unquestioned assumption that we arrive in some future because someone intended it to be that way. If this were so, then a priori established intentions must extend over large numbers of interrelationships, through recurring emergence, over long periods of time into the future.
