Buckle up! WNT Lead Project Manager Kelley Abell here, taking us on a little excursion into complexity.

Recently, our team has been thinking about how – as an organization- we like to move through complexity rather than around it. We’ve been wanting to better define what that means, both for ourselves and for our partners.

As we navigate work in complex systems and organizations, one truth keeps surfacing: humans crave clarity. When things get messy, our minds rush to find patterns and explanations, even when the story is more tangled. We are, after all, sense-making machines. The human brain converts complex information into linear narratives, often with unconscious ease.

We like an explanation that look like this:

X input caused “Challenge A.”
In the past, “Approach B” applied to the “Challenge A” yielded “Success C.”
So we move to initiate “Approach B” again. It’s logical. It’s neat. And that’s that.

So… why do our time-tested solutions and best-laid plans sometimes stall, while unexpected ideas take off?

Complexity science offers a clue (calling all fellow nerds – read more here). Theorists suggest the whole is not always the sum of its parts. Instead:

1. Things don’t always add up neatly. A single new partnership can have an outsized impact, or a routine meeting can yield completely different results in different contexts.
2. Outcomes often emerge from relationships. After a natural disaster, communities often self-organize without a clear leader and create outcomes greater than any one person could predict. (A Complexity Science Primer)
3. Renewal requires letting go, not just building up. Funders may sunset initiatives when conditions shift, allowing space for new, more relevant innovation.

A complexity framework allows us to see not just the discreet parts of a system, but the relationships that make it function – or not. Complex systems share a few common traits:

1. Interdependence: what one person, partnership, or action does shapes the context for others.
2. Non-linearity: small changes can trigger outsized, unpredictable results.
3. Emergence: new patterns arise from local interactions, without central control.
4. Adaptation: systems evolve as agents learn and respond to feedback.

Through this reflection on complexity, I don’t mean to suggest that there isn’t value in linear thinking, especially for organizations and initiatives. Clear goals, targets, and measurement helps to keep groups on track toward a shared purpose & help to provide feelings of coherence – which is motivating and productive! But I do think that zooming out to viewing our work through a systems lens can help us make more sense of what’s going on. This reflection is at the heart of how we support organizations navigating complexity.

So, how can we see complexity in action and learn from it?

Here’s how WNT resists the impulse toward overly neat, linear thinking – and how you might invite complexity into your everyday work:

1. Model curiosity: ask more questions than you answer;
2. Welcome tensions and paradoxes: sometimes, the way forward begins by letting go of the desire for a cohesive narrative and embracing a “both and” approach; and
3. Use practical tools that remind us of complexity (like the Ecocycle) to challenge biases toward linear solutions.

At WNT, we bring frameworks like this into planning and facilitation work with our partners. What we love most is helping teams make sense of where they are, where they’re stuck, and where new energy is emerging.