Does Big Data gen­er­ate com­plex­i­ty and uncertainty?

Where is dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion tak­ing us? Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion is a tool and not a goal. Is there enough dis­cus­sion regard­ing what we want to achieve and where the dig­i­tal age should be head­ing? Or are we so over­whelmed by the result­ing com­plex­i­ty and uncer­tain­ty that most of us react with either agony, fear or anger? If the lat­ter out­come is the case, rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion seems to be an inevitable con­se­quence. Or is it?

Con­tin­u­ing with her series of Duet inter­views, Dr Cal­daro­la, author of Big Data and Law, and Prof. Ran­dall P. White, best-sell­ing author of sev­er­al busi­ness books and lead­er­ship expert, dis­cuss whether empow­er­ing empa­thy is a solu­tion for rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion and what “dig­i­tal” empa­thy could look like. They also con­sid­er how it could be prac­ticed in the mod­ern era of machines, quan­ti­ta­tive meth­ods as well as an increas­ing lack of imma­nent human inter­ac­tion due to today’s chal­lenges which now involve work­ing from home, hav­ing class­es at home, online shop­ping and similar.

The world is fac­ing two major changes: Glob­al­i­sa­tion – mean­ing var­i­ous cul­tures, habits, com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills that move us clos­er togeth­er – and dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion – mean­ing the increase of automa­tion, dig­i­tal devices, use and flows of data… This brings us com­plex­i­ty with regard to trans­paren­cy, shift­ing pow­er struc­tures etc.… Is this the uncer­tain­ty you exam­ined in your lat­est book Relax, It’s Only Uncer­tain­ty: Lead the way when the way is chang­ing?

Prof. Ran­dall P. White: That is a great ques­tion- and a fair one. When we took on the ques­tion of uncer­tain­ty in our book, we took it from any direc­tion, com­ing from any place about anything. 

There is an abbre­vi­a­tion that was intro­duced many years ago, called VUCA (volatile, uncer­tain, chaot­ic, ambigu­ous). The issue is we are liv­ing in a VUCA world that is cer­tain­ly volatile and uncer­tain and full of chaos and a lot of man­i­fold mean­ings. When Phil (Philip Hodg­son) and I were first think­ing of this and writ­ing about it, we had already writ­ten a book, The Future of Lead­er­ship: Rid­ing the Cor­po­rate Rapids Into the 21^st Cen­tu­ry, and a lot of lead­ers – the women and men we inter­viewed – talked about the uncer­tain­ty they faced when they took over a senior lev­el posi­tion or the most senior posi­tion in an organ­i­sa­tion. They knew they could lead and that they had cer­tain capa­bil­i­ties, but they were faced with mak­ing choic­es on a scale, scope and lev­el that they hadn’t faced before. Phil had noticed this in his oth­er work, and this gave us the orig­i­nal idea for what we want­ed to study: uncer­tain­ty. I had also researched that issue in oth­er books, such as, Break­ing The Glass Ceil­ing: Can Women Reach The Top Of Amer­i­ca’s Largest Cor­po­ra­tions?

 What we noticed is that there were lev­els that peo­ple went through in their learn­ing dur­ing their organ­i­sa­tion­al life: At the first lev­el – when you first super­vise peo­ple – you learn that peo­ple are a prob­lem; at mid-lev­els you give up on tech­ni­cal mas­tery and you are get­ting in an area where you expe­ri­ence that some­thing is tac­ti­cal and some­thing is strate­gic but you have prob­lems dis­tin­guish­ing which is which and you expe­ri­ence that peo­ple do not want you in that posi­tion because they do not want you lead­ing them.

The tough­est tran­si­tion is becom­ing a senior exec­u­tive, where you have to be strate­gic and say where the organ­i­sa­tion is head­ing – espe­cial­ly in a chaot­ic envi­ron­ment. And you have to – and this is a big les­son – embrace uncer­tain­ty by run­ning towards it, not away from it. We fur­ther under­stand that you as the senior exec­u­tive can­not do this all by your­self; you need a team of com­mit­ted individuals.

I gave you all that pre­am­ble because you are ask­ing whether glob­al­i­sa­tion and the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion are either con­tribut­ing to the uncer­tain­ty or whether they are the uncer­tain­ty we are talk­ing about. Glob­al­i­sa­tion and the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion each stand sep­a­rate­ly as a source of uncer­tain­ty but also togeth­er cre­ate a whole class of uncer­tain­ty, some­thing that over 50 years ago when a leader took over a senior posi­tion had no idea about. And now these are phe­nom­e­na that a leader has to deal with. These are phe­nom­e­na that bring uncer­tain­ty and the unknown that a leader by neces­si­ty has to deal with. Glob­al­i­sa­tion and dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion make the uncer­tain­ty faster and more com­plex.

The indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion already cre­at­ed big changes with a lot of uncer­tain­ty, because dai­ly life changed, cul­tures came clos­er because of new mobil­i­ty…. And today we are fac­ing anoth­er big rev­o­lu­tion- we could even call it a sort of Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion 2.0- where dai­ly life will change again: with glob­al­i­sa­tion because dif­fer­ent eth­i­cal per­cep­tions move clos­er togeth­er and with dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion because automa­tion rais­es the ques­tion of the role of human beings in pri­vate as well as in work life. Take, for exam­ple, the new stores of Ama­zon, “Ama­zon Go”¹ , with­out any cashiers, where you take prod­ucts reg­is­tered by video and sen­sors off the shelves of the super­mar­ket, put them in your shop­ping bag and where pay­ment is done auto­mat­i­cal­ly by deb­it­ing the Ama­zon account by hold­ing the mobile device equipped with the “Ama­zon to go App” at the entrance and exit. The sur­prise is that Ama­zon is say­ing that they will use the same amount of per­son­nel as before and that they will not get rid of them. The fear of human replace­ment by machines doesn’t seem to exist but I think it is there and we are not address­ing the prob­lem. I don’t think we’ve prop­er­ly explored the inter­ac­tion between machines and humans.

But let us look at the leader who needs to answer the ques­tion: Where do I see the future head­ing? And how is the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion in indus­try affect­ing the busi­ness and strat­e­gy that I want to accom­plish? That is a lot of uncer­tain­ty from a lot of dif­fer­ent directions.

So, when we wrote our book, we looked at uncer­tain­ty com­ing from any source. Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and glob­al­i­sa­tion are just two of many sources. But let us also look at the veloc­i­ty of change. We all can feel this veloc­i­ty. I won­der whether peo­ple can get used to that veloc­i­ty. I won­der whether peo­ple feel over­whelmed by the veloc­i­ty and the amount of change. So, the ques­tion is whether we can digest and feel okay with this amount and veloc­i­ty of change. This is an impor­tant ques­tion and I don’t pre­tend to know the answer.

If we acknowl­edge increas­ing com­plex­i­ty and uncer­tain­ty, then most psy­chol­o­gists could pre­dict the reac­tions of human beings: fear and anger because humans can­not deci­pher today’s com­plex­i­ty.  The chal­lenge for every one of us would be to bear the ambi­gu­i­ty of open ques­tions – even those that we can­not solve. Is that a cor­rect obser­va­tion or assumption?

I think that the human being is fear­ful of the unknown and we tend to run away from it and not towards it. I won­der whether the pan­dem­ic has exac­er­bat­ed the degree of the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion and I also won­der whether the pan­dem­ic opened a win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty for us to tune into the veloc­i­ty of change. Fur­ther­more, I am won­der­ing whether this is the moment we begin to try to imple­ment some of the con­cepts and ideas that have been out there for a while. We can say that we need change and that we need to try imple­ment­ing those con­cepts and ideas since we have noth­ing to lose because we can’t oper­ate as we did before. I think it is time to embrace the veloc­i­ty of change.

For human beings it is dif­fi­cult to cope with the veloc­i­ty. Let us take the exam­ple of trav­el­ing. There is the Indi­an wis­dom “We have to take a break from time to time and wait for our souls to catch up with us again”. I am get­ting ready for a long trip after hav­ing not trav­elled for many months due to the pan­dem­ic. My pro­fes­sion as con­sul­tant and pro­fes­sor required that I lived on an air­plane out of a suit­case. I learned to show up imme­di­ate­ly. I learned to be present imme­di­ate­ly. I would play lit­tle tricks on myself to be ready on Mon­day in Paris for teach­ing, the day after for con­sult­ing in anoth­er place etc. Although I have been trav­el­ling before and although I have been trav­el­ling so much, I am now full of anx­i­ety with regard to my next trip, full of feel­ing the uncertainty.

I am out of prac­tice! Deal­ing with uncer­tain­ty is not some­thing I think peo­ple do light­ly. I think we need to be pre­pared. I think we need to prac­tice. I think there are some things we need to be open and will­ing to do to run toward the uncer­tain­ty. So, if we need a break from time to time, that is an indi­ca­tion for not trav­el­ing often, that is a sign for our adap­ta­tion and that is the time we need to get pre­pared. I think I was pre­pared to deal with a cer­tain lev­el of uncer­tain­ty, but now that I haven’t trav­elled for a long time, I have regressed and I am out of prac­tice and I have to relearn.

To be sure, liv­ing in an inter­na­tion­al bub­ble cuts down the uncer­tain­ty because peo­ple in this bub­ble are sim­i­lar, the hotels and meet­ing places resem­ble each oth­er… So, in such a bub­ble one feels safe and that is a way of nav­i­gat­ing the uncer­tain­ty. Where­as when we trav­el as a sin­gle enti­ty, we do not have that sort of pro­tec­tion and then we tru­ly enter into anoth­er cul­ture, anoth­er bub­ble… and we face the dif­fer­ence, the unfa­mil­iar, the chal­lenge, the need to explore dif­fer­ent handling…

I believe that the idea of glob­al­i­sa­tion and dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion accel­er­ates the veloc­i­ty of change and I won­der if we have knocked down some of the nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring bar­ri­ers in some way so that we are cre­at­ing a dif­fer­ent kind of bub­ble that allows us to move very quick­ly and allows us to cre­ate a dif­fer­ent space.

So, we no longer per­ceive of France, Great Britain or Chi­na as coun­tries. Instead, we cre­ate oth­er bub­bles, sort of affin­i­ty groups or idea groups or cor­po­rate set­tings. Con­tin­u­ing in this direc­tion, cer­tain states and bor­ders, groups and beliefs don’t mean as much as before and that is the way we nav­i­gate the uncer­tain­ty by find­ing human beings who agree with us. As a result, we might have ecosys­tems – bub­bles – like Face­book, Ama­zon, Apple… where peo­ple need to decide to which bub­ble, they want to belong. We dis­tin­guish between the word cul­ture with a cap­i­tal C or a small c. The bub­ble with the cap­i­tal C of Cul­ture are the exist­ing nations, where­as the bub­bles with a small c are the cul­tures of the dig­i­tal ecosys­tems. There­fore, the cap­i­tal C Cul­ture is falling away and will be replaced by the cul­tures with the small c.

Dig­i­tal plat­forms and com­mu­ni­ties will help us in cre­at­ing these new cul­tures, bub­bles… And that helps me to nav­i­gate the uncer­tain­ty I face in the world around me. That means, if I face some kind of dis­con­ti­nu­ity and the uncer­tain­ty it brings, then I might turn to a Face­book spe­cial group. And that becomes my cul­tur­al ref­er­ence. It scares me to lose the old cul­tur­al val­ues, but they do fall by the way­side – and now I am aging myself by admit­ting that there is a part of me that does not want to lose these cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences. There is a dis­cus­sion about these cor­po­rate actors of the ecosys­tems tak­ing so much space and hav­ing so few com­peti­tors. They are cre­at­ing “the only game in town”. More con­trol leads to a nar­row­er out­look and a devel­op­ment which is not as broad as it once was.

If we fur­ther recog­nise fear, anger, hate and low self-esteem as being a reac­tion to the cur­rent com­plex­i­ty and uncer­tain­ty, then the “auto­mat­ic” and inevitable reac­tion is rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion; Is rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion the most prob­a­ble reac­tion? Can we observe an increase in rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion with the emer­gence of glob­al­i­sa­tion and digitalisation?

Rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion sim­pli­fies the com­plex­i­ty and uncer­tain­ty by shrink­ing pos­si­ble answers to just a small num­ber of answers (for or against, right wing or left wing, pro and contra…).

If I am self-con­fi­dent, self-reliant and self-suf­fi­cient as an indi­vid­ual, and, as I face uncer­tain­ty, I am will­ing to have a debate in a het­ero­ge­neous group and I am will­ing to explore shades, nuances, details… But if I don’t feel secure enough to lis­ten to anoth­er opin­ion or solu­tion then I am drawn to a par­tic­u­lar view or an affin­i­ty group that gives me the feel­ing of being attached to some­thing that is big­ger than I am. And the dig­i­tal plat­forms give me much more and eas­i­er oppor­tu­ni­ties and space to find fol­low­ers than if I am out in the world with­out these dig­i­tal con­nec­tions in this glob­alised world try­ing to phys­i­cal­ly meet peo­ple. It would take me far more effort, far more poten­cy to attract those fol­low­ers around the world.

It is a ques­tion of het­ero­gene­ity and homo­gene­ity. Since the 1980s in the lead­er­ship lit­er­a­ture, you see var­i­ous researchers enter­tain­ing the idea of het­ero­gene­ity. Human beings, how­ev­er, enjoy being homoge­nous – espe­cial­ly in group work – cloning them­selves because it is easy; it is easy to estab­lish trust, there is low con­flict… Het­ero­gene­ity leads to var­i­ous ideas, requires a longer time to decide on some­thing, pro­duces con­flict and chal­lenges trust.

Rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion gives room for sects, cults and extrem­ists to devel­op although I have to admit that I do not know the lit­er­a­ture on cult-like behav­iour. There is a soci­ol­o­gy called Mil­lenar­i­an Move­ment. These are move­ments that promise some deliv­er­ance at some lat­er point in time – they are cults but a dif­fer­ent kind of cult – and it is inter­est­ing that some of the groups that I’m think­ing about seem to want fol­low­ers, and you begin to be sucked into these groups because they give you a sense of belong­ing, poten­cy and a sense of being part of some­thing that is big­ger than you. They give you a sim­ple answer to a com­plex set of prob­lems that are full of uncer­tain­ty and confusion.

Rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion sim­pli­fies the com­plex­i­ty by shrink­ing the many pos­si­ble answers to just a small num­ber of answers (for or against). In addi­tion, alleged debates in affin­i­ty groups are most of the time rarely based on knowl­edge and facts but rather on opin­ions (likes and dis­likes). Fur­ther­more, the role of sci­ence is trashed (Agno­tol­ogy) because sci­ence is an iter­a­tive process and actu­al­ly explores uncer­tain­ty – answers change as we test and reject hypothe­ses. The affin­i­ty groups do not change their mind and they trash sci­ence and the role of experts because they do not want to wait for an answer. They reject the uncer­tain­ty that comes with hypoth­e­sis testing.

My opin­ion is:

“It is time to embrace the veloc­i­ty of change. Uncer­tain­ty is what makes the world go round. Uncer­tain­ty is the way we make progress, the way that inven­tions come to pass, and it is the new and nov­el: It is to be embraced!”

Prof. Ran­dall P. White

We are not run­ning towards it but we are run­ning away from it. We avoid adven­tures because there is the fear of doing some­thing wrong, get­ting a wrong answer or mak­ing a mis­take – but it is part of the game to do some­thing wrong.

Often there isn’t a cul­ture of fail­ure because we fol­low the mer­it prin­ci­ple. There is an attempt to incor­po­rate fault tol­er­ance in schools, work, organ­i­sa­tion, and this attempt is grow­ing. It is true that chil­dren before they start school are curi­ous, and attempt to learn and to improve, try­ing again and again to learn how to walk, for exam­ple, ear­ly in life ask­ing ques­tion after ques­tion (an aver­age of 250 ques­tions a day which decreas­es to 50 by the age of 11 or 12). We train scep­tics, in our for­mal edu­ca­tion, so that when you come up with a new idea or a new approach, we show you three things that are wrong with your approach ver­sus three things that are right with your idea or approach. We have many ways to eat at a person’s self-con­fi­dence and indi­vid­u­al­i­ty. Fur­ther­more, there is a lot of con­for­mi­ty because with con­for­mi­ty I am part of a larg­er group that gives me my ideas, which are a direct response to uncer­tain­ty. There is con­cern because there seems to be less and less inde­pen­dent think­ing and less and less abil­i­ty to judge in the flood of infor­ma­tion and trashed sci­ence. We need to frame uncer­tain­ty as a good thing, some­thing to be embraced and train our­selves to engage in learn­ing and chal­leng­ing each other.

If we fur­ther admit that rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion is on the rise, what tools are avail­able to us to fight this trend? Trust? Edu­ca­tion? If so, who is able to train peo­ple to con­sid­er open ques­tions that most of us can­not decipher?

What I per­ceive to be hap­pen­ing on the dig­i­tal plat­forms is that they pro­vide sim­ple answers to com­plex prob­lems of uncer­tain­ty and they do not pro­vide for review, cura­tion, learn­ing and feedback.

We need thinkers who think broad­ly, we need lead­ers who think from a vari­ety of direc­tions, points of view ‑and I do not want us to lose the oppor­tu­ni­ty and the impor­tance of debate for explo­ration and try­ing to come up with bet­ter solu­tions. We are lack­ing lib­er­al arts edu­ca­tion, we lack vari­ety, we lack diver­si­ty and debate and once I turn to or am drawn to a spe­cial group in an ecosys­tem and those groups start telling me things that I do not ques­tion, I find ready-made answers that I believe and accept. Then, I become a believ­er of some­thing that might or might not be true. There are no debates, there is less and less crit­i­cal judge­ment which is need­ed to nav­i­gate the huge amount of infor­ma­tion avail­able; we are not lis­ten­ing to each other.

A good leader embraces the uncer­tain­ty, is not afraid to ask ques­tions, admits that s/he does not have the answer and invites oth­ers from dif­fer­ent back­grounds and per­spec­tives to sit togeth­er and debate pos­si­ble solu­tions. This is deliv­ered by a lib­er­al arts education.

We know from authors like Don­ald Ham­brick and Ran­dall Peter­son that het­ero­gene­ity in groups increas­es the time it takes for deci­sion-mak­ing which comes off as counter-pro­duc­tive in the dig­i­tal era where the veloc­i­ty I was talk­ing about is increas­ing. Isn’t it inter­est­ing that as het­ero­gene­ity goes up, trust goes down in groups, and con­flict increas­es? We know from the research of Tere­sa Ama­bile and oth­ers that het­ero­gene­ity does not guar­an­tee inno­v­a­tive solu­tions. So, it is not that easy to cope with uncer­tain­ty by putting togeth­er a het­ero­ge­neous group to find a good solu­tion. Het­ero­gene­ity only increas­es the like­li­hood of find­ing that solu­tion. True het­ero­gene­ity would appre­ci­ate the var­i­ous dif­fer­ences in thoughts and stand­points around the table and encour­age an open debate.

We need to learn to have debates involv­ing het­ero­ge­neous par­tic­i­pants. So, the ques­tion is: How do we cre­ate a space where peo­ple can learn to be more self-reliant, more self-con­fi­dent, more potent and more able to have their own view, where they are chal­lenged by oth­er views and don’t fall into line just because they get an easy answer- a space where peo­ple don’t con­fuse dis­agree­ment (het­ero­gene­ity) with not being loved or not belong­ing to a group. The ques­tion, then, needs to be asked: How do we pre­vent giv­ing room to sects and cults in times of uncer­tain­ty? This is espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult if there is a lack of broad-based lib­er­al arts edu­ca­tion where we are taught the fun­da­men­tal ideas of chal­leng­ing ortho­doxy, lis­ten­ing, and build­ing on one another’s ideas which all fos­ter a cul­ture of debate… I’m think­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly about de Tocqueville’s Democ­ra­cy in Amer­i­ca and his con­clu­sion that wide access to edu­ca­tion is the key to pre­serv­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic ideas.

How about empa­thy? Can empa­thy and emo­tion be a way to reduce radicalisation?

Empa­thy is a West­ern ide­al, and I believe empa­thy is one of the main EQ com­pe­ten­cies for any leader. In this con­text, empa­thy means to be able to walk a mile in some­one else’s shoes. It is the secret to cross-Cul­tures with a cap­i­tal C. I might not speak the oth­er lan­guage, but I might be able to inter­act and com­mu­ni­cate at a lev­el that allows me to make some sort of connection.

The prob­lem that I note is that affin­i­ty groups aren’t very empa­thet­ic- espe­cial­ly towards oth­ers who do not share their point of view. Most peo­ple try to get rid of the peo­ple who have dif­fer­ent ideas so a homo­ge­neous group comes into existence.

We have often thought, as we debate or argue or try to find the best solu­tion, that we need to lis­ten and build on one another’s idea. We even prac­tice empa­thy when we dis­agree and take the prob­lem from their point of view.

I think the world has already done this a few times and I find that thought a scary one at this point and that is why in my class­room I have tried with all my might to show that uncer­tain­ty needs to be embraced. The num­ber of places and debates which fos­ter this sort of think­ing is get­ting small­er. Whether dig­i­tal plat­forms will serve as “trust cen­tres” or whether gov­ern­ments and big reg­u­la­tors will try to break them apart, much as hap­pened ear­ly in the 20^th cen­tu­ry with the large oil com­pa­nies, I just don’t know. Fur­ther­more, if we break them, what will happen?

What I do know is that we need to encour­age peo­ple to embrace the uncer­tain­ty. We are fright­ened about what we do not know. Uncer­tain­ty rep­re­sents what we do not know and our basic needs of comfort/protection/acceptance/love can seem at odds when faced with uncertainty.

Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion gives peo­ple access to infor­ma­tion – a lot of infor­ma­tion- but para­dox­i­cal­ly, it does increase uncer­tain­ty and peo­ple dis­ap­pear in these cult-like groups that give them sim­ple answers. Maybe our human tech­nol­o­gy has not caught up with our machine-based tech­nol­o­gy to digest the infor­ma­tion flood and there is not a lot of emo­tion in those machines when we embrace the uncer­tain­ty and solve a prob­lem togeth­er. I do not know what abil­i­ty in par­tic­u­lar cap­tures the imag­i­na­tion of fol­low­ers, whether it is the charis­ma of a leader or some­thing else, but what I do know is that a leader needs the abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate sim­ply- but with­out giv­ing sim­ple answers.

Empa­thy requires observ­ing how the per­son vis-à-vis to us feels by using our dif­fer­ent sens­es. How can we estab­lish “dig­i­tal empa­thy” in times of work­ing and hav­ing school at home which has result­ed in reduced human inter­ac­tions due to the pan­dem­ic? Any ideas?

I think dur­ing the pan­dem­ic when we have been forced into cap­sule-like envi­ron­ments, peo­ple have been exper­i­ment­ing with var­i­ous human tech­niques to check in with oth­ers on their teams or in their class­rooms. We need to con­tin­ue to fig­ure out these tech­niques for estab­lish­ing con­nec­tion and empa­thy as we go for­ward. We should be col­lect­ing exam­ples of these tech­niques and inter­ven­tions so that they become more wide­ly used and study which ones are most effec­tive in cre­at­ing deep and mean­ing­ful interactions.

Randy, thank you so much for shar­ing your opin­ion, your thoughts and your view on uncer­tain­ty, rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion and empa­thy in the dig­i­tal age.

Thank you, Cristi­na, and I look for­ward to read­ing your upcom­ing inter­views with rec­og­nized experts, delv­ing even deep­er into this fas­ci­nat­ing topic.

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¹ https://​www​.ama​zon​.com/​b​?​i​e​=​U​T​F​8​&​n​o​d​e​=​1​6​0​0​8​5​8​9​011