From critical thinking to critical imagination

When situations are complicated; lots of interdependent moving parts, all of which can be understood, critical thinking is vital. It's complicated, spreadsheets from hell complicated, and we need the skills to make sure we put the parts together in the right order to achieve what we intend.

When complicated crossed the border into complex however, all the rules change, There are parts to what we are looking at that we cannot see or understand, and they appear unexpectedly at random and cause results we not just could not foresee, but could not imagine. To start to get to grips with this, we need critical imagination.

The border between complicated and complex is a liminal space, as old orders disappear and new ones emerge. Chaos often has a hand in it, and expertise, treated as truth, is a massive handicap. When experts create maps, projecting what they believe they know onto what they do not, we're in trouble. We create short term elastoplast answers to gaping complex wounds.

In liminal…