Community of Inquiry
In Omnicomplexity, we lean into the messy reality of organisational life, understanding that fixed structures often hinder adaptation and genuine learning. This is precisely why we favour the concept of a Community of Inquiry and the fluid nature of stances over rigid roles.
The Community of Inquiry: A Living Container for Sensemaking
A Community of Inquiry (COIN) is the foundational unit in Omnicomplexity. It's not a team with a fixed deliverable or a traditional working group. Instead, it's a dynamic, evolving space where people come together to collectively make sense of complex situations, explore tensions, and shape wiser action through continuous questioning and experimentation. It is a container for shared doubt, curiosity, and surprise. This "meaning-making field" is oriented by tensions, not deliverables, and held together by inquiry, not alignment.
Within a COIN, knowledge is co-created through interaction, not isolated analysis. It embraces fallibilism, meaning all knowledge is provisional and open to revision. It also thrives on abduction, generating plausible hypotheses in the face of uncertainty. This means a COIN is constantly learning its way forward, adapting as new experiences unfold and consequences are observed.
Stances: Fluid Postures for Complex Engagement
Instead of fixed roles, which presuppose a stable, predictable environment and often lead to "performance" rather than genuine engagement, Omnicomplexity embraces stances. Stances are fluid, active ways of relating to the work and the people involved. They are "postures" or "ways of showing up" that individuals adopt depending on the context, the moment, and the energy required. People rotate through them, inhabit different ones as context shifts, and contribute according to what the moment calls for.
This fluidity is preferred to roles because roles calcify under complexity; they are premised on fixed function and linear accountability. Stances, on the other hand, are adaptive responses that allow individuals to engage authentically with emergent situations. They foster a healthier ecosystem of collaboration by acknowledging that no single way of working is sufficient on its own.
Applying the Community of Inquiry to Any Group or Team
The beauty of the Community of Inquiry, animated by these fluid stances, is its fractal nature. It can be applied to any group or team, regardless of its formal designation, because wherever people are working together on complex problems, sensemaking and adaptive action are required.
A delivery team. Instead of merely executing a backlog, a delivery team becomes a COIN exploring tensions like "how do we simplify access without erasing nuance in user needs?" or "how do we evolve data ethics amidst product pressure?" The stances within the team ensure continuous learning and adaptation to emergent user needs and technical challenges.
A community of practice. This naturally aligns with a COIN, where practitioners come together to explore craft-related tensions such as "what tensions are we navigating in our design practice?" or "how do we balance speed with intention in code reviews?" The stances facilitate shared learning and the evolution of collective expertise.
A project or programme. Rather than a linear plan, a project becomes a COIN focused on a "North Star Tension," like "how do we offer a service that feels personal without being intrusive?" The stances help navigate uncertainty, adapt to new information, and co-create solutions through iterative probes.
A leadership team. This group transforms into a COIN dedicated to high-level strategic inquiry, such as "how do we foster innovation while maintaining stability?" or "what coherence are we enacting, intentionally or not?". Their engagement through stances allows for reflective leadership, tuning into the rhythms of inclusion, exclusion, and meaning-making.
A community of interest. These groups can act as COINs exploring identity and values, asking questions like "what does it mean to be a responsible technologist here?" or "how do we evolve data ethics amidst product pressure?" Stances like the Steward and Challenger are particularly vital here.
A department. A department can be seen as a larger, nested COIN, or a "constellation of related COINs," where different teams (as smaller COINs) feed insights and tensions into the broader departmental inquiry. The focus shifts from silos to shared coherence across overlapping tensions.
In essence, shifting to a COIN model means we no longer form teams to deliver predictable outcomes. Instead, we convene inquiries to evolve our understanding and capacity to act wisely in an uncertain world. The organisation becomes a dynamic network of these COINs, each holding a stretch, alive to the moment, and collectively rewriting the meaning of strategy through tension.
The Stances: Our Navigational Toolkit
Here are the detailed descriptions of each stance and why they are indispensable in a Community of Inquiry:
Inquiry & Orientation
This group of stances focuses on sensing what's happening, framing questions, and challenging assumptions to set a clear direction for inquiry. They are about perceiving and framing the initial understanding.
Inquirer. This stance embodies active curiosity and the continuous pursuit of understanding. It is about opening questions, staying with uncertainty, and resisting the urge for premature answers. The Inquirer keeps the central tension alive as a live question, ensuring the community resists premature closure and remains open to new discoveries. This is crucial because inquiry arises from felt difficulties and a disturbed situation, provoking reflection rather than seeking immediate certainty.
Challenger. This stance courageously surfaces assumptions, unspoken tensions, and power dynamics. The Challenger ensures the community doesn't shy away from uncomfortable truths, pushing to name the unspeakable and expose hidden conflicts. This prevents groupthink and "alignment theatre," forcing genuine engagement with difficult realities and ensuring comfortable truths are not buried.
Synthesiser. This stance excels at connecting disparate insights into tentative coherence. The Synthesiser helps the community weave together diverse perspectives and observations into a meaningful, albeit provisional, understanding. They look for patterns, links, and emergent themes, building shared understanding without forcing premature agreement.
Noticer. This stance is deeply attuned to subtle shifts, felt senses, and non-verbal cues within the system or conversation. The Noticer attends to the subtle dynamics within the community, such as emotional currents or unspoken discomfort, which are crucial signals for the inquiry. They observe what is being felt but not said, surfacing signals that logic alone might miss.
Stewardship
This group of stances focuses on maintaining the flow, integrity, and long-term purpose of the collective inquiry. They are about interpreting and guiding the journey.
Facilitator. This stance actively shapes the environment and interactions, ensuring effective group flow and dialogue. The Facilitator guides conversations, adapts structures, and ensures equitable participation, allowing the community to move effectively through different phases of inquiry, from diverging to converging. They help cultivate conditions where learning can survive disagreement.
Steward. This stance holds the purpose, coherence, and continuity of the Community of Inquiry over time. The Steward nurtures the community's long-term purpose and ensures its continued vitality and relevance. They ensure that the inquiry remains anchored in what matters and that the community's learning journey evolves purposefully.
Experimentation & Embodiment
This group of stances is oriented towards acting into the system, designing experiments, and ensuring that practical learning occurs from those actions, bringing ideas into tangible reality.
Shaper. This applied stance focuses on translating abstract insights and hypotheses into tangible experiments or actions. The Shaper helps give concrete form to probes, designing the "smallest meaningful move" that can test a hypothesis in the real world. They bridge the gap between conceptual understanding and practical application, allowing the CoI to "act into belief".
Craftsperson. This applied stance brings care, integrity, and contextual skill to the execution of probes and interventions. The Craftsperson ensures that any actions or experiments undertaken by the community are handled with ethical consideration, responsibility, and attention to real-world consequences. They ensure actions are "good enough to honour the tension it explores."