FLOWCON 2025

Seeing the world through a different lens

We see the world through the lens of all our experiences. This is probably obvious to most, but what is probably less apparent is that we also carry a coherent mental model of how we expect the world around us to behave. A preconceived notion of what to expect in any given situation, one that even goes beyond the basic laws of nature and common human behaviour. It is so ingrained that we do not know we even have it until made aware of it. Like do you assume predictability because science assumes determinism, or do you accept unpredictability because everything is contextual?

In this talk, we will have a look at some of these lenses, called world hypothesis, and we will explore how profoundly different we interpret the world by choosing one over the other. How does it play out assuming social systems behave like machines, like when blindly copying an approach from others; or trying to create a canonical data model when all have their own context; or how about giving a team orders and designs and then expecting them to self-manage?

We shall see that the lenses are complete and should not be mixed as we constantly seem to do; to our detriment, creating massive confusion and dysfunction. Awareness of these world views and understanding their fitness in any given situation can take us a long way to make the world a better place. Imagine that.

Sum up the session in only 1 sentence
To collaborate and codesign better we need to understand other peoples world views and how they compare and contrast with ours.

What are the 3 top takeaways from your session or workshop?
You need to understand at least the four different world views, seeing how they differ, and understand the issue of mixing them.