This episode is a conversation with Olli-Pekka Heinonen - the civil servant responsible for primary and secondary education in Finland - about his experience of complexity thinking in the Finnish government.

Selected quotes

I think complexity thinking is such a fundamental way of looking at the world that once you have put those eyeglasses on, you can't see the world the old way anymore - 4:42

What we did is that we stopped actually making organisational changes and we started to see how the work works - 7:05

I'm sure that there will be a moment in the future when we're saying how on earth could it have been that we were functioning in these silos ... entirely separated from each other ... that's kind of insane - 15:15

I felt a responsibility, as the State Secretary in the Prime Minister's office, to create enough trust among the people holding power that they could let go of part of their power to get better results and better added value working together - 15:57

But now there is another kind of culture that has been created, being ready to experiment where actually the experimentation is the most important part of that what happens - 18:00

We organised a day for all the ministers to discuss the issues of wicked problems and complexity; and actually they were thrilled with it. - 18:40

The concept of wicked problems is quite strongly used in Finland - 21:42

We're seeing also in Finland that if we are trying to tackle our challenges the traditional way, we don't get them done - 22:42

In the Prime Minister’s office we have a special unit ... Experimental Finland ... we have tried to create an awareness of experimenting ... it's a sexy word, it's used a lot these days - 23.19

Not first thinking and then changing the action, but first acting and then changing the thinking through action - 24:32

But what we found out was that the idea that if people would get Basic Income, they would just get lazy and stay home wasn't true - 25:18

We have tried to make it very easy to make legislative changes to make experimenting possible - we've made a guidebook that [explains] what should be done to enable experimentation through legislation - 27:23

The parliament has been very active on experimenting ... there's a preparedness in the Finnish society to do experiments that go against the existing legislation - 28:20

A way of teaching which is called problem-based, or project-based, or phenomena-based learning. Where you start with a phenomena, and you give the pupils a lot to say about how they want to get into that phenomena. - 34:30

I've myself given presentations to more than a thousand leading decision makers in Finland about complexity - 43:10

Olli-Pekka Heinonen - Bio

Olli-Pekka is the Director General of the National Agency for Education in Finland and is responsible for running primary and secondary education for the whole of Finland.

He's been in public service for 30 years both as a senior politician and a civil servant.

He's been the State Secretary in the Prime Minster's office and had a variety of cabinet roles.

He's also been a TV director in the Finnish National Broadcasting company.

Olli-Pekka is a complexity enthusiast, speaks regularly about organisational change and is involved in leadership coaching.

Transcript

Olli-Pekka (00:04): In the Prime Minister's office we've had a special kind of team of unit for Experimental Finland. We have tried to create and increase the awareness of experimenting. Because it's also a kind of, how would I say, a very sexy word that's used a lot these days.

Mark (00:29): Hello, I'm Mark Foden. You just heard Olli-Pekka Heinonen who's the star of the show today. In addition to the sexiness of experimenting, we talk about getting ministers to care about complexity, work on the introduction of Basic Income in Finland, and phenomena based education. As it turned out, and you'll perhaps hear it in his voice, when we recorded this Olli-Pekka was going down with the flu. Hat off to him though, it's a great conversation despite the circumstances.

Mark (00:53): So, welcome once more to The Clock and the Cat, exploring the emerging topic of complexity, ultimately to help you be more effective, whatever you're involved with. If you're new to the podcast, it might help to go back to Episode 1 for a 7-minute introduction. As ever we regulars will wait for you.

Mark (01:15): If you went away, welcome back. I am with Olli-Pekka Heinonen. Following the recent international Clock Cat theme, Olli-Pekka is in Finland, but I'm still looking after business here near London. Olli-Pekka is the Director General of the National Agency for Education in Finland, which means he's responsible for running primary and secondary education for the whole of Finland. He's been in public service for 30 years, both as a senior politician and a civil servant. He's been a state secretary in the Prime Minister's office, and has had a variety of cabinet roles. He's also been a TV Director in the Finnish National Broadcasting Company.

Mark (01:47): Olli-Pekka is a complexity enthusiast, speaks regularly about organizational change, and is involved in leadership coaching. He got in touch with me after hearing mention of Finland on the podcast, and he's generously offered to talk about what's going on there. So, let's get on with it.

Mark (02:02): Olli-Pekka welcome, thanks very much for joining us.

Olli-Pekka (02:04): Thank you very much for it. Pleased to be here.

Mark (02:07): I ask this of everyone, tell us about how you first got involved with complexity.

Olli-Pekka (02:11): Well I think it was when I was a minister in the Finnish Government and I was a member in a ministerial group that was going through all the administrational reforms that were done in the kind of state organizations. And there was a lot of them. There were organizational changes. And it started to puzzle me that why we were making all those organizational changes. What was the aim behind them? And that was very hard to find. And usually there were changes that you would just put the boxes in an other order and that's it. And that kind of started to puzzle me and then I went to study organizational theory, and there I bumped into the systems theory, and from thereon to complexity thinking and that's the road I'm on.

Mark (03:16): So how long ago was that?

Olli-Pekka (03:18): That was from 1994 on. I was a minister for eight years.

Mark (03:26): Oh, so that's quite a long time then, isn't it? Did you think about particular complexity theorist whose books did you read, or did you meet any of them, or?

Olli-Pekka (03:36): I think for some reason I bumped into Dave Snowden's Cynefin model, and I've since met him a couple of times myself. But there were a very large variety of people that had an influence on my thinking and complexity. Eve Mitleton-Kelly was definitely one of them, and then of course the Peter Senge learning organization ideas were very close to me, and they were a lot of people. And quite strongly connected also the holistic thinking like Edgar Morin, he's a French scientist and Francois Montour from the States who's been thinking about wholeness in the creative environments and so on.

Mark (04:38): And so how did this new thinking change how you do things?

Olli-Pekka (04:42): The reason why I started to get deeper into complexity thinking was because it made a lot of sense to me. It made me understand why certain things don't function the way that we would like them to function. And I think complexity thinking is such a fundamental way of looking at the world that once you have put those eyeglasses on, you can't see the world the old way anymore. And I think that's what's happened to me, that complexity thinking and system thinking is something that, that's the way that I sense the world in all situations.

Mark (05:37): When was the first time you think that complexity thinking impacted on your work, that is you did something differently as a result? So I mean, you were saying that it changed your view on the world. Can you point to something that happened that you did differently, having gained this understanding?

Olli-Pekka (06:01): Well I think it was probably when I was working as a television director in the Finnish National Broadcasting Company. What it affected there was the question that how we internally developed our own organization and the working culture there. But also how to create added value to the citizens who were utilizing our content, whether it's kind of visual or audio content, and how we link ourselves in the production with the citizens for whom we are doing things. I think that was the first time that I really started implementing complexity ideas into practice.

Mark (07:02): So what did you do?

Olli-Pekka (07:05): What we did is that we stopped actually making organizational changes and we started to see how the work works. Making a television program for example involves very many special types of expertise. And usually they're done so that some people are involved in the beginning, and others at the end. But that was a kind of a frustrating way for everybody actually, because the ones who were in the beginning of the process involved were kind of saying that ones that were coming in at the later parts don't understand what they're doing and vice versa. So everybody was blaming each other, and we were not utilizing the abilities of everybody. So that was one thing with it.

Olli-Pekka (08:05): Another thing with it was that the question that for whom we were doing the programs. And the people in the company were saying that well we're doing the programs for people like ourselves. That we are typical Finnish people and if we do programs for ourselves then that's fine. But then we made a survey that compared to the attitudes and values of the Finnish society and Finnish people how the people working in the company, how their values and attitudes compared. And the people in the company their attitudes represented about 9% of Finnish people. So we were making programs for 9% of Finns. And then understanding that you have to get into contact with people to understand that how diversified needs and interests there are in a society. It entirely changed the way of broadcasting and looking at for whom we're doing the programs.

Mark (09:24): So how did this complexity thinking affect that? Because you could say that we're going to do a survey of what our citizens need, we're going to then change our programming on that to reflect that. That sounds like a fairly kind of standard approach. So can you say how the complexity thinking changed things?

Olli-Pekka (09:44): Because the idea that we know that what are the programs we need to do. And then you broadcast it from one point to everybody and they're the ones who are receiving it. It's a kind of a top down, very linear way and then also a very stable way of looking at creating added value. And what we did is actually that we've involved ourselves with the audience, and not the audience, but actually with the individuals and connected them into the process of making the programs. Which means that we had all the time to adapt ourselves to the diversified needs that they were out there.

Mark (10:38): Okay, so how did you do that? What mechanisms? Did you involve them over social media? Did you invite them to studios? What did you do?

Olli-Pekka (10:46): All of that. We used both qualitative and quantitative methods and our programme makers, producers, everybody involved in the process did that. Actually we went to Finnish people's homes. We asked that if we could come and discuss with them and those people wrote their diary to us for two weeks, telling that what are their kind of ambitions and dreams and values and style of life. And through that we tried to increase the understanding and the adaptation to the reality of the Finnish society.

Mark (11:35): So that must have been quite a dramatically different way of working for the people who worked in the TV company. Was it hard to make that change?

Olli-Pekka (11:46): It was very hard. It was very hard that there was in the beginning not much understanding of it. Because there was the idea that we were the experts and we know. And you had to find the hard evidence first to show that that's not true. That there was this kind of cognitive dissonance that had to be created. And only after that was there, then you had to show that there can be a better way of doing quality programs, and that was the involvement and adaptation part that we took into use.

Olli-Pekka (12:29): Because it's pretty much an identity question for the program makers. And once you're dealing with change and identity issues, you cannot do it from outside. But it's an inner process that must happen so that the people themselves get the motivation to do things differently. And that's very challenging.

Mark (13:01): So, you came back to government after you finished with the TV company. What happened then? How did you use that experience when you came back to government?

Olli-Pekka (13:12): Well I think the big thing was that also in Finland we had the challenge of chairing the meeting of all permanent secretaries, of all ministries. And the ministries were very siloed in their activities. What I was seeing was that there was so much added value lost in the walls and silos of those different ministries that we could not utilize. Pretty often complexity is seeing as something that is difficult, and something that is, how would I say, confusing. The word has many connotations. But to me it's something that is making things easier, because you make those connections that should be there, you make them visible. And you'd have a more holistic view of for whom and what we're doing, and that we should do it together. Because we are faced with today's and tomorrow's, we get problems. And there's no organization that can alone tackle them. But we must see that we must work together, and not only adapt to ourselves, but be part of the change that we're trying to achieve.

Mark (14:41): Yes exactly what I think about this question. If you're dealing with particularly complex situations, then it's quite straightforward really. You start by connecting with people and working out together what you need to do, and that's kind of releasing, isn't it? It's because you're not going to have to go away, work out a big programme and then come back and give a big presentation saying, "Hey, this is how it's going to go." And then everyone pick it apart and so on. So I think it's actually easier working this way.

Olli-Pekka (15:15): Exactly, I think it the same way and I'm sure that there will be a moment in the future that we're saying that how on earth could it been so that we were functioning in these silos and departments and the unit's entirely separated from each other. That that's kind of insane that we've done it, that why didn't we make it much, much easier.

Mark (15:44): That's absolutely the case here in the UK. So tell us, how have things changed over the past few years? Have you managed to get away from this siloed approach in government?

Olli-Pekka (15:57): Well we're talking about power of course when we're talking about also the silos. And for that reason the thing that I felt responsible for as the State Secretary in the Prime Minister's office was to create enough trust among the people holding power that they could let go of part of their power to get better results and better added value working together. And that was something that... what we did actually was that we created a kind of a shared development program where we together, not so that somebody taught us, but us learning together that how we could in a better way tackle the complex problems. And that's one thing that has helped. So there's a lot of kind of put them up activity also today in the different ministries.

Olli-Pekka (17:14): Younger and older civil servants who were saying that we don't want to work the way we've done earlier. We want to work in a more collaborative way, more together, more citizen involvement, and they are driving the change at the moment. How would I say? The bureaucratic ethos used to be very strong also in Finland. That the civil servant must know the right answers and then it's from top down using power or ratio to implement it. But now there is another kind of culture that has been created, being ready to experiment where actually the experimentation as such is the most important part of that what happens there and what we can learn from that.

Mark (18:13): Does this happen across Finnish government, is every government department starting to use experimentation to solve its problems, rather than upfront policy making?

Olli-Pekka (18:23): I would say that it's going across, and there is a couple reasons for that. We, and I was kind of responsible for it. We organized also a day for all the ministers to discuss the issues of wicked problems and complexity. And actually they were thrilled with it. It was a very good day, and they were all very happy, and they found a good tone in their discussions. And it also ended up so that in the government programmme, which is really the kind of national strategy for four years in Finland, there was a part of re-inventing government where the experimentation had a very strong emphasis.

Mark (19:21): Can I just interrupt you for a second Olli-Pekka?

Olli-Pekka (19:23): Yep.

Mark (19:24): I'm fascinated by this workshop you were talking about, I assume it was a workshop you were talking about. So, where you talked about your complexity ideas. Who was at the workshop, and when was it, and could you tell us a bit more about what happened?

Olli-Pekka (19:41): Yeah, it was the first workshop was probably in 2014 I would say. And it was organized so that in order to have a kind of a trustful discussion. It was only the ministers in the government that who took part.

Mark (20:07): So all the ministers in government?

Olli-Pekka (20:09): All the ministers in government were involved. And then we-

Mark (20:12): That's impressive.

Olli-Pekka (20:14): Yeah, sure. And we pulled in some people from the research sector to tell what kind of complexity is all about, what wicked problems are there and how they're connected to the big issues on the government's agenda. And as I said, the ministers were really thrilled about it. They really enjoyed their time and I also saw that that was that sense-making feeling that they had after that day.

Mark (20:48): So you just got some people from ... Experts in complexity, and you stood them up in front of the ministers, and these people explained it and the ministers heard this and it resonated with them. And that just changed how things happened from that day on. Is that right? Was it just a great shining of light? Is that what happened?

Olli-Pekka (21:12): I would say that it was a starting point. That after that the critical mass has been growing all the time. So there's been much, much more discussion, much, much more articles about complexity in Finland, and it's referred to in many discussions the concept of wicked problems, it quite strongly used in Finland. And as I said, that making change to experimentation was one part of that same change. And also having these developmental courses for all leading civil servants in the government. We have organized those, and complexity has played a very central role during those courses.

Mark (22:11): Well that's interesting, I was in Singapore a couple of years ago, at the complexity institute there. And every civil servant in Singapore goes through this course and there's a lot of stuff about complexity in it, and the politicians and the senior civil servants all understand complexity in a way that they ... Quite honestly I just don't believe the folks do here in the UK. So, that's really encouraging.

Olli-Pekka (22:42): Yes, it is. I think that also the thing that it was tackled in the government programme had a strong impact there. And of course the main reason is that we're seeing also in Finland that if we are trying to tackle our challenges the traditional way, we don't get them done.

Mark (23:08): Obviously the experimenting thing is absolutely vital. Can you tell us the story about a way you've used experimentation and about where its made a difference?

Olli-Pekka (23:19): In the Prime Minister's office we've had a special team or a unit for Experimental Finland. And what we've done is that we have tried to create and increase the awareness of experimenting. Because it's also a kind of a, how would I say, a very sexy word that it's used a lot these days. And the interpretations about what it's all about vary a lot.

Mark (23:52): Right, understanding.

Olli-Pekka (23:53): So we wanted to increase the deeper understanding of experimenting. And also the other thing was that we encourage quite actually I would say radical experiments on the non-radical level, on the local level to learn the way of changing things through action. Not first thinking and then changing the action, but first acting and changing the thinking through action. And that has been the other part on the work on experimenting. And the third one has been doing some policy experimentations where probably the experimentation with the Basic Income has been one of the most important ones then we've had experiments with the digitalization and municipalities and there were actually seven of these policy level, national level experiments that were done by the former government.

Mark (25:11): So that's one of those was Basic Income, was it?

Olli-Pekka (25:13): One of them was Basic Income, yes.

Mark (25:15): And how did that go? What happened as a result?

Olli-Pekka (25:18): Well, the question was of course that was of interest was that how does it affect the choices that people are making? And what kind of motivational impact the Basic Income would have. I think it's a very challenging area of experimenting, because there are so many factors, it's such a complex situation to look at. But what we found out was that the idea that if people would get basic income, they would just get lazy and stay home wasn't true. The idea that it encouraged to also to strengthen your abilities to get back to working life for example and to stay active was very strong with the people taking part in the experiment.

Mark (26:23): So when did this experiment take place?

Olli-Pekka (26:26): It took place probably from the year 2016 on.

Mark (26:35): Okay, so that's quite a long time ago. So what's happened since? What's the situation? How wide-spread is Basic Income now?

Olli-Pekka (26:42): Well it rose the awareness in the discussions about Basic Income, but of course it's just very strong political value issue still in Finland. And at the moment there are no political decisions done with Basic Income in Finland.

Mark (27:04): So experimenting, particularly with government policy, you come up against the challenges of the law and you might want to be experimenting with something that's actually outside the law. Have you got any examples of how you've tackled that?

Olli-Pekka (27:23): Yes, actually that's quite often the challenge that once we want to experiment something it's against the legislation. What we've done is that we have tried to make it very easy, to make legislative changes to make experimenting possible. So we've made a guidebook that what should be done in order to enable experimentation through legislation. And that of course has helped the process.

Mark (28:01): So do you have some legislation about that, that provides you to experiment with legislation if you see what I mean?

Olli-Pekka (28:12): Yes, we do. Yes, we do. You cannot create, or not according to Finnish constitution you cannot create a general experimentation legislation. But you have to specify what are the things that you're going to change in the existing legislation. But what we've done is that we've done it so easy as possible. And we've also involved the parliament on this. The parliament has been very active on experimenting. We have a Futures Committee in the parliament in Finland. And they've created a big report together about experimenting culture, and there are also reflections about the legislation. So I would say that there's a preparedness in the Finnish society to do experiments that go against the existing legislation also.

Mark (29:09): So that is, to me that sounds really advanced. It's just the sort of thing that we need to be doing here. Have you been able to share what you've been doing with other nations? UK for example.

Olli-Pekka (29:26): Yes, there are certain international networks that I myself quite active, and through those networks we're constant sharing and learning issue we're doing and like for example a political... Is one of they where I've been pretty involved. And there's also a network where we meet once a year with top civil servants around the world. Or we see this quite often also in world where we share our experiences with rethinking the government for the future. And I would say that my feeling is that there is a lot of similar activities happening around the world.

Mark (30:20): Oh really? So what...

Olli-Pekka (30:20): But still it's not the kind ... I think you can find excellent examples in all continents with... and also with complexity thinking. But they're not the mainstream. But they're experiments themselves, they're individual people, or individual units that are really getting it. Once you're sharing with others, there's also kind of ... understanding gets better and there's a growing critical mass in public service, taking these ideas in concrete measures forward.

Mark (31:05): So what's the forum for this? Is there an organization, or is it an informal network, or what?

Olli-Pekka (31:12): It is an informal network, certain organizations also taking part in the network. There are certain countries that have been very active on this networking, Singapore being one of them, Australia, UK has been involved. One of the meetings was actually happened in collaboration with Chatham House. I was close to London and now we will be meeting in May in Paris.

Mark (31:48): So Chatham House I think is the think tank, isn't it? In London. So I imagine there are quite a few figures-

Olli-Pekka (31:55): Yes.

Mark (31:55): ... that are interested in this kind of stuff. But what about actual government? Have you had any connection with our parliament for example?

Olli-Pekka (32:05): Yes, there are certain people that have been active in that network from UK also. Quite often they come from close to Prime Minister's office. They're there and of course there's the special motivation to have a more whole of government approach. And in doing that I think complexity thinking can be very useful.

Mark (32:37): Just turning to a different subject Olli-Pekka. You've been involved in education for quite a while now. How is complexity affecting education in Finland?

Olli-Pekka (32:50): Well, it's connected with the education system in very many ways. So the same thing that we were talking about, the siloed structure in government you could also say that in a way the school subjects is one way of reductionism. Which is the opposite of complexity to my mind.

Mark (33:20): So you're talking about dividing up a subject into Maths, English, Finnish, whatever, and delivering them as separate things. Is that what you're saying?

Olli-Pekka (33:30): Exactly. And then what you're missing is that all these different subjects, which are based actually on different scientific disciplines. They are views, different viewpoints, to the same reality. But if you do the division to different subjects too strongly, then the pupils and students cannot see the connections between different subjects. We've created in Finland of course these transversal competencies which is something that unites all the subjects. But also of a way of teaching which is called problem-based, or project-based, or phenomena-based learning. Where you start with a phenomena, and you give the pupils a lot to say that how they want to get into that phenomena, what they are interested in. And then you bring the different viewpoints, the different subjects, scientific way of looking to that entirety.

Mark (34:44): So you're saying that pupils will tackle a subject and then draw in the Maths and the writing essays about it, and the Physics and the Chemistry and the social dimension, all that stuff. And you bring all that together into a whole. Is that what you do?

Olli-Pekka (35:04): That's exactly what we're doing. And it's part of the core curricula in Finland which involves all schools in Finland.

Mark (35:14): So if you look at a school timetable you won't see Physics, Maths, Finnish, English? Is that right?

Olli-Pekka (35:21): No, we still have the subjects, but we also have the other approach, which combines the subjects together. So there it's both and situation in the Finnish core curriculum.

Mark (35:39): Oh right, so when did that start?

Olli-Pekka (35:41): That started when the new core curriculum was taken into use, and that happened in 2016.

Mark (35:50): Oh right, so that's something you've closely been involved in implementing then?

Olli-Pekka (35:53): Mmmm. Yes.

Mark (35:55): And what kind of changes are you seeing, and outcomes as the result of that? Is it too early to say?

Olli-Pekka (36:01): It's a bit too early to say. But what is the aim with it is that it is something that we want to strengthen the motivation of the pupils and students. That they see the connection to the real life challenges. Take for example the climate change, which is a really meaningful issue for young people today. The question that you take into use in learning that concept, and you bring the different scientific facts to the same table. And also you let the pupils discuss the different ethical and value and opinions involving climate change. So what could be a better way of having a motivating learning happen in schools than this kind of an approach?

Mark (37:07): Again, similar question to the one I asked you earlier. How has that been for teachers in the schools? Has it been difficult to get them to work in this different way, or have they accepted it? I guess it's a mixture, isn't it?

Olli-Pekka (37:20): Actually it's been quite challenging, because as you might know, in Finland we have a very highly qualified teacher force. All our teachers have a master's degree, and they really are competent in their work, and they have also a lot of autonomy to do their work and develop their own work. But it has also meant that earlier our teachers were working alone. So in their professional development and doing their work there were no kind of sharing with peers and doing things together in the school community. And that is the thing that now we see changing. That in order to have those projects more holistic ways of teaching and learning, it must involve that the teachers themselves are collaborating in a much, much more kind of stronger way. And again we come to the question that it's an identity change that how a teacher's work identity what's it's all about. Is it a professional working alone, or is actually the professionalism something that is between people? And that change has been quite challenging in Finnish schools.

Mark (38:57): Yes, I'm sure it is, because it means thinking fundamentally differently I guess. Oh yes, that's the thing. Do you teach complexity in schools?

Olli-Pekka (39:12): Not as a term, we don't. But when we are talking about the transversal competencies, in those issues the ideas behind complexity are actually touched. And it involves a lot what we're talking earlier about understanding how the world works, the future's literacy part, how students and pupils, how they see that what future is all about. Is it about planning? One future that you see that will be happening, or is it opening up the possibilities, the different possibilities for the future, not planning, but anticipating and understanding the context, the changing context all the time? So these are issues that are tackled in our schools.

Mark (40:28): So the stories you're telling here, Finland seems to be quite advanced in complexity territory. You spoke about your complexity network and the connections that you have within Finland, could you just say a bit about how that works and how you involve people in it?

Olli-Pekka (40:48): We've had this complexity network now for probably I would say three years. And it started just with people interested in the same issues together. And these people come from different sectors of the society. So there are some people from the academic side from different universities, for example; there are people from the government side, there are think-tank people, there are people from NGOs, from companies. What we do is we gather, one of us invites the others in and tells the stories about how complexity is involved in their everyday life and work. And then we discuss these issues together. It's been very, very fruitful. And actually about a year and a half ago we decided that we wanted to write a book about leadership in complexity. How complexity is changing the way that we see that what's the role of leader. And that book will be coming out in two months' time, and we're very much very thrilled about it and hope that through that we can increase the awareness still further in the Finnish society.

Mark (42:32): So your complexity network. Does that include politicians, ministers, civil servants?

Olli-Pekka (42:39): Actually I don't think at the moment we have in the network any politicians, but there are leading civil servants, there are CEOs of think tanks and researchers, leading people from NGOs. But at the moment no, no politicians involved.

Mark (43:05): You were saying earlier that you got the ministers together and they understand the basics of complexity would you say?

Olli-Pekka (43:14): I would say so. And then we've had training and courses for the decision makers in Finnish society. And I've myself given presentation, I would say that to more than 1,000 leading decision maker in Finland about complexity. I would say that the majority of the decision makers are aware of these issues. The challenge is that, how would I say? There's such a strong logic in the political system that it makes it very difficult for the individuals to start looking at decision making from another perspective... Although the knowledge is there, the action is not always there.

Mark (44:20): It's difficult, because the culture is built on this reductionist scientific approach to things. Even if every individual understood it, it would still be quite hard to change behaviors. It's going to take a long time to do this I guess.

Olli-Pekka (44:37): I totally agree with that. And it's also has something to do that reductionism is in so many other fields also, and I'm now thinking about also the field of science. That although the basic ideas about Enlightenment had a very holistic principle behind them, but still the different disciplines, they are divided into smaller and smaller parts. And for that reason I've been very interested for example in the concept of Warm Data.

Mark (45:16): No, tell us about Warm Data.

Olli-Pekka (45:19): It's an author and a researcher called Nora Bateson who has the Bateson Institute and I think her father was one of the pioneers in the kind of also systems and complexity thinking. And the idea with Warm Data is the idea that a scientific knowledge, it separates the knowledge from the context. Because you want to make sure that it's universal, it's objective, and you must be able to repeat the tests to show that it is valid. And the idea with Warm Data is that it brings back that knowledge to context and actually different disciplines knowledge back to the context. And it's all about the interrelationship and understanding those interrelationships between different scientific knowledge being used in a certain context. So I think there's a lot...

Mark (46:39): Yeah, so there's a lot of discussion, kind of social change community about place based activity, and that makes absolute sense is that every situation if different and you have to pay attention to the context as well as what's going on that does makes sense. Olli-Pekka, a little earlier you talked about the fact that you were writing a book. Who's it aimed at?

Olli-Pekka (47:02): Well, it's aimed at leaders and everybody interested in complexity.

Mark (47:10): And it will be in Finnish, will it?

Olli-Pekka (47:13): When it's published now in two months time it will be in Finnish. And we have not decided anything about making it available in other languages yet.

Mark (47:25): I bet you there'll be quite a lot of people who'd be interested. There's lots of people in Canada who listen to the Clock and the Cat. I'm sure you'll get plenty people out there wanting to see it. So if can encourage you to get it translated into English then that'll be absolutely fantastic.

Olli-Pekka (47:37): Yes, thank you. We'll consider that.

Mark (47:39): So Olli-Pekka, thank you very much. We've heard about transforming national TV. Some incredible experiments with major policy things like Basic Income. How you've been changing legislation in order to experiment. And what sounds like phenomenal teaching, if you'll forgive the expression. This has been absolutely fantastic. I know it's going to be a great episode, and that lots of people are going to be interested in it. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this.

Olli-Pekka (48:08): Well, thank you so much. I really enjoyed it, and I've been a keen listener of the earlier episodes, and very proud of having this chance of taking part in this episode. Thank you so much.

Mark (48:21): The pleasure is all ours. Thanks very much indeed.