Building Shared Understanding in a Complex World
This is the fifth in a series of reflections exploring capability, understanding, purpose, context and the human role in an age of AI.
The World Does Not Arrive in Neat Categories
In previous articles, I explored three questions.
The Wizard of Oz asked:
What lies behind the curtain?
King Lear asked:
Do we understand what matters?
Gulliver’s Travels asked:
Why are we doing this?
Together they led me towards a different question:
How do people develop a shared understanding of the world they are acting upon?
The more I think about it, the more I believe this is one of the defining challenges of our time.
Because the world refuses to fit neatly into the boxes we create for it.
We Like Simplicity
Organisations love boundaries.
Departments.
Budgets.
Systems.
Services.
Projects.
Responsibilities.
These structures are necessary.
They help us organise effort and allocate resources.
Yet people’s lives rarely follow the same structure.
A family experiencing poverty may simultaneously interact with:
● schools,
● health services,
● housing services,
● employers,
● community groups,
● transport systems,
● welfare support.
Each organisation sees part of the picture.
Nobody automatically sees the whole picture.
A Reflection
The challenge is rarely a lack of information.
The challenge is that information exists in fragments.
Four Things Keep Appearing
Across different projects, sectors and communities, I keep seeing the same four elements.
People
Individuals.
Families.
Citizens.
Practitioners.
Communities.
Organisations
Councils.
Businesses.
Health services.
Charities.
Government agencies.
Places
Neighbourhoods.
Towns.
Cities.
Rural communities.
Regions.
Context
History.
Relationships.
Needs.
Aspirations.
Services.
Opportunities.
Constraints.
These four elements constantly interact.
None makes sense in isolation.
Place Matters More Than We Often Realise
One lesson that repeatedly emerges from public services is the importance of place.
A place is not simply a location on a map.
It brings context.
Consider two households with similar incomes.
One lives in a city with:
● regular public transport,
● nearby services,
● multiple employment opportunities.
The other lives in a rural community with:
● infrequent transport,
● limited childcare,
● longer travel times,
● fewer local opportunities.
The data may appear similar.
The context is entirely different.
Without place, understanding becomes incomplete.
Organisations See Different Realities
Another challenge emerges when organisations attempt to work together.
Each organisation develops its own language.
Its own priorities.
Its own measures.
Its own systems.
Its own view of reality.
This is not a problem.
It is inevitable.
The difficulty comes when collective action is required.
Because coordinated action depends upon coordinated understanding.
A Question Worth Holding
How often are organisations trying to solve the same problem while describing it in completely different ways?
Shared Understanding Is Not Agreement
An important distinction.
Shared understanding does not require everyone to agree.
It does not require organisations to have identical goals.
It does not require people to hold the same opinions.
It requires something else.
It requires people to understand one another sufficiently well that they can act together.
This is true for:
● communities,
● organisations,
● partnerships,
● governments,
● and perhaps increasingly, intelligent systems.
The goal is not uniformity.
The goal is coherence.
Health, Communities and Complexity
Throughout my work I have encountered similar challenges in very different domains.
Health data.
Community planning.
Poverty reduction.
Digital transformation.
Education.
Sports performance.
At first glance, these appear to be separate worlds.
Yet beneath the surface they often share a common challenge.
Different actors hold different pieces of the same puzzle.
The difficulty is not merely collecting information.
The difficulty is connecting information in ways that create understanding.
The Missing Layer
For many years we focused heavily on data.
Data quality.
Standards.
Interoperability.
Integration.
These remain important.
Today we are increasingly focused on AI and automation.
Capability.
Agents.
Decision support.
Action.
But there is something sitting between data and action.
Something that often receives far less attention.
Understanding.
Not information.
Not technology.
Understanding.
The ability to make sense of reality together.
A Reflection
Perhaps the most important question is not:
What information do we have?
But:
What understanding are we creating?
A Different Way of Thinking
Perhaps understanding begins with a simple question:
What relationships matter?
People are connected to organisations.
Organisations operate in places.
Places shape experiences.
Experiences create context.
Context influences decisions.
Decisions create outcomes.
The challenge is not simply collecting facts.
It is understanding relationships.
The more complex the world becomes, the more important those relationships become.
Building Shared Understanding
Shared understanding is rarely delivered.
It is built.
Through:
● conversation,
● participation,
● evidence,
● experience,
● stories,
● data,
● reflection.
Each contributes something different.
Data helps us see patterns.
Stories help us understand experiences.
Context helps us interpret meaning.
Together they allow us to develop richer pictures of reality.
Looking Ahead
If people, organisations, places and context help create understanding, then another question naturally follows.
How do we maintain that understanding?
How do we share it?
How do we build it over time?
And perhaps most importantly:
What happens when some of the participants are no longer human?
That question takes us to the final article in this series.
One about shared understanding itself.
And why it may become the scarcest resource in an age of increasingly abundant intelligence.
Final Reflection
We often talk about AI transforming how we work.
Perhaps the deeper transformation will be in how we understand.
Because before people, organisations and intelligent systems can act together, they must first learn how to see the world together.
Next in the series:
Shared Understanding in an Age of AI
Why Understanding May Become More Valuable Than Intelligence
About the author
David Eccles is a co-founder of Wallscope, based in Edinburgh, Scotland. He writes about AI, organisational knowledge, interoperability, shared context and public-sector transformation, exploring how organisations can turn fragmented information into actionable knowledge.
🌐 https://wallscope.co.uk
🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidecclesedinburgh/
People, Organisations, Places and Context was originally published in Wallscope on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.