What's More Important: Learning or Planning?
Newsletter 455 - May 20, 2026
Planning vs Learning in Complex Systems
Yesterday we were talking with David Eisner about ways of responding to the governance crisis in the United States. David asked a very interesting question: “Who wins?” he asked (referring to which projects will wind up having the greatest positive impact on efforts to advance our shared goal of strengthening democracy). “People who learn faster — or people who plan better?” We often think poorly of people who act without planning — without carefully analyzing the situation, and then thoughtfully planning their response to match it — before they act. Just acting on the basis of “gut feelings” is generally thought to be rash and ineffective.
David argued that the winners actually tends to be the people who learn faster. That’s because we are all attempting to influence a complex system that is constantly changing as a result of competing citizen efforts to push society in their desired direction. It is impossible to understand the whole system well enough to know how it will respond to any particular action. And since the system is constantly changing, the social circumstances upon which initial plans were based are likely to change significantly by the time that those plans are implemented. So things seldom go according to plan. Successful projects are those that are able to adapt to unforeseen circumstances, while projects that fail to adapt often run into serious trouble. Such adaptation requires thoughtful, continual monitoring of the ways in which a project is unfolding, and a willingness to make minor modifications and, sometimes, major changes. One of the big struggles that the peacebuilding community has had with many funders revolves around their desire to have a firm work plan for an entire, often multi-year project — a work plan that often lacks the flexibility needed to respond to changing circumstances.
Now, of course, this is an over-simplification. It certainly helps to understand as much as possible about a situation before deciding upon a course of action. As Kenneth Boulding was fond of putting it, we should prepare to be surprised about the way in which events will unfold. Still, with careful thought and planning, we can avoid being dumbfounded. There is much that is knowable, and those things often make a big difference. But not everything is knowable; we must expect surprises.
This way of thinking reflects the importance of distinguishing between complicated and complex systems and the ways of “fixing them” when they aren’t working as we wish. As we explained in Newsletter 324, there are two very different approaches to fixing broken systems, which we refer to as the “engineering” and the “medical” models. As we wrote then,
The engineering model works for systems that are consciously designed by humans: complicated mechanical systems. They may be computers or computer programs, airplanes, cars, assembly lines, space stations — all sorts of complicated devices, large and small. Complete plans for those systems are available; they’re deterministic systems. They work the same way every time — at least, until they’re broken, and then in a sense, the system is just functioning differently, but it still is deterministic. That’s why you can troubleshoot complicated systems effectively. If you’ve got enough money and sufficient will, you can troubleshoot and repair just about any mechanical system, unless doing so will cost more than the repair is worth. In that case, you junk the machine and replace it with a new one.
The engineering model does not work nearly as well, however, for complex systems because they are not deterministic. Here you are dealing with systems that have evolved through natural and social evolution. The human body is one example of what systems theorists call a “complex adaptive system.” So, too are biological ecosystems, social systems, economies, and conflict systems.
There are no plans for these systems, because they weren’t designed. The closest we can come to “plans” are observational studies about how particular aspects of the system seem to work. So doctors understand the basic elements of the human body, and how all the “parts” are connected. Much of their work focuses on treating as many injuries and diseases as possible. For some kinds of ailments, doctors are usually able to produce a complete cure. They can give you penicillin for strep throat, and your sore throat will go away. They can set a broken bone, and it will heal correctly. For other problems, the best they can do is provide partial or symptomatic relief. You can take Tamiflu to lessen the duration of the flu, but doctors can’t cure it, as they can strep throat. They can suggest Claritin for hay fever in the spring, but that just reduces symptoms, it doesn’t get rid of them. Other kinds of problems doctors can’t treat, but they can help you live with them. That’s what the whole movement which produced the Americans with Disabilities Act was about: helping people live with incurable chronic conditions. Yet, there are still other conditions which are terminal, for which modern medicine does not have a cure. Many cancers are like that, as is heart disease. We can reduce risk factors by eating well and exercising, but doctors cannot entirely prevent heart attacks or cancer.
This continuum of treatments applies to conflicts, as well. We can’t prevent conflict; indeed, as we have explained elsewhere, we need conflict as it is what Guy calls “the engine of social learning.” But we do want to prevent conflicts from becoming destructive, and to limit their destructiveness, if we fail to prevent it. And just as we try to reduce medical risk factors by eating well and exercising, we can try to learn conflict management and resolution techniques such as learning how to listen to others effectively, or identify shared interests to find win-win agreements.
Just as is true with medicine, conflict outcomes can range from complete resolution to complete failure. Sometimes, there are misunderstandings that can be cleared up entirely with a good, honest conversation. Or apparently irreconcilable positions can have compatible interests underneath, allowing for a win-win interest-based resolution. In many other cases, what you’re providing is symptomatic relief. You help people who have irreconcilable differences learn to live with chronic conflict, but to do so in ways that limit casualties and costs. This is what dialogue facilitators do, when they get people who have fundamental moral differences to learn how to listen to each other and treat each other with respect, even if they don’t change their minds about the moral issue being discussed. And just as is true in medicine, there are some conflicts that are, in essence, terminal. We do not now have the tools that enable us to deal with these constructively. (Although some of our colleagues likely disagree, we would put the Israel/Palestinian conflict in this category).
Going back to Guy’s notion that conflict is the “engine of social learning,” conflict is what enables us to see that the way we have always done things, or the way we have always understood the world to be (or work), sometimes isn’t right. Or at least it could be improved upon. Sometimes the people who we are in conflict with actually have important things to tell us — things we would do well to learn, not just for them, but for our own well-being too. And sometimes we need to “learn from the system.” If it isn’t working as well as we hope it will, we need to study it to figure out what is going wrong, and experiment with different approaches to fixing it, rather than having one “solution” which we think is right, and implementing that same “solution” over and over again, even though it isn’t producing the results we want.
So that suggests a strong reason why, in David’s observation, “learners” beat “planners.” Planners are acting as if they are working on a complicated (deterministic) system, but learners recognize that they are working within a complex system and that their success depends upon their ability to adapt to ever-changing conditions.
A Further Note on “Winning.”
When we mentioned to David that we wanted to turn his observation into a post, he warned that some people are adverse to the idea of “winning,” seeing it as too competitive, and not adequately cooperative. Indeed, we have written a lot about the need to pursue a “power-with democracy,” rather than a “power-over democracy,” which is another way of saying we should try to cooperate more and compete less. And we stand by that advice. But in this sense, “winning” is not beating the other side, but rather doing a better job of pursuing shared or complementary goals surrounding democratic revitalization. Making things better is a win. No change or making things worse is a loss. And, it is desirable for funds to flow toward those organizations and projects that are most effective in doing in making things better.
So it is not a question of cooperation or competition. Indeed, we think that pursuing collaboration over competition is a likely winning approach to fixing our toxic, hyper-polarized political system. The question is who can most successfully facilitate the kind of cooperation that we need. Good intentions are not enough. We need genuine positive results. And, given the extraordinary challenge we face, we need to continue to push ourselves to do more and to do it better. We have seen many people and organizations do that when they pursue various forms of deliberative democracy. The results are most often very positive, both in terms of system change, and in terms of satisfaction among the participants. So we would call that a “win” for democracy. And the more people learn about this new way of “doing democracy,” the better off we are likely to be.
Individual projects and the people who fund those projects also need to be realistic in their expectations. We need to resist the temptation to over promise and funders need to resist the temptation to make unrealistic demands on their grantees. We also need to think about project evaluations as a way of encouraging and facilitating this kind of adaptive learning process. We need to be careful to focus on the things that really matter, not meaningless statistics. After all, there is considerable truth to the old axiom that “things that count are very difficult to count and things that are easy to count often don’t count.”
So maybe learning and planning aren’t really in competition, and they certainly aren’t in an either-or or zero-sum or win-lose relationship. But we need to be constantly attune to opportunities to learn, even after we have done what we think was excellent planning.
————————
Lead Photo Credit: Engineering drawing – Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schl%C3%B6rwagen_-_Construction_drawings.jpg; By:DLR German Aerospace Center; Permission: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic; Date Acquired: February 21, 2025
Medical Operation: Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash. https://unsplash.com/photos/man-in-white-dress-shirt-wearing-white-goggles-KrsoedfRAf4; By: National Cancer Institute; Permission: Unslpash License; Date Acquired: February 21, 2025
Please Contribute Your Ideas To This Discussion!
In order to prevent bots, spammers, and other malicious content, we are asking contributors to send their contributions to us directly. If your idea is short, with simple formatting, you can put it directly in the contact box. However, the contact form does not allow attachments. So if you are contributing a longer article, with formatting beyond simple paragraphs, just send us a note using the contact box, and we'll respond via an email to which you can reply with your attachment. This is a bit of a hassle, we know, but it has kept our site (and our inbox) clean. And if you are wondering, we do publish essays that disagree with or are critical of us. We want a robust exchange of views.
About the MBI Newsletters
Two or three times a week, Guy and Heidi Burgess, the BI Directors, share some of our thoughts on political hyper-polarization and related topics. We also share essays from our colleagues and other contributors, and every week or so, we devote one newsletter to annotated links to outside readings that we found particularly useful relating to U.S. hyper-polarization, threats to peace (and actual violence) in other countries, and related topics of interest. Each Newsletter is posted on BI, and sent out by email through Substack to subscribers. You can sign up to receive your copy here and find the latest newsletter here or on our BI Newsletter page, which also provides access to all the past newsletters, going back to 2017.
NOTE! If you signed up for this Newsletter and don't see it in your inbox, it might be going to one of your other emails folder (such as promotions, social, or spam). Check there or search for beyondintractability@substack.com and if you still can't find it, first go to our Substack help page, and if that doesn't help, please contact us.
If you like what you read here, please ....