Making Sense of Problem-Solving in a Complex World

I was home last Thursday anticipating my LMC Media Cable TV show the next day, an interview with our State Senator, Shelley Mayer. I was pretty happy. Before going upstairs, I checked email one last time.

Nine o’clock the night before this episode, my phone lit up and my stomach dropped. The interview I’d carefully prepared for MindShifting with Mitch—a thoughtful conversation with Senator Shelley Mayer—was dead. Emergency session in Albany. Now I had no guest. I had no backup. My limbic brain went wild:  The fight reaction, “She bailed. How dare she?” The flee reaction, “You need to cancel the recording.  You’re unprepared.” The victim reaction, “Why does this always happen to me?” And plenty of blame: “It’s all her fault. I’m so stupid to rely on someone else. Anyone competent would have had a backup.”

If you’ve ever had your plans blown up at the last minute and felt your brain spiral into worst-case scenarios, this episode is for you. That’s exactly the moment this episode is really about.

Have you ever catastrophized?

Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: nothing “bad” had actually happened yet. A state senator was doing her job in an emergency session. The only real crisis was in my own head. The stories my survival brain was spinning felt absolutely real—until I caught them.

That’s the work of MindShifting.

Instead of letting those limbic reactions run the show, I paused and shifted into my Sage mind, the calmer, more reflective part of the brain. When I looked again, the situation changed: this wasn’t a personal slight, it was an opportunity. If my guest cancelled at the last minute and my brain instantly generated a storm of fear, blame, and self-doubt, how often was that happening to everyone else—every time their plans blew up?

We create our own calm, or not

That question is what led me to turn this “disaster” into an episode on how to think clearly in uncertain times. Not in some abstract, theoretical way, but in the messy, real world where:

• Your plans fall apart at 9 p.m.
• Your brain reacts before you do.
• And the decisions you make in those moments shape your life, your work, and your relationships.

We were all taught a neat, linear model of decision making: list your options, analyze pros and cons, pick the “best” one, execute. Ben Franklin’s famous “pros and cons” list is the classic example. The problem is, real life rarely behaves that way. Our world is full of ambiguity, hidden assumptions, unintended consequences, and other people whose behavior we can’t fully predict.

On top of that, our brains are wired to react quickly, not wisely. The limbic system decides first to keep us safe; then our thinking brain often shows up after the fact to rationalize whatever we’ve already chosen emotionally. We feel right, but we haven’t actually reasoned our way to a sound decision.

Life is complex, flow with it

This is where sensemaking comes in.

In this session, I walk through a powerful framework (developed by Dave Snowden) that helps you recognize what kind of situation you’re in: simple, complicated, complex, or chaotic. Each type calls for a different way of thinking and acting. If you treat a complex, human-centered challenge as if it were simple – like a bureaucrat applying rigid rules to a nuanced problem – you almost guarantee frustration and failure.

By listening to this episode, you’ll learn:

• How to distinguish between simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic situations
• Why “more data” and “more experts” don’t automatically lead to better decisions
• How to use experiments and small probes in complex situations instead of pretending there’s one perfect answer
• How to recognize when politicians, autocrats, or manipulators are trying to frame everything as a crisis to push you into fight-or-flight

Ultimately, this isn’t about being right. It’s about being effective – more resourceful, more resilient, more collaborative, even when life throws you a last-minute curveball. If you can learn to see situations clearly and choose the right way to respond, you don’t just make better decisions. You help create a better world.