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Why this social change agent wants you to ‘fail better’ | MIT Sloan

Why this social change agent wants you to ‘fail better’

by Kara Baskin

 Aug 17, 2021

Why It Matters

Kara Penn learns from “smart mistakes” as she works bringing community development, management, and systems thinking to bear on social issues.Share 

“Improved failure” might sound like an oxymoron. Not for Kara Penn, who explains how bold managers can exploit, design, and use failure as an asset in “Fail Better: Design Smart Mistakes and Succeed Sooner,” which she co-wrote with MIT Sloan senior lecturerAnjali Sastry.Work smart with our Thinking Forward newsletterInsights from MIT experts, delivered every Tuesday morning.Email Address 

As founder and principal consultant at Denver-based Mission Spark, Penn harnesses ideas from community development, management, and systems thinking to improve the social sector — a nod to her previous positions as a counselor at a juvenile detention facility, business advisor to low-income Southeast Asian artists, and nonprofit consultant.

We talked with Penn, MBA ’07, about the power of collaboration, the role of reflection in generating ideas, and why we all need to be systems-thinkers.

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Why this social change agent wants you to ‘fail better’ | MIT Sloan

Complexity Management Theory: Motivation for Ideological Rigidity and Social Conflict

(10) (PDF) Complexity Management Theory: Motivation for Ideological Rigidity and Social Conflict

Complexity Management Theory: Motivation for Ideological Rigidity and Social Conflict

• December 2002 Cortex 38(3):429-58

• DOI:  10.1016/S0010-9452(08)70680-4

• Source PubMed

• Jordan B Peterson
• Joseph L Flanders

We are doomed to formulate conceptual structures that are much simpler than the complex phenomena they are attempting to account for. These simple conceptual structures shield us, pragmatically, from real-world complexity, but also fail, frequently, as some aspect of what we did not take into consideration makes itself manifest. The failure of our concepts dysregulates our emotions and generates anxiety, necessarily, as the unconstrained world is challenging and dangerous. Such dysregulation can turn us into rigid, totalitarian dogmatists, as we strive to maintain the structure of our no longer valid beliefs. Alternatively, we can face the underlying complexity of experience, voluntarily, gather new information, and recast and reconfigure the structures that underly our habitable worlds.

Systems Thinking and the Jungian Framework

Systems Thinking and the Jungian Framework – Systems Changes – Open Learning Commons

The Impossibility of Automating Ambiguity

The Impossibility of Automating Ambiguity | Artificial Life | MIT Press

June 11 2021

The Impossibility of Automating Ambiguity 

Abeba BirhaneAuthor and Article Information

Artificial Life (2021) 27 (1): 44–61

https://doi.org/10.1162/artl_a_00336

Abstract

On the one hand, complexity science and enactive and embodied cognitive science approaches emphasize that people, as complex adaptive systems, are ambiguous, indeterminable, and inherently unpredictable. On the other, Machine Learning (ML) systems that claim to predict human behaviour are becoming ubiquitous in all spheres of social life. I contend that ubiquitous Artificial Intelligence (AI) and ML systems are close descendants of the Cartesian and Newtonian worldview in so far as they are tools that fundamentally sort, categorize, and classify the world, and forecast the future. Through the practice of clustering, sorting, and predicting human behaviour and action, these systems impose order, equilibrium, and stability to the active, fluid, messy, and unpredictable nature of human behaviour and the social world at large. Grounded in complexity science and enactive and embodied cognitive science approaches, this article emphasizes why people, embedded in social systems, are indeterminable and unpredictable. When ML systems “pick up” patterns and clusters, this often amounts to identifying historically and socially held norms, conventions, and stereotypes. Machine prediction of social behaviour, I argue, is not only erroneous but also presents real harm to those at the margins of society.Complexity, machine learning, artificial intelligence, embodiment, equity, racial justice

SYSTEMS CHANGE THROUGH LOCAL ECONOMIES SEPTEMBER 24-26, 2021 FREE ONLINE CONFERENCE

Systems Change Through Local Economies – Systems Change Alliance

In the www.systemschanges.com chat on chat.diglife.coop, David Ing says:

Keekok Lee was interviewed in April 2021 by the Global University for Sustainability, at https://youtu.be/BmaOTvwg2R8?t=3507 . I listened to the whole talk (while bicycling), and have provided the link with the index to 58m27s of a rather long life history running 1h52m40s. I’m a completist, so I didn’t mind the first hour going back about family history (there’s are variations on the surname Lee in Chinese), and hearing about her childhood growing up in Malaysia. Keekok attended the University of Malaya (that would become the National University of Singapore).

At the halfway point of the recording, the question turns to Chinese philosophy, and Keekok going to Oxford U. to study for a B.Phil. She was thoroughly trained in the tradition of analytic philosophy in the British Empire. (She traces the idea that “there’s no such thing as Chinese philosophy” back to Kant, and then chains that forward to Heidegger)

It wasn’t until she retired that Keekok turned to looking into Chinese philosophy. She relates some personal stories (e.g. her son having a spleen injury that was treated by a doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine who happened to be visiting in Manchester). The net is that the books published by Keekok are relatively recent, well-researched, and don’t require digging back further in history to understand background.

2021/08/09 Normal Accidents, High Reliability, Wicked Messes | Coevolving Innovations

2021/08/09 Normal Accidents, High Reliability, Wicked Messes

Submitted by daviding on Tue, 08/10/2021 – 01:55

Discussion Leader

David Ing

Session Description

The original announcement is at https://wiki.st-on.org/2021-08-09.

Have we learned from brushes with disaster, or have we become complacent about complexities in everyday life?

On March 28, 1979, an accident with a nuclear reactor occurred at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania. Twelve days earlier, an Academy Awards winning film The China Syndrome had opened with a story fictionalized from a 1975 fire at a nuclear plant in Brown’s Ferry, Alabama, raising public awareness of an issue. For a Presidential Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, sociologist Charles Perrow contributed organizational analysis report. On a sabbatical to the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 1981-1982, that report expanded to include other high-risk systems, becoming the Normal Accidents book, published in 1984.

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2021/08/09 Normal Accidents, High Reliability, Wicked Messes

2021/08/09 Normal Accidents, High Reliability, Wicked Messes | Coevolving Innovations

Integral Ecology, and the Laudato Si’ Action Platform – Systems Changes – Open Learning Commons

Integral Ecology, and the Laudato Si’ Action Platform

Systems Changesecologicalspirituality

daviding20h

Integral Ecology is a term originating from the papal encyclical issued in 2015 under the title Laudato Sí , by Pope Francis. Marina Fischer-Kowalski wrote a short review of an invitation to a June 2019 convention at the Vatican.

• Fischer-Kowalski, Marina. “Integral Ecology: An unexpected support for Ecological Economics by Pope Francis.” Ecology, Economy and Society-the INSEE Journal 3, no. 2354-2020-1082 (2020): 5-10. https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v3i1.85 , alternate search at https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=1092797060812804685

Integral Ecology has been picked up in the USA, with “Pope Francis promotes integral ecology to combat ‘culture of waste’” | September 2019 | America (The Jesuit Review) at Pope Francis promotes integral ecology to combat ‘culture of waste’ | America Magazine

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Integral Ecology, and the Laudato Si’ Action Platform Systems Changes ecological spirituality

Integral Ecology, and the Laudato Si’ Action Platform – Systems Changes – Open Learning Commons

CECAN Webinar – Developing Systems Approaches in the Water Sector

Webinar Registration – Zoom

source:

Finally – I’m seen! | Wenger-Trayner

Finally – I’m seen!

by Bev Wenger-Trayner | Jun 7, 2020 | All entries, Systems convening | 0 comments

Systems conveners: essential workers long term

In 2014, we wrote a chapter on what we called “systems conveners,” people who work to increase learning capability across a whole social landscape that includes many practices, institutions, and stakeholders. It’s not just about big acts of leadership or leadership on a large scale. It is also about taking leadership to bring a broader perspective into local efforts to make a difference.

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Finally – I’m seen! | Wenger-Trayner

I have found CoCreative to be very practical and grounded in the systems change space, combining deep theoretical understanding with a lot of experience, so I expect this will be good.

Introduction to Collaborative Innovation (September, 2021, $475)

Registration Is Underway!

How do I get started in building a systems change collaborative?Whom do I need to engage as I move forward, and when (and how)?How do I get people to volunteer their time for this work when they’re all so busy?How am I going to get these people to agree to do something meaningful together, and actually do it?

Unlocking The Sustainability Potential Of Circular Processes By Applying Systems Thinking

Unlocking The Sustainability Potential Of Circular Processes By Applying Systems Thinking

The System Work of Social Change – Book Launch

Webinar Registration – Zoom

Full newsletter for Catalyst 2020:

It is time to think about (and do) systems change differentlyNeed hope in dark times? A new book The Systems Work of Social Change, launching on September 1, offers a fresh – and deeply hopeful – take on mending a broken world. Simple, but radical, this book distills 200 years of social change-making and presents innovative and workable examples of how to do things differently.   “It will guide those who work in and think about systems change for a generation. A breakthrough book.”   – Stephan Chambers, Director, Marshall Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science

From Stigma to PrideThe Systems Work of Social Change by Cynthia Rayner and François Bonnici draws on research of over 200 years of social change literature, hundreds of interviews, and 8 in-depth case studies from the Schwab Foundation’s community of committed social changemakers. Mothers to Mothers (m2m), a new C2030 member, is one of the featured organisations. Headed by Frank Beadle de Palomo, m2m is an excellent example of an organisation that has built a impactful and responsive network that is ensuring broader agency for people and communities across Africa.  Click here to read the excerpt

Is your voice part of the People’s Report?The playful People’s Report survey has a very serious intent. It is designed to reach people all over the world and to find out exactly what their lived experiences are. Do they have clean water? Can their children go to school? Do they feel safe? The results of the survey will be taken to the world’s leaders at the UN in September. We want the people who are making decisions on our behalf to know the situations that we face and the needs that need to be met.So, are you ready to give 5 minutes of your time to change the world? Click here to take part.