Personal construct theory suggests that people develop personal constructs about how the world works. People then use these constructs to make sense of their observations and experiences.
The world we live in is the same for all of us, but the way we experience it is different for each individual. For example, imagine that you and your friend are going for a walk in the park and you spot a large brown dog. You immediately see a graceful and adorable animal that you would like to pet.
Your friend, on the other hand, sees a threatening animal that she wants to avoid. How can two people have such a different interpretation of the same event?
According to psychologist George Kelly, personality is composed of the various mental constructs through which each person views reality. Kelly believed that each person was much like a scientist. Just like scientists, we want to understand the world around us, make predictions about what will happen next, and create theories to explain events.
Collective intelligence (CI) is shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration, collective efforts, and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making. The term appears in sociobiology, political science and in context of mass peer review and crowdsourcing applications. It may involve consensus, social capital and formalisms such as voting systems, social media and other means of quantifying mass activity.[1] Collective IQ is a measure of collective intelligence, although it is often used interchangeably with the term collective intelligence. Collective intelligence has also been attributed to bacteria and animals.[2]
is Denning Family Professor of Sustainable Development at Columbia University in New York and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences. Her most recent book is What Would Nature Do? A Guide for Our Uncertain Times (2021). She lives in New York.
Nature is famously, gloriously complex. But it wasn’t always so. When the Earth was young, physics ruled. Steam spewed from prodigious volcanoes and seeped through the cracked surface, transforming our planet into an ocean-covered mass, circling in the darkness. The physics that governs a phase change from steam to water in the oceans is as true today as it was 4.5 billion years ago. Gas would turn to liquid on any planet at any time, so long as the temperature and air pressure oblige. Then, as now, the laws of physics were predictable and straightforward.
But the history of life that followed from that fateful phase change didn’t proceed along such a simple trajectory. Its evolution over billions of years defies simple rules and predictable outcomes. Nature became a complex system, a tangled web of invisible connections. As nature’s intricacy ramped up, it brought with it opportunities for expansion, but also possibilities for annihilation. Fortunately, with each problem that arose, a strategy evolved to overcome it.
The process controls the organized spatial distribution of cells during the embryonic development of an organism. Morphogenesis can take place also in a mature organism, such as in the normal maintenance of tissue homeostasis by stem cells or in regeneration of tissues after damage. Cancer is an example of highly abnormal and pathological tissue morphogenesis. Morphogenesis also describes the development of unicellular life forms that do not have an embryonic stage in their life cycle. Morphogenesis is essential for the evolution of new forms.
Morphogenesis is a mechanical process involving forces that generate mechanical stress, strain, and movement of cells,[1] and can be induced by genetic programs according to the spatial patterning of cells within tissues.
Interesting approach to building and transferring complicated applied knowledge at scale.
Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) Project ECHO is a revolutionary guided-practice model that reduces health disparities in under-served and remote areas of the state, nation, and world. Through innovative telementoring, the ECHO model uses a hub-and-spoke knowledge-sharing approach where expert teams lead virtual clinics, amplifying the capacity for providers to deliver best-in-practice care to the underserved in their own communities.
THE ASPIRATION exponential societal change at scale We envision a future in which the solutions we have access to are always a step ahead of the problems we are trying to solve. Our goal – catalysing a societal movement for change – is audacious. But we are irrationally optimistic about the capacity of the ecosystem to achieve it. To this end, we are architects of shared spaces for actors across civil society, the government, and the market to reimagine, and co-create together.
ESSENTIAL BALANCES is now available in paperback.
It is about how organizations work,
for diagnosis and design,
below and beyond models, metrics, and methodologies.
It reveals the fundamental principles of organizing.
Click on https://amazon.co.uk/Essential-Balances-Looking-Seeing-Organizations/dp/1838338616/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=… to get your copy.
The Future Cafe is open to those who want to radically conceptualise the world we live in & how it could be different in the future.
About this Event
Inspired by The Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory (3CT) Future Cafe and Jon Underwood’s Death Cafe, Forcera’s Future Cafe is open to those who want to radically conceptualise the world we live in and how it could be different in the near and distant future.
We will listen and learn from each other different ways of thinking and seeing about the future with a view that we can create new perspectives about the world that we live in tomorrow.
It is a group-directed discussion about the future with no set agenda or objectives. No prior knowledge of the topic, themes or ways of thinking are required to take part just a general willingness to come with an open mind, heart and will to discuss. Bring your thoughts, questions and concerns – so we can listen and respond as together in a non-judgemental way.
Please listen when people are talking, be respectful of others’ views and confidentiality, and do not lead participants to believe in any conclusion, product or course of action, as the cafe is open to all.
Although we will discuss specific topics or themes, these will be decided upon organically as a group when we meet to allow the discussion to be spontaneous and to stop those with knowledge or expertise from taking over and to avoid presumptuous, restrictive and/or disempowering conversations. This is why it is a group directed session so as to offer participants time to reflect on and share what they think is important as this yields the best results.
(ISSS membership is $60-115 per year and includes One-year eAccess online subscription to Systems Research and Behavioral Science (including part 5, which is the Yearbook of the ISSS))
Welcome to the ISSS Book Club! The purpose of the book club is to explore the systems science literature in depth, so books are read over several months, with monthly reading assignments of approximately 50-100 pages. Participants will have opportunities to both suggest books to read and vote on a selection of books. Meetings are on the third Thursday of the month from 12:30 – 2:00 pm Eastern Time. Our inaugural book is The Hidden Power of Systems Thinking: Governance in a Climate Emergency by Ray Ison and Ed Straw.The reading assignment are as follows: 15 April 2021: Introduction and Part I20 May 2021: Part II17 June 2021: Chapters 7-915 July 2021: Chapters 10-12 (this meeting may be postponed if it conflicts with the ISSS Conference) The next three books that we will read are Heart of Enterprise by Stafford Beer, The Science of Synthesis by Debora Hammond, and Free Will by Sam Harris. If you would like to be included on book club emails, please email Marty Jacobs. She is listed in the Member Directory. Please note: This is a members only benefit. If you’d like to join the conversation, please consider becoming a member of ISSS.
Complexity and the Social World: building on the legacy of Allen, Byrne, Stacey and Cilliers
Mark December 16, 2020 Comments Offon Complexity and the Social World: building on the legacy of Allen, Byrne, Stacey and Cilliers
Online event 3rd March 2021, 12.30-14.00 GMThttps://www.youtube.com/embed/hSMyKXGb4wk?feature=oembed
Complexity theory took off in the 1990s and four of the key people who shaped how these ideas were developed for application to the social world were represented in this event. In this unique retrospective, we explored how these four thinkers approached complexity thinking over long careers.
Invited Speakers
Peter Allen – Embracing Complexity
David Byrne – Complexity and the Social Sciences
Chris Mowles in the legacy of Ralph Stacey – Complex Responsive Processes
Rika Preiser in the legacy of Paul Cilliers – Complexity and Postmodernism
The discussion was hosted by Jean Boulton and featured a guest appearence from Brian Arthur (who developed complexity economics)
The speakers were each interviewed and then discussed issues with each other, before answering questions from the audience.
Biographies
David Byrne is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Sociology, at the University of Durham. His first book on complexity, was ‘Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences’ (1998), built on in ‘Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences: the state of the art’ (Byrne and Callaghan, 2013). His new book ‘Inequality in a Context of Climate Crisis: A Complex Realist Approach’ will be published soon. His research interests include researching large scale complex interventions, case-based methods, inequality and social exclusion.
Peter Allen is Emeritus Professor at Cranfield University. He has a PhD in theoretical physics and from 1972-87 worked with Nobel Laureate, Ilya Prigogine at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. He then ran two Research Centres, focused on complexity, at Cranfield University. He has written and edited several books in the field of complexity and socio-economic modelling and published well over 200 articles. In 2011 he co-edited the Sage Handbook on Complexity and Management and in 2015 co-authored Embracing Complexity(OUP) with Jean Boulton and Cliff Bowman.
Friedrich Paul Cilliers (1956 – 2011) was a South-African philosopher, complexity theorist, and Professor in Complexity and Philosophy at Stellenbosch University. His original background was in Electronic Engineering. His research focused on the ethical implications of complexity theory and the philosophy of science. His book ‘Complexity and Postmodernism’(1998) integrates insights from complexity with the thinking of Derrida, Lyotard and others. Together with Rika Preiser, he co-edited ‘Complexity, Difference and Identity’ (2010) and his collected essays ‘Critical Complexity’ (2016) was edited by Rika Preiser after his death.
Ralph Douglas Stacey, Emeritus Professor of Management at the University of Hertfordshire, was Director of the Complexity and Management Centre, established in 1995, until 2011, when he was succeeded by Professor Chris Mowles. He was born in 1942 in Johannesburg. Initially trained in law, his PhD focused on the construction of econometric models of industrial development. He pioneered an inquiry into the implications complexity theory for understanding human organisations and their management. He is best known for his writings on the theory of organisations as complex responsive processes of relating (2001) and this work was influenced through his training as a Group psychotherapist.
Professor Chris Mowles is Director of the Managing Complex Change Research Group at the University of Hertfordshire. He also teaches and consults internationally. Chris is interested in research methods, strategy and change in organisations, and ethics. He has a particular focus on the functioning of groups. ‘Managing in Uncertainty: Complexity and the paradoxes of everyday organizational life’ was published in 2015.
Dr Rika Preiser is a Senior Researcher with the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition at the University of Stellenbosch. In 2012 she completed her PhD in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Stellenbosch, entitled ‘The Problem of Complexity: Rediscovering the role of Critique’. Rika was supervised by Paul Cilliers and worked closely with him, taking the lead in editing his papers posthumously. Her current research explores the conceptual development of complexity, and she has a particular interest in social-ecological transformations and works closely with the Stockholm Resilience Centre.
Dr Jean Boulton is a Visiting Fellow with Cranfield School of Management and a Visiting Senior Research Fellow with the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Bath and a recent (2019) Research Fellow with Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Studies. She has a PhD in theoretical physics and is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. She teaches and consults around the theme of complexity and its implications for the social and natural world at a range of institutions. She is lead author of ‘Embracing Complexity’ (2015). Her current interests centre on the development of ‘process complexity’ and on articulating the implications of complexity for theories of change and transformation.
Complexity and the Social World: building on the legacy of Allen, Byrne, Stacey and Cilliers Mark December 16, 2020 Comments Offon Complexity and the Social World: building on the legacy of Allen, Byrne, Stacey and Cilliers Online event 3rd March 2021, 12.30-14.00 GMT
I am in the process of writing a book about the question whether it is possible to find universal common ground, in the face of globalism-generated problems of moral relativism and economic competition, on which humankind can deal with serious challenges confronting it in three domains. One, the most obvious, is climate change; the second is the more troubling aspects of technological development, especially involving AI, for example autonomous weapons systems; the third is the social, economic and political injustice endemic to many parts of the world. All of them require concerted international action. Achieving such action faces high barriers.
The two highest barriers are as follows. The first is what, as coiner of it, I have elsewhere called “Grayling’s Law”:
Across the UK there is a great appreciation for the National Health Service, particularly since its 70th anniversary and the Covid epidemic – yet few of us would claim that the system runs on perfect choices.
Boards need reliable information and clear prompts, upon which to make better decisions. Yet within the service (and in business) the prevalent approaches to looking at performance data are two-point comparisons and traffic light ‘red, amber, green’ reports. We recognise these are difficult to read, and tough going when trying to spot meaningful trends, let alone make predictions.
In this workshop Samantha Riley of NHS Improvement will explore better ways for Boards to understand and manage the variation in results, and provide a sound basis for assurance.
This movement has proven to be very successful in strengthening decision-making or ‘governance’. Sam’s small team have convinced half of the NHS’s 217 Trust Boards to adopt this approach, and are working on the remainder.
With a similar change overdue in industry, education and government, the field of application is vast. Attention will be placed on how executive members are encouraged to adopt a different approach – without their needing to perform detailed data preparation, which others do on their behalf.
WHO SHOULD JOIN IN? This free session will be especially valuable to senior managers who make reports to boards; executive board members, and performance analysts. Anyone with an interest in pragmatic and more effective management, in any sector will also gain useful insights.
book for dates:
15 Mar – https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEpc-mprTopG9ZyJ1YXj3teahTMlLke-FWf?_x_zm_rtaid=kEu3WgBITv-Fjb3Ys5qRoQ.1615790589649.bf8048068897a97097e1c065e7081d6e&_x_zm_rhtaid=93
1 April – https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEpdeGhrjIoGt3eUYULHPLcaGNHR51d0T8k?_x_zm_rtaid=kEu3WgBITv-Fjb3Ys5qRoQ.1615790589649.bf8048068897a97097e1c065e7081d6e&_x_zm_rhtaid=93
Thursday 25th March from 15:00 -16:30
CCSS Societal Discussion #11: The ‘endo-exo’ problem in complex systems (ecology, earthquakes, financial volatility, epileptic seizures…)
On Thursday afternoon (15.00-16.30) we will be hosting our 11th Societal Discussion with Prof. Didier Sornette (ETH Zurich)
Link to Webinar (Thursday 25th March at 15:00) >> >>
Thursday 25th March from 15:00 -16:30 CCSS Societal Discussion #11: The ‘endo-exo’ problem in complex systems (ecology, earthquakes, financial volatility, epileptic seizures…)On Thursday afternoon (15.00-16.30) we will be hosting our 11th Societal Discussion with Prof. Didier Sornette (ETH Zurich)Link to Webinar (Thursday 25th March at 15:00) >> >>Keynote speaker: Prof. Didier Sornette Didier Sornette is Professor on the Chair of Entrepreneurial Risks in the Department of Management, Technology and Economics at ETH Zurich. He also holds a position at the Swiss Finance Institute, and several other departments at ETH Zurich (Physics, Earth Sciences). Prof. Sornette is a founding member of the Risk Center at ETH Zurich and has published 500+ research papers and 7 books. In 2008, he founded the Financial Crisis Observatory to diagnose and predict financial bubbles. His research focuses on the predictability and control of crises and extreme events in complex systems with particular focus on financial bubbles, crashes, earthquake physics and geophysics, the dynamics of success on social networks and the complex system approach to medicine towards the diagnostic of systemic instabilitiesPresentation Overview The ‘endo-exo’ problem in complex systems (ecology, earthquakes, financial volatility, epileptic seizures…) Abstract: The “endo-exo” problem — i.e., decomposing system activity into exogenous and endogenous parts — lies at the heart of statistical identification in many fields of science. E.g., consider the problem of determining if an earthquake is a mainshock or aftershock, or if a surge in the popularity of a youtube video is because it is “going viral”, or simply due to high activity across the platform. The “endo-exo” problem is also at the heart of a general description of the dynamics of out-of-equilibrium complex systems generalising the fluctuation-susceptibility theorem. There will be 45-minute presentation, followed by a 45-min Q&A.
Cranfield Webinar Series on Complexity and Strategy
Critical Systems Thinking and the Management of Complexity
Speaker: Professor Michael C. Jackson, University of Hull & Systems Research Ltd.
Description: This talk discusses the nature of complexity, the development of systems thinking, the emergence of critical systems thinking, and how to conduct interventions on the basis of critical systems practice. The world has become increasingly networked and unpredictable. Leaders of international bodies such as the UN, OECD, UNESCO and WHO, and of major business, public sector, charitable, and professional organizations, have all declared systems thinking an essential leadership skill for managing the complexity of the interrelated economic, social, and environmental issues they face. Systems thinkers have developed different methodologies attuned to different aspects of complexity; examples being systems engineering, system dynamics, organizational cybernetics, and soft systems thinking. Critical systems thinking helps us to understand the relative strengths and weaknesses of these systems approaches in dealing with different aspects of complexity. It recommends using systems methodologies, models, and methods in informed combinations when confronted by complexity. Critical systems practice sets out how such multi-methodological interventions can be undertaken and evaluated.
Date and time: Monday, 22 March 2021; 8 am (U.S. Pacific) / 11 am (U.S. Eastern) / 3pm (London) / 8.30 pm (New Delhi)
Duration: 1 h 30 min (including Q&A).
Moderators: Professor Andrey Pavlov & Dr Ibrat Djabbarov, Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield University, UK
About the speaker Michael C. Jackson is Emeritus Professor at the University of Hull and MD of Systems Research Ltd. Mike is known as a key figure in the development of ‘critical systems thinking’ – a topic on which he has published ten books and over 150 articles. His latest book Critical Systems Thinking and the Management of Complexity was published in 2019.Time
(this is what OLSET is: https://olset.org/about-olset
and a book: https://www.olset.co.uk/the-book/ )
Professional Certification in Organizational Learning, Systems Thinking & OLSET
Date: Six sequential Sundays starting from Sunday 6th of June at 16.00 GMT Location: online
Are you a leader, a management consultant or a facilitator? Do you want to certify your knowledge of Organizational Learning and Systems Thinking?
• Learn and get certified by two of the field’s most renowned experts: Guus Geisen and Anthi Theiopoulou! Do you want to be able to apply management’s newest approach to your projects with the help of the OLSET technology?
• Scale up your participative projects with Organizational Learning and Systems Thinking – management’s newest approach! The OLSET Platform allows you to scale up your Organisational Development, Change, Lean, Kaizen, BPR, Knowledge management, Canban or Sustainability projects. Now you can be in many places at the same time using a software to scale up your project no matter the size you are dealing with! Learn how to facilitate others to use our digital decision making tools to thrive in any future.
Do you want to add more cutting edge services to your portfolio?
• Start auditing and certifying learning organisations! • Start facilitating OLSET development projects for organisations! • Get the single-user version free for all forever!
If you answered YES in any of these question, then this online intensive seminar and certification is for you!
Even if there are various workshops on this same topic, it is the first time that such in-depth knowhow as well as that certification is provided publicly. The principles and mechanics of creation (or vision creation) are so concisely, vigorously and yet simply presented, that will enable you to re-engineer and strategise your organisation exactly as you want it – no matter its scale! It is also an opportunity to increase the value of all your services with our high profile and quality certification.THE OLSET …
… system synthesises relevant scientific research and empirical observation by world known Organizational Learning (OL) experts.
… approach enables management and leadership consultants to enhance their participative leadership practice and to do so at a scale not achievable before.
… software is the only operational OL platform in the world that is currently available.
…certification is the only one offered for OL and ST worldwide and will significantly increase the value of your services
….services will be added to your portfolio (audits and development projects)
….tools allow directors to manage their agile teams in less time than ever before, while overseeing the big picture and bringing the details into focus
This is an opportunity to become pioneers in the field as it is the first time that standardised, replicable and scalable services related to OL and ST are offered such as auditing and strategic transformation. Quarterly meetings for sustenance and upgrades will be also offered for Certified practitioners.
OLSET Consultants’ Certification Workshop Design
Day 1 (3h): Critical OL and ST theory Measurement of OL Capacity Step 0
Day 2 (3h): Systemic Structure Map (Step 1)
Day 3 (3h): Systemic Action Map (Step 2) AAR (Step 3 and OMS)
Day 4 (2h): participants’ case studies Day 5 (2h): participants’ case studies Day 6 (2h): participants’ case studies
• 10 % discount for each additional registration received from the same organisation, • 10% discount to early bird registration (until 30 April), and • 10% discount to members of the SoL, AoH, WC, OST, AI networks.
To register contact us .We look forward to meeting you!
In today’s post, I am looking at the idea of regulation. I talked about direct and indirect regulation in my previous post. In today’s post, I will look at passive and active regulation.
Ashby viewed a system as a selection of variables chosen by an observer for the purpose of sensemaking. The observer is looking not at what the system is (what the variables are), but at what the system does. In other words, the observer is interested in the behavior of the system. The observer is interested in influencing the behavior so that the system is maintained in certain chosen states. Of all possible states, the system can be in, the observer would like to keep the system in a chosen few states. To achieve this, the observer has to model the behavior of the system. As J. Achterbergh and D. Vriens note:
Keynote speaker: Prof. Didier Sornette
Systems Community of Inquiry 
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