A ‘characterful’ scan:

Click to access a165185.pdf

CybSights Insights: “What’s my Motivation?” A cybernetic question and its dramatic enactment – Prof Tom Scholt, Percetual Control Theory, Method of Levels

The Insights Series is an eclectic and learned collection of monthly events on the 4th Tuesday of each month hosted by the Secretary of the Cybernetics Society, Angus Jenkinson. Cybernetics is the science of design and achievement, the great fusion discipline of our time. In this session, Prof Tom Scholte, an acclaimed film and theatre director, Vice-President of the American Society for Cybernetics, and a Professor of Acting and Directing at the University of British where his centre deals with social challenges and conflicts in organisations. This business-savvy and human-centred immersive experience was a fine exploration of motivation and human behaviour through the media of drama, conversation and reflection. It also introduced the discipline of perceptual control theory (PCT), a discipline with affinities and connections to cybernetics. Discover the real nature of behaviour and how it is self- managed. Relevance to business and social practice is evident. The session was also held in association with IASCYS, the PCT network.

source:

CybSights Insights: “What’s my Motivation?” A cybernetic question and its dramatic enactment. – YouTube

full text of Challenge to Reason: http://www.ask-force.org/web/Discourse/Churchman-Challenge-Reason-1-223-1968.pdf

tribute on Ulrich’s page

C.W. Churchman | W. Ulrich | Ulrich’s Home Page: A Tribute to C.W. Churchman

Werner Ulrich’s Home Page:  C.W. Churchman
		A Tribute to C. West Churchman

source:

C.W. Churchman | W. Ulrich | Ulrich’s Home Page: A Tribute to C.W. Churchman

• John Pourdehnad
• Erica R. Wexler
• Dennis V Wilson

source:

Systems & Design Thinking: A Conceptual Framework for Their Intergration

Systems & Design Thinking: A Conceptual Framework for Their Intergration

• July 2011

• John Pourdehnad
• Erica R. Wexler
• Dennis V Wilson

• This paper explores the relationship between Systems and Design Thinking. It specifically looks into the role of Design in Systems Thinking and how looking at the world through a systems lens influences Design. Our intention is to show the critical concepts developed in the Systems and Design Thinking fields, their underlying assumptions, and the ways in which they can be integrated as a cohesive conceptual framework. While there are many important distinctions that must be considered to understand the similarities and differences of these concepts, gaining a complete understanding of these factors is more than can be covered in this paper. Nevertheless, the most critical classifying variable used to distinguish these concepts will be discussed in order to make their integration possible. This variable, the recognition of purposeful behavior, will be used to develop a conceptual vision for how a combined approach can be used to research, plan, design and manage social systems…Systems in which people play the principle role.

full article in source:

Systems & Design Thinking: A Conceptual Framework for Their Intergration

A revival of an old link from model.report –

https://model.report/s/np0uvr/a_collection_of_collective_systems_facilitation_and_delivery_techniques/comments/lizbqi

Because I’m again thinking about the links and connection between the MG Taylor Method and Future Search, and Beer’s Team Syntegrity, and indeed Tavistock and Trist and Jacuqes and post-WW2 army leader selection.

Anyway, some more collective/large group facilitation links:

ART OR ARTIST? AN ANALYSIS OF EIGHT LARGE-GROUP METHODS FOR DRIVING LARGE-SCALE CHANGE
Svetlana Shmulyian, Barry Bateman, Ruth G. Philpott and Neelu K. Gulri

Click to access add8f9b084b526100166a6971c0fbfa8bd15.pdf

(covers: AmericaSpeaks, Appreciative Inquiry, Conference Models, Decision Accelerator, Future Search, Participative Design, Strategic Change Accelerator/ACT (IBM), and Whole-Scalet Change)

US Patent application (2001, abandoned) for “System and method for augmenting knowledge commerce” – Matt and Gail Taylor
A system and method for addressing the paradoxes and problems associated with the Knowledge Economy, and the transition to it. The system and method of the present invention create a unified experience of work that scales from individual thought processes to the building and using of a global system of commerce. Described in several levels of recursion, the system and method of the present invention integrate, into a single system and method several discrete Sub-Systems and methods that comprise a myriad of now unintegrated tools and processes that are conducted across contradictory and non-collaborative environments.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20040006566A1/en
(pdf) https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/11/a8/0b/73254778a0bb42/US20040006566A1.pdf

D5.1 Plan for Innovation Procedures in ROADIDEA (bear with me!) – part of a European funded project (5 million euros?!) to study the potential of the European transport service sector for innovations, to analyse available data sources, to reveal existing problems and bottlenecks, and to develop better methods and models to be utilized in service platforms. These were to be capable of providing new, innovative transport services for various transport user groups, while trialling a formal innovation process to achieve this. The central issue was the Innovation Process itself and its value in undertaking this important task. (Overview https://trimis.ec.europa.eu/project/road-map-radical-innovations-european-transport-services#tab-outline)
This is the innovation process: https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/projects/cnect/5/215455/080/deliverables/ROADIDEA-D5-1-Innovation-Plan-V1-1.pdf

‘Comprehensive review of collaboration technologies’ (it’s not): http://www.collaborationlabs.net/index.html

Dee Brook – Towards a practice of collaborative sustainable innovation design – foresight enhancement and the designshop process
Submitted to OCAD University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Design in STRATEGIC FORESIGHT AND INNOVATION Toronto, Ontario, Canada, April, 2019

Click to access Brooks_Dee_2019_MDES_SFI_MRP.pdf

source:

Redesigning Our Theories of Theories of Change, Peter H Jones + Ryan J A Murphy (ST-ON 2020/11/19) – Coevolving Innovations

Redesigning Our Theories of Theories of Change, Peter H Jones + Ryan J A Murphy (ST-ON 2020/11/19)

 February 5, 2021  daviding 0 Comments

While the term “theory of change” is often used by funders expecting an outcome of systems change for their investment, is there really a theory there?

The November 2020 Systems Thinking Ontario session was an opportunity for Peter H. Jones (OCADU) and Ryan J. A. Murphy (Memorial U. of Newfoundland) to extend talks that they had given over a few days for the Relating Systems Thinking and Design (RSD9) Symposium.

The talks covered some early research and conversation on deepening the understanding of “theories of change”.  After our usual round of self-introductions by meeting attendees, the core content starts in the web video recording after 12m45s.

The video file is also viewable and downloadable at the Internet Archive,

The digital audio was extracted from the video, and transcoded to MP3.

Here is the original abstract from the Systems Thinking Ontario November 9, 2020, session.

— begin paste —

Redesigning Our Theories of Theories of Change

Peter Jones presents a customized talk from the RSD9 plenary session for ST ON. Ryan Murphy joins with a full presentation of his RSD9 talk.

We often use the model of “theories of change” to argue for the process by which envisioned change programs might achieve their goals. Essentially these are the working theories by which we explain the logic of system change outcomes, and we often include quasi-systemic logic models to communicate them. ToCs are as ubiquitous in social innovation and philanthropy as business models are in startups and VCs. “Systems change” has emerged as a major movement in the worlds of impact investing, philanthropy, and the NGOs they fund, and the proposals expected to advance studies and change programs embrace the language of the theory of change.

• Do Theories of Change reflect coherent models of change that we can observe or assess in real social systems? If so, are logic models sufficient (do they correspond to reality)?
• How do we Represent Transformation? Framework of four Sensemaking Logics
• What are the meanings, purposes, effectiveness, basis in systemics, their common applications, uses and misuses of Theories of Change?
• Can we produce better theories for change through systemic design rationale

Suggested pre-reading:

• Murphy Jones (2020). Systemic Strategy: Systemic Design Methods for Complex Systems Change. RSD9 Symposium.
• Abstracts from RSD9:
  • Peter Jones, “The Social Construction of Systemic Change: Our Working Theories of Change” (parallel breakout session, October 14)
  • Ryan Murphy, “Systemic Strategy: Systemic Design Methods for Complex Systems Change” (parallel breakout session, October 15)
  • Peter Jones, “Redesigning Our Theories of Theories of Change“, (plenary session, October 16)

source:

Redesigning Our Theories of Theories of Change, Peter H Jones + Ryan J A Murphy (ST-ON 2020/11/19) – Coevolving Innovations

source:

Gregory Bateson, Ecology of Mind and Double Binds – YouTube

Gregory Bateson, Ecology of Mind and Double Binds 458 views•1 Dec 2020 6 0 SHARE SAVE jude lombardi 264 subscribers SUBSCRIBED Two excerpts from the 2012 American Society for Cybernetics. One by Nora Bateson on the Ecology of Ideas and the other one man’s story about his experience with a Double Bind.

Gregory Bateson, Ecology of Mind and Double Binds – YouTube

Shape of things to come: From the ‘laws of form’ to management in the post-growth economy | ephemera

Shape of things to come: From the ‘laws of form’ to management in the post-growth economy

Organizing for the post-growth economyarticleAndré Reichel17-1reichel.pdfKeywords  post-growththeory of the firmsystem theorylaws of formNiklas Luhmannabstract

Departing from George Spencer-Brown’s Laws of form and the works of German sociologist Dirk Baecker, a formal model of the firm in the post-growth economy is developed. In following a post-classical approach – and some reference to system theory by Niklas Luhmann as well as the works on autonomous systems by Francisco Varela – we, first, show the explanatory power of Spencer-Brown’s indicational notation for conceptualizing organizational and managerial problem situations, thus contributing a novel approach to the theory of the firm. Secondly, model insights about the nature of the firm, its management, and its relation to a changing environment with limits to economic expansion and increased societal demands are contrasted with existing strands of more classical managerial research and their findings. Thus, it is possible to theoretically substantiate new perspectives on the future ‘hard core’ of management practice around the notions of ethics, values, and collaboration, while also describing the scope and direction of changes in the firm’s societal, economic, and ecological environments.

source:

Shape of things to come: From the ‘laws of form’ to management in the post-growth economy | ephemera

Eagle-eyed readers will notice that I am ‘clearing the decks’ today.

Linksy and Heiftez’s Adaptive Leadership is an approach which I see a lot of value in, and some risk. It’s not truly systems thinking at all, I don’t think – but is a relevant practice (arguably), and is used by many in a form of institutional structure ‘systems leadership’

Heifetz talking about leadership:

A four-minute overview from Adriano Pianesi (with dramatic music):

A Survival Guide for Leaders
by Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky
HBR (June 2002)
https://hbr.org/2002/06/a-survival-guide-for-leaders

Leading with an Open Heart (2002)
(pdf) http://docshare02.docshare.tips/files/9240/92401968.pdf

Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis
by Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky
HBR (July–August 2009)
https://hbr.org/2009/07/leadership-in-a-permanent-crisis

Becoming an adaptive leader (an overview not by the originators)
(pdf) https://www.lifelongfaith.com/uploads/5/1/6/4/5164069/becoming_an_adaptive_leader.pdf

Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading
5/28/2002
It’s not enough to lead everyone out of the mud. As a leader you need to ask yourself—honestly—what you did to get everyone into a bad spot to begin with. In this excerpt from their new book Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading, two Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government faculty pool ideas to look deeper at the hard work of leading others.
by Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky
https://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/leadership-on-the-line-staying-alive-through-the-dangers-of-leading

Hume on identity over time and persons PHIL 20208 Jeff Speaks October 3, 2006 Hume on identity over time and persons

A Treatise of Human Nature (1739) Book I: Of the understanding Part IV: Of the sceptical and other systems of philosophy Section VI: Of Personal Identity by DAVID HUME This text is in the PUBLIC DOMAIN and may be freely reproduced. Paragraph numbering was not included in the original text and has been added for ease of reference.

David Hume on Personal Identity

classic article:

A Case-Study in the Functioning of Social Systems as a Defence against Anxiety: A Report on a Study of the Nursing Service of a General Hospital Isabel E. P. MenziesFirst Published May 1, 1960 Research Article https://doi.org/10.1177/001872676001300201 Article information 

A Case-Study in the Functioning of Social Systems as a Defence against Anxiety: A Report on a Study of the Nursing Service of a General Hospital – Isabel E. P. Menzies, 1960

Isabel Menzies Lyth

Isabel Menzies Lyth – Melanie Klein Trust

Isabel Menzies Lyth

Isabel Menzies Lyth was born in Fife in 1917, the fourth child of a minister of the Church of Scotland. She took a double first in economics and experimental psychology from St Andrews, where she lectured for some years. Her tutor was Eric Trist, who was to become a leading figure in the field of organisational development. It was through Trist that during the war she was able to spend her vacations from her teaching at St Andrews working with the War Office Selection Board and, later, the Civil Resettlement Headquarters of the British Army. At the end of the war she moved to London and was the only woman in a group of psychiatrists, psychologists, psychoanalysts and social scientists who founded the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, which offered research and consultation to organisations. Among this group were Wilfred Bion, John Bowlby, John Rickman, Jock Sutherland and Elliott Jaques. In this post-war period the influence of Melanie Klein, and then also Donald Winnicott, imbued the atmosphere of the Tavistock Institute.

In addition to her social research, Menzies began psychoanalytic training in London. Bion was her second analyst. It was an analysis which she said she undertook for herself, rather than the analysis required as part of her psychoanalytic training. Bion had a great influence upon her. In 1957 she qualified as a child analyst, and in 1960 became a training analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society. Throughout her time at the Tavistock, she would see her patients in the morning and carry out social research in the afternoon (Dartington, 2008).

She had a significant role as a group-relations consultant, particularly at the Tavistock Institute’s international ‘Leicester’ conferences on the dynamics of authority and leadership.

Contribution to understanding organisational life

Menzie’s classic paper on the structure of a hospital nursing service, ‘A case-study in the functioning of social systems as a defence against anxiety. A report on a study of the nursing service of a general hospital’ (1960), has almost iconic status within the field of organisation theory and organisational consultancy. It is required reading for all who were interested in what is now termed the ‘system psychodynamic’ approach to organisations (Gould, J., Stapley, L. and Stein, M., 2001). In the paper Menzies made the original proposition that work in health care and social care organisations entail significant anxieties for staff and that defences against this anxiety are part of organisational life. In the introduction to the paper she describes how a hospital,

“…sought help in developing new methods of carrying out a task in nursing organisation. The research data were, therefore, collected within a socio-therapeutic relationship in which the aim was to facilitate desired social change.”

From, ‘A case-study in the functioning of social systems as a defence against anxiety. A report on a study of the nursing service of a general hospital’ (1960), p.95.

The hospital had been finding it increasingly difficult to reconcile staffing needs and training needs. The senior staff felt that that there was a danger of complete breakdown in the system of allocating student nurses to practical front line work with patients, while also trying to train them effectively.

Menzies states that she took a position of considering the overt problem as the ‘presenting symptom’ and to reserving judgement on the real nature of the difficulties until she had completed the ‘diagnostic’ work. She set up a programme of data-gathering consisting of intensive interviewing, observational studies of operational units, and informal contacts with nurses and other staff. In an interesting footnote she refers to this as a ‘therapeutic study’ and writes of how the work in later stages shifted from diagnosis to therapy. She states that “presentation and interpretation of data, and work done on resistances to their acceptance, facilitate the growth of insight into the nature of the problem”.

She notes that as the research proceeded she “came to attach increasing importance to understanding the nature of the anxiety and the reasons for its intensity” (p97). For Menzies, the anxiety is connected to primitive anxieties aroused in the nurse by contact with seriously ill patients. She uses the description of infantile psychic life as elaborated by Freud, and more particularly by Melanie Klein (1959), as a conceptual framework. Above all, she draws on Klein’s view that the internal phantasy world of the infant “is characterised by a violence and intensity of feeling quite foreign to the emotional life of the normal adult”, seeing infantile-type primitive anxieties aroused for the nurses through intimate contact with patients. She describes how she sees these anxieties mobilised in the nurse around love, hate, aggression and suggests that the main psychological mechanism in use is projection. The nurse projects her own infantile phantasy situation into the workplace, experiencing the work as a deeply painful mixture of objective reality and phantasy.

Alongside anxiety is another crucial theoretical concept, the relationship between emotion and its ‘containment’; that is, the ways in which emotion is experienced or avoided, managed or denied, kept in or passed on, so that its effects are either mitigated or amplified. The capacity to think, on the part of individuals or groups, is related to the capacity for containment of anxiety (Bion, 1959) Going one step further, Menzies then suggests that this to-be-expected anxiety is amplified by the techniques used to contain and modify this anxiety.

The main message of her paper is the elaboration of how these defensive techniques are played out in the organisation of the nursing service. They are:

1. Splitting up the nurse-patient relationship
2. Depersonalisation, categorisation, and denial of the significance of the individual
3. Detachment and denial of feelings
4. The attempt to eliminate decisions by ritual task-performance
5. Reducing the weight of responsibility in decision-making by checks and counter checks
6. Collusive social redistribution of responsibility and irresponsibility
7. Purposeful obscurity in the formal distribution of responsibility
8. The reduction of the impact of responsibility by delegation to superiors
9. Idealisation and underestimation of personal development possibilities
10. Avoidance of change

Her conclusions give a powerful picture of dynamic processes at work within an institutionally defensive system.

Although people rely on social defences to contain their anxiety, they also desire to restore their experience of psychological wholeness and repair the real or imagined damage they have done in devaluing others. This desire for repair helps to limit the level of social irrationality in any group setting and provides a strong basis for moments of group development.

Perhaps the particular emphases of Menzies’ nursing paper militate against its being remembered and taken seriously. The paper illustrates the complex defence system used by the nursing system but does not address adequately what to do about it. This is a point that Menzies continued to feel strongly about. In an interview with Liz Webb and David Lawlor (2009) she asserted that the paper had been misunderstood and had led people to believe that providing support groups for staff was the answer to anxiety-provoking work. She was firmly opposed to this idea. She thought that the issue of anxiety was over-emphasised, in relation to the other side of the process – containment. She felt that the organisation needed to be designed in a way that offered staff effective containment of their anxieties.

Dr David Lawlor, 2016

Key publications

1960 Menzies Lyth, I. ‘A case-study in the functioning of social systems as a defence against anxiety. A report on a study of the nursing service of a general hospital’, Human Relations. 13(2): 95-121.

References

Bion, W. R. 1959. ‘Attacks on linking’, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis. 40: 308-315, and also in Second Thoughts, London: Heinemann.

Dartington, T. 2008. ‘Isabel Menzies Lyth’ (obituary), The Guardian. [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2008/feb/20/1

Gould, J., Stapley, L. and Stein, M. (eds.) 2001. The Systems Psychodynamics of Organisations. Karnac: London.

Klein, M. 1959. ‘Our adult world and its roots in infancy’. In The Writings of Melanie Klein Vol 3, Routledge, 1975.

Lawlor, D. and Webb, L. 2009. ‘An interview with Isabel Menzies Lyth, with a conceptual commentary’, Organizational & Social Dynamics. 9(1): 93-137.

Lawlor, D. 2009. ‘Test of time: a case study in the functioning of social systems as a defence against anxiety: rereading 50 years on’, Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 14(4): 523-30.

Menzies Lyth, I. 1988. Containing Anxiety in Institutions, Vol. 1. London: Free Association Books.

Menzies Lyth, I. 1989. The Dynamics of the Social Selected Essays, Vol. 2. London: Free Association Books.

Thanks to the Archives of the British Psychoanalytical Society who have granted us kind permission to reproduce the photograph above of Isabel Menzies Lyth.

source:

Artemy Kolchinsky on “Semantic Information” & The Physics of Meaning — COMPLEXITY — Overcast

Artemy Kolchinsky on “Semantic Information” & The Physics of Meaning

December 11, 20201:201:00:31

episode notes:

source (on overcast.fm, my recommended player)

Artemy Kolchinsky on “Semantic Information” & The Physics of Meaning — COMPLEXITY — Overcast

source:

The diversity bonus in pooling local knowledge about complex problems | PNAS

The diversity bonus in pooling local knowledge about complex problems

 View ORCID ProfilePayam Aminpour, Steven A. Gray, Alison Singer, Steven B. Scyphers, Antonie J. Jetter, Rebecca Jordan, Robert Murphy Jr, and Jonathan H. GrabowskiPNAS February 2, 2021 118 (5) e2016887118; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2016887118Add to Cart ($10)

1. Edited by Matthew O. Jackson, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, and approved November 4, 2020 (received for review August 14, 2020)

• Article
• Figures & SI
• Info & Metrics
•  PDF

Significance

Groups can collectively achieve an augmented cognitive capability that enables them to effectively tackle complex problems. Importantly, researchers have hypothesized that this group property—frequently known as collective intelligence—may be improved in functionally more diverse groups. This paper illustrates the importance of diversity for representing complex interdependencies in a social-ecological system. In an experiment with local stakeholders of a fishery ecosystem, groups with higher diversity—those with well-mixed members from diverse types of stakeholders—collectively produced more complex models of human–environment interactions which were more closely matched scientific expert opinions. These findings have implications for advancing the use of local knowledge in understanding complex sustainability problems, while also promoting the inclusion of diverse stakeholders for increasing management success.

source:

The diversity bonus in pooling local knowledge about complex problems | PNAS

The Philosophy of Organism | Issue 114 | Philosophy Now

Articles

The Philosophy of Organism

Peter Sjöstedt-H introduces Whitehead’s organic awareness of reality.

The philosophy of organism is the name of the metaphysics of the mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. Born in Kent in 1861, schooled in Dorset, Alfred headed north and taught mathematics and physics in Cambridge, where he befriended his pupil Bertrand Russell, with whom he came to collaborate on a project to develop logically unshakable foundations for mathematics. In 1914, Whitehead became Professor of Applied Mathematics at Imperial College, London. However, his passion for the underlying philosophical problems never left him, and in 1924, at the age of 63, he crossed the Atlantic to take up a position as Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1947. His intellectual journey had traversed mathematics, physics, logic, education, the philosophy of science, and matured with his profound metaphysics, a complex systematic philosophy that is most comprehensively unfolded in his 1929 book, Process and Reality.

The philosophy of organism is a form of process philosophy. This type of philosophy seeks to overcome the problems in the traditional metaphysical options of dualism, materialism, and idealism. From the perspective of process philosophy, the error of dualism is to take mind and matter to be fundamentally distinct; the error of materialism is to fall for this first error then omit mind as fundamental; the error of idealism is also to fall for the first error then to omit matter as fundamental. The philosophy of organism seeks to resolve these issues by fusing the concepts of mind and matter, thereby creating an ‘organic realism’ as Whitehead also named his philosophy. To gain an overview of this marvelous, revolutionary, yet most logical philosophy, let’s first look at what Whitehead means by ‘realism’, then at the meaning of its prefix, ‘organic’.