Corporate Seagulls, Smart Alecs, & Enterprise Antics in a Cybernetic Lens Tickets, Tue 24 Nov 2020 at 18:00 | Eventbrite

NOV 24

Corporate Seagulls, Smart Alecs, & Enterprise Antics in a Cybernetic Lens

by CybSights: The Insights SeriesFollow£0 – £5

Event Information

A live research conversation about cybernetics, biz and models (etc) between Hon Fellow Stephen J. Brewis and the Secretary, Angus Jenkinson

About this Event

The Insights Series is an eclectic and learned collection of monthly events on the 4th Tuesday of each month. There will be lectures, seminars, conversations, debates, participation, all advancing our knowledge of cybernetics and its applications to real world needs.

It is the science of achievement, the great meta-discipline of our time.

Events are normally curated and hosted by the Secretary, Angus Jenkinson, FCybS. Get in touch of you ahve an idea. Attendance is free. Non-members are invited to make a donation or Join.

The Cybernetics Society has been hosting conversations and lectures since the late 1960s. We also have an Annual Conference. Videos are shared on our YouTube Channel.

Seagulls? Smart Alecs? What is this about?

Corporate Seagulls: wiki says: The seagull style of management may be indicative of a manager who is untrained, inexperienced or newly-appointed.

Smart Alecs: opinion about: Cyberneticians who think they know better. Maybe they do?

Inquiry: Both approaches may lack the praxis, the glue that joins the two together i.e. Theory without practice is useless, practice without theory is dangerous. And expertise that does not reach those who need it is wasted.

This is a conversation between Stephen Brewis HonFCybS and Angus Jenkinson FCybS with audience participation.

It will flow freely to and fro, questioning and probing, exploring and researching together around such vital questions as:

1. How can cybernetic language become accessible and more powerful?
2. How does cybernetics solve significant enterprise problems?
3. What do companies need to work more effectively?
4. How do we improve both the freedom of individuals and the performance of enterprises?

Stephen J Brewis

Stephen Brewis is an honorary fellow of the Society, a former chief scientist at BT whose cybernetic modelling made huge financial difference, improved quality, and enhanced the working life of people. He now runs his own consultancy as well as having academic fellowships.

Angus Jenkinson FCybS

Angus Jenkinson is the Secretary of the Society, a former Professor, tech entrepreneur, consultant, and business leader. He is researching a new theory of organisations, called propriopoiesis.

Stephen and Angus have regular collegiate research conversations and think that it could be an interesting stimulus to share. Together they have rethought certain ideas, found new language, and challenged each other to go deeper — join in!

Interspersed with audience discussion and Q & A

Cybernetics Society – a learned society to join?

Cybernetics offers a distinct “go” — techniques — to address local and global challenges of the 21st century.

The Cybernetics Society promotes and offers education and research opportunities in the rich field of cybernetics. It is a specially authorised learned society regulated by the FSA and established by a 1974 Act of Parliament. To join visit our membership system or pick the Join ticket. We give MCybS and FCybS postnomal awards.

Cybernetics and the Society seek understanding of the vast domain of active causation, internally controlled behaviour towards outcomes of value in living and non-living organizations. We cultivate the principles and praxis required to design policies, interventions, and innovations for social and ecological weal.

Cybernetics plays into and strongly influences many scientific and practice fields including design, epistemology, ecology, biology, psychology and living behaviour, technology and engineering, social policy, and business practice, amongst others. Many feature in this wonderful set of aware and successful designers and thinkers.

We are interested in people who are learners, advisers, researchers, academics, designers, leaders. Those involved in policy and practice — think tanks, central and local government, enterprises, foundations, academic and civil society institutions. These may range from Rowntree to RSA, Royal Society to the Royal Institute of British Architects, the local housing association to the UN. We place great importance on the value of cybernetics for better business. From startups to global giants, cybernetics offers powerful insight and tools for enterprise.

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Corporate Seagulls, Smart Alecs, & Enterprise Antics in a Cybernetic Lens Tickets, Tue 24 Nov 2020 at 18:00 | Eventbrite

Jukka Mallinen: A Finnish Dissident – The Northern European :: UpNorth

[original title, which I believe is incorrect: Jukka Mallinen: A Finnish Dissident]

by Jukka Mallinen

Juuso Salokorpi (editor): The Arithmetic of the Greatness of Ilmari Susiluoto

Helsinki. 2020. 413 pages.

The twists and turns in the career of Russian researcher Ilmari Susiluoto (1947 – 2016) are themselves a reflection of Finland’s traumatic relationship with Russia. He was an independent researcher and a presidential advisor who became mired in the bureaucratic politics of Finland’s relations with its Eastern neighbour.

Well-known Russian scholars, Soviet trade veterans and journalists take a retrospective look at his career in a memoir titled “The Arithmetic of the Greatness of Ilmari Susiluoto”. The book has been edited by Juuso Salokorpi, Ilmari’s cousin and schoolmate, who was once an international banker in Moscow and London.

1960

In the mid-19th century, Susiluoto was a board member of the Helsinki New Left Schoolboys and Schoolgirls
Society. Several Finnish left-wing politicians and intellectuals emerged from this famous association. But he
maintained (kept) his intellectual and critical freedom, when most of this group betrayed the ideals of “the generation of 1968” accepting communist ideology or careers in service of advancing finlandization.

In 1982, his book, “The Origin and Development of System Thinking in the Soviet Union” which focused on the early

stages of Soviet cybernetics, a policy that was internationally regarded as being bold and innovative,  was even noted by Alec Nove in “Soviet Studies”. The issue of cybernetics was politically sensitive in The Soviet Union, because it was invented by Lenin’s opponents Anatoly Bogdanov and  Nikolai Bukharin. They presented an alternative to Stalin’s “barrack style” communism with early Soviet cybernetics, and predicted Norbert Wiener’s theories that appeared in the West, 50 years later.

The challenges of a planned economy provided a peculiar perspective on cybernetics. Cybernetic socialism was accused of being too technocratic. Bogdanov’s and Bukharin’s theory of equilibrium threatened the party’s leading role.

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Jukka Mallinen: A Finnish Dissident – The Northern European :: UpNorth

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Home – Allen Discovery Center at Tufts UniversityAllen Discovery Center at Tufts University

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Reading and Writing the Morphogenetic Code

The Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University is a center of fundamental research on anatomical homeostasis. Dr. Levin and his team focus on reading and editing the biophysical control circuits that underlie the Morphogenetic Code. Explore the concepts outlined in our White Paper, and imagine the breakthroughs to come.

Read the White Paper

The Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University focuses on reading and writing the Morphogenetic Code, which orchestrates how cells communicate to create and repair complex anatomical shapes. Our interdisciplinary effort explores the role that bioelectrical signaling plays in pattern memory and decision-making by somatic cell networks. By understanding these dynamics, the team will create the first quantitative theories of top-down pattern control along with protocols and instrumentation that show how pattern can be rationally modified. Addressing fundamental questions at the intersection of embryogenesis, computation, evolution, and synthetic morphology, this work explores a key frontier within the dark matter of biology: how information processing in cells implements robust control of large-scale patterning.

Led by developmental biologist Michael Levin, the team is comprised of researchers with expertise in biology, computer science, and engineering from Tufts University, Harvard University, Princeton University, University of Chicago, and Tel Aviv University. Together we are using molecular genetics, biophysics, and developmental physiology, as well as techniques from the information sciences and AI to build new tools to exploit endogenous bioelectric pathways. The basic findings will drive diverse applications in regenerative medicine, birth defects, cancer biology, and bioengineering.

Just one of two such centers in the country (the second is at Stanford University), the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University is generously supported by The Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group, which is committed to funding research at the frontiers of biological sciences.

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Home – Allen Discovery Center at Tufts UniversityAllen Discovery Center at Tufts University

Politics: Power versus Love (It’s not what you think)

The Seeing Systems Blog: Politics: Power versus Love (It’s not what you think)

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Tools for Viable Organizing

Tools for Viable Organizing

Kyle Thompson

This article is also available in PDF form, suitable for printing.Organizing is difficult, and often exhausting work. It means bringing together strangers and facing a hostile environment along with them.

To help, this pamphlet introduces the structure for developing viable organizations. By viability, I mean the ability to adapt to and survive changes in the environment. The structure of viable organizations lets members share important information with those who need it, while filtering out noise. This ability to adapt and channel information allows for quick responses to danger or need, without losing sight of the big picture.

This structure has been used in many co-ops, as well as in the democratic revolution of 1970-1973 in Chile.

The Viable System Model

The Viable System Model (VSM) gives us this structure for building viable organizations. We can also use it to check if our organizations are set up to survive hostile environments. Any viable system should look like the VSM, so don’t be surprised if you are already doing a lot of what it suggests.

The VSM has six parts, called systems. These don’t need to be their own offices or committees, but every viable organization should somehow include all six functions…

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Tools for Viable Organizing

The Centre for Systems Studies at the University of Hull (UK) has an exciting opportunity for the right person: a PhD scholarship, co-sponsored by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), starting in Autumn 2021, with fieldwork starting in Autumn 2022.

For the fieldwork part of their studies, the student will be placed in Defra, and will work with them on the development of a new systems methodology to support cross-departmental working and science-policy integration in the context of land use policy-making.

While the advert for the scholarship (see the link below) talks about the kinds of degree courses relevant to this research, we are less interested in the disciplinary background of applicants, and more interested in their understanding of systems thinking, their creativity in tackling challenges and developing solutions, their openness to partnership working with national government agencies, and their ability to write to publication standard.

The supervisors of the student will be Prof Gerald Midgley (Hull), Dr Amanda Gregory (Hull) and Dr Dan McGonigle (Defra).

Applications from people in the UK and overseas are welcome

If covid-19 travel restrictions are lifted before the placement with Defra commences in Autumn 2022, then residence within easy reach of Defra’s London office will be expected, but if travel restrictions are still in force during the placement with Defra, then you will be able to work remotely.

https://panorama-dtp.ac.uk/research/systems-thinking-for-land-use-policy-making/

Gerald’s post on Facebook in The Ecology of Systems Thinking group:

The Ecology of Systems Thinking | Facebook

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What is Shared Meaning and why does it matter? • Meaning Guide

What is Shared Meaning and why does it matter?

 Steve Whitla1 week ago1 comment

I started using the phrase “shared meaning” a couple of years ago to describe the outcome we were focusing on in the organisations we were working with, but I wasn’t prepared for just how quickly the phrase came to be taken up by clients, colleagues and the world at large. It became the subtitle of the book I co-wrote earlier this year, and the more I talk about it, the more I hear it in other people’s conversations. While I ponder how on earth to find time to write another full-length book on the subject, here’s a short summary of what I mean by shared meaning, and why I think the world needs it.

Shared meaning is two things: one is the outcome we are seeking to achieve, and the other is the discipline that seeks to achieve that outcome. The outcome is defined at greater length elsewhere on this blog, but as a quick reminder:

If meaning is what it feels like to experience the following two sensations at the same time …

… then shared meaning is what it feels like for the same thing to happen within a group:

When this happens, there’s a release of energy, as the group identity forms around the meaning created.

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What is Shared Meaning and why does it matter? • Meaning Guide

A good approach to looking at how ‘complex’ is actually conceptualise and used in practice (TL:DR – it’s rather confused and more talked about than practised, and practice isn’t clear)

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Qualitative process evaluation from a complex systems perspective: A systematic review and framework for public health evaluators

Qualitative process evaluation from a complex systems perspective: A systematic review and framework for public health evaluators

• Elizabeth McGill ,
• Dalya Marks,
• Vanessa Er,
• Tarra Penney,
• Mark Petticrew,
• Matt Egan

• Published: November 2, 2020
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1003368

Abstract

Background

Public health evaluation methods have been criticized for being overly reductionist and failing to generate suitable evidence for public health decision-making. A “complex systems approach” has been advocated to account for real world complexity. Qualitative methods may be well suited to understanding change in complex social environments, but guidance on applying a complex systems approach to inform qualitative research remains limited and underdeveloped. This systematic review aims to analyze published examples of process evaluations that utilize qualitative methods that involve a complex systems perspective and proposes a framework for qualitative complex system process evaluations.

Methods and findings

We conducted a systematic search to identify complex system process evaluations that involve qualitative methods by searching electronic databases from January 1, 2014–September 30, 2019 (Scopus, MEDLINE, Web of Science), citation searching, and expert consultations. Process evaluations were included if they self-identified as taking a systems- or complexity-oriented approach, integrated qualitative methods, reported empirical findings, and evaluated public health interventions. Two reviewers independently assessed each study to identify concepts associated with the systems thinking and complexity science traditions. Twenty-one unique studies were identified evaluating a wide range of public health interventions in, for example, urban planning, sexual health, violence prevention, substance use, and community transformation. Evaluations were conducted in settings such as schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods in 13 different countries (9 high-income and 4 middle-income). All reported some utilization of complex systems concepts in the analysis of qualitative data. In 14 evaluations, the consideration of complex systems influenced intervention design, evaluation planning, or fieldwork. The identified studies used systems concepts to depict and describe a system at one point in time. Only 4 evaluations explicitly utilized a range of complexity concepts to assess changes within the system resulting from, or co-occurring with, intervention implementation over time. Limitations to our approach are including only English-language papers, reliance on study authors reporting their utilization of complex systems concepts, and subjective judgment from the reviewers relating to which concepts featured in each study.

Conclusion

This study found no consensus on what bringing a complex systems perspective to public health process evaluations with qualitative methods looks like in practice and that many studies of this nature describe static systems at a single time point. We suggest future studies use a 2-phase framework for qualitative process evaluations that seek to assess changes over time from a complex systems perspective. The first phase involves producing a description of the system and identifying hypotheses about how the system may change in response to the intervention. The second phase involves following the pathway of emergent findings in an adaptive evaluation approach.

Author summary

Why was this study done?

• Process evaluations are used in public health to understand how and why an intervention works (or does not work), for which population groups, and in which settings.
• Process evaluations often use qualitative methods—such as interviewing people and observing people in their daily and work routines—in order to draw their conclusions.
• Researchers in public health have contended that we need to do research in a manner that considers the broader system in which policies and interventions take place—something we call a “complex systems perspective.”
• To date and to our knowledge, there is no specific framework that describes how researchers can use a complex systems perspective when they conduct a process evaluation with qualitative methods.

What did the researchers do and find?

• We conducted a systematic literature review that looked for examples of qualitative process evaluations that self-identify as using a complex systems perspective to evaluate public health interventions.
• We found 21 different evaluations of many different types of public health interventions, including interventions to address student and employee health, sexual health, child development and safety, community empowerment, violence prevention, and substance use.
• We found that these evaluations describe the systems in which public health efforts take place but are less effective at analyzing how changes affecting health occur within these systems.

What do these findings mean?

• There is little evidence of a commonly shared understanding of how best to bring a complex systems perspective to process evaluations using qualitative methods, particularly, how to assess how interventions interact with a changing system.
• We developed a 2-phase framework to guide researchers who want to apply a complex systems perspective to qualitative process evaluations.
• This review excluded studies that do not self-identify as using a complex systems perspective so we may have missed literature that uses this perspective but not the associated terminology.

full paper in source:

Qualitative process evaluation from a complex systems perspective: A systematic review and framework for public health evaluators

The ‘complexity’ bit is a cogent attempt at a hard distinction between ‘systems thinking’ and ‘complexity’, but becomes a very soft distinction (I would say) – particularly because they are looking at that practical application:

“Research into complex systems takes place across academic disciplines and has roots in both systems thinking and complexity science. Although often grouped together because of some conceptual similarities, systems thinking and complexity science can be considered as distinct yet overlapping traditions [16,17]. Systems thinking may be best described as an orientation that prompts researchers to take a holistic, rather than reductionist view, of phenomena and study them in the context of their real-world systems that are open to and interact with surrounding systems. Systems thinking draws on theories, concepts, and methods from a range of disciplinary fields [18]. Complexity science, on the other hand, is more strongly rooted in the mathematical sciences and has drawn on complexity theory, which emphasizes uncertainty and nonlinearity, to create and refine specific methodological approaches to modeling complex systems in order to estimate and predict their emergent behavior over time. Systems thinking prompts researchers and practitioners to consider the boundaries of the system they are studying or in which they are working [19] and places an emphasis on the interactions and relationships between system elements and the system with its broader environment [1,6]. Further applying concepts from complexity science prompts a consideration of how those interactions create nonlinear chains of cause and effect, are unpredictable, unfold overtime, and give rise to system-level emergent outcomes [20].”

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Opinion: government must shift focus from authority over people to stewardship of complex systems | The Mandarin

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Opinion: government must shift focus from authority over people to stewardship of complex systems

By Thea SnowWednesday November 4, 2020

If someone were to ask you, “what is the role of government?”, what do you think you’d answer?

Perhaps it might sound something like this:

• Merriam-Webster Dictionary: the organisation, machinery, or agency through which a political unit exercises authority and performs functions and which is usually classified according to the distribution of power within it; or
• Columbia Encyclopedia: a system of social control under which the right to make laws, and the right to enforce them, is vested in a particular group in society.

Or, it might not.

While the definitions above aptly describe the dominant understanding of the role of government, a growing group of academics and practitioners (including the Centre for Public Impact) are beginning to suggest that a different approach is needed. We are advocating for a shift away from viewing government as being about authority and control and towards seeing the core role of government as being to act as stewards of complex systems.

What does system stewardship mean? Through our work with a number of public sector agencies both here in Australia, and overseas, we have discovered that there is no single definition. Government as system steward is described in many different ways including: “guiding complex systems”; taking “a less transactional, more relational approach” to engaging with service delivery partners; and thinking beyond efficiency and effectiveness to “the common good”. A very recent paper describes it as, “a new way of working that allows governments and their agents to effectively influence and steward systems from which outcomes emerge.”

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Opinion: government must shift focus from authority over people to stewardship of complex systems | The Mandarin

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CECAN Webinar: A Systems Approach to Environmental Policy in Defra

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CECAN Webinar: A Systems Approach to Environmental Policy in Defra

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Improving improvement | Q Community

Improving improvement

Co-designing a systems approach to managing complexity in Healthcare Improvement – building on the landmark report, Engineering Better Care, together we can develop the power to tame wicked problems.Download Idea as PDF  Print Idea Read comments 27 Project updates 2

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• 2019

• Q Exchange
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Meet the team

• Peter DudgeonDirector PD TransformationsPD Transformations LTDEngland – Yorkshire and HumberProject Lead
• Emma AdamsGenerationQ Fellow, Senior Quality Improvement Advisor at Portsmouth Hospitals and Independent Quality Improvement ConsultantPortsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust/Oxidate Consulting Limited (Self employed)England – nationalEngland – WessexEngland – West
• John ClarksonDirector, Cambridge Engineering Design CentreDepartment of engineering, University of CambridgeEngland – East
• John DeanDeputy Medical Director (Transformation) Clinical Director for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety, Royal College of PhysiciansEast Lancashire Hospitals NHS TrustEngland – nationalEngland – Greater ManchesterNorthern IrelandScotlandWales
• James WardPrincipal Research AssociateUniversity of CambridgeEngland – East

What is the challenge your project is going to address and how does it connect to your chosen theme?

“The UK’s health and social care system is, appropriately, one of our most treasured national assets. However, the sheer size and complexity of the system, as well as the pressures it faces from an ageing population and finite resources, mean that making improvements to health and care can be a significant challenge. Successful transformation must take into account the needs of all patients, carers, healthcare professionals and other staff. It requires consistent consideration of every element of the system, the way each element interacts, and the implications of these interactions for the system as a whole – that is, it requires a ‘systems’ approach.” This comment from the foreword of Engineering Better Care echoes a number of key global reports and advocates the need to describe a systems approach to design and continuous improvement, to build on current practice and bring renewed focus onpeople, systems, designand riskas vital perspectives in the improvement of complex systems.

What does your project aim to achieve?

Engineering Better Care sought to co-design a systems approach to health and care design and continuous improvement by bringing together improvers, healthcare providers and systems engineers in a series of workshops to define a common language for improvement. The resulting approach, based on a series of simple questions, formed the basis of a landmark report from the Royal Academy of Engineering, Royal College of Physicians and the Academy of Medical Sciences. This project aims to take this work further, co-designing a systems approach toolkit with health and care improvers, based on a prototype developed by the University of Cambridge. The main objective is to create a toolkit, owned by the improvement community, that shares ideas and good practice in taking a systems approach to improvement. This will be achieved by building an active, self-sustaining forum for discussion, learning and sharing where success is measured by interaction with the toolkit and stories of its use.

How will the project be delivered?

The core team will run a series of face-to-face workshops, site visits, online debates and forums to encourage improvers to share experiences of improvement. Particular attention will be paid to the improvement frameworks and approaches used and their accompanying activities and tools, the choices made in their deployment and the top tips for achieving success or avoiding failure. Q members will be asked to describe new tools, add references to existing tools, provide rationale for their tool choices and examples of their use. Stories will provide the basis of members’ narratives and a culture for sharing stories will be actively supported and encouraged as the primary mechanism for improving improvement. The core team have significant experience of facilitating improvement and working with Q members and the improvement community. The risk of poor engagement will be mitigated by identifying members from the early Engineering Better Care workshops to assist in building the community.

What and how is your project going to share learning throughout?

The project will deliver a toolkit, based on the Engineering Better Care prototype that provides guidance on a systems approach to improvement. This will be a dynamic resource ‘owned’ by the Q members, updated and choreographed by the core team. The project will also deliver a forum and events to encourage such ownership and a culture of storytelling to sustain the development of case studies which will add insight as to the use of systems tools and the value of using a systems approach. The toolkit and its associated guidance and resources will be made freely available to a Q members.

How you can contribute

• Ideas for resources to include in a systems toolkit
• Identification of existing improvement toolkits that work
• Discussion on the best means to encourage toolkit ownership in a busy world
• Identification of core team members

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Improving improvement | Q Community