Author Archives: antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 5:35 am on May 3, 2020  

Impact of External Systems | Management Blog

This is a good blog for a clear and cogent introduction to Elliot Jacques’ Requisite Organisation and its systemicity or otherwise…

 

via Impact of External Systems | Management Blog

Impact of External Systems

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By the time an organization reaches S-III maturity, its core system is maturing and provides for eventual profitability. At S-IV, the organization sees the emergence of multiple systems and sub-systems (marketing, sales, account management, operations, quality control, research and development, HR, accounting).

At S-V, with maturing multiple systems and sub-systems, the organization has to look outward, to external systems. No matter how well the company is organized internally, it is external systems that impact success (or failure).

Market (External System)
Markets organically shift related to demographics, trends, economic growth or contraction. These organic shifts are sometimes subtle and relatively slow. The relative slow speed allows companies to respond (market response).

Regulation (External System)
Most companies are financially regulated (taxes), some are subject to stringent environmental regulation. During COVID-19, regulation dramatically clamped market demand, by defining essential vs non-essential companies.

Labor (External System)
The US went from record low unemployment to depression level unemployment in a matter of 60 days. Labor is an external system that impacts the way we internally organize.

Finance (External System)
Finance includes institutional debt, credit lines, owner investment, private equity investment. The company believes it should be able to borrow as much money as it has the ability to repay. Banks, on the other hand have these concepts called covenants which require certain internal ratios. Finance, as an external system has an impact on the way we internally organize. COVID-19 shifted credit in some cases to forgivable debt guaranteed by government.

Most of these external systems stand alone, but COVID-19 has brought together a not-so-subtle interplay. The organizations who survive are those who are mature in their internal systems, but also understand the interplay and impact of external systems. Those companies funded in the first tranche of stimulus were those who kicked in applications immediately. Most smaller companies, with immature systems, without awareness of external systems were brushed to the second tranche or left in the cold.

It is the role of the CEO at S-V to ensure both, maturity of internal systems and skilled experience in external systems.

 

via Impact of External Systems | Management Blog

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 5:16 am on May 3, 2020  

This Danish Municipality Changed Its Management Model Inspired By Buurtzorg – Corporate Rebels

via This Danish Municipality Changed Its Management Model Inspired By Buurtzorg

I like this. It recalls Jane Searles’ Circles of Need model which was implemented in Chorley District Council (under the leadership of Donna Hall, who went on to Wigan and The Wigan Deal):

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4614-1972-3_30

Click to access NI14-Nov-08-K-Boardman-10.pdf

Click to access chorley-borough-council-m-f00.pdf

Click to access blackburn-darwen-borough–6c2.pdf

And it recalls other thinking about ‘zones of time and space’, e.g.

https://stream.syscoi.com/2020/04/13/border-zones-of-ecology-and-systems-theory-becker-2011/

https://stream.syscoi.com/2020/03/31/permaculture-zones/

There seems to be a core systems principle hidden here… and notably lacking from most relevant thinking in the real world!

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 10:42 am on May 2, 2020  

Systems Thinking for Global Problems – course at Toronto University

Professor Steve Easterbook has a blog (which I’m unlikely to pick up because there’s no email signup) at http://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/

 

via Systems Thinking for Global Problems

CSC2720H Systems Thinking for Global Problems

Winter Term, 2020

Note:

  • Course Seminars are scheduled for Tuesday afternoons, 1pm – 4pm, starting on January 7th, 2020.
  • Location: Room FE328 326, 371 Bloor Street West, Toronto. (Note switch of room, across the corridor from the original room!)
  • Instructor: Prof Steve Easterbrook, Dept of Computer Science.
  • For computer science grad students, this course fulfills breadth requirements in:
    • Methodology 4 (Human-Centered and Interdisciplinary Computing) *and*
    • Research Area 15 (Emerging areas in interdisciplinary computer science)
  • Note: You cannot take this course for credit if you previously took my course CSC2602 in Winter 2013, nor if you took any instance of DGC2003.

About the Course

This course is unlike any other graduate course you have taken. You will play games, solve puzzles, and tell stories. Each activity will create a system around you, with its own dynamics. Sometimes you will try to beat the system and discover you cannot. Other times you will discover you can change a system by changing your perspective of it. In the process, you will discover how complex patterns of behaviour can arise from simple structures and simple rules. You will draw on such insights to develop a deeper understanding of how the world works. You will start to see the systems around you in a whole new light, and you will develop a new mental toolkit for analyzing complex global issues, modeling their structure and behaviour, and understanding how and why change happens.

Along the way, you will read about the theory and practice of systems thinking, trace the history of the key ideas, and discover how they have been applied. You will explore how systems thinking provides new ways of studying the relationships between the most important global challenges of the twenty-first century, including globalization, climate change, conflict, democracy, energy, health & wellbeing, and food security.

Key topics will include:

  • General Systems Theory, developed by Bertalanffy for understanding biological systems;
  • Cybernetics: the study of feedback and control in living organisms, machines, and organizations;
  • Systems Dynamics approaches for modelling and analyzing non-linear feedback mechanisms in complex systems;
  • Complexity science and complex adaptive systems;
  • The role of computational modelling and simulation as a central tool for understanding systems
  • Philosophical roots of systems thinking as a counterpoint to the reductionism used widely across the natural sciences;
  • Emergent concepts from systems thinking, such as limits to growth, planetary boundaries, tipping points, sustainability, resilience, and chaos;
  • Soft Systems Methodology and Critical System Theory for engaging multiple stakeholders in processes of change;
  • Use of systems thinking to explore competing perspectives, trans-disciplinary synthesis, and modeling of global dynamics.

Course Requirements:

  • Class participation: Show up, do stuff, get credit.
  • Oral presentation: Research and present a 5 minute talk on a topic to be determined. Bonus marks if you do it as a Pecha Kucha. You must negotiate you choice beforehand, so we don’t have duplicates.
  • Term paper: Topic is negotiable. Suggestion: A case study applying ideas from the course to your own research work – preferably something that could be published, although there’s no requirement to seek publication. (Due by the end of the term; length & style should be typical for the journal you would publish it in).

Note: This is the sixth incarnation of this course. It was originally developed in the summer of 2012 as part of the Dynamics of Global Change Collaborative Program, and taught again in the summer of 2013. It then migrated to the Computer Science department in the winter terms 2014 and 2016. The previous course pages are archived at:

Some similar courses at other Universities exist, and may have useful material relevant to this course:

If you’re looking for more opportunities to meet systems thinkers and discuss how we can apply systems thinking to solve important societal problems, you might be interested in the Systems Thinking Ontario group, which meets in Toronto every month.

Course Outline (Draft – may change!)

Note: Some of this page still refers to the version of the course taught in the winter of 2018. I’ll update the outline and readings list as we go through the course.

Seminar Topic & Notes Notes and Background Readings
(1)
Tues
Jan 7, 2020		 Introduction & Basics
  • Course objectives
  • Parts vs. Wholes
  • Open and Closed Systems
  • Holism and reductionism
  • Seeing systems
  • Frames of reference
 Notes:
  1. Here are the slides I used this week
  2. Here are a couple of relevant blog posts about the ideas we talked about: Systems Thinking for Climate Systems, and The Principle of Complementarity.
  3. We talked a little bit about how this course started, and where it might fit within the university. Here’s a couple of relevant blog posts: Why Systems Thinking? and Why universities are bad at inter-disciplinary work, although the latter ends up being a bit of a rant…
  4. Activities this week included: Avalanche and Frames
  5. Three good introductory books:
    • Meadows (which we’ll be using as an initial text);
    • Weinberg (which provides a good entry into systems thinking for people in the natural sciences);
    • Walker and Salt (who provide a set of case studies showing how hard it is to understand and manage complex ecosystems)

For next seminar:

  1. Read: Chapters 1 & 2 of Meadows “Thinking in Systems”. (Note: Readings for this course are only available from the U of T campus network. If you need access from off campus, please email me!)
(2)
Tues
Jan 14, 2020		 Feedback Loops
  • How feedback loops work
  • Balancing and Reinforcing Loops
  • Systems Dynamics Models
 Notes:
  1. Here are the slides I used this week.
  2. We talked a little about the relative merits of stock and flow diagrams versus causal loop diagrams. For a detailed analysis of the weaknesses of causal loop diagrams, see Richardson 1986.
  3. We ended with a case study of the Earth’s climate as a stock and flow diagram, and identified three places to intervene to combat global warming:
    • Solar Radiation Management – reduce the flow of heat from the Sun to the Earth. See Alan Robock’s essay for why this is probably a very bad idea.
    • Carbon Dioxide Removal – increase the flow of carbon out of the atmosphere. See this article from Columbia for an overview of proposed technologies and their feasibility. TL;DR: We cannot yet do this cheaply enough at scale, but might eventually.
    • Stop Burning Fossil Fuels – stop the flow of carbon into the atmosphere. As long as this flow is non-zero, the problem gets worse. But we’ve been avoiding doing this for 30 years.

    Note that we’ll probably need to use all three approaches eventually, because we’ve been too slow to reduce emissions.

  4. Activities this week included Living Loops and Postcard Stories

For next seminar:

  1. Read: Randers, J. (2008). Global collapse—Fact or fiction? Futures, 40(10), 853–864. (access via UofT library)
(3)
Tues
Jan 21, 2020		 Flows and Limits
  • Stock and flow models
  • Exponential Curves
  • Limits to Growth
  • Population Dynamics
  • Understanding accumulation
  • Climate change as an accumulation problem
 Notes:
  1. Here are the slides I used this week.
  2. We talked about the original Limits to Growth study, published in 1972. There have been several updates:
  3. And a couple of recent papers comparing the original study with what happened, by Graham Turner: A comparison of The Limits to Growth with 30 years of reality and On the Cusp of Global Collapse?.
  4. You can play with the World3 model used in Limits to Growth online here.
  5. I didn’t have time to show this, but for an amusing take on exponential growth, you might want to join the Impossible Hamster Club
  6. I used Moore’s Law as an example of exponential growth. For more details on whether (and how long) Moore’s Law might continue, here’s a wonderfully thoughtful essay by Rodney Brooks.
  7. I showed lots of graphs of exponential growth, taken from Steffen et al’s paper on the Anthropocene.
  8. I briefly talked about economic growth in the context of the anthropocene, and mentioned that it’s principal measure, GDP is a flow measure, rather than a stock. Here’s quick overview of what GDP means, and here’s a short discussion of why GDP (a flow) cannot really assess wealth (a stock). For a critical look at whether economic growth is even necessary, see Tim Jackson’s book Prosperity Without Growth.
  9. Understanding flow and accumulation problems. The cognitive barriers have been studied in detail by John Sterman and colleagues. See for example, the papers Cronin et al “Why don’t well-educated adults understand accumulation?” and Sterman & Sweeney “Understanding public complacency about climate change: adults’ mental models of climate change violate conservation of matter“
  10. Activity: Paper Fold and the Accumulation exercises from Cronin et al. (2009).

For next seminar:

  1. Read: Bai et al, 2016 Plausible and desirable futures in the Anthropocene: A new research agenda.
(4)
Tues
Jan 28, 2020		 Delay and Inertia
  • Effect of delated information
  • Pilot Induced Oscillations
  • Supply Chain Management!
 Notes:
  1. We played the beer game!
  2. Here’s a short article discussing the beer game and some of the lessons it demonstrates.
  3. For a longer analysis of what the Beer Game reveals about mental models and decision-making in complex dynamical systems, read Sterman, J. D. (1989). Modeling Managerial Behavior: Misperceptions of Feedback in a Dynamic Decision Making Experiment. Management Science, 35(3), 321–339. doi:10.1287/mnsc.35.3.321
  4. For a more theoretical account of the effects of delay in a dynamical system, dive into how engineers deal with this problem in Control Theory, with this classic paper from Brown & Coombs: Notes on Control with Delay

For next seminar:

  1. Read: No reading this week
(5)
Tues
Feb 4, 2020		 Resilience and Collapse
  • The Whiplash Effect
  • Feedbacks in the Climate System
  • The effect of delay on climate policy
  • Tragedy of the Commons
 Notes:
  1. Here are the slides I used this week.
  2. We talked about the results from the beer game, and other systems where delay causes a problem, and looked at the “fixes that fail” pattern. The example for how road building nearly always fails to solve traffic congestion is discussed in this blog post on the Cobra Effect.
  3. And we talked about delays in responding to the challenge of climate change. Here’s an explanation of the diagram I showed that explores the delays.
  4. I presented a case study of the climate system as a set of feedback loops.
  5. We talked a little about the idea of geo-engineering the artificially cool the planet. The modeling study I mentioned is Berdahl et al. 2014, and the paper on reasons why its a really bad idea is Robock, 2008. For more on geoengineering see here and here.
  6. Games this week were: Warped Juggle and Harvest.

For next seminar:

  1. Read: Kim, D. H. (1992). System Archetypes I: Diagnosing Systemic Issues and Designing High-Leverage Interventions. Toolbox Reprint Series. Pegasus Communications Inc.
  2. And read: Kim, D. H. (2000). Systems Archetypes III: Understanding Patterns of Behaviour and Delay. Pegasus Communications Inc.
(6)
Tues
Feb 11, 2020		 Systems Analysis
  • Mid-course review
  • Practice analysing systems
  • A trip to the systems zoo
 Notes:
  1. Here are the slides I used this week.
  2. We explored a number of System Archetypes.
  3. We spent some time practicing drawing Causal Loop Diagrams. So it’s a good time to revisit tips on constructing these diagrams in Guidelines for Drawing Causal Loop Diagrams
  4. Today’s game was Group Juggle. Here’s one version of a causal loop diagram (drawn by Linda Booth Sweeney) to explain the behaviour seen during the game.

For next seminar:

  1. Read: Stauffer, M. (2018). An Introduction to Complexity Science for Social Sciences.
Tues
Feb 18, 2020		 No Seminar – Reading Week
(7)
Tues
Feb 25, 2020		 Chaos and Complexity
  • Chaos Theory
  • Difference between Chaos and Randomness
  • Complex Adaptive Systems
 Notes:
  1. Here are the slides I used this week.
  2. We started by playing with the Shodor fire models Fire and the slightly more sophisticated A Better Fire. If you want to explore more of these models, take a look at:
  3. We spent some time analyzing the Logistic Equation. Here’s the spreadsheet we used to explore it: The Logistic Equation Spreadsheet
  4. We talked about how sensitivity to initial conditions affects weather forecasting. For a great overview of this, and where the current state-of-the-art is in weather forecasting, read Bauer et al, The Quiet Revolution of Numerical Weather Prediction.
  5. We talked about Rossby Waves and the Gulf stream as an example of a chaotic system with a recognisable attractor. You can see the current state of the gulf stream on this visualization, and compare it with a comparable simulation in a rotating tank of water.
  6. A very brief introduction to chaos theory
  7. Brief introduction to complex adaptive systems theory
  8. The classic long read on chaos theory is James Gleick’s book Chaos
  9. For a fascinating read on the early development of Complexity Science at the Santa Fe Institute, read Waldrup’s book “Complexity“

For next seminar:

  1. Read: Manson’s paper Simplifying Complexity: A review of complexity theory, and for a second perspective on Manson’s use of terminology, read Reitsma’s response
(8)
Tues
March 3, 2020		 Complex Adaptive Systems
  • System Structure and Change
  • Self-Organised Criticality
  • Power Laws
 Notes:
  1. I didn’t use many slides this week, but here they are anyway.
  2. We talked some more about chaos theory and how it relates to climate and weather. If you want to read more on this, I highly recommend Ed Lorenz’s book, The Essence of Chaos, which also includes an an appendix the text of his original “Butterfly” talk.
  3. We explored how stock market data also exhibit some self similarity (aka self-affinity). The diagrams were from an article by Mandelbrot in Scientific American. Note that Mandelbrot is not claiming that stock market data forms a fractal pattern, just that it shares some of the statistical properties of fractals, notably that volatility in the stock market follows a power law, so that you see the same kinds of oscillation at all timescales.
  4. The idea is picked up by economist Frank Ackerman, who explores its relevance to extreme risk and climate change in his new book, Worst Case Economics: Extreme Events in Climate and Finance.
  5. We explored a number of videos/demos of the kinds of stability and cascades of change that you get in self-organised criticality:
  6. The Wikipedia entry on self-organised criticality is also a pretty good introduction.
  7. The game we played this week is called “Triangles”.

For next seminar:

  1. Read the chapter on Leverage Points from Meadows’ book (also available here)
(9)
Tues
Mar 10, 2020		 Pandemics and Systems Change
  • Global Pandemics
  • Multi-layered systems
  • Leverage Points
 Notes:
  1. Here are the slides I used this week.
  2. We talked a lot about the COVID-19 virus and global pandemics. During class I noted the World Health Organisations (WHO) had not yet declared it a pandemic. The next day (March 11), they did. Here’s the chart I showed on flattening the curve, and the animated version that shows how the “carrying capacity” of the healthcare system is affected.
  3. There’s a lot more information about COVID-19 at the Our world in data site.
  4. Robert Rohde at Berkeley has been charting the daily data. His latest chart is here. See his twitter feed for more.
  5. And here’s the video I showed on epidemics and exponential growth.
  6. We talked about Leverage Points and the Parisian Shower. Here’s the original article that example is from.
  7. The game we played this week is called “Space for Living”.

For next seminar:

  1. Read: Holling Understanding the Complexity of Economic, Ecological, and Social Systems
(10)
Tues
Mar 17, 2020		 No Seminar – A pause while we figure out how to take the course online due to COVID-19 pandemic
Tues
Mar 24, 2020		 Pandemics
  • How pandemics work
  • Links between the pandemic and climate change
 Notes:
  1. Class will be online. Check your email for the zoom link
  2. I only showed four slides today and they were all about the pandemic.
  3. First, updates on the pandemic:
  4. And some links between the pandemic and climate change:

For next seminar:

  1. Read: Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology: A Thirty Year Retrospective
(11)
Tues
Mar 31, 2020		 Interpretive Systems Thinking
  • The Adaptive Cycle
  • Panarchy Theory
  • Principle of Complementarity
  • Soft Systems Analysis
 Notes:
  1. Class will be online again. Same link as last week.
  2. Here are the slides I showed this week
  3. We spent some time discussing the Adaptive Cycle. The original book on panarchy is Gunderson & Hollings “Panarchy: Understanding transformations in Human and Natural Systems
  4. For more on resilience, I highly recommend Walker & Salt’s book, “Resilience Thinking“, which also, I think, offers a clearer introduction to the panarchy model too.
  5. See also, Fath et al, 2015, Navigating the adaptive cycle: an approach to managing the resilience of social systems
  6. See also Stirling’s paper “Keep it Complex“, where he points out that there’s a tendency to over-simplify policy prescriptions when we look for science-based policymaking, and that a more pluralistic approach that is needed, one that takes the complexity seriously
  7. And I used an example of panarchy applied to the energy transition in the face of climate change, from this paper by Dangerman and Schellnhuber.

For next seminar:

  1. Read: Midgely et al, The Theory and Practice of Boundary Critique
(12)
Tues
April 7, 2020		 Critical Systems Thinking
  • Critical Systems Heuristics
  • Boundary Critique
  • Intellectual history of Systems Thinking
  • Course Summary
 Notes:
  1. Here are the slides I used this week.
  2. The idea of a Wicked Problem was identifed in a classic paper by Rittel and Webber, Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning
  3. By way of introduction to Critical Systems Thinking, I talked about Stephen Toulmin‘s work on the structure of arguments. Here’s a blog post from Ulrich tracing the philosophical roots of his thinking to Toulmin and Habermas.
  4. The most readable introduction to critical systems heuristics is Ulrich’s A Brief Introduction to Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH).
  5. We used a mindmap of “Solving Global Warming” (from this site) as a warm-up exercise for boundary critique. The mindmap on its own is a good summary of the messages we typically hear about what we ought to do to address climate change. But an examination of what has been left out and why is interesting: this kind of message completely lets governments and corporations off the hook, and suggests it’s up to us as individuals to change what we do. Which means inevitably, action on climate change is seen as a voluntary lifestyle choice, rather than a deeper systemic dilemma.
  6. I used two examples of to illustrate boundary critique, where people draw boundaries in different places. The first was on protests about genetically modified food; and the second, a very recent post on expert responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.
  7. We also met Ulrich’s observation that researchers ought to trangress a boundary at least once a week. Here’s a blog post in which he expands on this idea.
  8. I mentioned Michael Jackson’s book, Systems Thinking: Creative Holism for Managers. Don’t let the “for managers” in the title put you off. It’s a surprisingly good overview of the main strands of systems thinking over the past half century or so. The book is expensive to buy from major online retailers, but Abe Books has plenty of used copies.
  9. I skimmed over the intellectual history of Systems Thinking, but you might want to explore further using this map of the history of systems thinking and complexity science. There’s also the ASC timeline for cybernetics, and Robert Horn’s mural(although I can only find a sketch of it online).
  10. Finally, we talked about the systemic nature of pandemic responses, and in particular, the dynamics of lifting the lockdown restrictions. We explored this brand new (unpublished) study by Tuite et al on Ontario’s pandemic response, and a new report on a modeling study in the Netherlands (auto-translated from Dutch).

Useful Material

Books

Meadows DH. Thinking in systems: A primer. Chelsea Green Publishing; 2008.
Meadows is the main text we’ll use for the first half of the course. Its a book I thorooughly recommend buying (as you’ll want to re-read it every few years). It’s a very readable introduction to the basics of systems dynamics.
Weinberg GM. An Introduction to General Systems Theory. Dorset House; 2001.
Weinberg is an interesting alternative to Meadows, especially appropriate for those with a background in the physical sciences, because he spends a lot of time contrasting systems thinking with the traditional reductionism used in science. For a review of Weinberg’s book, see here
Jackson MC. Systems Approaches to Management. Springer; 2000.
A very detailed account of the history and philosophical roots of different strands of systems thinking. It’s comprehensive, but that makes it a little heavy going to read.
Ramage M, Shipp K. Systems Thinkers. Springer; 2009.
This book is about 30 of the most prominent people in the development of the field. For each person, it provides a brief biography, and an excerpt from their writings (so they speak in their own words). This will be very useful as a source book for your presentations.
Walker BH, Salt D. Resilience thinking: sustaining ecosystems and people in a changing world. Island Press; 2006.
Applies systems thinking to explore how to make socio-ecological systems more resilient to future shocks. Resilience is an important systems concept – it refers to the ability of a system to withstand sudden changes. The book includes five major case studies, interleaved with the conceptual chapters. Excellent reading!
Garvey J. The ethics of climate change: right and wrong in a warming world. Continuum International Publishing; 2008.
Excellent book on the overall idea of what an ethical response to the challenge of climate change even means. It’s not specifically about systems thinking, but Garvey is certainly a systems thinker. He demonstrates that climate change is unusual as an ethical problem,because the causes and consequences are smeared out across time and space. He then frames the central question as how we divide up a shared limited resource: the atmosphere as a carbon sink. I reviewed the book here.
Booth Sweeney L. The systems thinking playbook: Exercises to Stretch and Build Learning and Systems Thinking Capabilities. Chelsea Green Publishing; 2010.
This is the book from which most of the activities on the course are taken. I suggest *not* reading this until after the end of the course – the exercises will work better if you experience them before reading about them.
Downey AB. Think Complexity. Green Tea Press; 2011.
For anyone who likes programming (in Python), this book covers many of the key ideas on complexity science, chaos, and self-organising systems, with a whole series of programming examples so you can build your own simulations models. And the book is free online – just click the link!
Gundersson L, Holling CS. Panarchy: Understanding Transformations In Human And Natural Systems. Island Press; 2002.
This book extends some of the ideas of systems dynamics to talk about why systems change and why collapse occurs.

Media

Papers

Introductory Papers

Modeling

Applications

The Global Problematique

a response by Rockstrom

Limits to Growth

Climate Change

Peak Oil

Agriculture

Advanced Topics

On Teaching Systems Thinking

Other Sources

 

via Systems Thinking for Global Problems

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 10:06 am on May 2, 2020  

RSD9 Symposium « Systemic Design Association – 12-17 October 2020, online, hosted by the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India

Now online, October 12-17 2020 via http://rsd9.org/

]via RSD9 Symposium « Systemic Design Association

RSD9 Symposium

National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India

In our myopic race towards progress humans have forgotten the interdependent web of life, putting the entire planet and its living beings deeper into issues of climate change, food scarcity, financial instability, energy shortages and resource unavailability. It is only through the lens of systemic thinking, with an understanding of the relational nature of action on any scale being resonated at all levels, can resolving of these issues be meaningful. We can with shifting our focus to a holistic human service approach and revisiting our ‘ways of understanding’ synchronise nature’s dynamic balance and our well-being.

See the Call for Participation – open now through May 10.

National Institute of Design is located in Ahmedabad, India.

The Relating Systems Thinking and Design Symposium series started at AHO in Oslo in 2012.  The series has the intention to promote and foster the emerging practices and theory development for systemic design for service systems, social systems, policy development and complex contexts. RSD has been held in Europe and North America, in Oslo, Banff, Toronto, Torino, and Chicago. In 2020, RSD will be held at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India.

The RSD conferences are organized by the local hosts with the sanction, guidance and assistance of the Systemic Design Association (SDA) a democratic membership organisation registered in Norway. Become a member of the SDA on the same site today.

We will soon communicate any plans for contingencies and virtual alternatives. Look for registartion to open in June, as well as the conference program, travel and accommodation updates.

Join us at the 9th RSD in India!

Source RSD9 Symposium « Systemic Design Association

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 6:25 am on May 2, 2020  

oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: Our Inevitable Collapse: We Can’t Save a Fragile Economy With Bailouts That Increase Fragility

via oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: Our Inevitable Collapse: We Can’t Save a Fragile Economy With Bailouts That Increase Fragility

FRIDAY, MAY 01, 2020

Our Inevitable Collapse: We Can’t Save a Fragile Economy With Bailouts That Increase Fragility

By bailing out the sources of systemic fragility with trillions of dollars, the Fed has shifted the risk to the entire financial system and the nation’s currency.
That the global economy is fragile is painfully obvious to all. What is less obvious is the bailouts intended to “save” the fragile economy actively increase its fragility, setting up an inevitable collapse of the entire precarious system.
Systems that are highly centralized, i.e. dependent on a handful of nodes that are each points of failure–are intrinsically fragile and prone to collapse. Put another way, systems in which all the critical nodes are tightly bound are prone to domino-like cascades of failure as any one point of failure quickly disrupts every other critical node that is bound to it.
Ours is an economy in which capital, wealth, power and control are concentrated in a few nodes of the network/ecosystem we call “the economy.” A handful of corporations own the vast majority of the media, a handful of banks control most of the lending and capital, a handful of hospital chains, pharmaceutical companies and insurers control healthcare, and so on.
Control of digital technologies is even more concentrated, in virtual monopolies: Google for search and Youtube, etc. and Facebook / Instagram and Twitter for social media, Microsoft and Apple for operating systems and services derived from OS, and so on.
The vast majority of participants in the economy are tightly bound to these concentrated nodes of capital and power, and these top-down, hierarchical dependencies generate fragility.
When unexpectedly severe variability and volatility occur, the disruption of a few nodes brings down the entire system. Thus the disruption of the subprime mortgage subsystem–a relatively small part of the total mortgage market and a tiny slice of the global financial system–nearly brought down the entire global financial system in 2008 because the GFS is a tightly bound system of centralized concentrations of capital, power and control.
Currently, we’re seeing the fragility of a meat production system that has concentrated ownership and production of meatpacking into a relatively few nodes on which the entire food supply chain is totally dependent.
And so what’s the status quo “fix” when this intrinsically fragile system comes apart? Increase its fragility by bailing out the most tightly bound, dominant nodes. This is what the monopoly on creating currency, the Federal Reserve, is doing on a vast scale.
Rather than reducing the fragility of the system, the Federal Reserve is increasing the fragility, guaranteeing a collapse of not just the financial system but the currency as well.
Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 5:20 am on April 30, 2020  

Philosophy of alternative stable states: teleonomy meets teleology – Systems Changes – Open Learning Commons – David Ing

 

via Philosophy of alternative stable states: teleonomy meets teleology – Systems Changes – Open Learning Commons

Apr 29, Apr 30
daviding

Underlying many of the approaches to “systems change” is teleology – “a reason or explanation for something as a function of its end, purpose, or goal”. Moving beyond social systems into other domains (e.g. biology, ecology) raises questions about whether nature has an end or purpose.

An alternative philosophy is based on teleonomy – “the quality of apparent purposefulness and of goal-directedness of structures and functions in living organisms”. This came up in a recent meeting. I then had some online communications with @Zemina .

The philosophy of science that I’ve taken on is not teleology – goal-directed behavior – but teleonomy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleonomy – that essentially means that you don’t work from the future-backwards, but that you are able to program options for your future.

See more in source.

via Philosophy of alternative stable states: teleonomy meets teleology – Systems Changes – Open Learning Commons

I note with interest that in David’s Open Innovation Learning book (a section of the post signposts to a section of this for more), he points to Aristotle’s four causes:

Aristotle offered four explanations of why in four causes:

(i) material cause (that out of which)

(ii) the formal cause (the account of what it-is-to-be)

(iii) the efficient cause (the primary source of change or rest)

(iv) the final cause (the end, that for the sake of which a thing is done

This is pretty powerful stuff to play around with, and reminds me of my distinction, for organisations, between

(1) espoused purpose – the mission statement

(2) de facto purpose or POSIWID – the actual behaviour and outcomes which the organisation is producing (see forthcoming podcast interview with Allenna Leonard for more on this) an

(3) deep, meaningful purpose – the empowering purpose to which the organisation could aspire (usually neither of the above)

 

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 4:52 am on April 30, 2020  

Video – Allenna Leonard | “Stafford Beer’s Fifty Years of Applied Epistemology Or, what else besides the VSM?” | Hull University Centre for Systems Studies | November 17, 2015

via 20151017-AllennaLeonard – YouTube

 

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 2:23 am on April 30, 2020  

Timothy F. H. Allen – Hierarchy Theory and ecology (and more)

This is pretty much curated by David Ing (thanks as always David).

A lovely nine-minute, three-question video:

 

slightly longer:

David’s summary of that piece:

https://stream.syscoi.com/2018/07/30/the-power-of-profit-in-ecology-timothy-f-h-allen-2017-tedxmadison/

Wikipedia: Timothy F. H. Allen – Wikipedia

Profile piece on his retirement: https://badgerherald.com/news/2010/01/27/professor-timothy-al/

And David’s pic of him at the American Cybernetics Association:

https://daviding.tumblr.com/post/177070113674/cybernetics-in-chicago-the-role-of-multiple

 

 

 

 

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 9:42 am on April 29, 2020  

Tenth International Conference on Complex Systems — ICCS 2020 will be an online event.

cxdig's avatarComplexity Digest

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, the Executive Committee has made the decision to move ICCS 2020 to an online-only event.

While the outlook for the unprecedented challenges we are facing from COVID-19 remain uncertain, our values are clearer than ever. The health and safety of our communities—academic, local, and business—are of the utmost priority. Further, we know as complex systems scientists that we must play our part by endeavoring to fragment our physical contact networks, yet strengthen our virtual social networks. We also remain committed to the pursuit of creating and sharing knowledge, and wish to honor our promise to provide a rich forum in which to do this. It is with these tenets in mind that we made the decision to make ICCS 2020 a 100% online-only event.

What you need to know:

  • The dates remain the same: July 26th – July 31st 2020

  • Registration has reopened, but…

View original post 108 more words

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 9:13 am on April 28, 2020  

Register Now: Open Studio April 30, 2020 – Literature Connects, with Linda Booth Sweeney, via the Waters Centre for Systems Thinking

On twitter, Linda Booth Sweeney says:

Looking for activities to promote #wholesystemslearning at home? Join me April 30 9 am PDT for a fun @WatersCenterST OpenStudios session. Registration here: mailchi.mp/9c44e0fee332/i

links: Register Now: Open Studio April 30, Literature Connects 

Register today for the April 30th Open Studio! More information on this session can be found below. We are excited to announce that Linda Booth Sweeney, systems educator and award-winning author, will be joining us live in the 9 a.m. PDT session. We will make her interview available via recording in the 12 p.m. and 4 p.m. PDT sessions.

We can’t wait to see you in the Open Studio!

Register Now!

Open Studio: Literature Connects – Registration Open. Click here. 

Thursday, April 30

9 a.m. PDT
12 p.m. PDT
4 p.m. PDT.

A helpful time converter can be found here. 

 

Session Description: 

There is no end to the connections that can be made between literature and systems thinking. This Open Studio will highlight a variety of books and the meaningful connections that can be made within and between the text and systems thinking Habits and tools. This session will feature some special guests sharing their favorite books and best systems thinking connections.

 

Please note, we will not be releasing the recording of this session, so if you are interested, be sure you attend! More information on the Open Studio and other upcoming sessions can be found below. 
Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 6:44 am on April 28, 2020  

The days after – a learning community to build back better

Excuse me for putting a business link here (I do it rarely) – but this is a community, principally focused on UK public services, and communities, voluntary sector – all of those with a primary focus on citizen and community outcomes) – to learn the lessons and build back better. We will be introducing systems concepts, and learning systems lessons, on an ongoing basis.

The days after – a learning community to build back better

-> We’ve been dynamic to deal with the crisis – amazing things have been achieved.
— How do we learn from these breakthroughs?
-> Things are still chaotic and confusing! And will be for some time as the ramifications continue.
— How do we make sense of things right now and for the future?
How do we prepare for a real reboot in ‘the days after’ the crisis?

We at the Public Service Transformation Academy have been working with some core organisations to start to think about these questions – and are now expanding to set up a wider learning community. There is no obligation and no charge. This is a place to share and build learning together.

Membership is open to anyone from any organisation with a primary focus on citizen and community outcomes – public services at any level, community and voluntary sector organisations, and others who deliver vital public services. The focus will be on the UK; those from other countries are welcome to join to share learning.
To join, email benjamin.taylor@publicservicetransformation.org

The group will meet fortnightly online, 2-3.30pm on Wednesdays.

The first virtual round table will take place on 13 May: what will we face in ‘the days after’?
An active online scenario planning session – and a look at the ‘three horizons’ model for future thinking.

The second virtual round table will take place on 27 May: how can we do radical rebuilding?
This will look at application of the ‘five worlds’ and ‘five key leadership practices’ applied not to organisations, but to creating place-based, emergent, learning systems.

Further dates to be planned. A core group will meet on the ‘off weeks’ to plan and input, and materials from each session will be shared with all participants. The community is supported with free groups on WhatsApp and groups.io

To join, email benjamin.taylor@publicservicetransformation.org

From the Public Service Transformation Academy (www.publicservicetransformation.org / www.twitter.com/servicereform) sponsored by RedQuadrant (www.redquadrant.com / www.twitter.com/redquadrant).

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 2:49 am on April 28, 2020  

Topological portraits of multiscale coordination dynamics

cxdig's avatarComplexity Digest

Zhang, M., Kalies, W., Kelso, J., Tognoli, E. (2020). Topological portraits of multiscale coordination dynamics. Journal of Neuroscience Methods https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jneumeth.2020.108672

 

Living systems exhibit complex yet organized behavior on multiple spatiotemporal scales. To investigate the nature of multiscale coordination in living systems, one needs a meaningful and systematic way to quantify the complex dynamics, a challenge in both theoretical and empirical realms. The present work shows how integrating approaches from computational algebraic topology and dynamical systems may help us meet this challenge. In particular, we focus on the application of multiscale topological analysis to coordinated rhythmic processes. First, theoretical arguments are introduced as to why certain topological features and their scale-dependency are highly relevant to understanding complex collective dynamics. Second, we propose a method to capture such dynamically relevant topological information using persistent homology, which allows us to effectively construct a multiscale topological portrait of rhythmic coordination. Finally, the method…

View original post 122 more words

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 4:21 am on April 24, 2020  

Think structurally about ‘effects’ from COVID-19

Three systemic points (but at the ‘technical’ not ‘adaptive’ level):

  1. We’ve had the earthquake, now comes the tsunami, then the aftershock waves… we shouldn’t expect the effects to be in
  2. Second and n order effects – re working from home – implications on business and real estate, and emergency preparedness and stockpiling for the future etc..
  3. And we should expect interesting oscillation via the Bullwhip effect – Wikipedia

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 6:10 pm on April 23, 2020  

Transformation Maps – World Economic Forum

https://www.weforum.org/strategic-intelligence

https://www.weforum.org/communities/transformation-map-co-curator-community

https://forum.frontiersin.org/stephan-mergenthaler-wef-digital-transformation-maps

Transformation Maps

 

via What is a Transformation Map? | World Economic Forum

The World Economic Forum’s Transformation Maps – a constantly refreshed repository of knowledge about global issues, from climate change to the future of work – are now publicly available for the first time and free of charge. But what are they? And what can we do with them?

What exactly are the Transformation Maps?

Transformation Maps are the World Economic Forum’s dynamic knowledge tool. They help users to explore and make sense of the complex and interlinked forces that are transforming economies, industries and global issues. The maps present insights written by experts along with machine-curated content. Together, this allows users to visualise and understand more than 120 topics and the connections and inter-dependencies between them, helping in turn to support more informed decision-making by leaders.

https://intelligence.weforum.org/topics/a1Gb0000000LGk6EAG?tab=publications

Strategic Intelligence
The maps harness the Forum network’s collective intelligence as well as the knowledge and insights generated through our activities, communities and events. And because the Transformation Maps are interlinked, they provide a single place for users to understand each topic from multiple perspectives. Each of the maps has a feed with the latest research and analysis drawn from leading research institutions and media outlets around the world.

As an example, imagine you are a student or government official, and you need up-to-date information about the dynamics of over-fishing. The Transformation Map on Oceans, curated with the University of California in Santa Barbara, has a dedicated “key issue” section dealing with this. The over-fishing section in turn links to a number of related maps, among them the Illicit Economy Transformation Map, curated with the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime. This map notes, among other things, how criminals are profiting from natural resources, including fish, in a way that threatens global biodiversity.


https://www.weforum.org/videos/introducing-transformation-maps

Introducing Transformation Maps

Alternatively you could explore the topic of over-fishing from a governance perspective by consulting the map on Global Governance, curated with the University of Oxford, or through the lens of possible innovative solutions by exploring the Innovation map, curated by Nesta, an innovation foundation. There are thousands of other possible pathways throughout the interlinked Transformation Maps, which shift according to developments in the real world, reflecting and helping to demystify our complex planet.

Why do you cover this selection of topics?

The Transformation Maps cover issues that are relevant to the World Economic Forum and the people and organisations we work with. Broadly speaking, these are topics of global importance that require leaders from across different sectors to work together, from urbanization to inclusive economic growth. The list of topics is continuously reviewed and updated.

Who curates the Transformation Maps?

Most of the maps are co-curated by a leading university, think tank or international organization. Their content is subject to continuous peer review and adjustment by the Forum and its network of experts. Many co-curators come from institutions that are members of the Forum’s Global University Leaders Forum (GULF) community.

  • The new elite universities, refugees as a country, young global leaders of 2017
  • These 3 maps show what’s powering the world
  • Is the information revolution transforming power?

    • What do co-curators do?

    A co-curator works with the Forum to identify and explain the key trends or drivers of change for their particular topic, drawing on their expertise and the latest research in their field as well as the insights from various Forum activities and communities. They explore how the key trends affecting their subject are in turn affected by other Transformation Map topics – covering industries, countries or regions, or global issues – and in doing so, the curators create a record of the connections and inter-dependencies between the different topics. These relationships are clearly represented in the maps’ graphic representations and accompanying texts, enabling a greater understanding of the complex web of influences that surround each issue.

    Why do articles and publications appear alongside the maps?

    Each Transformation Map has a dynamic feed of the latest research and analysis drawn from leading research institutions and media outlets around the world. These feeds enable users to access the latest research on a topic by clicking on a link that will take them back to the original source. The research and analysis contained in the feeds does not necessarily represent the views, opinions or positions of the World Economic Forum.

    Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 6:06 pm on April 23, 2020  

    Business ecosystem – Wikipedia

    I thought this was only jargon – now I discover it’s a book and a thing – thought the summaries make it sound the most half-baked, half-understood concept. (I suspect that the book is quite good on description, but turning that into prescription leads to some nonsense, but that’s only on a quick glance…)

    via Business ecosystem – Wikipedia

    https://www.bcg.com/en-gb/publications/2019/do-you-need-business-ecosystem.aspx

    https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/business-ecosystem.asp

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