BUILDING A NEW MODEL OF OWNERSHIP THROUGH SYSTEMIC LEADERSHIP BYTYL VAN TOORN.

Building a New Model of Ownership Through Systemic Leadership

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What is sensemaking? | Centre For Public Impact (CPI)

Last spring, our Executive Director, Adrian Brown, shared what we’ve been learning about reimagining government over the past few years and introduced CPI as a learning partner: an organization that helps others build their own capacity to learn.

This is how we believe that we can best help government organisations, by supporting them on their learning journeys and helping them to build the mindsets, culture, capabilities, and tools that will enable them to commit to a process of continuous experimentation and learning.

Within our definition, there are two complementary sets of practices that encourage different types of learning, and which form the core of our role as a learning partner. We’ve called these two sets of practices sensemaking and action-learning.

But what does playing the role of a learning partner actually look like in practice? And what do sensemaking and action-learning actually involve?

In the true spirit of being a learning partner, we are continually learning about what it means to be one, and we want to share that knowledge more widely so that others can benefit. However, we understand that some may be less familiar with the learning partner role, and concepts like sensemaking and action-learning.

As such, we’re embarking on a series of articles which will explore and share what it means to be a learning partner. We’ll be sharing what we have learned based on our own work with those in and around government, but we’ll also be looking to share the reflections from changemakers who are reimagining government in their own words. In this first piece of the series, we’re taking a closer look at sensemaking, what it is, and practical examples of it in action.

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January 13th, 2022 | Innovation • Delivery • Justice • Cities • Legitimacy • Technology What is sensemaking?

What is sensemaking? | Centre For Public Impact (CPI)

ASC Series:Cybernetics and the Gaia Hypothesis: A conversation with Bruce ClarkeJanuary 16, 2021 | 9:00 PDT, 12:00 EDT, 18:00 CEST

FREE REGISTRATION

Abstract

Born in 1919, trained in chemistry, biomedicine, and engineering, the British scientist James Lovelock, inventor of the Gaia hypothesis, began his professional career in the 1940s. His systems thinking was formed in the first wave of cybernetic concepts—homeostasis, self-organization, negative feedback, self-regulation—as these were closely allied to discourses of energy and entropy connecting thermodynamics via information theory to physical definitions of living systems. For Lovelock, Erwin Schrödinger’s What is Life? was instrumental in forming his conception of a living planet as operating far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Cybernetics, as drawn from the physiological concept of homeostasis, then filled in his initial conception of the Gaian system.

Lovelock’s foremost collaborator on the Gaia hypothesis, the American microbiologist and evolutionary thinker Lynn Margulis, born in 1938, one generation younger than Lovelock and starting her academic career in the 1960s, was trained in genetics and cellular systems rather than thermodynamics and classical cybernetics. However, she absorbed Lovelock’s lessons on these topics and then, stepping outside of the standard biology of her moment, she strongly endorsed Maturana and Varela’s concept of biological autopoiesis. By the 1980s she would meld Lovelock’s first-order Gaia concept to her own second-order formulation of “autopoietic Gaia.”

In this talk, literature and science scholar Bruce Clarke will draw from the scientific writings of Lovelock and Margulis as well as from his forthcoming edition of their correspondence to document and discuss their cultivation of the Gaia hypothesis as a dedicated application of cybernetic systems thinking.

Participants Bios

Bruce Clarke is Paul Whitfield Horn Distinguished Professor of Literature and Science in the Department of English at Texas Tech University. His research focuses on systems theory, narrative theory, and Gaia theory. His latest book is Gaian Systems: Lynn Margulis, Neocybernetics, and the End of the Anthropocene (Minnesota 2020); other books include Neocybernetics and Narrative (Minnesota 2014), Posthuman Metamorphosis: Narrative and Systems (Fordham 2008), and Energy Forms: Allegory and Science in the Era of Classical Thermodynamics (Michigan 2001). He was Baruch S. Blumberg/NASA Chair in Astrobiology at the Library of Congress in 2019. Co-edited with Sébastien Dutreil, his edition of Writing Gaia: The Scientific Correspondence of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.

Michael Hohl is a designer, educator and researcher. As a Professor of Design Theory at Anhalt University of Applied Sciences Dessau, Germany, he likes making things, thinking about things, how we do them and how this changes us. He enjoys learning with BA, MA and PhD students, from first-year BAs to supervising and mentoring PhD research students from Art, Design and Architecture. He also conducts Research Training Seminars at the Royal College of Art London and other institutions. He organises and co-organises conferences, research seminars and guest lectures, co-edits publications and conferences – and is interested in turning these experiences into conversations.

Links:

https://www.gaian.systems

FREE REGISTRATION

Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition

Heinz Von Foerster0 / 0 0 comments In these essays Heinz von Foerster discusses some of the fundamental principles that govern how we know the world and how we process the information from which we derive that knowledge. Included are path-breaking articles concerning the principles of computation in neural nets (1967), the definition of self-organizing systems (1960), the nature of cognition (1970), as well as recent expansions on these themes (e.g. “How recursive is communication,” 1993).

Working with Norbert Wiener, Warren McCullough, and others in the 1960s and 1970s, von Foerster was one of the founders of the science of cybernetics, which has had profound effects both on modern systems theory and on the philosophy of cognition. At the Biological Computer Laboratory at the University of Illinois he produced the first parallel computers and contributed to many other developments in the theory of computation and cognition.

Click to access Heinz_Von_Foerster-Ethics_and_Second-order_Cybernetics.pdf

Click to access foerster-2003.pdf

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Observing Systems | Heinz von Foerster | download

Observing Systems

Heinz von Foerster0 / 0 0 comments Considered as a whole, the work of Heinz von Foerster can be taken as a framework for the understanding of cognition. This framework is not so much a fully completed edifice, but rather a clearly shaped space, where the major building lines are established and its access clearly indicated.

Von Foerster’s framework has two fundamental principles. First, we are to understand by cognition the described behaviour or a particular class of systems: those which satisfy for their components a specific kind of internal coherence (or eigenbehaviour). Second, we are to understand our own knowledge as resulting from similar kinds of mechanisms. These two levels are inextricably connected: the study of mechanisms proper of first order systems (those we study), and the study of how second-order systems (those we are) are reflected in such descriptions. This mutually specifying pair, and all its details, constitutes the space where cognition is to be properly understood.

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The beginning of heaven and Earth has no name : seven days with second-order cybernetics | Heinz von Foerster & Albert Muller & Karl H. Muller & Elinor Rooks & Michael Kasenbacher | download

The beginning of heaven and Earth has no name : seven days with second-order cybernetics

Heinz von Foerster & Albert Muller & Karl H. Muller & Elinor Rooks & Michael Kasenbacher0 / 0 0 comments Heinz von Foerster was the inventor of second-order cybernetics, which recognizes the investigator as part of the system he is investigating. The Beginning of Heaven and Earth Has No Name provides an accessible, nonmathematical, and comprehensive overview of von Foerster’s cybernetic ideas and of the philosophy latent within them. It distills concepts scattered across the lifework of this scientific polymath and influential interdisciplinarian. At the same time, as a book-length interview, it does justice to von Foerster’s élan as a speaker and improviser, his skill as a raconteur.

Developed from a week-long conversation between the editors and von Foerster near the end of his life, this work playfully engages von Foerster in developing the difference his notion of second-order cybernetics makes for topics ranging from emergence, life, order, and thermodynamics to observation, recursion, cognition, perception, memory, and communication.

The book gives an English-speaking audience a new ease of access to the rich thought and generous spirit of this remarkable and protean thinker

Unlocking Luhmann A Keyword Introduction to Systems Theory Claudio Baraldi, Giancarlo Corsi and Elena Esposito

Unlocking Luhmann

Published by Bielefeld University Press 2021

Unlocking Luhmann

A Keyword Introduction to Systems Theory

Claudio Baraldi, Giancarlo Corsi and Elena Esposito

• Translated by: Katherine Walker
• Funded by: Universität Bielefeld

and

https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/48859/9783839456743.pdf?sequence=1

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Introduction to Systems Theory | Wiley

Introduction to Systems Theory

Niklas Luhmann, Peter Gilgen (Translated by)

ISBN: 978-0-745-64571-1 December 2012 Polity 300 Pages

• PRINTStarting at just $28.00

 Paperback$28.00 HardcoverPrint on Demand$78.00

DESCRIPTION

Niklas Luhmann ranks as one of the most important sociologists and social theorists of the twentieth century. Through his many books he developed a highly original form of systems theory that has been hugely influential in a wide variety of disciplines.

In Introduction to Systems Theory, Luhmann explains the key ideas of general and sociological systems theory and supplies a wealth of examples to illustrate his approach. The book offers a wide range of concepts and theorems that can be applied to politics and the economy, religion and science, art and education, organization and the family. Moreover, Luhmann’s ideas address important contemporary issues in such diverse fields as cognitive science, ecology, and the study of social movements.

This book provides all the necessary resources for readers to work through the foundations of systems theory – no other work by Luhmann is as clear and accessible as this. There is also much he…

Introduction to Systems Theory Niklas Luhmann, Peter Gilgen (Translated by) ISBN: 978-0-745-64571-1 December 2012

Introduction to Systems Theory | Wiley

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http://www.mediastudies.asia/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Niklas_Luhmann_Introduction_to_System_Theory.pdf

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Longer supply chains ‘bring innovation and lower prices’ – Supply Management

Longer supply chains ‘bring innovation and lower prices’

posted by Will Green in Procurement 10 January 2022

Companies have responded to Covid disruption by shortening supply chains but a study suggests longer supply chains provide more innovation and economic benefit.

A team of academics from the University of Oxford and Harvard University found supply chains – in which producers bought input goods, converted them into other goods and sold them to other producers – amplified the effects of technological improvements and price reduction.

“Longer production chains for an industry bias it toward faster price reduction, and longer production chains for a country bias it toward faster growth,” said the report.

continues in source: Longer supply chains ‘bring innovation and lower prices’

Longer supply chains ‘bring innovation and lower prices’ – Supply Management

SYSTEMIC LEADERSHIP SUMMIT When in doubt, Zoom out – Learn how from over 100 expert sessions covering: Leadership – Systems Thinking – Change and Much More! JANUARY 16-25, 2022 Register This year we offer over 100 encore summit sessions (and one or two new sessions as well)

Systemic Leadership Summit

CSAAW is a friendly, low-pressure environment where presenters can expect feedback from a highly intellectually diverse audience united by an interest in complex systems. CSAAW is a particularly good venue for researchers to: (a) present work using complex systems methods to an audience that is familiar with complex systems tools, (b) gather a wide range of feedback on complex systems research from many different disciplinary perspectives, or (c) discuss work that advances complex systems methods.

CSAAW seminars will typically occur on Wednesdays from 12:00-1:00 on Zoom, with some flexibility to accommodate potential speakers who have conflicts with that time. If you are interested in presenting, please email us at csaaw-organizers@umich.edu.

Lu Xian & Bernardo Modenesi
CSAAW Co-organizers

BioSystems Submit your Paper View Articles Guide for authors Track your paperOrder journal Autopoiesis: Foundations of Life, Cognition, and Emergence of Self/Other December 2021

Autopoiesis: Foundations of Life, Cognition, and Emergence of Self/Other – Call for papers – BioSystems – Journal – Elsevier

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Comparing Approaches to Addressing the Meta-Crisis | by Brandon Norgaard | Jan, 2022 | Medium

Comparing Approaches to Addressing the Meta-Crisis

Brandon Norgaard3 hours ago·6 min read

In the last couple of years, there has been an acceleration of community development, mostly online but also in-person, among people who are seeking new ideas and new ways of thinking about the world and about where our global society is headed. Many people have seized the opportunity to share concerns about the degradation of the natural environment and about threats to life on Earth and about where humanity might be headed in the years to come. To describe this growing phenomenon, we have these similar and partially overlapping notions of the liminal web, the sensemaking web, and the emergentsia among others. When we compare these people and organizations and the ideas they put forth and the values that drive them, we can find a lot of agreement that the world as we know it is in trouble and that we need to take this quite seriously.

cotninues in source: Comparing Approaches to Addressing the Meta-Crisis

Comparing Approaches to Addressing the Meta-Crisis | by Brandon Norgaard | Jan, 2022 | Medium

source – an invitation to engage

RUM – Really Useful Models | OpenDataSavesLives

RUM – Really Useful Models

05 January 2022By Peter Lacey, Director, Whole Systems Partnership

Just as patients often assume that information about them is shared by different parts of the health system there might be an assumption that when a really useful simulation model is developed it would be picked up and used elsewhere. We have some good examples of this, including work supporting more than 20 local systems to model the impact of COVID using the same model and a standard set of initialisation data tailored for each system. However, generally the spread and adoption of the models we build is limited.

We have explored several barriers to this including the ‘not invented here’ syndrome, or unfamiliarity with even the basics of system dynamics modeling, which is our tool of choice for strategic challenges in complex systems. There has been academic reflection on these challenges but we are confident that there is a way to break through.

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RUM – Really Useful Models | OpenDataSavesLives

The Substrate-Independence Theory: Advancing Constructor Theory to Scaffold Substrate Attributes for the Recursive Interaction between Knowledge and Information by John Turner 1,*,Dave Snowden 2 andNigel Thurlow 3

Systems | Free Full-Text | The Substrate-Independence Theory: Advancing Constructor Theory to Scaffold Substrate Attributes for the Recursive Interaction between Knowledge and Information