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.
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)
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.
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].”
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 stewardsof 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.”
A Systems Approach to Environmental Policy in DefraTuesday 24th November 2020, 13:00 – 14:00 GMTPresenter: Tom Oliver, University of ReadingYou are warmly invited to join us for the following CECAN Webinar… Webinar Overview: The need to take a whole-systems approach to policy to avoid unanticipated outcomes and burden shifting across sectors is now widely recognised. In this presentation I will introduce the Systems Research Programme established by the UK government’s Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in March 2019, with the aim to better understand multiple outcomes of policy decisions and how suites of policies interact. The programme has six academic fellows reflecting policy areas of air quality, resources and waste, rural land use, marine and food. My role involves the advising on overall design, synthesis and coordination of the programme and working on crosscutting issues. I will discuss in particular our current work on some particularly wicked policy problems: net zero policy design and environmental target setting, and conclude by describing a forthcoming project with CECAN and several universities developing new protocols for the governance of systemic risk, including COVID-19 relevant case studies for biosecurity, respiratory health and food security. Presenter Biography: Tom Oliver is Professor of Applied Ecology at the University of Reading UK and leads their Ecology and Evolution research division. He sits on the European Environment Agency scientific committee and is a senior Fellow with Defra working to coordinate their Systems Research Programme. Tom’s primary research focuses on understanding the interacting impacts of drivers upon multiple environmental outcomes. A key aspect of this involves developing methods and tools to better quantify and communicate environmental risk to support environmental decision-making. Tom has published more than eighty scientific papers in world-leading interdisciplinary journals. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, Independent and BBC Science Focus and he is author of the critically acclaimed book The Self Delusion: The Surprising Science of Our Connection to Each Other and the Natural World. How to Join: This talk will take place via a Zoom Webinar – please click here to register for a place. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. In case you are unable to attend, a recording of the webinar will be uploaded to our website following the event.REGISTER FOR CECAN WEBINAR
I spend a lot of time with systems engineers. They are an annoying bunch, by and large. Always telling me (or anyone else who dares venture an opinion, for that matter), that we have not considered all the elements of a problem. That we need to think about the whole system (they even say it like it is in italics). Even if you demonstrate you have thought about the whole system, they then suddenly tell you it is actually a systems of systemsproblem. And then you give up and go spend some time with economists for a bit of light relief…
But despite the relentless tedium of their company, if I could give my former Government self — close to the minister, ambitious for decarbonisation that maintains popular support, massive worrier about the risks of a rapidly changing energy sector — one piece of advice, it would be this: ‘spend more time with systems engineers’. Because good strategy, and a good strategy for future energy policy, would benefit hugely from adopting a systems approach.
The energy system or energy systems (see, I was listening) is/are hugely complex (note the important difference between complicated and complex). The interactions between different actors and parts of the system bewilder even seasoned energy sector observers or participants. It is part of what makes energy and climate such an enthralling intellectual challenge.
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
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
Chick Spinney, one of John Boyd’s closest associates, has revised his flow diagram depicting how Boyd’s strategic thinking evolved from his days flying F-86s in Korea in 1953 until his death in 1997.
In this chart, “ODA” is “orient-decide-act,” not “observe-decide-act.” As Chuck recalls, Boyd added “observation” in 1975, about the time he retired from the Air Force. “LWF” is the Air Force’s Lightweight Fighter program, which culminated in the flyoff between the YF-16 and YF-17 in 1974.
Note that Patterns of Conflict is about operating inside the OODA loop and says virtually nothing about the OODA loop itself. The only place Boyd develops — and draws — the OODA loop is in The Essence of Winning and Losing, 1996.
Chuck also highlights how Boyd returns to “Scientific/Philosophical Foundation Efforts” with Conceptual Spiral in 1992. Interesting to compare the two, the effects of 16 years of intense effort.
All of Boyd’s works, and a PDF of the above diagram, are available from our Articles page. I might also modestly recommend my “Origins of John Boyd’s Discourse,” which illustrates some of the domains Boyd investigated (e.g., evolution, complexity, Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, etc.) as he moved along Chuck’s progression.
On November 18, OECD – OCDE will host a number of high level forums. I will be moderating one on #complexity, #systemsand #anticipation with the help of Chiara Bleckenwegner. The main question I will pose to the four leading experts will be on new methods government should introduce to deal better with uncertainty and complexity beyond Covid19. What have we learnt from 2020? This question will be tackled by:
Rovenskaya Elena, Program Director, Advanced Systems Analysis, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
Hiroki Habuka, Deputy Director, Digital Economy Division, Commerce and Information Policy Bureau, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), Japan
Márton Herczeg, PhD, European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), Head of Strategy and Impact Unit
David Winickoff, Senior Policy Analyst, Science, Technology and Innovation Directorate, OECD
SCiO DACH Buch Club mit Martin Dr. Pfiffner und seinem fantastischen Buch „Die dritte Dimension des Organisierens“ erschienen 2020 bei Springer/ Gabler mit 348 Seiten für 34.99 € als Taschenbuch. eBook ISBN: 978-3-658-29247-8, Softcover ISBN: 978-3-658-29246-1
Donnerstag den 28.01.2021 von 16:00 bis 17:30 Uhr GMT virtuell
Die 3. Dimension des Organisierens; das Viable System Model mit seiner vollständigen Beschreibung von Steuerung und Kommunikation in einer Organisation.
Martin Pfiffner nimmt uns mit dem Buch mit auf eine Reise von mehr als 20 Jahren praktischer Erfahrung und Anwendung eines der wichtigsten Management Modelle unserer Zeit.
Peter Jones presents a customized talk from the RSD9 plenary session for ST ON. Ryan Murphy joins with a full presentation of his RSD9 talk.
We often use the model of “theories of change” to argue for the process by which envisioned change programs might achieve their goals. Essentially these are the working theories by which we explain the logic of system change outcomes, and we often include quasi-systemic logic models to communicate them. ToCs are as ubiquitous in social innovation and philanthropy as business models are in startups and VCs. “Systems change” has emerged as a major movement in the worlds of impact investing, philanthropy, and the NGOs they fund, and the proposals expected to advance studies and change programs embrace the language of the theory of change.
Do Theories of Change reflect coherent models of change that we can observe or assess in real social systems? If so, are logic models sufficient (do they correspond to reality)?
How do we Represent Transformation? Framework of four Sensemaking Logics
What are the meanings, purposes, effectiveness, basis in systemics, their common applications, uses and misuses of Theories of Change?
Can we produce better theories for change through systemic design rationale?
Join us on Nov. 9 starting at 6:30pm ET.
Venue:
The link for a Zoom conference will be sent upon preregistration.
CST WEBINAR SERIESThis week the Webinar will be moved to co-incide with the ONLINE BOOK LAUNCH of “The Age of Sustainability”Wednesday, November 4th from 16:00 (GMT+2)This webinar will take place online. Register in advance for this webinar:https://maties.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_TZk5JNQcQoGZmXg2q7XfxQ
Join us for the launch of Prof Mark Swilling’s new book “The Age of Sustainability: Just Transitions in a Complex World”The Age of Sustainability: Just Transitions in a Complex World provides an interpretation of the global economic and ecological crisis from a distinct African perspective. Drawing on a relational epistemology and ontology that emerges from the intersection between contemporary Sub-Saharan African philosophy and western post-humanism, Swilling traverses a vast terrain in order to illustrate his argument that there are multiple transitions already underway at the global, national and local levels. He offers a theory of change that avoids the false promise of superficial reforms (‘greenwash’) and the grandiose claims about ‘structural change’. Instead, he proposes that we need to be radical incrementalists in the way we fuse together real-world experiments and the making of global futures. He argues that the directionality of the global energy transition will shape the way the global political economy evolves beyond the current crisis.
The intellectual and operational bankruptcy of neo-liberal economics opens the way for alternative futures, but these alternatives have yet to consolidate themselves at the global and national levels. They are, however, emerging across all world regions at the local level. This is particularly true when it comes to the emerging commons-based peer-to-peer economies that we see at local and global levels. Unless we understand the complex dynamics of the deep transition already underway, and how this is shaping all our choices about governance, economics, well-being, urban living and cultural norms, we will be ill-equipped for the rapidly unfolding future that we all experience on a daily basis. More information is available here. This webinar will take place online Register in advance: https://maties.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_TZk5JNQcQoGZmXg2q7XfxQ
Mark Swillingis Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Development in the School of Public Leadership, University of Stellenbosch and Co-Director of the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition (http://www0.sun.ac.za/cst/). He is the author of The Age of Sustainability: Just Transitions in a Complex World (London and New York: Routledge, 2020), co-author with Eve Annecke of Just Transitions: Explorations of Sustainability in an Unfair World (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2012), co-editor with Adriana Allen and Andreas Lampis of Untamed Urbanism (New York and London: Routledge, 2016), co-editor with Josephine Musango and Jeremy Wakeford Greening the South African Economy (Cape Town: Juta, 2016) and was the lead author with Ivor Chipkin et. al. of Shadow State: Politics of State Capture (Johannesburg: WITS Press, 2018). He is a member of UNEP’s International Resource Panel acting as Coordinator of the Cities Working Group (http://www.unep.org/resourcepanel/) and is the Deputy Chair of the Board of the Development Bank of Southern Africa. He is co-lead author of The Weight of Cities: Resource Requirements of Future Urbanization, published in 2018 by the International Resource Panel. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Sheffield and Utrecht, and in 2018 was the Edward P. Bass Visiting Environmental Scholar at Yale University
The purpose of the Chair in Anticipatory Systems is to both develop and promote the Discipline of Anticipation, thereby bringing a critical idea to life. To this end, we have a two pronged strategy consisting of knowledge development and communication. The two are equally important. While many academic projects naturally emphasize knowledge development, we must also reach a large and disparate audience, and open minds locked within the longstanding legacy of reactive science. Thus, from a practical standpoint, how we conceptualize and communicate the Discipline of Anticipation is as important as the Discipline of Anticipation itself.
While anticipation has been widely studied within a number of different disciplines – including biology, anthropology, cognitive and social sciences – to date nobody has collected and systematically compared the results. For a preliminary survey see, however, R. Poli, The Many Aspects of Anticipation, Foresight, 2010, 12, p. 7-17, and the bibliography M. Nadin, Annotated Bibliography: Anticipation, International Journal of General Systems, 2010, 39(1), p. 35-133. Two figures stand as central contributors to the discipline of anticipation: the mathematical biologist Robert Rosen (see his Anticipatory Systems. Philosophical, Mathematical and Methodological Foundations, New York, Springer, 2nd ed. 2012, and Life Itself. A Comprehensive Inquiry into the Nature, Origin, and Fabrication of Life, New York, Columbia University Press, 1991) and the anthropologist John W. Bennett (see his Human Ecology as Human Behavior: Essays in Environmental and Development Anthropology, New Brunswick and London, Transaction Publishers, 2nd ed. 2002). The former established the theory of anticipatory systems; the latter the connection between anticipation and resilience.
We propose to centralize the study of anticipation for the first time, and to define the Discipline of Anticipation as a cohesive body of knowledge. To this end, the chair will address a number of key questions, such as:
What is anticipation? Are anticipations imposed by the mind, or are they aspects of reality, or does anticipation involves a relation with both?
Are there different kinds of anticipation? What distinguishes them?
Which are the connections between the Discipline of Anticipation and Futures Studies?
What are the qualitative and quantitative aspects of anticipations? Can anticipation be described mathematically?
Are there hierarchies of anticipations? How do they define their hierarchy?
What visual phenomena are associated with anticipations, including magnification, scaling, zooming, expansion, detail, depth, and apparent size?
How do anticipations relate to emergence and the budding science of qualities?
What are the social applications of the Discipline of Anticipation?
Can we relate anticipation to current interests in sustainability and resilience?
Objectives
The project’s main objective is the development of the Discipline of Anticipation, including the development of a system of anticipatory strategies and techniques. The more the culture of anticipation spreads, the easier it will be to develop socially acceptable anticipatory strategies. It will then be possible to accumulate relevant experience on how to think about the future and to use anticipatory methods. It will also be possible to try and develop a language and a body of practices that are more adapted for thinking about the future and for developing new ways to address threads and opportunities.
The following outcomes are envisaged:
Futures Literacy: Development of a set of protocols for the appropriate implementation on the ground of the different kinds of anticipation (under the rubric of futures literacy), together with syllabi and teaching materials on the Discipline of Anticipation.
Anticipatory Capability Profile: Development of a Anticipatory Capability Profile for communities and institutions, together with a set of recommendations on how a community, organization or institution may raise its anticipatory performance.
Resilience Profile: Setting of a resilience index and analysis of the resilience level of selected communities and regions, including a set of recommendations on how to raise their resilience level.
David Sloan Wilson: Welcome Kim. I recall many fine conversations with you. Let me begin by asking you to explain in general terms how philosophers contribute to the study of evolutionary biology. What do you bring to the table?
Kim Sterelny: A couple of things. For one, a lot of foundational questions in evolutionary biology are curious hybrids of conceptual, formal and empirical issues. Think for example of the history of gene selectionism or multi-level selection. It took a lot of hammering and tinkering to get clear which claims about selection were genuinely empirically and causally distinct; which were empirically equivalent but perhaps heuristically distinct, and which really were just verbal disputes. It is also true that philosophers bring both the time and the skills to do integrative and synthetic work across different research traditions. Biologists are with few exceptions almost forced to specialise quite narrowly; they have to produce data; philosophers only have to think about it.
It is a pleasure for us to launch our first Metaphorum webinar series with a confirmed program of speakers for the next four months. Our intention with this Webinar Series is to share innovations in theory and practice in organizational cybernetics and related systems approaches. We aim to develop as an active community of learning by sharing in these online conversations, recent innovations in theory and methodology, critical reflections and insightful experiences. The webinar series aims at creating a space for collective learning with other fellow cyberneticians, systems researchers and practitioners.
Once or twice a month we will have a Zoom webinar with selected speakers. All sessions are on Wednesdays from 5 to 6 pm (UK time). The speaker will present in the first 30 min and then there will be 30 minutes for the participants to engage with the speaker. If the speaker agrees, we will also make all presentations available on the Metaphorum website.
If you want to participate in any of the webinars, please respond to this email by following the link and confirming in which webinars you’d like to participate. We will send you links to forthcoming webinars – you can include as many webinars as you’d like in the form. There is no cost to attend the webinars for Metaphorum members.
Looking forward to have you with us in this webinars’ series.
Angela Espinosa, Allenna Leonard and Jon Walker
METAPHORUM WEBINAR SERIES 2020-2021 – AGENDA October 2020- February 2021
November the 4th 2020.
November 11th, 2020.
November 25th, 2020.
December 16th 2020.
February the 3rd, 2021.
Dr. Steve Morlidge. ‘The VSM in 2020 – more relevant than ever?’. Dr. Barry Clemson. ‘Monitoring the health of riverine systems’ Dr. Manel Pretel-Wilson. The Neo-Cybernetic Synthesis: Ashby’s True Legacy. Dr Jonathan Huxley. The Viability of Tribes Prof Emeritus Michael C. Jackson. The Soul of the Viable System Model (VSM)
See below for information on the first webinar, by Steve Morlidge, and the link to the session, for those who want to attend.
Please register by clicking on the following link, for links to forthcoming webinars and /or updates on the webinar series.
November the 4th, 2020 Dr. Steve Morlidge ‘The VSM in 2020 – more relevant than ever?’
It has been said that Stafford Beer was 50 years ahead of his time. In this webinar Steve Morlidge will reflect on the relevance of the VSM from the perspective of someone dedicated to helping finance practitioners half a century distant after the first edition of Brain of The Firm was published.
Steve Morlidge 2020 Bio
General Management Thinker, Author, Speaker.
Steve Morlidge has 30 years of practical experience in designing and running performance management systems in Unilever, including three years as the lead of a global change project. He is a former chairman of the European Beyond Budgeting Round Table and now works as a management thinker, writer and speaker, drawing on his years of experience at the leading edge of performance management thought and practice. Steve Morlidge published Future Ready: How to Master Business Forecasting, John Wiley, 2010, ‘The Little Book of Beyond Budgeting’ and ‘The Little Book of Operational Forecasting’ through Matador in 2017 and 2018 respectively. His latest book ‘Present Sense: A practical guide to the science of measuring performance and the art of communicating it, with the brain in mind’ was published in November 2019. He is on the editorial board of Foresight, a forecasting practitioner’s journal published by the International Institute of Forecasting to which he regularly contributes. He is also a cofounder of CatchBull, a supplier of forecasting performance management software and sits on the non-executive Board of the Beyond Budgeting Institute. Steve Morlidge is a visiting fellow at Cranfield University, Bedfordshire, UK and has a PhD from Hull Business School in Yorkshire, UK focusing on the application of systems concepts to the design of complex organizations. He completed his BA with honors, and he is a qualified management accountant (CIMA).
For years now, I’ve been obsessed with the idea of synthesis of knowledge from various disciplines, academic and non-academic. Looking at things holistically and considering the interdependence between them seems like an obvious way forward to solve the hard and complex problems of our society. We need to both specialise and have the holistic picture. Lucky for us, research is essentially a collaborative process, and the nature and intimacy of collaborations yield different disciplinary frameworks: intra/mono, multi, cross, inter, and trans.
This representation by Jenseniu (2012) summarises the progression to transdisciplinary in a snapshot.
Mark Swillingis Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Development in the School of Public Leadership, University of Stellenbosch and Co-Director of the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition (
Systems Community of Inquiry 
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