ENIGMA – play

Enigma – Palladio – Trusted Advisers

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Exploring Prices as an Information and Communication Technology (ICT): Heuristics towards Accurate and Precise Prices – project maplesync

Exploring Prices as an Information and Communication Technology (ICT): Heuristics towards Accurate and Precise Prices

• Post authorBy gceh
• Post dateOctober 27, 2020
• No Commentson Exploring Prices as an Information and Communication Technology (ICT): Heuristics towards Accurate and Precise Prices

A synthesis of work done over my undergrad, and a generator of future thought: project maplesync

ABSTRACT: Exploring price systems as emergently designed information technology: a heuristic approach for externalities with climate change applications

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Exploring Prices as an Information and Communication Technology (ICT): Heuristics towards Accurate and Precise Prices – project maplesync

OD41: Being a Systems Thinking Practitioner ∙ New Operating Models Handbook | LinkedIn

OD41: Being a Systems Thinking Practitioner ∙ New Operating Models Handbook

• Published on October 27, 2020

Welcome to the OrgDev newsletter

We’re curating weekly resources that you can use for making your organization more effective. If you want to get the weekly edition straight to your inbox every Thursday, you can subscribe here.

1. OD Goodies

Curated starters for this week’s edition:

• Care4: Paul Tolchinsky is hosting a unique series of stories and lessons learned about leading change, inspired by the nearly 6 decades of doing this work. Food for thought from the session last week:

The wisdom is in the conversations we have.

• PolicyLab: recently revisited the 56 distinct actions in the Government as a System toolkit featured back in OD23. Good source of inspiration for enabling change.

• Medium: Bülent shared some thoughts on growing through effective learning loops. The comments on the LinkedIn thread are worth reading as well.

• Sketchplanations: sketch about the Cobra Effect – “(…) an unintended (and disastrous) consequence arises from a well-meaning solution.” detailed a bit back in OD32.

2. Being a systems thinking practitioner

If you’re applying systems thinking in your work or if you’re just curious about this topic, you might be interested in a comprehensive occupation standard that details many aspects of this type of work.

Thanks to Benjamin Taylor and the Systems Community of Inquiry, we discovered that the Institute of Apprenticeships and Technical Education in UK has recently approved for delivery the standard of Systems Thinking Practitioner, which has professional recognition by Systems & Complexity in Organisations (SCiO).

Occupation purpose

(…) to support decision-makers in strategic and leadership roles to understand and address complex and sometimes even ‘wicked’ problems through provision of expert systemic analysis, advice and facilitation.

Examples include: providing joined-up health and social services, reducing plastics use in the bottled drinks industry, developing sustainable international food production and supply systems, developing combined diplomatic and military options for unstable regions, and addressing climate change.

These problems have no single ‘owner’ or cause, and no simple solution; they require multi-disciplinary, multi-organisational responses with sensitive attention to diverse viewpoints, behaviour, culture and politics.

Here the 5 knowledge areas associated with this occupation:

K1: Systems thinking

Understands core systems concepts and laws that underpin and inform the practical methodologies and methods. • Aware of the inter-relationships between Systems Thinking approaches (including methods and methodologies), enabling comparisons of paradigms and underpinning philosophies. • Understands provenance of Systems Thinking methodologies and approaches in context of ‘schools’ of systems thinking and own ontology and epistemology. • Understands essential concepts of systems: complexity, emergence, boundaries, inter-relationships, multiple-perspectives, randomness, non-linear relationships, feedback loops, sensitive dependence on initial conditions, and unpredictability.

K2: Systems approaches

Has a sound working knowledge of at least three modelling approaches, as defined in the Systems and Complexity in Organisations (SCiO) professional standard framework, including at least two of the widely-used systems methodologies or approaches: Critical Systems Heuristics, Soft Systems Methodology, System Dynamics, Viable Systems Model. • Understands the applicability, benefits and limits of each systems approach for each situation, and how to integrate them into a broader methodological design. • Understands relevance of, and knows methods for, determining appropriate scope, scale and systemic levels, for understanding, diagnosing and modelling situations, or for system design.

K3: Intervention and engagement

Knows a range of approaches for delivering systems interventions with differing levels of complexity and ambiguity, including double loop learning, change methods, and learning cycles. • Has a working knowledge of at least two methods or methodologies for: intervention planning, information gathering, engagement and change implementation. • Understands strengths and limitations of each approach; knows when and how to use each approach to gain insight to the organisational/ societal/ political context. • Understands the principles of effective relationship building and stakeholder management and their application in a system intervention.

K4: Ethics

Working knowledge of ethics as applied to systems interventions generally, and as applied specifically to sector where practitioner is working. • Appreciates the regulatory environment, and the legal, health and safety and compliance requirements of the sector the practitioner is working in.

K5: Assessment and evaluation

Understands a range of quantitative and qualitative assessment and evaluation methods for determining the outcomes and impact of interventions, and for evaluating the effectiveness and impact of intervention decisions and processes.

We think that the world needs more systems thinking practitioners. This standard will guide us in our aspiration of improving our systems thinking practice and we hope it will be a useful read for you too – you will also find a summary of the occupation, 12 duties, 11 skills and 9 behaviors in the standard description. Enjoy! Link: Systems Thinking Practitioner

3. New Operating Models Handbook

Another pick that you might find interesting is a “practitioners’ guide to new ways of working that enable upstream innovation in local government”.

The New Operating Models Handbook captures the ideas and experience of the 20 pioneering local authorities who made up the Upstream Collaborative.

These local government innovators are all experimenting with different ways to address complex challenges, by moving attention and resources upstream of service delivery to create the conditions that enable citizens to thrive. To do this they have adopted new ways of working – new operating models – that acknowledge the complexity and interconnectedness of social issues and the people and organizations that aim to tackle them.

The work of these innovators, and the experiences of the communities they serve, has informed the development of a framework which characterizes what new operating models in local government look like in practice. 

This handbook consists of 6 parts:

1. Introducing New Operating Models for Local Government – link
2. From the Margins to the Mainstream: How to create the conditions for new operating models to thrive – link
3. Reframing Risk: How to adopt new mindsets around risk that enable innovation – link
4. Asset-Based Community Development for Local Authorities: How to rebuild relationships with communities through asset-based approaches – link
5. Meaningful Measurement: How a new mindset around measurement can support a culture of continual learning – link
6. A Catalyst for Change: What COVID-19 has taught us about the future of local government – link

Among the most ambitious and highest potential initiatives are those that aim to tackle the underlying causes of social problems by heading ‘upstream’ to create the economic, social and community conditions for both people and place to flourish. Or, put simply, initiatives designed to solve problems before they happen.

Councils shared repeatedly that these new ways of working are simply “the right thing to do” and are driven by wanting people to live happier, more fulfilling lives. This is underpinned by a common belief within many councils that the status quo is ineffective and unsustainable.

Upstream initiatives are architectural innovations. To deliver them effectively at scale requires the adoption of new operating models.

New operating models don’t completely reject and replace the tools and approaches of the past decades, but are often overlayed on top of existing operating models where both systems continue to coexist. These new approaches are, however, starting to become more embedded and as they do so may supersede the legacy model.

If these snippets resonated with you, we invite you to explore the whole handbook:

Link – New Operating Models Handbook

Thanks for reading

We hope you found something useful in this edition!

Please feel free to forward the newsletter to any colleagues who you think might benefit from these resources.

This newsletter is curated by Raluca and Bülent Duagi, the Sense & Change team.

We’re using systems thinking, behavioral science and mental models to advise organizations to become more effective.

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OD41: Being a Systems Thinking Practitioner ∙ New Operating Models Handbook | LinkedIn

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Universiteit Utrecht Corporate

CENTRE FOR COMPLEX SYSTEMS STUDIES

Message from the boardDear reader, This academic year, the Centre for Complex Systems Studies will be organising some new activities to bond our community in these extraordinary circumstances. We will introduce two new (online) series of lectures for you to attend with the titles Scaling in Complex Systems and Complex Systems Views on Fundamental issues. For Master’s students and PhD candidates, we have recently launched the CCSS Complexaton to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration with generous prizes. We are excited to see the teams take up the complex systems challenges provided by our members! The board of the CCSSCCSS Complexaton The Centre has recently launched CCSS Complexaton, a brand new competition for Master’s students and PhD candidates with an attractive €1,000 cash prize for the winning team. Our main goal in setting up this competition is to encourage students to connect with their peers in these challenging times. We also encourage students who participate in this competition to connect with people from other disciplines and hence broaden their knowledge and skills. Our CCSS members and external partners have provided some very interesting social challenges for this competition. The topics include sustainable diets, biodiversity, bacteria metabolism, knowledge flows in industries, plastic littering in oceans, chemical reactions in oil paintings and geoengineering for CO2 reduction. These challenges cover most scientific disciplines and all require an interdisciplinary team effort. The CCSS Complexaton Kickoff Meeting will be held on Monday, 16 November.More information and registration      »Lecture series: Scaling in Complex Systems The monthly talks in the series Scaling in Complex Systems focus on scaling in both space and time. Scaling is one of the important features found within the stochastic dynamics of complex systems. In this series we will cover mechanisms of scaling, with topics including self-organised criticality, preferential processes, multiplicative processes and sample space reducing processes.We invite you to join the upcoming meeting Scaling in Regulatory Networks: Basic Theory and Implications for Systemic Evolution on Thursday, 29 October 2020.More information      »Lecture series: Complex Systems Views on Fundamental issues In the new series Complex Systems Views on Fundamental Issues, we will focus on the philosophical impact of complex systems research and address the overarching issues of complex systems. The guest speakers will discuss their research and reflect on the fundamental issues related to complex systems research. This series will host lectures on a quarterly basis. We invite you to join the upcoming meeting Fundamentals of Complex Systems: Why We Behave Hierarchically on Thursday, 10 December 2020.More information      »NWO call: Complexity research in connection with Covid-19 Experienced researchers can request NWO funding for research concerned with the way in which separate but interlinked complex systems operate: the national crisis organization on the one hand, and the decentralized system of the security regions and/or medical institutions on the other. More information      »Calendar29 October: Scaling in Regulatory Networks: Basic Theory and Implications for Systemic Evolution, Guest lecturer: Prof. Rudolf Hanel16 November: CCSS Complexaton Kickoff Meeting10 December: Fundamentals of Complex Systems: Why We Behave Hierarchically,Guest lecturer: Prof. Tamás Vicsek

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Universiteit Utrecht Corporate

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

What is Shared Meaning and why does it matter?

 Steve Whitla13 hours agoAdd comment

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

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

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

A cybersystemic framework for practical action Ray Ison

(99+) (PDF) A cybersystemic framework for practical action | Ray Ison – Academia.edu

contains another diagram to add to the ‘useful maps of the development of systems, complexity, and cybernetics’

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Gentle medicine could radically transform medical practice | Aeon Ideas

Gentle medicine could radically transform medical practice

Photo by Kendal/Unsplash

Jacob Stegenga

is a reader in philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Medical Nihilism (2018) and Care and Cure: An Introduction to Philosophy of Medicine (2018). He lives in Cambridge.

1,200 words

Edited by Sam Haselby

Numerous criticisms of medical science have been articulated in recent years. Some critics argue that spurious disease categories are being invented, and existing disease categories expanded, for the aim of profit. Others say that the benefits of most new drugs are minimal and typically exaggerated by clinical research, and that the harms of these drugs are extensive and typically underestimated by clinical research. Still others point to problems with the research methods themselves, arguing that those once seen as gold standards in clinical research – randomised trials and meta-analyses – are in fact malleable and have been bent to serve the interests of industry rather than patients. Here is how the chief editor of The Lancet medical journal summarised these criticisms in 2015:

Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.

These problems arise because of a few structural features of medicine. A prominent one is the profit incentive. The pharmaceutical industry is extremely profitable, and the fantastic financial gains to be made from selling drugs create incentives to engage in some of the practices above. Another prominent feature of medicine is the hope and the expectation of patients that medicine can help them, coupled with the training of physicians to actively intervene, by screening, prescribing, referring or cutting. Another feature is the wildly complex causal basis of many diseases, which hampers the effectiveness of interventions on those diseases – taking antibiotics for a simple bacterial infection is one thing, but taking antidepressants for depression is entirely different. In my book Medical Nihilism (2018), I brought all these arguments together to conclude that the present state of medicine is indeed in disrepair.

How should medicine face these problems? I coined the term ‘gentle medicine’ to describe a number of changes that medicine could enact, with the hope that they would go some way to mitigating those problems. Some aspects of gentle medicine could involve small modifications to routine practice and present policy, while others could be more revisionary.

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Gentle medicine could radically transform medical practice | Aeon Ideas

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The challenge of reclaiming the commons from capitalism | Aeon Essays

Economics for the people

Against the capitalist creeds of scarcity and self-interest, a plan for humanity’s shared flourishing is finally coming into view

Mousehold Heath (1810) by John Sell Cotman. Drawing on paper. According to the UK Government, between 1604 and 1914 enclosure Bills enacted by Parliament restricted access to formerly open communal land comprising just over a fifth of the total area of England. Courtesy the Trustees of the British Museum

Dirk Philipsen

is an economic historian and wellbeing economics advocate who teaches public policy and history at Duke University in North Carolina. He is also a senior fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics. His most recent book is The Little Big Number: How GDP Came to Rule the World and What to Do About It (2015).

Edited by Sam HaselbySYNDICATE THIS ESSAY

I’ve witnessed massive swarms of fireflies
grace my garden like never before, drawn
to the air cleansed of our arrogant greed,
their glow a flashback to the time before
us, omen of Earth without us, a reminder
we’re never immune to nature. I say this
might be the end we’ve always needed
to begin again …
– From the poem ‘Say This Isn’t the End’ (2020) by Richard Blanco

Abasic truth is once again trying to break through the agony of worldwide pandemic and the enduring inhumanity of racist oppression. Healthcare workers risking their lives for others, mutual aid networks empowering neighbourhoods, farmers delivering food to quarantined customers, mothers forming lines to protect youth from police violence: we’re in this life together. We – young and old, citizen and immigrant – do best when we collaborate. Indeed, our only way to survive is to have each other’s back while safeguarding the resilience and diversity of this planet we call home.

As an insight, it’s not new, or surprising. Anthropologists have long told us that, as a species neither particularly strong nor fast, humans survived because of our unique ability to create and cooperate. ‘All our thriving is mutual’ is how the Indigenous scholar Edgar Villanueva captured the age-old wisdom in his book Decolonizing Wealth (2018). What is new is the extent to which so many civic and corporate leaders – sometimes entire cultures – have lost sight of our most precious collective quality.

This loss is rooted, in large part, in the tragedy of the private – this notion that moved, in short order, from curious idea to ideology to global economic system. It claimed selfishness, greed and private property as the real seeds of progress. Indeed, the mistaken concept many readers have likely heard under the name ‘the tragedy of the commons’ has its origins in the sophomoric assumption that private interest is the naturally predominant guide for human action. The real tragedy, however, lies not in the commons, but in the private. It is the private that produces violence, destruction and exclusion. Standing on its head thousands of years of cultural wisdom, the idea of the private variously separates, exploits and exhausts those living under its cold operating logic.

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The challenge of reclaiming the commons from capitalism | Aeon Essays

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Book Announcement: Cynefin® – weaving sense-making into the fabric of our world – Cognitive Edge

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Book Announcement: Cynefin® – weaving sense-making into the fabric of our world

Music: Battle Of The Creek by Alexander Nakarada | https://www.serpentsoundstudios.com Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Video clips: Peter Fowler, Peggy Johnson, Kelly Lacy, Treedo Footage, Why Steve and Vimeo from Pexels

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Book Announcement: Cynefin® – weaving sense-making into the fabric of our world – Cognitive Edge

IFSR Conversations: European Bauhaus/Systems Design 30. Oct. 2020, 16:00 to 17:00 CET Pamela Buckle (IFSR) and Louis Klein (IFSR) are going to host the kick-off of our regular IFSR Conversations on Zoom. They picked Von der Leyen’s call to the European Bauhaus as the main topic for this first gathering. Von der Leyen links systemic change, sciences and design as the promising lead to meet the challenges of the Anthropocene in the 21st century. At the IFSR we believe that the systems community has more to offer than the community itself knows. So, let’s find out about our collective potential and the aesthetics of systemic solutions. To participate in this IFSR Conversation just follow the link when it is time to start: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88277524048. If you like the convenience of a calendar invitation via e-mail, please contact us at conversations@ifsr.org.

IFSR Conversations at the WCSA conference 4. Nov. 2020, 18:30 to 19:30 CET The World Complexity Science Academy (WCSA) is hosting an IFSR Conversation on The strategic Value of the Complex System Approach to Global Governance and Policy Modeling. The WCSA had to go online with its annual conference which was initially scheduled to be on the island of Ischia in the south of Italy. More information about the entire conference, which is free of charge for the systems community, you find at the WCSA website and you may request the current programme at the WCSA conference office. To participate in the IFSR Conversation just follow the link when it is time to start: https://zoom.us/j/93727506720. If you like the convenience of a calendar invitation via e-mail, please contact us at conversations@ifsr.org.

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About maplesync – project maplesync

project maplesyncan open-source initiative that requires feedbackMenu

About maplesync

The “kernel” of the idea is project maplesync: an inclusive, open-source distributed economic decision making system for Canada. (plain language summary to follow below)

Maplesync is a proposal for open-source national level accounting and strategic indicative planning systems that anyone can contribute to. The idea is that by providing better baseline information to entrepreneurs (and more) we can build capacity for greater prosperity in terms of economic, social and environmental wealth.

Indicative planning simply means to draw attention to strategic options via collective intelligence design techniques.

Access the (under development) Github and Wiki by clicking on these links.

Maplesync was originally conceived by @gceh&… more info at www.gceh.ca, and you can add him on LinkedIn.

plain language summary: (shareable Google Doc link available on main page)

MAPLESYNC: a collaborative strategic planning process for Canada

How might we share strategic information to improve economic, social and environmental prosperity?

Introduction:

We have the opportunity to participate in economic decisions every day, including selling, renting and, mostly, buying products and services. From the micro level, these decisions contribute to the collective use of knowledge in society. Our decisions shape other decisions, from the bottom up, for the rest of the economy. 

But what about the big, macro decisions? The strategies and plans? People aren’t normally involved, on a daily basis, in the strategic planning of companies or governments – let alone of an entire country.

But what if they were involved, in real time?

What if regular people on a mass scale had the chance to collectively indicate, or point attention to, opportunities and directions which a national economy could rally around and make happen?

This is exactly what maplesync intends to make possible as a grand project.

Overview: 5 W’s:

What is maplesync?

Project maplesync is a blueprint to lay the foundations for systems that answer the above “how might we” question: How might we share strategic information to improve economic, social and environmental prosperity?

Maplesync lays out the possibilities of crowdsourcing strategic plans, plans that provide a roadmap into the future, at the national level. These strategic plans will point attention to areas of economic concern and generate ideas for addressing these concerns. 

In other words, a large group of Canadians could collaborate online to co-create a plan that helps meet the needs of Canadians by identifying opportunities, collecting and filtering ideas. This gives participants the ability to pool their collective intelligence to co-create plans from a great variety of different vantage points.

These plans would not be binding, but will act as more than a petition as they lay stepwise, integrative directions that concentrate attention and action. Individuals, entrepreneurs, innovators, companies, nonprofits and governments would be able to coordinate action around these plans as the benchmark.

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About maplesync – project maplesync

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Bristol University Press | Anarchist Cybernetics – Control and Communication in Radical Politics, By Thomas Swann

Anarchist Cybernetics

Control and Communication in Radical Politics

By Thomas Swann

• Hardback
• EPUB
• Kindle

Published19 Oct 2020

Page count190 pages

SeriesOrganizations and Activism

ISBN978-1529208788

Dimensions234 x 156 mm

ImprintBristol University Press£75.00 £60.00You save £15.00 (20%)Add to basket
Click to order from North America, Canada and South AmericaShare           

Recommend to library

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Bristol University Press | Anarchist Cybernetics – Control and Communication in Radical Politics, By Thomas Swann