Dr. Sandra Janoff from the USA and Co-Founder of the Future Search Methodology, talks to Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Özdemir (oezpa Institute) about the Future Search, Tavistock, Eric Trist, Future Search Network and Marvin Weisbord.
An interview with Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff, founders of Future Search Network, whose members practice one of the first and most successful participative methods for whole system interactive planning and organizational development. Learn about a unique philosophy and method that enables communities and organizations to transform their capability for action.
Integrating Chaos: Building Resilient Organizations with Chaos Theory
Our imagination about what happens in the business world has become disconnected with reality and it all starts with an accepted narrative about the unstoppable power of Fredrick Taylor’s ideas
The narrative goes like this: Fredrick Taylor introduced managers to analytical methods and tools that helped them to dramatically improve productivity; however these efforts also kick-started a non-stop line of efforts that led to the inevitable over-optimization of human labor.
This over-simplification of Taylor is part of a narrative that has become entrenched and feeds a broad movement that says organizations are broken. The story says that organizations might be efficient, but at enormous cost – they destroy autonomy, stifle creativity and at worst, are systems that enable widespread verbal and physical abuse. All starting with Taylor of course.
Yet, as I’ll show you, this story is wrong, misses the context of Taylor’s time and ignores that a hyper-optimized mindset towards work did not take hold until the emergence of the “career path” in the 1960s. This coincided with the risk of “knowledge work” and this shift turned work into a performance, distracting many from the real mission of any organization: survival.
Instead of seeing organizations as broken, a more accurate starting point is to think of them as complex systems and instead of broken, as fragile. As the scale of business gets bigger, the hidden fragility of many organizations puts employees, customers and society at risk.
To address this fragility, I want to look at organizations as “complex adaptive systems”, an idea that emerged from a field called Chaos Theory in the 1970s and 1980s. I want to push for a broader adoption of these principles and encourage a new generation of “chaos managers” to become interested in the survival and success of our institutions.
I first learned about chaos theory 13 years ago and have been thinking about it ever since. During the ten years I spent in the corporate world and as a management consultant, I couldn’t escape the feeling that something was missing. This is my first attempt to fill that gap and to give many other frustrated managers and leaders an additional lens to help them think about helping their organizations thrive.
This essay will explore the following:
What we got wrong about Taylor
How the idea of the “career path” turned workers into performers
How organizations subsequently became complicated, not complex
Why chaos theory does not lead to anarchy
The implications of chaos theory on leadership
An actionable five-part guide for the modern “chaos manager”
13 July 2020 18:30–20:30Event type: Open MeetingOrganiser(s): SCiO UKEvent access:All welcomeBook now
SCiO Virtual Open Meeting – July 2020
SCiO organises Open Meetings to provide opportunities for practitioners to learn and develop new practice, to build relationships, network, hear about skills, tools, practice and experiences. In the current period of social distancing we are pleased to provide a virtual version of these popular events. Inevitabley this will be shorter but will also be more frequent. Although these events will be free, it is important that you do book – through eventbrite (click book now). You will be emailed a Zoom link close to the meeting. The programme for 13th July is as follows:
18:30 – Welcome, SCiO notices, virtual housekeeping etc 18:40 – Virtual community exercise 18:50 – Session 1 (presentation followed by Q & A ) – Marie Davidova 19:40 – Session 2 (presentation followed by Q & A) – Malcolm Cawood 20:25 – Summary and close
The session by Marie Davidova will focus on Systemic Approach to Architectural Performance (SAAP) design field and hyperobjectivity of its prototypes. The field discusses the question of cities’ adaptation to climate change and biodiversity loss. Current environmental ecology research shows that spe… Read moreAuthorsMarie Davidova
People I talk to often seem a little wary of the term “systems thinking” – a bit abstract, perhaps, and far too intellectual. On other hand, anyone who can appreciate complex drama, from Shakespeare to modern TV shows like The Wire, is arguably already doing it, that is thinking, to some degree, sys… Read moreAuthorsMalcolm Cawood
Apply these lessons from the rewilding theory of conservation to revolutionize your approach to leadership.
Ben Lamm
Expert Contributor
Serial technology entrepreneur making the impossible possible. Currently, Founder/CEO of Hypergiant. Previously, Founder/CEO of Conversable, acquired by LivePerson; Chaotic Moon Studios, acquired by Accenture; and Team Chaos, acquired by Zynga.
May 12, 2020 Updated: May 20, 2020
I don’t know how many days I have spent inside my house. For a while, I counted them, but I gave up somewhere around day 20. I began to acknowledge that things were going to blur together, and that I was going to become intimately familiar with my home office. While trapped inside, I began studying new theories and ideas for how to move our world forward. In particular, I’ve been drawn to the theory of rewilding.
Terreform One’s vision of New York as a smart city. Photograph- Mitchell Joachim/Terreform One
In this time of impending economic and ecological crises, we urgently need to aim for a sustainable or ‘steady state’ economy. In order to get there, we will need to adopt a ‘systems-thinking’ outlook taking into account the interconnections of our complex world. We will also need to consider the issue of de-growth, and re-prioritise kindness and the commons. We have a choice as to whether we act now to make this transition voluntarily and with fairness, or have it forced upon us by times of economic, resource and ecological collapse.
An uprising against the hated elite by the people of [checks notes] Islington (Photo by Tolga AKMEN / AFP) (Photo by TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images)
Polly Mackenzie is Director of Demos, a leading cross-party think tank. She served as Director of Policy to the Deputy Prime Minister from 2010-2015.Add to Favourites Add to favourites
At school, I always loved the moment in language lessons when you had to learn how to list your siblings. Thanks to my parents’ divorce and remarriages, I have a brother, a sister, a half-sister and three step sisters, which meant I got to show off my mastery of complicated words like stiefschwestern and hermanastras. I pitied the children with boring families and boring things to say like “je suis enfant unique.” What surprised me, though, was that even my best friends could never quite remember which of my sisters belonged to which step parent. We have infinite ability to understand the complexity of our own lives. But when we think about other people? The details get blurred, like the background in a Zoom video.
I was reminded of this very human weakness as I listened to Dominic Cummings exhaustively describe the “complicated, tricky situation” that had led him to drive his family to Durham at the end of March. He seemed to think that “complicated” and “tricky” were evidence that his circumstances were exceptional. Because, like my school friends, he was blind to the complexity of others’ lives — the thousands upon thousands of other parents who also had little children, sick spouses and important jobs.
The government wrote a lockdown policy that was radically different to the norm in our common law system. Under common law, everything is legal unless prohibited by law. During the lockdown the default was the opposite: it was illegal to leave your home unless you had a good excuse. That shift puts an impossible burden on those who draft the law, to think of every single good reason that could arise, in the infinite variety of human experience.
Ian Mitroff reminds me of this classic story (evidently repeated in several publications by Ackoff):
There is a classic case in which the tenants of a large office building complained about the increasingly poor elevator service. A consulting firm specializing in elevator-related problems was employed to deal with the situation. It first established that average waiting time for elevators was too long. It then evaluated the possibilities of adding elevators, replacing existing elevators with faster ones, and introducing computer controls to improve utilization of elevators. For various reasons, none of these turned out to be satisfactory. The engineers declared the problem to be unsolvable.
When exposed to the problem, a young psychologist employed in the building’s personnel department made a simple suggestion that dissolved the problem. Unlike the engineers who saw the service as too slow, he saw the problem as one deriving from the boredom of those waiting for an elevator. So he decided they should be given something to do. He suggested putting mirrors in the elevator lobbies to occupy those waiting by enabling them to look at themselves and others without appearing to do so. The mirrors were put up and complaints stopped. In fact, some of the previously complaining tenants congratulated management on improvement of the elevator service.
Speaking to Ian Mitroff (for a forthcoming podcast) has certainly validated and cemented my own ‘systems thinking identity’ as being focused on this kind of story – the importance of framing, the priority of actual outcomes and of making things better!
A STRUCTURE OF STEEL TUBES and blades towers 52 meters (170 feet) over the Parc de la Boverie in Liège, Belgium. Known as Tour Cybernétique (the Cybernetic Tower), the monumental structure was designed by the artist Nicolas Schöffer and assembled in 1961.
Nicolas Schöffer is known as the father of cybernetic art, which priotizes feedback over traditional aesthetics. Cybernetic art uses audio and visual feedback, computer-generated compositions, and other technological elements to create pieces of striking modernist art.
Tour Cybernétique interacts with environment through an electronic brain located in a nearby convention center, the Palais des Congrès. It is equipped with microphones, light sensors, a hygrometer, and an anemometer. This way the tower receives data about noise, light intensity, humidity and wind. Depending on this input, the electronic brain can set in motion the different pads or start one of the 12 musical sequences or light up the area with one of its 120 multi-color projectors.
Due to lack of proper maintenance, the tower was deactivated in 1970. The tower however stayed and as a testimony of a scientific process it was later classified as an exceptional heritage. In 2002, a project to restore of the tower began. In 2015 it was dismantled for a complete renovation. The control and electrical systems and lights were updated and modernized. In 2016, after more than 40 years of inactivity, the tower was operational once again.
How can living and mental “selves” exhibit properties that are so unlike the properties of the inanimate, insentient material processes that constitute them? Can an account of how order spontaneously arises from chaotic beginnings in so-called “self-organizing” processes solve these mysteries? this talk will demonstrate how self-organizing processes work, explain why they alone cannot solve these mysteries, but hen show how certain higher order relationships between self-organizing processes do create selves.
Welcome by Jay Pratt, vp of dean and infrastructure
Weigand interest: in larger questions, science and faith
This digest was created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker’s presentation(s) and comments from the audience. The content should not be viewed as an official transcript of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single…
The subject of human thermodynamics is akin to mountain climbing: we know thermodynamics governs us as it does the universe, the question is not if, the question is how? Only through study of the pioneers (below) shall we reach the summit.
“I’m sorry Lord Kelvin (1824-1907) is dead. I would travel a few thousand-million miles to discuss with him the thermodynamics of socialistic society.” (Henry Adams, Letter to English lawyer Charles Gaskell, 1909)
“The fascination of a growing science lies in the work of the pioneers at the very borderland of the unknown, but to reach this frontier one must pass over well traveled roads; of these one of the safest and surest is the broad highway of thermodynamics.” (Gilbert Lewis and Merle Randall, Thermodynamics, 1923)Each person’s photo-size is indicative of a combination of originality, contribution density, impact, and deepness of thought and theory penetration. Ranks of pioneers within a given year, are listed in descending order. Small quick-mark clickable icons, as described in the following table, are used to facilitate topics and theories associated with the work of each person. Those thinkers with equations, shown in upper right hand corner (of their description), each equation representative of that person’s work, signifies a deeper thinker who goes beyond simple verbal arguments and employs the language of differential equations, rather than simple verbal arguments, otherwise known as entropology, which are a dime-a-dozen; most-often becoming empty excursions into nonsense. Thinkers are grouped into four year-range categories: past-1799 (8+), 1800-1899 (51+), 1900-1999 (334+), and 2000-present (110+):
In the late 00’s Michelle Barton and Kathleen Sutcliffe carried out a study of wildfires in the US. They wanted to understand why some fires were well controlled and brought to a swift and happy conclusion, whilst others ran out of control causing millions of dollars of damage to thousands of acres of land.
They interviewed 28 firefighters from the north and south western states. This gave them insights into 62 different incidents.
The researchers categorised the outcome of the incidents as good or bad by how well the firefighters managed to control the blaze. At one extreme, fires were quickly extinguished whilst at the other they caused significant damage to property and on occasion firefighters had to run for their lives — literally.
They found patterns in the behaviour of those teams that controlled fires, and also those that didn’t.
In this webinar, Tim will distil his years of experience and learnings to offer an excellent introduction to the principles of transport modelling and its uses. You will develop a newfound interest in, and appreciation of this area of operational research. In particular, he will share insights on the challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and how transport modellers and operational researchers may respond. This will ensure your grasp of transport modelling is up-to-date and cutting-edge.
We have been following the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it is unlikely that a successful, broadly attended, face-to-face meeting can be safely held in October. Therefore, the organizing committee and the Complex Systems Society (CSS) have agreed to transform CCS2020 to an online event organized by the CSS during this year. Further details will be provided soon in this and in the Complex Systems Society webpage [https://cssociety.org/].
Although from @IFISC_mallorca we are going to dearly miss you this year, we are happy to announce that Mallorca will be the venue for CCS2022. With renewed energy, we expect to see you all in Mallorca from 17 to 23 October 2022 for a vibrant CCS2022 edition. We also have the honor to announce that the next presencial edition of CCS will be held in October 2021 in Lyon, France! Keep these dates in your agenda!
Important Dates
In the context of a close monitoring of the present COVID 19 situation, a new deadline for abstracts will be announced soon
Systems Community of Inquiry 
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