Three month Systemic Leadership Summit – unprecedented times, unprecedented leadership, March 30-June 28, 2020

A nice offer from Jennifer Campbell, the force behind the Systemic Leadership Summit –

[declaration – I’m one of the speakers – but although I previously had a franchise link for the summit I was directly involved in, I have no commercial interest in this one]

via 3 month Systemic Leadership Summit

Unprecedented Times, Unprecedented Leadership

A three month-online systemic leadership journey

77+ highly valuable thought leader sessions, weekly live calls, online community

The ultimate daily cadence for leaders and systems thinking practitioners in times of crisis

MARCH 30 – JUNE 28, 2020

Only $77

3 month Systemic Leadership Journey

 

In these times of crisis, many leaders and professionals are concerned and anxious. We all share the same complex problems and wonder how to deal with the uncertainty and volatility that this brings to our work and our lives. We want to step up and do something.

 

Unprecedented times call for unprecedented leadership.

To help you navigate this uncertain period, we want to offer you daily support, inspiration and a moment to pause and reflect.

As you may know our summits contain highly valuable expert summit sessions with thought leaders and wise individuals.

Participants have paid hundreds of dollars to have access to their value packed systems thinking based strategies.

Now, we want to help you hold space for whatever emerges and lead in uncertain times.

Gain access to the best of what we’ve learned and accumulated over the years.

We are offering the best of ALL four summits to you for only $1 per summit session.

Online community and weekly live calls with participants (and possibly speakers) are included.

 

 

more info and book at 3 month Systemic Leadership Summit

 

Speakers March 30 – April 5

Sessions are broadcast daily from Monday to Saturday at 4pm CET

Fritjof Capra

A Systems View of Life

Scientist, Educator, Activist,

Author of best selling books

 

Dr. Eliat Aram

Leading in Complex Times

CEO of the Tavistock Institute of

Human Relations

 

Dr. William Tate

Understanding Systemic Leadership

Director of the Systemic Leadership Institute, author of books about systemic leadership

Nora Bateson

Liminal Leadership:

Leading from the In-between

President of the International Bateson Institute, research designer, film-maker, writer.

Dr. Peter Senge

System Leadership:

Solving Problems That Matter

Founding Chair of System Leadership Institute, author of the Fifth Discipline , senior lecturer MIT.

Arawana Hayashi

Social Presencing Theatre

Head of the creation of Social Presencing Theater at Presencing Institute. Choreographer, performer educator

JOIN OUR ONLINE JOURNEY HERE

 

Speakers April 6 – 12

Sessions are broadcast daily from Monday to Saturday at 4pm CET

Margaret Wheatley

Who do we Choose to be?

Speaker, teacher, community worker, consultant, advisor, formal leader. Best selling author of nine books.

Mathias Weitbrecht

The Why & How Of Visualization

Founder and Managing Director of Visual Facilitators, Facilitator, Visual Strategist, Graphic Recorder

 

Noomi Natan

The Power Of Constellations

Certified Coach and Constellatory trained at The Centre for Systemic Constellation and the Nowhere Academy

Dave Snowden

The Cynefin Framework

The renowned developer of the Cynefin framework. Founder & chief scientific officer of Cognitive Edge Researcher  knowledge management.

Jan Jacob Stam

Systemic Phenomenological Work

Pioneer in systemic work in the Netherlands , founder of the Bert Hellinger Institute in Groningen,

the Netherlands.

 

Benjamin Taylor

Paradoxes, polarities, paradigm shifts

Chief Executive of the Public Service Transformation Academy and managing partner of RedQuadrant. Passionate about systems thinking.

JOIN OUR ONLINE JOURNEY HERE

 

Speakers April 13 – 19

Sessions are broadcast daily from Monday to Saturday at 4pm CET

Peter Hawkins

The Future of Leadership and Leadership Team Coaching

Professor of Leadership at Henley Business School, best-selling author of Leadership Team Coaching

 

Heather Plett

Holding Liminal Space

 

Speaker, Writer, Facilitator of the Holding Space Facilitator Program

 

 

Dr. Leslie Brissett

Contemporary Challenges when Leading Systemically

Company Secretary & Principal Consultant at the Tavistock Institute, Co-Director of the Dynamics at Board Level programme

John Renesch

A Shift in Consciousness

 

Advisor, mentor, futurist. Writer on social & organizational change

 

Christiane Seuhs-Schoeller

Language Of Spaces

Founding member and partner at Encode.org and Evolution at Work, Creator of Language of Spaces

Dr. Louis Klein

Governance, Purpose, Change

and Potential

Internationally recognized expert in the field of systemic change and complex project management.

JOIN OUR ONLINE JOURNEY HERE

 

Speakers April 20 – 26

Sessions are broadcast daily from Monday to Saturday at 4pm CET

Phil Cady

The Organic System Framework

President of Cognitive Leadership Strategies West, Master Facilitator Organization Workshop

Kathleen E. Allen

Leading from the Roots

President of Kathleen Allen and Associates, leadership expert, author of Systemic Leadership books

Ed & Peter Schein

Humble Leadership

Bestselling author, father of organizational culture studies and

Silicon Valley strategy consultant, helps start-ups & expansion-phase technology companies.

Anthony Howard

Human Centered Leadership

CEO, entrepreneur, thought leader, philosopher, author of the book “Humanise”,

“CEO Whisperer”

 

Deborah Rowland

Still Moving

Deborah is an experienced change leader, founder of a research consulting firm, executive coach and author of the book Still Moving.

 

Giles Hutchins

Regenerative leadership

Chair of the Future Fit Leadership Academy, co-author of Regenerative Leadership,(co)founder of Leadership Immersions, Regenerators, a.o.

JOIN OUR ONLINE JOURNEY HERE

 

Speakers April 27 – May 3

Sessions are broadcast daily from Monday to Saturday at 4pm CET

Nora Bateson

The Leadership Paradox

President of the International Bateson Institute, a research designer, independent film-maker, writer, and lecturer.

Marshall Goldsmith

Great Leadership

 

World renown #1 Executive Coach, bestselling author of “What got you here won’t get you there”

Dr. Michael Buehler

Global Systemic Leadership in Political and Business Environments

Head of Infrastructure and Urban Development at the World Economic Forum, project manager, consultant

Marita Fridjhon

Intelligent Teams

Co-founder & CEO CRR Global,

co-creator of ORSC

 

Dr. Morne Mostert

Systemic Leadership Learning

Director of the Institute for Futures Research, President World Leadership Day

Gina Hayden

Questions for Conscious Leaders

Leadership expert, Author of Becoming a Conscious Leader

 

JOIN OUR ONLINE JOURNEY HERE

 

Speakers May 4 – 10

Sessions are broadcast daily from Monday to Saturday at 4pm CET

Joan Lurie

Orgonomics

CEO of Orgonomix, helps leaders & organisations to transform

Jim Kouzes

Relationship Building for Leaders

Bestselling author, co-author of The Leadership

Ella Saltmarshe

Role of Story in Systems Change

Writer, co-founder, innovator

Anne Rød

Systemic Leadership in Action

Intercultural management consultant and executive team coach, Systems Inspired Leadership Faculty, co-author of “Intelligent Teams”

Dion Johnson

Women Leadership & Systemic Change

Strategic Ally,  Master Coach, Founder of Woman Leader Global,

“The Womanologist”

 

Klaus Lombardozzi

Leading With Relationship Intelligence

Leader in Multinational Organizations, Internationally CRR Global Certified Organizational & Systems/Team Coach

JOIN OUR ONLINE JOURNEY HERE

 

Speakers May 11 – 17

Sessions are broadcast daily from Monday to Saturday at 4pm CET

Siets Bakker

Moving Questions

Organization consultant, forerunner in applied systemic work. Family & organizational constellator.

Jo McHale

Nonviolent Communication

Certified Non Violent Communication (NVC) Trainer,

Leadership Coach

Andre Wierdsma

SL: The Fragility of the ‘In-between’

Emeritus Professor of Organization & Co-creation (Nijenrode University), best-selling author

Katherine Long

The Application And Practice Of Systemic (Leadership) Approaches

Eco-systems development practitioner at Evolution OD, writer and international speaker.

Katherine Tyler Scott

Leading Highly Anxious Systems

Managing Principal of KiThoughtBridge , Chair of the International Leadership Association Board (ILA)

Olivier Piazza

Collective Intelligence

Collective Intelligence

Program Leader,

Executive Coach

 

JOIN OUR ONLINE JOURNEY HERE

 

Speakers May 18 – 24

Sessions are broadcast daily from Monday to Saturday at 4pm CET

Edward Howard &

Sarah Rozenthuler

Purpose-Led Leadership

 Co-directors of The Whole Partnership, systemic work, constellations & dialogue experts.

Dr. Glenda Eoyang

Human Systems Dynamics

Pioneer in the applications of complexity science to organizational systems, developed human systems dynamics (HSD).

Zachary Green

Leadership and Group Relations

Co-founder Group Relations International, Associate Director Leadership Institute (San Diego)

 

Dr. Aftab Omer

An Exploration Of Transformative Leadership

President of Meridian University, former president of the Council for Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychologies, sociologist, psychologist and futurist.

Pilar García Sánchez

Beyond the Numbers

Strategic business development manager at Medtronic and Chair of the Medtronic Women’s Network in The Netherlands.

 

 

Brian “Ponch” Rivera

The Flow System™

Co-creator of the Flow System™, worked at the US Navy,

Agile & innovation trainer.

 

 

 

JOIN OUR ONLINE JOURNEY HERE

 

Speakers May 25 – 31

Sessions are broadcast daily from Monday to Saturday at 4pm CET

Dr. Amy Mindell

Process Work and Deep Democracy

Process Work & Deep Democracy expert, creator of MetaSkills

 

 

Jeremy Lloyd

Hearing the Customers Voice

Independent consultant, former leader in business, creating customer-centric solutions and executing strategic plans.

Cynthia Loy Darst

The Inside Team

Master Certified Coach (ICF), Front of the Room Leader CTI and CRR Global, speaker, author

 

Sarah Cornally

Systems Intelligence In The Corporate Space

Strategic Leadership Advisor, Systemic Intelligence Pioneer and Educator of Practitioners, Leadership Circle™ Faculty in Asia Pacific region.

Max Schupbach

Deep Democracy

Co-founder of the Deep Democracy Institute (DDI), a think tank, learning hub and consulting group based on the Process Work paradigm, an inclusive whole system paradigm.

Dr. Susan Gantt

Systems-centered Training

Director of the Systems-Centered Training & Research Institute,

Educator in Systems-Centered Training

 

JOIN OUR ONLINE JOURNEY HERE

 

Speakers June 1 – 7

Sessions are broadcast daily from Monday to Saturday at 4pm CET

Myrna Lewis

The Power and Potential of Conflict

Co-founder of the Lewis Method of Deep Democracy and Head of Professional Services for Deep Democracy Ltd.

Antonio Belgrave

Positive Deviant Performance

Former leader in pharmaceutical industry, Organisation Development Specialist

 

Brian Robertson

Holacracy: Leadership When Goals and Roles Rule

Inventor Holacracy, experienced entrepreneur HolacracyOne, pioneer, author of book ‘Holacracy’

Ray Haddock

Developing Organizations with Systems Centered Training

Qualified in medicine, Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, Systems Centered Training Expert

 

Gaston Schmitz

Community Behavior Change

Former UN program advisor,

Coach Asian Leadership Institute

 

 

 

Monica Velarde Lazart

The Hope of the Amazon – Systemic Leadership Case Study

Director of T-Consult Socioanalytic Practice. Social scientist, org. & leadership development consultant and coach

JOIN OUR ONLINE JOURNEY HERE

 

Speakers June 8 – 14

Sessions are broadcast daily from Monday to Saturday at 4pm CET

Diederick Janse

Getting Teams Done: Leading and Serving

Entrepreneur, Holacracy expert, Co-founder of Energized.org, author of Getting Teams Done

Danielle Braun

Building Tribes

Co-founder and director of the Culture Academy (NL), co-author of The Corporate Tribe, leadership & culture expert

Patrick Hoverstadt

The Viable Systems Model

Consultant, author of The Fractal Organization: Creating sustainable organizations with the Viable System Model and other books.

Jitske Kramer

Culture Change in the Corporate Tribe

Co-founder and Chief of the Culture Academy, Founder of Human Dimensions, author, trainer

 

 

John Watters

Systems Blindness and Stuck Systems

Managing Director of Living Leadership, Master Trainer and Leading authority on Barry Oshry’s systems leadership work

 

Dr. Stuart Hill

Enabling Real Change Ecologically

Emeritus Professor and Foundation Chair of Social Ecology in the School of Education. Received “Leadership for Sustainability Award” from Australia’s Centre for Sustainability Leadership.

JOIN OUR ONLINE JOURNEY HERE

 

Speakers June 15 – 21

Sessions are broadcast daily from Monday to Saturday at 4pm CET

Dr. Mette Böll

Shapeshifting Education

Biologist, specializing in the evolution of complex social systems, organizational ethology,  holds additional degrees in contemplative leadership and philosophy & history of science.

Dr. Alexander Laszlo

Thrivability & Being The Systems You Want To See In The World

Director of Development at L-INPR, President of B of D BCSSS & ISSS, Founding Dir. of the Doctoral Program in Leadership & Systemic Innovation at ITBA (Arg.)

George Pór

Evolutionary Purpose

Founder of Community Intelligence, Creator of the Enlivening Edge Community and Faculty member at Meridian University

 

 

Laura Storm

Regenerative Leadership and the Practice of Silence

Awarded the title “Worldchanger” by Greenbiz, selected by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader and Sustainability Expert.

Christian Kromme

Humanification: Go Digital, Stay Human

Author of Humanification, Public Speaker, and board member at a.o. the Workforce Institute EMEA and the Human Genome Foundation

Dr. Orit Gal

Social Acupuncture

Senior Lecturer for Strategy and Complexity at Regent’s University London, political economist, founder of tech start-up “Urbaniser”.

 

JOIN OUR ONLINE JOURNEY HERE

 

Speakers June 22 – 28

Sessions are broadcast daily from Monday to Saturday at 4pm CET

Jean-Louis Lamboray

Strength-based Community Building

Co-founder of The Constellation, former UNAIDS health specialist, author: “What makes us human?”

Wendy Mahoney

Why Innovation is Human

Head of Newmella Holdings, seminal expert and lecturer on the topic of Business Innovation

Lili Gulbert

Strategic Systemic Change

Systemic Change Strategist, builds collaborative intelligence with executives

Dr. Peter Robertson

Ecology In Business

Executive Lecturer at Nyenrode Business University, visiting professor to universities in NL, USA and China, author of Always Change A Winning Team and The Ecological Leader, ​Senior consultant.

Nora Bateson

Warm Data and Warm Data Labs

President of the International Bateson Institute, a research designer, independent film-maker, writer, and lecturer.

 

 

Martin Kalungu-Banda

Leading from the Emerging Future

Martin is a consultant in organization and leadership development, a facilitator of innovation and change; trainer, coach and author. He is faculty for the Presencing Institute.

The UK’s coronavirus policy may sound scientific. It isn’t | Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Yaneer Bar-Yam | Opinion | The Guardian

via The UK’s coronavirus policy may sound scientific. It isn’t | Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Yaneer Bar-Yam | Opinion | The Guardian

The UK’s coronavirus policy may sound scientific. It isn’t

Dominic Cummings loves to theorise about complexity, but he’s getting it all wrong

 and 

When, along with applied systems scientist Dr Joe Norman, we first reacted to coronavirus on 25 January with the publication of an academic note urging caution, the virus had reportedly infected fewer than 2,000 people worldwide and fewer than 60 people were dead. That number need not have been so high.

At the time of writing, the numbers are 351,000 and 15,000 respectively. Our research did not use any complicated model with a vast number of variables, no more than someone watching an avalanche heading in their direction calls for complicated statistical models to see if they need to get out of the way.

We called for a simple exercise of the precautionary principle in a domain where it mattered: interconnected complex systems have some attributes that allow some things to cascade out of control, delivering extreme outcomes. Enact robust measures that would have been, at the time, of small cost: constrain mobility. Immediately. Later, we invoked a rapid investment in preparedness: tests, hospital capacity, means to treat patients. Just in case, you know. Things can happen.

The error in the UK is on two levels. Modelling and policymaking.

First, at the modelling level, the government relied at all stages on epidemiological models that were designed to show us roughly what happens when a preselected set of actions are made, and not what we should make happen, and how.

The modellers use hypotheses/assumptions, which they then feed into models, and use to draw conclusions and make policy recommendations. Critically, they do not produce an error rate. What if these assumptions are wrong? Have they been tested? The answer is often no. For academic papers, this is fine. Flawed theories can provoke discussion. Risk management – like wisdom – requires robustness in models.

But if we base our pandemic response plans on flawed academic models, people die. And they will.

This was the case with the disastrous “herd immunity” thesis. The idea behind herd immunity was that the outbreak would stop if enough people got sick and gained immunity. Once a critical mass of young people gained immunity, so the epidemiological modellers told us, vulnerable populations (old and sick people) would be protected. Of course, this idea was nothing more than a dressed-up version of the “just do nothing” approach.

Individuals and scientists around the world immediately pointed out the obvious flaws: there’s no way to ensure only young people get infected; you need 60-70% of the population to be infected and recover to have a shot at herd immunity, and there aren’t that many young and healthy people in the UK, or anywhere. Moreover, many young people have severe cases of the disease, overloading healthcare systems, and a not-so-small number of them die. It is not a free ride.

This doesn’t even include the possibility, already suspected in some cases, of reccurrence of the disease. Immunity may not even be reliable for this virus.

Worse, it did not take into account that the duration of hospitalisation can be lengthier than they think, or that one can incur a shortage of hospital beds.

Second, but more grave, is the policymaking. No 10 appears to be enamoured with “scientism” – things that have the cosmetic attributes of science but without its rigour. This manifests itself in the nudge group that engages in experimenting with UK citizens or applying methods from behavioural economics that fail to work outside the university – yet patronise citizens as an insult to their ancestral wisdom and risk-perception apparatus. Social science is in a “replication crisis”, where less than half the results replicate (under exact same conditions), less than a tenth can be taken seriously, and less than a hundredth translate into the real world.

So what is called “evidence-based” methods have a dire track record and are pretty much evidence-free. This scientism also manifests itself in Boris Johnson’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings’s love of complexity and complex systems (our speciality) which he appears to apply incorrectly. And letting a segment of the population die for the sake of the economy is a false dichotomy – aside from the moral repugnance of the idea.

As we said, when one deals with deep uncertainty, both governance and precaution require us to hedge for the worst. While risk-taking is a business that is left to individuals, collective safety and systemic risk are the business of the state. Failing that mandate of prudence by gambling with the lives of citizens is a professional wrongdoing that extends beyond academic mistake; it is a violation of the ethics of governing.

The obvious policy left now is a lockdown, with overactive testing and contact tracing: follow the evidence from China and South Korea rather than thousands of error-prone computer codes. So we have wasted weeks, and ones that matter with a multiplicative threat.

 Nassim Nicholas Taleb is distinguished professor of risk engineering at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering and author of The Black Swan. Yaneer Bar-Yam is president of the New England Complex System Institute

Ecology and Economy: Systems Changes Ahead? – Coevolving Innovations – David Ing

A series of pieces on coevolving.com from January-March of this year, which I’ll be linking out one per week (but all are on the blog). Here is 1/5

via Ecology and Economy: Systems Changes Ahead? – Coevolving Innovations

Ecology and Economy: Systems Changes Ahead?

Following the workshop at 2019 CANSEE Conference, cohosted with David L. Hawk, we were invited to contribute an article to a special issue of WEI Magazine.  Here’s the abstract for the workshop in May:

 

[HEADINGS ONLY]

Systems Changes, Environmental Deterioration

This dialogue-oriented workshop will be framed by two short position papers (< 30 minutes each) towards energizing a discussion on the prospects for systems thinking and ecological economics.

(1) Systems Changes research program

(2) Environmental Deterioration: What have we learned about systems change(s) over the past 50 years?

(3) Dialectic: Group Discussion


Ecology and Economy: Systems Changes Ahead?

By: David Ing

One doesn’t recognize the really important moments in one’s life until it’s too late. — Agatha Christie

Living in a world where systems changes are omnipresent, where do we focus our attention? We read every day about climate change and economic change as major forces that are impacting our world. These forces — partially under human control and partially not — are perplexing in their plurality: systems changes as beyond stable states we have enjoyed, and beyond the limits that we have previously expected. Action by individuals and groups range from (i) dealing with imminent systems changes when the evidence cannot be denied, to (ii) anticipating negative and positive systems changes on the horizon with proactive foresight.

Let’s step through three ideas: (a) three attitudes towards systems changes; (b) human responses to impending tragedy; and (c) surfacing the values that we appreciate.

A. Three attitudes towards systems changes

B. Human responses to impending tragedy

C. Surfacing the values we appreciate


David Ing, “Ecology and Economy: Systems Changes Ahead?“, WEI Magazine, Volume 100/101, pp. 59-62

 

People and Systems — Creating Networks of System Leadership and Practice – Keyes, Khela, Storr, and Walsh (2019)

via People and Systems — Creating Networks of System Leadership and Practice – International Journal of HRD Practice, Policy & Research

pdf: https://www.ijhrdppr.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/2-IJHRDPPR-Vol-4-No-1-Keyes-et-al.pdf

International Journal of HRD Practice, Policy and Research 2019, Vol 4 No 1: 7-24

doi: 10.22324/ijhrdppr.4.105

People and Systems — Creating Networks of System Leadership and Practice

Steve Keyes, Organisational Development Lead for Leeds UK
Manraj Singh Khela, Head of Partnerships, Health Partnerships Team Leeds UK
Frances Storr, Director, Levati, Bradford UK
John Walsh, Organisational Development Lead, Leeds Community Health NHS Trust UK

Our health systems are under pressure from increasing demands within a challenging and changing landscape. There is a need for new approaches that are joined up, relational, co-created and co‑delivered. Without them there is a risk of poor experiences, a worsening of health and social outcomes and inefficient use of increasingly scarce resources. This paper reports a move towards a system leadership culture with an approach and a methodology for creating that. This requires people from different organizations with different cultures and governance to work together as if they were one organization.

This paper focuses on a major Organizational Development initiative in the city of Leeds, England to create the conditions and framework for such an approach. It reports on a methodology for creating a community of system leaders who work across the system for the benefit of the people of Leeds. A complementary aspiration of this paper was to propose a new field of theory — Dynamic System Theory — which is a derivation of Organization Development and which would benefit from further research.

One of the key achievements of this work has been an increasing distributed leadership across localities which is the key to the leadership of a complex evolving system. This has focused on people, communities and relationships, discovering common ground and connection to a bigger aim.

Key words: organization development, systems theory, system leadership, networks

 

A Framework for Systemic Design – Ryan (2014)

via [PDF] A Framework for Systemic Design | Semantic Scholar

Corpus ID: 56245403

A Framework for Systemic Design

As designers move upstream from traditional product and service design to engage with challenges characterised by complexity, uniqueness, value conflict, and ambiguity over objectives, they have increasingly integrated systems approaches into their practice. This synthesis of systems thinking with design thinking is forming a distinct new field of systemic design. This paper presents a framework for systemic design as a mindset, methodology, and set of methods that together enable teams to learn, innovate, and adapt to a complex and dynamic environment. We suggest that a systemic design mindset is inquiring, open, integrative, collaborative, and centred. We propose a systemic design methodology composed of six main activities: framing, formulating, generating, reflecting, inquiring, and facilitating. We view systemic design methods as a flexible and open-ended set of procedures for facilitating group collaboration that are both systemic and designerly.

Freaking Out Is Part of Systems Change – Faster Than 20

via Freaking Out Is Part of Systems Change – Faster Than 20

Situated cognition – Wikipedia

via Situated cognition – Wikipedia

Legitimate peripheral participation – Wikipedia

via Legitimate peripheral participation – Wikipedia

“If You Want to Understand the Big Issues, You Need to Understand the Everyday Practices That Constitute Them.” Lucy Suchman in Conversation With Dominik Gerst & Hannes Krämer | Suchman

via “If You Want to Understand the Big Issues, You Need to Understand the Everyday Practices That Constitute Them.” Lucy Suchman in Conversation With Dominik Gerst & Hannes Krämer | Suchman | Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research

Lucy Suchman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Suchman

Simon’s ant & system complexity – The Seemingly Unrelated

Also: https://everything2.com/title/Simon%2527s+ant

https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/LuisGuimaraes/20131204/205979/Simons_Ant_On_The_Beach.php

 

 

via Simon’s ant & system complexity – The Seemingly Unrelated

Simon’s ant & system complexity

Sean Newman Maroni

Sean Newman Maroni

Following
Jan 18, 2015 · 2 min read

Where is the complexity? Just because a system’s environment is complex does not mean that the systems operating within it must be complex as well.

“An ant, viewed as a behaving system, is quite simple. The apparent complexity of its behavior over time is largely a reflection of the complexity of the environment in which it finds itself.” — Herbert Simon (Simon’s Law)

Simon’s Law is about an ant on a beach looking for food. If you were to graph the ant’s path it would look swervy and complex.

If you saw this line with no other context, you’d think to yourself: “some ant.” If however you had in your possession a corresponding picture of the beach, you would realize that there is nothing special about the ant at all.

In complex terrain even a simple robot can mimic the ant’s path with only a few simple rules. That robot could be programmed to change course when the strait path is blocked. There are Arduino kits designed for middle schoolers that do this.

Simon’s Ant reminds us to always take the environment into consideration when analyzing a problem. In other words: understand both the content and context of any problem. Most people believe that complex problems require equally complex solutions. But the inverse is often more accurate when context is considered.

Be wary of simple problems.

via Simon’s ant & system complexity – The Seemingly Unrelated

 

The Free Energy Principle at the Gemba:

Harish's avatarHarish's Notebook - My notes... Lean, Cybernetics, Quality & Data Science.

FEP

In today’s post, I am looking at the Free Energy Principle (FEP) by the British neuroscientist, Karl Friston. The FEP basically states that in order to resist the natural tendency to disorder, adaptive agents must minimize surprise. A good example to explain this is to say successful fish typically find themselves surrounded by water, and very atypically find themselves out of water, since being out of water for an extended time will lead to a breakdown of homoeostatic (autopoietic) relations.[1]

Here the free energy refers to an information-theoretic construct:

Because the distribution of ‘surprising’ events is in general unknown and unknowable, organisms must instead minimize a tractable proxy, which according to the FEP turns out to be ‘free energy’. Free energy in this context is an information-theoretic construct that (i) provides an upper bound on the extent to which sensory data is atypical (‘surprising’) and (ii) can be evaluated…

View original post 1,406 more words

Boyd’s OODA ‘Loop,” Really Final Edition – Slightly East of New

via Boyd’s OODA ‘Loop,” Really Final Edition – Slightly East of New

Boyd’s OODA ‘Loop,” Really Final Edition

The Norwegian Defense University has just published a new version of “Boyd’s OODA Loop” in their journal, Necesse, edited by Royal Norwegian Naval Academy. I had thought that the previous version was about as close to perfection as can be found on this Earth, but alas Necesse is a peer-reviewed journal, and “Reviewer No. 2” ripped it to shreds. After I calmed down, it was clear that Number 2 was right. So the edition published in the journal is vastly improved over the last version.

As Boyd suggested in his final briefing, The Essence of Winning and Losing (all of Boyd’s works are available for free download on our Articles page), the OODA “loop” is simply a schematic representing three processes and the interplay among them:

  • Using our existing implicit repertoire
  • Creating new and therefore unexpected ways to use our repertoire in the heat of conflict
  • Creating new repertoire, principally by training when not in direct contact with an opponent
From “The Essence of Winning and Losing,” 1996.

In fact, he even called his drawing of the OODA “loop” a “sketch,” strongly indicating that there might be better ways to represent these processes, and over time, people have suggested several.

The folks at Necesse have done a magnificent job of making this rather long and complex paper readable. Although I am sure there are many people involved whom I do not know — you have my sincere gratitude — I would like especially to thank two officers of the Royal Norwegian Navy whom I know quite well and am proud to call colleagues, Commanders Roar Espevik, Main Editor of Necesse, and Tommy Krabberød, who approached me with the idea of a new version of the paper and encouraged me to press on with a major revision as a result of certain peer review comments.

You can download the paper from the Articles page. The current edition of Necesse, which contains the paper, is available at https://fhs.brage.unit.no/fhs-xmlui/handle/11250/2647802, and past issues can be found at https://fhs.brage.unit.no/fhs-xmlui/handle/11250/2559117. It’s an interesting journal. There are quite a few articles in English, and, through the miracle of Google Translate, you should have no trouble with the others.

The origin of the name, incidentally, is found on the last page of the journal.

Toilet Paper Shortage: Retailers Play the ‘Beer Game’ – Bloomberg

via Toilet Paper Shortage: Retailers Play the ‘Beer Game’ – Bloomberg

Beyond Complexity

ComplexWales's avatar

Oliver Wendell Holmes (OWH) was a Supreme Court justice who once said something so profound, that few people at the time, including himself, really understood the depth of the sentiment.

There are a few slightly different versions, quoted in various places, but I think this one best captures the sentiment. He also said a few other things, many notable, some stupid and several now unrepeatable. With regard to this quote, he is essentially saying that either side of the inherent ambiguity of complex situations, there are some calmer more understandable spaces, but and this is the crux, those other spaces are not the same. They are easily confused by the uninitiated, but they are fundamentally different to operate within, effectively.

This Side…

We’re all familiar with the simple stuff “this side” as he calls it. There are some things that are enduring, easy to understand, buried in common knowledge, do…

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Systemic Design – Systems Innovation Live Discussion – LIVE – 23 March, 18:00 UK time

via Systemic Design: Live Discussion – YouTube

LIVE – 23 March, 18:00 UK time

Systemic Design: Live Discussion

How do we approach design in the age of complexity? How can we ensure sustainable outcomes when designing? Systemic design is an approach to design that starts from the perspective of the whole system; how to design for synergies between the parts, networks and the emergence of sustainable outcomes. This 1-hour discussion hopes to shed light on what we mean by the term “systemic design” and how we can approach it. The Speakers: Tom Bosschaert is the Founder and Director at Except, a design firm which develops and implements strategies to make cities, buildings, companies, industries and day-to-day life more resilient, more sustainable, and more human. Tom has recently developed the Symbiosis in Development methodology, combining systems thinking, complexity analysis, iterative design thinking and co-creation in multi-disciplinary teams, and shared this as a free e-book: http://thinksid.org Virginie Gailing is a co-designer and permaculturist. She is teaching “Systemic Design” and “Participatory & transformation design” at the Design Akademie Berlin. She is a collaborator at the Systemic Design Group, a community-of-practice who seek to make Systems Thinking more approachable. Kristel Van Ael is a Designer and Creative Director of the Namahn design agency, which specialises in human-centered design. She also teaches product-service systems and systemic design at the University of Antwerpen. Namahn has also collaborated to produce a Systemic Design Toolkit which summarises some principles and provides templates to facilitate the process of systemic design: https://www.systemicdesigntoolkit.org
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