In Too Deep
Cultivating energy for systems change | Episode 11
JANUARY 13, 2020
In Too Deep
Cultivating energy for systems change | Episode 11
00:00 | 40:37
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SHOW NOTES
This week we’re joined by Chris Block, who is currently the Chronic Homelessness Initiative Director at Tipping Point Foundation. Previously he was the CEO of American Leadership Forum, Silicon Valley, as well as a number of other roles all really in the thick of it, as a systems leader working on systems change. I think you’ll find he has a fascinating background, with lots of insights to share, so let’s dive in.Read the full transcript on the In Too Deep blog.
Category Archives: Discussion
A view or perspective on the world
THE ADJACENT POSSIBLE – A Talk with Stuart A. Kauffman [11.9.03] | Edge.org
THE ADJACENT POSSIBLE
A Talk with Stuart A. Kauffman [11.9.03]
An autonomous agent is something that can both reproduce itself and do at least one thermodynamic work cycle. It turns out that this is true of all free-living cells, excepting weird special cases. They all do work cycles, just like the bacterium spinning its flagellum as it swims up the glucose gradient. The cells in your body are busy doing work cycles all the time.
Are living beings extended autopoietic systems? An embodied reply
Mario Villalobos, Pablo Razeto-Barry
Adaptive Behavior Vol 28, Issue 1, 2020
Building on the original formulation of the autopoietic theory (AT), extended enactivism argues that living beings are autopoietic systems that extend beyond the spatial boundaries of the organism. In this article, we argue that extended enactivism, despite having some basis in AT’s original formulation, mistakes AT’s definition of living beings as autopoietic entities. We offer, as a reply to this interpretation, a more embodied reformulation of autopoiesis, which we think is necessary to counterbalance the (excessively) disembodied spirit of AT’s original formulation. The article aims to clarify and correct what we take to be a misinterpretation of AT as a research program. AT, contrary to what some enactivists seem to believe, did not (and does not) intend to motivate an extended conception of living beings. AT’s primary purpose, we argue, was (and is) to provide a universal individuation criterion…
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Seven conceptions of ‘systems change’: A starting point for intervention | Saïd Business School (January 2020)
source Seven conceptions of ‘systems change’: A starting point for intervention | Saïd Business School
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Seven conceptions of ‘systems change’: A starting point for intervention
Almost a year on, the Systems Change Observatory at the Skoll Centre shares early research findings
How do you solve wicked problems such as climate change, global poverty and wealth inequality – issues core to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?
Global changemakers and social impact institutions broadly agree: Persistent problems demand systemic solutions. In other words, they require coordinated institutional efforts to drive long-lasting systems change.
How do we get started with this? How do we actively steer systems change to address the most pressing issues of our time?
To begin, there are several challenges to consider. One, systems change takes time and resources. Two, there is no single view about how systems change actually works. Three, it is unclear how standard research can inform practice and policy for systems change.
The Systems Change Observatory (SCO), a research initiative from the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, seeks to address these challenges directly. Combining research and practice, it strives to create what Skoll Centre Director Dr Peter Drobac calls ‘a practical roadmap for changing the world.’
Conceptions of systems change
The SCO is focused on mapping how systems change is practised in key sectors, with attention to both global North and South contexts. Led by Professor Marc Ventresca, the three-year research initiative leverages data from 110 social ventures – representing a wide range of industries and varied focus on systems change – captured over 15 years. In addition, the baseline research draws upon public information from many of the world’s most influential social impact funders, and also builds on relevant work from other academic centres and global agencies.
‘Academic approaches often grapple with “whole system” approaches’, according to Ventresca. ‘Our team is engaging these familiar models and also exploring a novel starting point: intervention and problem-solving tools, grounded in empirical cases. The world is messy, complex. We pay attention to research that integrates practice and theory, a first step in directly supporting changemakers in the world.’
In August 2019, the SCO team outlined early research findings at the Academy of Management research conference in Boston. Specifically, the team presented the different ways key funders operationalise ‘systems change’ in practice rather than in theory. These amount to seven conceptions of systems change.
‘Ours is not a theory-driven framework’, notes Dr Paulo Savaget, a postdoctoral researcher on the team. ‘These are the conceptions that funders like Acumen, Skoll, the Gates Foundation and AKDN have supported to effectively respond to systematic challenges. Each makes key assumptions about actors, resources, forms of intervention, and the nature of impact on incumbent activities and behaviours.’
The seven conceptions of systems change the research identifies include:
- Disrupt the status quo. Build momentum to transform ‘mainstream’ behaviours and activities, changing what is often seen as taken for granted, inevitable.
- Explore cause and effect. When a system is not working as it should, identify and address the root causes of a problem instead of its symptoms.
- Empower people. Democratise power throughout the system and enable disenfranchised people to take action, to have a multiplying effect and address issues ignored by the privileged and powerful.
- Improve coordination. When agencies act in isolation, they often have little capacity to bring in new actors or try to change the game. Instead, help current players work together, exploring synergies towards common goals.
- Scale up. Focus on expanding the organisation’s operations, broadening its offerings and extending its reach, to impact more people and other regions.
- Scale deep. Instead of expanding out, push the organisation to do more in its current area of specialisation with multiplex ties in the local community or region.
- Go beyond your organisation. Engage a broader view of the boundaries and expectations of what the organisation can and should do, engaging with broader opportunities with stakeholders and the ecosystem.
Building a ‘hub’ for systems change
The seven conceptions are a starting point for further research and engagement with key SCO stakeholders. This work will centre on trialling the findings, refining them and converting them into actionable insights. For the next phase of research, the SCO will investigate how systems change is pursued, framed, measured and ultimately legitimised.
While the near-term goal is to understand how systems change is practised in diverse and complex contexts around the world, the longer-term goal is something more ambitious: to enrich and change the model of engagement with different stakeholders and catalyse positive change.
‘Currently, the way experts and practitioners engage with one another is uneven and has little “translational” research guidance,’ Ventresca explains. ‘Our Skoll Centre at the Saïd Business School has an opportunity to become a hub for systems change – to bring actors together, foster collaboration, streamline efforts and build a sense of common purpose among social entrepreneurs and other changemakers, researchers, consultants, foundations and universities.’
Acknowledgements: We thank colleagues at the Skoll Centre, the Skoll Foundation and among Skoll Scholar alumni for early comments. The SCO research team also includes Nikhil Dugal, Lu Cheng and Skoll Centre Associate Director for Programmes, Dr Zainab Kabba, with media support from Georgia Rafferty.
source Seven conceptions of ‘systems change’: A starting point for intervention | Saïd Business School
Principles of the self-organizing system W. Ross Ashby (1962)
Classical Papers – Principles of the self-organizing system
E:CO Special Double Issue Vol. 6 Nos. 1-2 2004 pp. 102-126
Principles of the self-organizing system
W. Ross Ashby
Originally published as Ashby, W. R. (1962). “Principles of the self-organizing system,” in Principles of Self-Organization: Transactions of the University of Illinois Symposium, H. Von Foerster and G. W. Zopf, Jr. (eds.), Pergamon
Press: London, UK, pp. 255-278. Reproduced with the kind permission of Ross Ashby’s daughters, Sally Bannister, Ruth Pettit, and Jill Ashby. We would also like to thank John Ashby for his generous assistance in obtaining their permission.
Source (pdf)
Key takeaways from Team of Teams by General Stanley McChrystal – Beau Gordon
Small Arcs of Larger Circles framing through other patterns Nora Bateson With a Foreword by Sahra Bateson Brubeck An extract: Parts & Wholes, Hope & Horror
Creating a systems canvas – The Point People – Medium
Creating a systems canvas
Cat Drew
Following
Jan 27, 2019 · 5 min read
Why do it in the first place?
Towards the end of last year, I asked the Point People Whatsapp channel, does anyone know of a ‘systems canvas’ that I could use on a project? I was after something that people and organisations from across a system could work together to create which would serve as a visual reminder of the ingredients they needed to take a wide and sustained approach to achieving their goal (increasing physical activity).
It is of course, not as simple as that. Systems change is complex, ever emergent and is forged in relationships rather than setting out a nice, rational plan on a piece of paper. However, in the same way as mapping is valuable in creating a shared understanding of what is going on, it is similarly important to communicate a shared sense of where we are going to.
There are many tools, guides and articles out there (including Systems change: a guide to what it is and how to do it by NPC & Lankelly Chase, Systems Changers by The Point People, the Systems Changers Programmedesigned by the Point People & Lankelly Chase, Systems Practice by the Omidyar Group and Putting the system back into systems change: a framework for understanding and changing organisations & community systems by Pennie Foster-Fisherman). This exercise was not to duplicate these, but rather to draw on this work, and bring together the conclusions into one place to share with the system you are working with.
Continues in source Creating a systems canvas – The Point People – Medium
Canvas: https://www.slideshare.net/CatDrew1/the-point-people-systems-canvas
Systems thinking tools – a user’s reference guide, by Daniel H Kim (1994)
Thinking in Systems – a primer – Donnella H Meadows, 2008
Constellation Collaboration: A model for multi-organizational partnership Written by Tonya Surman – a Centre for Social Innovation think piece
Guides to mapping a system (2019) – student and teacher versions, Daniela Papi-Thornton et al
Student Guide to Mapping a System by Anna Johnson, Daniela Papi-Thornton, and James Stauch, January 2019
Click to access Student-Guide-to-Mapping-a-System-1.pdf
Teaching Guide to Mapping a System 2019, by Daniela Papi-Thornton
February 10 (the second Monday of the month) is the 76th meeting for Systems Thinking Ontario – Systems Thinking and an Ontology of Becoming
2020-02-10
February 10 (the second Monday of the month) is the 76th meeting for Systems Thinking Ontario. The registration is on Eventbrite at https://ontology-of-becoming.eventbrite.com.Systems Thinking and an Ontology of Becoming
What are the systems changes in which we’re interested? Answering the question of “what is” generally involves ontology, the physical study of being. Human beings are living systems who anticipate (and are sometimes surprised by) a world that is becoming less or more to their preferences.This February session of Systems Thinking Ontario will take advantage of lecture materials prepared as introductory for the “Systemic Design” classes of the Master’s program in Strategic Foresight and Innovation. As an alternative to a presentation (i.e. the first 35 slides delivered within timebox constraints, given the graduate students have other content to learn, towards course and degree requirements), we will have a leisurely conversation paced to the interests of regular Systems Thinking Ontario attendees. (We will start on slide 36, and move forward collectively).
This agenda is guided by partially based on directions discussed at the January 2020 meeting. If the February meeting goes well, we may continue with a series of topics following the Systemic Design course material.
Venue:
OCADU, sLab (Strategic Innovation Lab), 205 Richmond Street West, Room 410
Suggested pre-reading:
The blog post following the SFI class includes slides, audio recordings and web video of the lecture (i.e. the first 35 slides). These are not a pre-requisite for attending, but are highly recommended.“Are Systems Changes Different from System + Change?” | January 23, 2020 at http://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/are-systems-changes-different-from-system-change/
Agenda
John Von Neuman: Complexity – From Representation to Performativity
In his Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata John Von Neuman one of the father’s of the modern computer tells us:
there is … this completely decisive property of complexity, that there exists a critical size below which the process of synthesis is degenerative, but above which the phenomenon of synthesis, if properly arranged, can become explosive, in other words, where syntheses of automata can proceed in such a manner that each automaton will produce other automata which are more complex and of higher potentialities than itself.1
This notion that complex systems can at certain thresholds begin to degenerate, but that at other boundary lines suddenly shift into gear and begin to create more complex systems with greater potential and adaptive capabilities is now a cornerstone of certain forms of computing. It’s upon this very principle of complexification that many of the popularizers of a singularity and AI theoretic base their claims.
One…
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Is the System Badly Named? Noise as the Paradoxical (Non-)foundation of Social Systems Theory Justine Grønbæk Pors (2015)
Cybernetics and Human Knowing. Vol. 22 (2015), no. 4, pp. 75-89
Is the System Badly Named? Noise as the Paradoxical (Non-)foundation
of Social Systems Theory Justine Grønbæk Pors
Through an analysis of the concept of noise, this paper argues that Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory is not only a theory built on binary oppositions such as system/environment, but also a theory full of paradoxical third things that challenges any idea of systems as stable, systematic entities. To revitalise the concept of noise I trace the concept back to the sources that Luhmann draws on, namely Heinz von Foerster and Henri Atlan. Moreover, I introduce Michel Serres’s theory of noise to emphasis that noise is not just an outside to orderly systems, but the unstable ground of always changing orders. Through this synthesis I conclude that systems should not be understood as predictable entities or identities with pre-given boundaries, but rather as autopoietic processes driven by indeterminacy and paradoxes.
Keywords: Niklas Luhmann, noise, Henri Atlan, Michel Serres, social systems theory
Click to access Article_75-89_0.pdf
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