This article is also available in PDF form, suitable for printing.Organizing is difficult, and often exhausting work. It means bringing together strangers and facing a hostile environment along with them.
To help, this pamphlet introduces the structure for developing viable organizations. By viability, I mean the ability to adapt to and survive changes in the environment. The structure of viable organizations lets members share important information with those who need it, while filtering out noise. This ability to adapt and channel information allows for quick responses to danger or need, without losing sight of the big picture.
This structure has been used in many co-ops, as well as in the democratic revolution of 1970-1973 in Chile.
The Viable System Model
The Viable System Model (VSM) gives us this structure for building viable organizations. We can also use it to check if our organizations are set up to survive hostile environments. Any viable system should look like the VSM, so don’t be surprised if you are already doing a lot of what it suggests.
The VSM has six parts, called systems. These don’t need to be their own offices or committees, but every viable organization should somehow include all six functions…
What if the global economy were structured, not to send wealth into the hands of a tiny group of oligarchs, but rather to ensure the best possible lives for everyone, ensuring that people lived fulfilling lives free from want, engaged in activities that interested them and engaged them, enabling them to pursue their own interests alongside working for the common good? What if people worked in co-operatives, coordinated together to meet the needs of society, organized from below rather than from above, with the workers themselves as the beneficiaries of their labor? What if the global economy elevated workers instead of immiserating them?
Stafford Beer devoted his life to answering these questions. A gifted child, he entered University College London at the age of 13, but dropped out to join the army at the start of World War II.
Beer was stationed in India in 1947 at the time of the Partition, and was one of the last British soldiers out. During his time in India, he studied yoga and Tantra, and even saw Gandhi give speeches. He was trained in the British intelligence services that emerged in World War II. He learned operational research, which the war had made prominent, and after leaving India, the military trained him as an army psychologist. He got married and entered the private sector, developing the operational research group for United Steel. He began to write papers in cybernetics, and Norbert Weiner, the founder of the science of cybernetics, invited him to MIT, where he met the neurophysiologist Warren McCulloch, who mentored Beer in cybernetics. In Britain, Beer worked with British cyberneticians W. Grey Walter and W. Ross Ashby, and became good friends with Gordon Pask.
Jeremy Gross is a cybernetic tikkun olamunist living north of Boston, Massachusetts. He is interested in collaborative workspaces that incorporate peer-to-peer and empathetic practices to subsume alienated labor. Social media splash image by Johnny Hammond.
And on https://social.coop/@tikkun_olamunist/103902136779008635
he says:
I wrote an article about the cybernetician Stafford Beer for a left-wing art magazine, and I’m looking to expand it into a book. My background is in mathematics (algebraic geometry) and I’ve worked on medical data integration for the last dozen years or so. Tired of making tech billionaires richer, I want to learn about co-operatives. I have an idea for a residential education co-op for high school students. I want to turn Beer’s ideas into libre software. He/his pronouns.
The Centre for Systems Studies at the University of Hull (UK) has an exciting opportunity for the right person: a PhD scholarship, co-sponsored by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), starting in Autumn 2021, with fieldwork starting in Autumn 2022.
For the fieldwork part of their studies, the student will be placed in Defra, and will work with them on the development of a new systems methodology to support cross-departmental working and science-policy integration in the context of land use policy-making.
While the advert for the scholarship (see the link below) talks about the kinds of degree courses relevant to this research, we are less interested in the disciplinary background of applicants, and more interested in their understanding of systems thinking, their creativity in tackling challenges and developing solutions, their openness to partnership working with national government agencies, and their ability to write to publication standard.
The supervisors of the student will be Prof Gerald Midgley (Hull), Dr Amanda Gregory (Hull) and Dr Dan McGonigle (Defra).
Applications from people in the UK and overseas are welcome
If covid-19 travel restrictions are lifted before the placement with Defra commences in Autumn 2022, then residence within easy reach of Defra’s London office will be expected, but if travel restrictions are still in force during the placement with Defra, then you will be able to work remotely.
In their book The World of the Newborn, Daphne and Charles Maurer write:
“His world smells to him much as our world smells to us, but he does not perceive odors (as we do) . . . His world is a melee of pungent aromas — and pungent sounds, and bitter-smelling sounds, and sweet-smelling sights, and sour-smelling pressures against the skin. If we could visit the newborn’s world, we would think ourselves inside a hallucinogenic perfumery.”
And it’s not just the sense of smell. The human brain does not simply represent the information we receive through our senses, it constructs it. In fact babies are born perceiving the reality as it “really” is, meaning that their brains have not yet learned to assemble the photons and waves and particles that make up the universe into anything that we adults would recognize. As psychologist and researcher Mike Gazzaniga puts it: “This is what our brain does all day long. It takes input from various areas of our brain and from the environment and synthesizes it into a story that makes sense.” We are born not being able to “make sense” of anything, but the process of construction, of storytelling, is already under way. And remarkably, in a matter of days, we begin to sort out our senses, to tell ourselves “stories” about what we perceive, and to make the world. There is much in nature to awe us, but few things are more impressive than this. Babies need no instructions from us. All we need do is what comes naturally, which is to hold them, feed them, be with them, and love them as they perform this miracle of creating a world.
I started using the phrase “shared meaning” a couple of years ago to describe the outcome we were focusing on in the organisations we were working with, but I wasn’t prepared for just how quickly the phrase came to be taken up by clients, colleagues and the world at large. It became the subtitle of the book I co-wrote earlier this year, and the more I talk about it, the more I hear it in other people’s conversations. While I ponder how on earth to find time to write another full-length book on the subject, here’s a short summary of what I mean by shared meaning, and why I think the world needs it.
Shared meaning is two things: one is the outcome we are seeking to achieve, and the other is the discipline that seeks to achieve that outcome. The outcome is defined at greater length elsewhere on this blog, but as a quick reminder:
If meaning is what it feels like to experience the following two sensations at the same time …
… then shared meaning is what it feels like for the same thing to happen within a group:
When this happens, there’s a release of energy, as the group identity forms around the meaning created.
A good approach to looking at how ‘complex’ is actually conceptualise and used in practice (TL:DR – it’s rather confused and more talked about than practised, and practice isn’t clear)
Public health evaluation methods have been criticized for being overly reductionist and failing to generate suitable evidence for public health decision-making. A “complex systems approach” has been advocated to account for real world complexity. Qualitative methods may be well suited to understanding change in complex social environments, but guidance on applying a complex systems approach to inform qualitative research remains limited and underdeveloped. This systematic review aims to analyze published examples of process evaluations that utilize qualitative methods that involve a complex systems perspective and proposes a framework for qualitative complex system process evaluations.
Methods and findings
We conducted a systematic search to identify complex system process evaluations that involve qualitative methods by searching electronic databases from January 1, 2014–September 30, 2019 (Scopus, MEDLINE, Web of Science), citation searching, and expert consultations. Process evaluations were included if they self-identified as taking a systems- or complexity-oriented approach, integrated qualitative methods, reported empirical findings, and evaluated public health interventions. Two reviewers independently assessed each study to identify concepts associated with the systems thinking and complexity science traditions. Twenty-one unique studies were identified evaluating a wide range of public health interventions in, for example, urban planning, sexual health, violence prevention, substance use, and community transformation. Evaluations were conducted in settings such as schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods in 13 different countries (9 high-income and 4 middle-income). All reported some utilization of complex systems concepts in the analysis of qualitative data. In 14 evaluations, the consideration of complex systems influenced intervention design, evaluation planning, or fieldwork. The identified studies used systems concepts to depict and describe a system at one point in time. Only 4 evaluations explicitly utilized a range of complexity concepts to assess changes within the system resulting from, or co-occurring with, intervention implementation over time. Limitations to our approach are including only English-language papers, reliance on study authors reporting their utilization of complex systems concepts, and subjective judgment from the reviewers relating to which concepts featured in each study.
Conclusion
This study found no consensus on what bringing a complex systems perspective to public health process evaluations with qualitative methods looks like in practice and that many studies of this nature describe static systems at a single time point. We suggest future studies use a 2-phase framework for qualitative process evaluations that seek to assess changes over time from a complex systems perspective. The first phase involves producing a description of the system and identifying hypotheses about how the system may change in response to the intervention. The second phase involves following the pathway of emergent findings in an adaptive evaluation approach.
Author summary
Why was this study done?
Process evaluations are used in public health to understand how and why an intervention works (or does not work), for which population groups, and in which settings.
Process evaluations often use qualitative methods—such as interviewing people and observing people in their daily and work routines—in order to draw their conclusions.
Researchers in public health have contended that we need to do research in a manner that considers the broader system in which policies and interventions take place—something we call a “complex systems perspective.”
To date and to our knowledge, there is no specific framework that describes how researchers can use a complex systems perspective when they conduct a process evaluation with qualitative methods.
What did the researchers do and find?
We conducted a systematic literature review that looked for examples of qualitative process evaluations that self-identify as using a complex systems perspective to evaluate public health interventions.
We found 21 different evaluations of many different types of public health interventions, including interventions to address student and employee health, sexual health, child development and safety, community empowerment, violence prevention, and substance use.
We found that these evaluations describe the systems in which public health efforts take place but are less effective at analyzing how changes affecting health occur within these systems.
What do these findings mean?
There is little evidence of a commonly shared understanding of how best to bring a complex systems perspective to process evaluations using qualitative methods, particularly, how to assess how interventions interact with a changing system.
We developed a 2-phase framework to guide researchers who want to apply a complex systems perspective to qualitative process evaluations.
This review excluded studies that do not self-identify as using a complex systems perspective so we may have missed literature that uses this perspective but not the associated terminology.
The ‘complexity’ bit is a cogent attempt at a hard distinction between ‘systems thinking’ and ‘complexity’, but becomes a very soft distinction (I would say) – particularly because they are looking at that practical application:
“Research into complex systems takes place across academic disciplines and has roots in both systems thinking and complexity science. Although often grouped together because of some conceptual similarities, systems thinking and complexity science can be considered as distinct yet overlapping traditions [16,17]. Systems thinking may be best described as an orientation that prompts researchers to take a holistic, rather than reductionist view, of phenomena and study them in the context of their real-world systems that are open to and interact with surrounding systems. Systems thinking draws on theories, concepts, and methods from a range of disciplinary fields [18]. Complexity science, on the other hand, is more strongly rooted in the mathematical sciences and has drawn on complexity theory, which emphasizes uncertainty and nonlinearity, to create and refine specific methodological approaches to modeling complex systems in order to estimate and predict their emergent behavior over time. Systems thinking prompts researchers and practitioners to consider the boundaries of the system they are studying or in which they are working [19] and places an emphasis on the interactions and relationships between system elements and the system with its broader environment [1,6]. Further applying concepts from complexity science prompts a consideration of how those interactions create nonlinear chains of cause and effect, are unpredictable, unfold overtime, and give rise to system-level emergent outcomes [20].”
If someone were to ask you, “what is the role of government?”, what do you think you’d answer?
Perhaps it might sound something like this:
Merriam-Webster Dictionary: the organisation, machinery, or agency through which a political unit exercises authority and performs functions and which is usually classified according to the distribution of power within it; or
Columbia Encyclopedia: a system of social control under which the right to make laws, and the right to enforce them, is vested in a particular group in society.
Or, it might not.
While the definitions above aptly describe the dominant understanding of the role of government, a growing group of academics and practitioners (including the Centre for Public Impact) are beginning to suggest that a different approach is needed. We are advocating for a shift away from viewing government as being about authority and control and towards seeing the core role of government as being to act as stewardsof complex systems.
What does system stewardship mean? Through our work with a number of public sector agencies both here in Australia, and overseas, we have discovered that there is no single definition. Government as system steward is described in many different ways including: “guiding complex systems”; taking “a less transactional, more relational approach” to engaging with service delivery partners; and thinking beyond efficiency and effectiveness to “the common good”. A very recent paper describes it as, “a new way of working that allows governments and their agents to effectively influence and steward systems from which outcomes emerge.”
A Systems Approach to Environmental Policy in DefraTuesday 24th November 2020, 13:00 – 14:00 GMTPresenter: Tom Oliver, University of ReadingYou are warmly invited to join us for the following CECAN Webinar… Webinar Overview: The need to take a whole-systems approach to policy to avoid unanticipated outcomes and burden shifting across sectors is now widely recognised. In this presentation I will introduce the Systems Research Programme established by the UK government’s Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in March 2019, with the aim to better understand multiple outcomes of policy decisions and how suites of policies interact. The programme has six academic fellows reflecting policy areas of air quality, resources and waste, rural land use, marine and food. My role involves the advising on overall design, synthesis and coordination of the programme and working on crosscutting issues. I will discuss in particular our current work on some particularly wicked policy problems: net zero policy design and environmental target setting, and conclude by describing a forthcoming project with CECAN and several universities developing new protocols for the governance of systemic risk, including COVID-19 relevant case studies for biosecurity, respiratory health and food security. Presenter Biography: Tom Oliver is Professor of Applied Ecology at the University of Reading UK and leads their Ecology and Evolution research division. He sits on the European Environment Agency scientific committee and is a senior Fellow with Defra working to coordinate their Systems Research Programme. Tom’s primary research focuses on understanding the interacting impacts of drivers upon multiple environmental outcomes. A key aspect of this involves developing methods and tools to better quantify and communicate environmental risk to support environmental decision-making. Tom has published more than eighty scientific papers in world-leading interdisciplinary journals. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, Independent and BBC Science Focus and he is author of the critically acclaimed book The Self Delusion: The Surprising Science of Our Connection to Each Other and the Natural World. How to Join: This talk will take place via a Zoom Webinar – please click here to register for a place. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. In case you are unable to attend, a recording of the webinar will be uploaded to our website following the event.REGISTER FOR CECAN WEBINAR
I spend a lot of time with systems engineers. They are an annoying bunch, by and large. Always telling me (or anyone else who dares venture an opinion, for that matter), that we have not considered all the elements of a problem. That we need to think about the whole system (they even say it like it is in italics). Even if you demonstrate you have thought about the whole system, they then suddenly tell you it is actually a systems of systemsproblem. And then you give up and go spend some time with economists for a bit of light relief…
But despite the relentless tedium of their company, if I could give my former Government self — close to the minister, ambitious for decarbonisation that maintains popular support, massive worrier about the risks of a rapidly changing energy sector — one piece of advice, it would be this: ‘spend more time with systems engineers’. Because good strategy, and a good strategy for future energy policy, would benefit hugely from adopting a systems approach.
The energy system or energy systems (see, I was listening) is/are hugely complex (note the important difference between complicated and complex). The interactions between different actors and parts of the system bewilder even seasoned energy sector observers or participants. It is part of what makes energy and climate such an enthralling intellectual challenge.
Co-designing a systems approach to managing complexity in Healthcare Improvement – building on the landmark report, Engineering Better Care, together we can develop the power to tame wicked problems.Download Idea as PDF Print Idea Read comments 27 Project updates 2
What is the challenge your project is going to address and how does it connect to your chosen theme?
“The UK’s health and social care system is, appropriately, one of our most treasured national assets. However, the sheer size and complexity of the system, as well as the pressures it faces from an ageing population and finite resources, mean that making improvements to health and care can be a significant challenge. Successful transformation must take into account the needs of all patients, carers, healthcare professionals and other staff. It requires consistent consideration of every element of the system, the way each element interacts, and the implications of these interactions for the system as a whole – that is, it requires a ‘systems’ approach.” This comment from the foreword of Engineering Better Care echoes a number of key global reports and advocates the need to describe a systems approach to design and continuous improvement, to build on current practice and bring renewed focus onpeople, systems, designand riskas vital perspectives in the improvement of complex systems.
What does your project aim to achieve?
Engineering Better Care sought to co-design a systems approach to health and care design and continuous improvement by bringing together improvers, healthcare providers and systems engineers in a series of workshops to define a common language for improvement. The resulting approach, based on a series of simple questions, formed the basis of a landmark report from the Royal Academy of Engineering, Royal College of Physicians and the Academy of Medical Sciences. This project aims to take this work further, co-designing a systems approach toolkit with health and care improvers, based on a prototype developed by the University of Cambridge. The main objective is to create a toolkit, owned by the improvement community, that shares ideas and good practice in taking a systems approach to improvement. This will be achieved by building an active, self-sustaining forum for discussion, learning and sharing where success is measured by interaction with the toolkit and stories of its use.
How will the project be delivered?
The core team will run a series of face-to-face workshops, site visits, online debates and forums to encourage improvers to share experiences of improvement. Particular attention will be paid to the improvement frameworks and approaches used and their accompanying activities and tools, the choices made in their deployment and the top tips for achieving success or avoiding failure. Q members will be asked to describe new tools, add references to existing tools, provide rationale for their tool choices and examples of their use. Stories will provide the basis of members’ narratives and a culture for sharing stories will be actively supported and encouraged as the primary mechanism for improving improvement. The core team have significant experience of facilitating improvement and working with Q members and the improvement community. The risk of poor engagement will be mitigated by identifying members from the early Engineering Better Care workshops to assist in building the community.
What and how is your project going to share learning throughout?
The project will deliver a toolkit, based on the Engineering Better Care prototype that provides guidance on a systems approach to improvement. This will be a dynamic resource ‘owned’ by the Q members, updated and choreographed by the core team. The project will also deliver a forum and events to encourage such ownership and a culture of storytelling to sustain the development of case studies which will add insight as to the use of systems tools and the value of using a systems approach. The toolkit and its associated guidance and resources will be made freely available to a Q members.
How you can contribute
Ideas for resources to include in a systems toolkit
Identification of existing improvement toolkits that work
Discussion on the best means to encourage toolkit ownership in a busy world
Chick Spinney, one of John Boyd’s closest associates, has revised his flow diagram depicting how Boyd’s strategic thinking evolved from his days flying F-86s in Korea in 1953 until his death in 1997.
In this chart, “ODA” is “orient-decide-act,” not “observe-decide-act.” As Chuck recalls, Boyd added “observation” in 1975, about the time he retired from the Air Force. “LWF” is the Air Force’s Lightweight Fighter program, which culminated in the flyoff between the YF-16 and YF-17 in 1974.
Note that Patterns of Conflict is about operating inside the OODA loop and says virtually nothing about the OODA loop itself. The only place Boyd develops — and draws — the OODA loop is in The Essence of Winning and Losing, 1996.
Chuck also highlights how Boyd returns to “Scientific/Philosophical Foundation Efforts” with Conceptual Spiral in 1992. Interesting to compare the two, the effects of 16 years of intense effort.
All of Boyd’s works, and a PDF of the above diagram, are available from our Articles page. I might also modestly recommend my “Origins of John Boyd’s Discourse,” which illustrates some of the domains Boyd investigated (e.g., evolution, complexity, Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, etc.) as he moved along Chuck’s progression.
On November 18, OECD – OCDE will host a number of high level forums. I will be moderating one on #complexity, #systemsand #anticipation with the help of Chiara Bleckenwegner. The main question I will pose to the four leading experts will be on new methods government should introduce to deal better with uncertainty and complexity beyond Covid19. What have we learnt from 2020? This question will be tackled by:
Rovenskaya Elena, Program Director, Advanced Systems Analysis, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
Hiroki Habuka, Deputy Director, Digital Economy Division, Commerce and Information Policy Bureau, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), Japan
Márton Herczeg, PhD, European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), Head of Strategy and Impact Unit
David Winickoff, Senior Policy Analyst, Science, Technology and Innovation Directorate, OECD
SCiO DACH Buch Club mit Martin Dr. Pfiffner und seinem fantastischen Buch „Die dritte Dimension des Organisierens“ erschienen 2020 bei Springer/ Gabler mit 348 Seiten für 34.99 € als Taschenbuch. eBook ISBN: 978-3-658-29247-8, Softcover ISBN: 978-3-658-29246-1
Donnerstag den 28.01.2021 von 16:00 bis 17:30 Uhr GMT virtuell
Die 3. Dimension des Organisierens; das Viable System Model mit seiner vollständigen Beschreibung von Steuerung und Kommunikation in einer Organisation.
Martin Pfiffner nimmt uns mit dem Buch mit auf eine Reise von mehr als 20 Jahren praktischer Erfahrung und Anwendung eines der wichtigsten Management Modelle unserer Zeit.
Peter Jones presents a customized talk from the RSD9 plenary session for ST ON. Ryan Murphy joins with a full presentation of his RSD9 talk.
We often use the model of “theories of change” to argue for the process by which envisioned change programs might achieve their goals. Essentially these are the working theories by which we explain the logic of system change outcomes, and we often include quasi-systemic logic models to communicate them. ToCs are as ubiquitous in social innovation and philanthropy as business models are in startups and VCs. “Systems change” has emerged as a major movement in the worlds of impact investing, philanthropy, and the NGOs they fund, and the proposals expected to advance studies and change programs embrace the language of the theory of change.
Do Theories of Change reflect coherent models of change that we can observe or assess in real social systems? If so, are logic models sufficient (do they correspond to reality)?
How do we Represent Transformation? Framework of four Sensemaking Logics
What are the meanings, purposes, effectiveness, basis in systemics, their common applications, uses and misuses of Theories of Change?
Can we produce better theories for change through systemic design rationale?
Join us on Nov. 9 starting at 6:30pm ET.
Venue:
The link for a Zoom conference will be sent upon preregistration.
CST WEBINAR SERIESThis week the Webinar will be moved to co-incide with the ONLINE BOOK LAUNCH of “The Age of Sustainability”Wednesday, November 4th from 16:00 (GMT+2)This webinar will take place online. Register in advance for this webinar:https://maties.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_TZk5JNQcQoGZmXg2q7XfxQ
Join us for the launch of Prof Mark Swilling’s new book “The Age of Sustainability: Just Transitions in a Complex World”The Age of Sustainability: Just Transitions in a Complex World provides an interpretation of the global economic and ecological crisis from a distinct African perspective. Drawing on a relational epistemology and ontology that emerges from the intersection between contemporary Sub-Saharan African philosophy and western post-humanism, Swilling traverses a vast terrain in order to illustrate his argument that there are multiple transitions already underway at the global, national and local levels. He offers a theory of change that avoids the false promise of superficial reforms (‘greenwash’) and the grandiose claims about ‘structural change’. Instead, he proposes that we need to be radical incrementalists in the way we fuse together real-world experiments and the making of global futures. He argues that the directionality of the global energy transition will shape the way the global political economy evolves beyond the current crisis.
The intellectual and operational bankruptcy of neo-liberal economics opens the way for alternative futures, but these alternatives have yet to consolidate themselves at the global and national levels. They are, however, emerging across all world regions at the local level. This is particularly true when it comes to the emerging commons-based peer-to-peer economies that we see at local and global levels. Unless we understand the complex dynamics of the deep transition already underway, and how this is shaping all our choices about governance, economics, well-being, urban living and cultural norms, we will be ill-equipped for the rapidly unfolding future that we all experience on a daily basis. More information is available here. This webinar will take place online Register in advance: https://maties.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_TZk5JNQcQoGZmXg2q7XfxQ
Mark Swillingis Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Development in the School of Public Leadership, University of Stellenbosch and Co-Director of the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition (http://www0.sun.ac.za/cst/). He is the author of The Age of Sustainability: Just Transitions in a Complex World (London and New York: Routledge, 2020), co-author with Eve Annecke of Just Transitions: Explorations of Sustainability in an Unfair World (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2012), co-editor with Adriana Allen and Andreas Lampis of Untamed Urbanism (New York and London: Routledge, 2016), co-editor with Josephine Musango and Jeremy Wakeford Greening the South African Economy (Cape Town: Juta, 2016) and was the lead author with Ivor Chipkin et. al. of Shadow State: Politics of State Capture (Johannesburg: WITS Press, 2018). He is a member of UNEP’s International Resource Panel acting as Coordinator of the Cities Working Group (http://www.unep.org/resourcepanel/) and is the Deputy Chair of the Board of the Development Bank of Southern Africa. He is co-lead author of The Weight of Cities: Resource Requirements of Future Urbanization, published in 2018 by the International Resource Panel. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Sheffield and Utrecht, and in 2018 was the Edward P. Bass Visiting Environmental Scholar at Yale University
Mark Swillingis Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Development in the School of Public Leadership, University of Stellenbosch and Co-Director of the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition (
Systems Community of Inquiry 
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