@kate_hammer and @Europeripheral are planning a reading group, to be conducted over the internet. The reading group will explore the controversial 1972 book The Limits to Growth.
In 1972, a think tank called the Club of Rome published the alarming results of a computer simulation of the world economy, environment and population, developed by a team at MIT. If events followed what the authors called the "business as usual" scenario, without corrective or preventative action, the model projected “overshoot and collapse” by 2070. Since its publication, the report has been subjected to sustained critical attack. But a few years ago, researchers at the University of Melbourne compared the model with data from the past four decades. Their results show that the world is tracking pretty closely to the "business-as-usual" scenario.
Those interested in joining the reading group should complete this Google form.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfFv2hfDniGrKMs5-SRVwqHUYD9FzRnnuAr0RcDYALzGeoPfQ/viewform
But At Least There Are No Limits To Reading The Book
The Club of Rome has made the book available in PDF format here:
https://www.clubofrome.org/report/the-limits-to-growth/
The book has been digitized and can be read in a web browser here: http://collections.dartmouth.edu/teitexts/meadows/diplomatic/meadows_ltg-diplomatic.html
http://donellameadows.org/the-limits-to-growth-now-available-to-read-online/
See also
Academy for Systems Change (The Donella Meadows Project)
Graham Turner and Cathy Alexander, Limits to Growth was right. New research shows we're nearing collapse (Guardian, 2 September 2014)
Showing posts with label systems thinking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label systems thinking. Show all posts
Saturday, March 25, 2017
Saturday, October 09, 2010
Easier Seddon Done 2
#JohnSeddon has developed a simple approach to service design, which he and his followers call "systems thinking", much to the annoyance of everyone else in the systems thinking world. He has also developed a critique of what he calls The Regime, including some very pertinent observations about the failings of the target culture.
Seddon adopts a highly political language in attacking The Regime, and this hasn't always been helpful in-the-large for tackling the problems of the UK public sector. In my previous post Easier Seddon Done, I noted his complaint that when he wrote a letter to representatives of the regime explaining their errors, he got a “snotty, curt reply”. (Well, who could have predicted this?) Today I found another example of this kind of thing in a heated debate started by @leanblog, The One Where John Seddon Might Be Lying (or Has His Facts Very Very Wrong) (October 2010). In his contribution to the debate, Bill S points to the Vanguard Newsletter Feb 2010 where Seddon admits to harrassing the head of HMRC.
The great systems thinker C. West Churchman identified politics as one of the enemies of the systems approach. Seddon's campaigning approach has resulted in a considerable politicization of the "systems thinking" label. Seddon himself certainly understands the POSIWID principle (in his books he refers to "de facto purpose") so he must take some responsibility for this.
Some additional points about lenscraft
The first point about lenscraft is the principle that no single lens is adequate to solve difficult problems. That principle applies both to the UK government's obsession with targets (which it is thankfully now backing away from) and to Seddon's simple service design alternative. It is when the claims of a given lens are overstated that politicization occurs.
The second point about lenscraft is that any lens can be useful sometimes. There may well be specific contexts where targets are valuable (although I can't think of any right now), and there are probably situations where Seddon's way of looking at the world is useful.
The third point about lenscraft is that any lens needs to be used reflectively and critically. In other words, we need to pay attention to the nature of our own intervention in the situation, and the limitations of the lenses we are using, rather than imagine we have some privileged observation platform. For my part, I am particularly wary of the claim that a given lens is "integral" or for that matter "holistic", because such words imply a kind of cognitive closure, as well as inviting arguments with proponents of rival lenses.
The question this discussion raises for me is what kind of practical systems work is viable (both politically and financially) in an ecosystem that is dominated by such claims and counter-claims.
Related Posts
Easier Seddon Done (June 2008)
Changing How We Think (May 2010)
Demanding Change: Lenscraft
Seddon adopts a highly political language in attacking The Regime, and this hasn't always been helpful in-the-large for tackling the problems of the UK public sector. In my previous post Easier Seddon Done, I noted his complaint that when he wrote a letter to representatives of the regime explaining their errors, he got a “snotty, curt reply”. (Well, who could have predicted this?) Today I found another example of this kind of thing in a heated debate started by @leanblog, The One Where John Seddon Might Be Lying (or Has His Facts Very Very Wrong) (October 2010). In his contribution to the debate, Bill S points to the Vanguard Newsletter Feb 2010 where Seddon admits to harrassing the head of HMRC.
The great systems thinker C. West Churchman identified politics as one of the enemies of the systems approach. Seddon's campaigning approach has resulted in a considerable politicization of the "systems thinking" label. Seddon himself certainly understands the POSIWID principle (in his books he refers to "de facto purpose") so he must take some responsibility for this.
Some additional points about lenscraft
The first point about lenscraft is the principle that no single lens is adequate to solve difficult problems. That principle applies both to the UK government's obsession with targets (which it is thankfully now backing away from) and to Seddon's simple service design alternative. It is when the claims of a given lens are overstated that politicization occurs.
The second point about lenscraft is that any lens can be useful sometimes. There may well be specific contexts where targets are valuable (although I can't think of any right now), and there are probably situations where Seddon's way of looking at the world is useful.
The third point about lenscraft is that any lens needs to be used reflectively and critically. In other words, we need to pay attention to the nature of our own intervention in the situation, and the limitations of the lenses we are using, rather than imagine we have some privileged observation platform. For my part, I am particularly wary of the claim that a given lens is "integral" or for that matter "holistic", because such words imply a kind of cognitive closure, as well as inviting arguments with proponents of rival lenses.
The question this discussion raises for me is what kind of practical systems work is viable (both politically and financially) in an ecosystem that is dominated by such claims and counter-claims.
Related Posts
Easier Seddon Done (June 2008)
Changing How We Think (May 2010)
Demanding Change: Lenscraft
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
POSIWID should be plural
@seabird20 writes that "POSIWID should be plural..Systems "do" many things. Expense system purpose pay employees or control costs? Whose perspective?"
Sometimes that's exactly the problem - we expect a single system to do two different things at the same time - not only paying employees but also controlling costs. The employees may complain because the system is slow and complicated, and for really small claims they sometimes lose the receipts or can't be bothered to claim at all - but of course these effects contribute (whether deliberately or otherwise) to the "controlling costs" purpose.
The POSIWID principle at least helps employees to understand why the system behaves the way it does, they can work backwards from the manifest consequences of the system, to infer its purpose.
Now let me come back to Chris's point about plurality. How many purposes do we really have here? Can we regard paying-employees-and-controlling-costs as a single complex purpose (with some internal tension), or should we regard it as two different purposes yoked together (rather like life-liberty-and-the-pursuit-of-happiness)? There isn't a definite answer to that question; we just can't count purposes the way we can count cans of baked beans.
And we don't always know how to count systems either. Is there only one system here with many purposes, or do we have many "systems" occupying the same space? Perhaps the effects experienced by employees are the result of an interaction between two conflicting systems.
In general, however, there are many systems and many purposes. So POSIWID helps us identify additional purposes that explain the perverse behaviour of complex systems.
Related Post: VPEC-T and pluralism (June 2010)
Sometimes that's exactly the problem - we expect a single system to do two different things at the same time - not only paying employees but also controlling costs. The employees may complain because the system is slow and complicated, and for really small claims they sometimes lose the receipts or can't be bothered to claim at all - but of course these effects contribute (whether deliberately or otherwise) to the "controlling costs" purpose.
The POSIWID principle at least helps employees to understand why the system behaves the way it does, they can work backwards from the manifest consequences of the system, to infer its purpose.
Now let me come back to Chris's point about plurality. How many purposes do we really have here? Can we regard paying-employees-and-controlling-costs as a single complex purpose (with some internal tension), or should we regard it as two different purposes yoked together (rather like life-liberty-and-the-pursuit-of-happiness)? There isn't a definite answer to that question; we just can't count purposes the way we can count cans of baked beans.
And we don't always know how to count systems either. Is there only one system here with many purposes, or do we have many "systems" occupying the same space? Perhaps the effects experienced by employees are the result of an interaction between two conflicting systems.
In general, however, there are many systems and many purposes. So POSIWID helps us identify additional purposes that explain the perverse behaviour of complex systems.
Related Post: VPEC-T and pluralism (June 2010)
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
School League Tables
Is assessment in schools fit for purpose? asks the UK Teaching and Learning Research Programme. (Full report pdf, press release pdf, BBC News)
Obviously the answer depends on what you imagine the purpose to be. The report identifies a wide range of possible (and sometimes conflicting) uses, and politely pours scorn on the view expressed last year by David Bell, who as permanent secretary at the Department for Children, Schools and Families told MPs:
As the report points out, the reason that this expectation is problematic is that assessments have two different effects: they provide information and they influence what people do. These effects generally conflict: measurement (especially targets) distorts performance.
Using Stafford Beer's POSIWID principle to determine the real (de facto) purpose of assessment, we can identify four real purposes, one internal to the educational establishment, and three external.
For head teachers and bureaucrats, assessment is a way of competing for resources. Assessment results are used to allocate funding to schools, and to cost-justify a wide range of innovations and initiatives, and are therefore subject to strong vested interests from various stakeholders within the education system.
For politicians, assessment provides a way of claiming that education standards have improved monotonically since records began, with especially good progress during the current regime. (I don't actually know anyone outside the "system" who takes these claims very seriously.)
The schools at the top of the league tables can attract the best teachers and the best pupils, and therefore should be able to maintain their position at the top of the table in perpetuity. (A bit like professional football.)
Therefore, for ordinary people, assessment provides a way of selecting the "best" school for your child, and helps to increase and maintain property prices within the desirable catchment areas. (Obviously this effect is viewed differently by those families who can afford these property prices and by those who cannot.)
In summary, despite an official Government agenda for innovation and change, the league table system helps to maintain an unsatisfactory status quo. POSIWID.
As a champion of systems thinking, I find it encouraging that so many ordinary people (almost everyone except politicians and bureaucrats) understand the problems with target-setting. One of the effects (and therefore the POSIWID purpose) of the target-setting regime may be to encourage people to embark on real system thinking. And by "systems thinking", I don't just mean the John Seddon approach to service design but holistic joined-up thinking. I live in hope.
See also
Obviously the answer depends on what you imagine the purpose to be. The report identifies a wide range of possible (and sometimes conflicting) uses, and politely pours scorn on the view expressed last year by David Bell, who as permanent secretary at the Department for Children, Schools and Families told MPs:
“While I hear the argument that is often put about multiple purposes of testing and assessment, I do not think that it is problematic to expect tests and assessments to do different things.”
As the report points out, the reason that this expectation is problematic is that assessments have two different effects: they provide information and they influence what people do. These effects generally conflict: measurement (especially targets) distorts performance.
Using Stafford Beer's POSIWID principle to determine the real (de facto) purpose of assessment, we can identify four real purposes, one internal to the educational establishment, and three external.
For head teachers and bureaucrats, assessment is a way of competing for resources. Assessment results are used to allocate funding to schools, and to cost-justify a wide range of innovations and initiatives, and are therefore subject to strong vested interests from various stakeholders within the education system.
For politicians, assessment provides a way of claiming that education standards have improved monotonically since records began, with especially good progress during the current regime. (I don't actually know anyone outside the "system" who takes these claims very seriously.)
The schools at the top of the league tables can attract the best teachers and the best pupils, and therefore should be able to maintain their position at the top of the table in perpetuity. (A bit like professional football.)
Therefore, for ordinary people, assessment provides a way of selecting the "best" school for your child, and helps to increase and maintain property prices within the desirable catchment areas. (Obviously this effect is viewed differently by those families who can afford these property prices and by those who cannot.)
In summary, despite an official Government agenda for innovation and change, the league table system helps to maintain an unsatisfactory status quo. POSIWID.
As a champion of systems thinking, I find it encouraging that so many ordinary people (almost everyone except politicians and bureaucrats) understand the problems with target-setting. One of the effects (and therefore the POSIWID purpose) of the target-setting regime may be to encourage people to embark on real system thinking. And by "systems thinking", I don't just mean the John Seddon approach to service design but holistic joined-up thinking. I live in hope.
See also
- What do school tests measure (New York Times, 3 August 2009)
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Purpose of a Nation
James Liu posted a question to the Linked-In Systems Thinking Group.
My first response was to suggest that nations only exist because other nations exist. I'm not sure it makes sense to talk about a nation in isolation. The system whose purpose I'd like to understand is the system that has (often violently) carved the world into the nations we have today, and still threatens to split existing nations into smaller ones and/or create new ones. What purposes are served by the concept of "Nation"? And how does a single instance of this concept relate to this international context?
This prompted an interesting response from Joseph Higginbotham, who rephrased my suggestion in terms of alterity (Otherness) - the organization of the nation is an answer to the threat posed by organization of the Other. But that doesn't quite explain what triggers the process of nation-forming in the first place.
Joseph went on to speculate about the end of this process of nation-forming.
Obviously if there is only one government, then there cannot be wars between governments. But history tells us about many other kinds of war - civil wars (British, American, Spanish), revolutions, guerrilla and terrorism. The nation-state pattern (one nation = one country = one government) is not a universal one. And from a systems perspective, the notion of historical inevitability is highly problematic.
A vision of competition being replaced by cooperation suggests that there were in fact two different questions under discussion: not only what the purpose of a nation actually is, but also what the purpose should be. Some of us may have a personal preference for cooperation over competition, or for peaceful resolution rather than violent conflict, but getting large complex systems (such as Global Politics) to follow our personal preferences is a highly political activity.
Joseph says the challenge would be to agree on why we have a government or a nation. That is certainly a challenge, but I see it as primarily a political challenge. A systems-thinking challenge (I hesitate to say "the" challenge) would be to agree on a systematic or systemic way of exploring and perhaps improving the purpose of governments or nations, without being constrained or coopted by any single political or ethical position.
James offered an answer to his original question: "Currently the primary aim of a democratic nation is to help its citizens to enhance their quality of life." This answer has added two important words: currently and democratic.
I take the word "currently" to indicate that this is his observation of the AS-IS purpose of a nation (what it already is), rather than his aspiration of the TO-BE purpose (what he thinks it ought to become).
I also note the addition of the qualifier "democratic". Democracy has long been a key component of how America has perceived itself, and how it has been perceived by others. In his classic book Democracy in America, the 19th century Alexis de Tocqueville sought to understand why republican representative democracy had succeeded in the United States while (at that time) failing in so many other places. He sought to apply the functional aspects of democracy in America to what he saw as the failings of democracy in his native France. (Book summary based on Wikipedia.) A useful read if you want a historical perspective on the purpose of a democratic nation.
Today, many Americans sees one important purpose of the United States of America as being a Beacon of Democracy. If you search the Internet for "beacon of democracy", you will also find this phrase being applied to other nations, including Canada, Ghana, India, Mongolia and Taiwan, as well as some imaginary future state of Iraq.
But is this systems thinking as opposed to straight politics? By straight politics I meant undiluted politics, which Churchman identified as one of the Enemies of the Systems Approach. I wasn't thinking specifically of realpolitik.
James's second question (How can we get there if we don't know?) seems to be making an assumption about the nature of goal-directed systems. However, with large complex systems, we can achieve (happen upon) all sorts of wonderful outcomes without knowing the purpose in advance. I often use Stafford Beer's POSIWID principle to try and work out the hidden agendas of complex systems.
Joseph acknowledged that governments and government officials have many different purposes, some of them declared and some hidden. But then Joseph went on to say that "we cannot apply systems thinking to government until we can agree on what government is trying to accomplish". My view is the exact opposite of Joseph: we MUST apply systems thinking to government IF WE WANT TO MAKE SENSE OF what government is REALLY trying to accomplish. (This is perhaps a classic example of the POSIWID principle.)
Joseph thought that my position (that systems thinking must be applied to figure out what government is trying to accomplish) has at least three logical flaws:
My approach to systems thinking is careful not to make any of the assumptions he imputed to me, and I don't accept that there were logical flaws in my argument. But it became increasingly clear from our discussion that Joseph and I had completely different notions of what systems thinking actually was. He acknowledged the validity of logically walking backwards from outcomes through processes to ask questions about systems, such as "Your system is perfectly designed to deliver X, was that your intent? Did you know your system was designed to produce X or do you just not know what you're doing?" But he didn't seem to regard this line of inquiry as a form of systems thinking. I do, although it's not the only kind of systems thinking I recognize.
What Joseph is calling systems thinking seems to be limited to a particular rationalist style of systems design. As it happens I am currently re-reading Churchman's book on the Systems Approach and its Enemies, where this practice is described as Objective-Planning. But this leaves out what Churchman calls Ideal-Planning (working out the objectives in the first place), which I regard as an important (perhaps the most important) element in Systems Thinking.
To the extent that this discussion was taking place in the Systems Thinking group, I expected to see some willingness to find systems-thinking answers to some important questions about nationhood, and I hoped such answers would be different to the answers we might have found in a Political Study group (if there were one).
James thought it was interesting to see totally different perspectives from different groups. And he thought that this diversity suggested it was a question worth to ask and discuss.
Diversity is often a sign that there is something problematic about the question. Systems thinking often helps us by changing the question. The Linked-In Group was certainly having an interesting discussion about something important, although the exact nature of the question (as often happens with discussions about complex systems) seemed to be shifting kaleidoscopically, and I was interested to see the interplay between different systems concepts - purpose, role, causal loops, and so on.
Some later contributions to the discussion seemed to be converging on identifying a purpose for the discussion itself - perhaps to identify how people (such as ourselves) can make a difference to the political formation of the nation and its activities (including diplomacy and warfare).
And this is a strong theme within some styles of systems thinking - the need to rephrase the original question into "What is the purpose/aim of OUR ASKING ABOUT a nation (such as US, UK... ) as a system?
Someone else talked about the discussion "drifting around" - and calling it that makes it sound as if it's always better to follow a charted course. But then you will only arrive at pre-ordained destinations.
What is the purpose/aim of a nation (such as US, UK... ) as a system? How can we get there if we don't know the aim of our nation?The following is edited from my contributions to this discussion.
My first response was to suggest that nations only exist because other nations exist. I'm not sure it makes sense to talk about a nation in isolation. The system whose purpose I'd like to understand is the system that has (often violently) carved the world into the nations we have today, and still threatens to split existing nations into smaller ones and/or create new ones. What purposes are served by the concept of "Nation"? And how does a single instance of this concept relate to this international context?
This prompted an interesting response from Joseph Higginbotham, who rephrased my suggestion in terms of alterity (Otherness) - the organization of the nation is an answer to the threat posed by organization of the Other. But that doesn't quite explain what triggers the process of nation-forming in the first place.
Joseph went on to speculate about the end of this process of nation-forming.
So what is advancement? A Utopia where humans only organize to accomplish something that can only be accomplished through cooperation, not because they feel threatened? And of course, as the world grows "flatter" and more interconnected and more interdependent, we have to ask if One World Government is inevitable, right? I mean, theoretically, can wars be eliminated if we're all One World?
Obviously if there is only one government, then there cannot be wars between governments. But history tells us about many other kinds of war - civil wars (British, American, Spanish), revolutions, guerrilla and terrorism. The nation-state pattern (one nation = one country = one government) is not a universal one. And from a systems perspective, the notion of historical inevitability is highly problematic.
A vision of competition being replaced by cooperation suggests that there were in fact two different questions under discussion: not only what the purpose of a nation actually is, but also what the purpose should be. Some of us may have a personal preference for cooperation over competition, or for peaceful resolution rather than violent conflict, but getting large complex systems (such as Global Politics) to follow our personal preferences is a highly political activity.
Joseph says the challenge would be to agree on why we have a government or a nation. That is certainly a challenge, but I see it as primarily a political challenge. A systems-thinking challenge (I hesitate to say "the" challenge) would be to agree on a systematic or systemic way of exploring and perhaps improving the purpose of governments or nations, without being constrained or coopted by any single political or ethical position.
James offered an answer to his original question: "Currently the primary aim of a democratic nation is to help its citizens to enhance their quality of life." This answer has added two important words: currently and democratic.
I take the word "currently" to indicate that this is his observation of the AS-IS purpose of a nation (what it already is), rather than his aspiration of the TO-BE purpose (what he thinks it ought to become).
I also note the addition of the qualifier "democratic". Democracy has long been a key component of how America has perceived itself, and how it has been perceived by others. In his classic book Democracy in America, the 19th century Alexis de Tocqueville sought to understand why republican representative democracy had succeeded in the United States while (at that time) failing in so many other places. He sought to apply the functional aspects of democracy in America to what he saw as the failings of democracy in his native France. (Book summary based on Wikipedia.) A useful read if you want a historical perspective on the purpose of a democratic nation.
Today, many Americans sees one important purpose of the United States of America as being a Beacon of Democracy. If you search the Internet for "beacon of democracy", you will also find this phrase being applied to other nations, including Canada, Ghana, India, Mongolia and Taiwan, as well as some imaginary future state of Iraq.
But is this systems thinking as opposed to straight politics? By straight politics I meant undiluted politics, which Churchman identified as one of the Enemies of the Systems Approach. I wasn't thinking specifically of realpolitik.
James's second question (How can we get there if we don't know?) seems to be making an assumption about the nature of goal-directed systems. However, with large complex systems, we can achieve (happen upon) all sorts of wonderful outcomes without knowing the purpose in advance. I often use Stafford Beer's POSIWID principle to try and work out the hidden agendas of complex systems.
Joseph acknowledged that governments and government officials have many different purposes, some of them declared and some hidden. But then Joseph went on to say that "we cannot apply systems thinking to government until we can agree on what government is trying to accomplish". My view is the exact opposite of Joseph: we MUST apply systems thinking to government IF WE WANT TO MAKE SENSE OF what government is REALLY trying to accomplish. (This is perhaps a classic example of the POSIWID principle.)
Joseph thought that my position (that systems thinking must be applied to figure out what government is trying to accomplish) has at least three logical flaws:
- It assumes humans always act rationally and that their plans always reflect their intent. I can use systems thinking to analyze the probably outcome of a government policy or I can go the other way and start with the outcome and work backwards from the outcome through the system that produced it to the cause but I still don't know what that government intended. Only if they are consistent systems thinkers who intentions always align with their policies can I assume that.
- It assumes our policy makers are good enough systems thinkers themselves to reason from intent to plan to implementation to execution to outcome. We don't know if our leaders are systems thinkers. We don't elect them for their systems thinking skills. We elect them because they say what we want to hear and then we pray they meant what they said. Of course, most of the time they don't.
- Policy keeps changing and pretty soon, due to budget cuts, elections, changes in party, lack of political will, lack of public support, etc., by the time we get enough data to start looking backward from outcomes to processes to causes to intents, we don't know what was intended.
My approach to systems thinking is careful not to make any of the assumptions he imputed to me, and I don't accept that there were logical flaws in my argument. But it became increasingly clear from our discussion that Joseph and I had completely different notions of what systems thinking actually was. He acknowledged the validity of logically walking backwards from outcomes through processes to ask questions about systems, such as "Your system is perfectly designed to deliver X, was that your intent? Did you know your system was designed to produce X or do you just not know what you're doing?" But he didn't seem to regard this line of inquiry as a form of systems thinking. I do, although it's not the only kind of systems thinking I recognize.
What Joseph is calling systems thinking seems to be limited to a particular rationalist style of systems design. As it happens I am currently re-reading Churchman's book on the Systems Approach and its Enemies, where this practice is described as Objective-Planning. But this leaves out what Churchman calls Ideal-Planning (working out the objectives in the first place), which I regard as an important (perhaps the most important) element in Systems Thinking.
To the extent that this discussion was taking place in the Systems Thinking group, I expected to see some willingness to find systems-thinking answers to some important questions about nationhood, and I hoped such answers would be different to the answers we might have found in a Political Study group (if there were one).
James thought it was interesting to see totally different perspectives from different groups. And he thought that this diversity suggested it was a question worth to ask and discuss.
Diversity is often a sign that there is something problematic about the question. Systems thinking often helps us by changing the question. The Linked-In Group was certainly having an interesting discussion about something important, although the exact nature of the question (as often happens with discussions about complex systems) seemed to be shifting kaleidoscopically, and I was interested to see the interplay between different systems concepts - purpose, role, causal loops, and so on.
Some later contributions to the discussion seemed to be converging on identifying a purpose for the discussion itself - perhaps to identify how people (such as ourselves) can make a difference to the political formation of the nation and its activities (including diplomacy and warfare).
And this is a strong theme within some styles of systems thinking - the need to rephrase the original question into "What is the purpose/aim of OUR ASKING ABOUT a nation (such as US, UK... ) as a system?
Someone else talked about the discussion "drifting around" - and calling it that makes it sound as if it's always better to follow a charted course. But then you will only arrive at pre-ordained destinations.
When you set out for Ithaka
ask that your way be long,
full of adventure, full of instruction.
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Blame Obama
My friend Phil from Iowa has long been a passionate McCain supporter, and circulated numerous emails during McCain's previous bid for the presidency. Yesterday he sent me a copy of an article apparently blaming Senator Obama for single-handedly causing the current financial catastrophe. Diana West: Social Engineering Derailed Our Economy.
The argument goes like this. As a community organizer, Barack Obama encouraged poor people (yes there's a racial element to this argument) to take advantage of the available finance. As a politician, Barack Obama supported the availability of finance to poor people. Therefore the collapse of the American banking system is a dastardly communist plot orchestrated by Barack Obama.
Who is the principal beneficiary of this collapse? Why, Senator Obama of course, who now commands a healthy lead in the opinion polls. Therefore the primary purpose of this social engineering was to cheat Senator McCain from his rightful job as President Maverick.
If all this were true, of course, it would rather undermine the standard Republican argument that Obama has no management experience. A president capable of orchestrating such a dramatic outcome, and with such consummate timing, would make an outstanding President.
Of course this is nonsense. As if the weak-minded banks were coerced into dodgy finance by left-wing politicians!? If the capitalist system can be subverted by a handful of left-wing activists, then it isn't quite as robust as the End-of-History ideologues like to think.
Of course the current state of regulation over the banking system is a complete mess - both nationally and internationally. In the USA, regulation has been a battleground between Republicans and Democrats, with the latter blaming everything on Reagan-era deregulation, and the former blaming everything either on Clinton or on the refusal of the Democrats to support partial reintroduction of regulation under Bush.
One of the principles of systems thinking is that a regulation system needs to have requisite variety - in other words, it needs to have just enough complexity to respond intelligently to the complexity of the system being regulated. It is difficult to imagine politicians of any stripe being capable of designing an effective regulatory system. Conversely, it is difficult to imagine someone capable of real systems thinking becoming an effective President. Look at Jimmy Carter: the exception proves the rule.
See also Relationships built on self-interest (January 2009)
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Positive Intentions
NLP practitioners sometimes talk about discovering The Positive Intention. For example, if a person drives a car into a tree, NLP will ask what purpose this action might possibly serve (for example, escaping a difficult domestic or work situation) and then find a less destructive way of achieving the same outcome. This approach, which was pioneered by Virginia Satir, is a clear application of the POSIWID principle.
Instead of labelling people as “stupid” or “obstinate” or “narrow-minded” or “bureaucratic”, this principle suggests we look for a way of framing the situation in which their behaviour makes sense.
Here’s an example. A colleague was running a course with sixteen students. At the end of the course, only fifteen evaluation forms could be found. The administrator got very anxious about the missing form, and insisted on a new form being produced. My colleague couldn’t see what the fuss was about, assumed that the missing form probably wouldn’t provide any additional information, and attributed the anxiety to a mindless procedural rigidity.
But let’s try and construct a different frame for the administrator. Perhaps he imagined that my colleague had destroyed one form because it had contained especially critical comments. So the concern about the missing form might have stemmed not from a bureaucratic mindset but from a lack of trust. (In any case, these two explanations are not so far apart - bureaucracies emerged historically as a solution to certain forms of corruption, and are often specifically designed to reduce reliance on personal trust.) The new form had a positive intention – it served to reassure the administrator that my colleague hadn’t acted dishonestly.
However, I have a quibble with how NLP practitioners sometimes talk about positive intentions. (The founders of NLP were very alert to small details of language that revealed habits of thought, but their followers aren’t always so careful.) The word “the” seems to imply that once you have found a frame in which the behaviour seems to make sense, you can stop your analysis because you have found the truth: The Positive Intention. But I prefer to regard this as a hypothesis rather than a truth: A Positive Intention. Sometimes when a person drives a car into a tree, it really is just an accident. As Freud said: sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Some people never stop looking for alternative frames; arguably these people are the true systems thinkers.
See also Good Ideas from Flaky Sources (December 2009)
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Easier Seddon Done
John Seddon of Vanguard has written a book called Systems Thinking in the Public Sector, criticizing something he calls “The Regime” – by which I think he means the dominant forces within government based on targets. The extracts I’ve read so far indicate that Seddon has been strongly influenced by Deming. I also detect some influence from Stafford Beer’s POSIWID principle when he writes: “the de-facto purpose of the regime [is to] make services worse”.
This kind of analysis is absolutely in line with the kind of analysis we have been doing here on the POSIWID blog. I have ordered a copy of the book, and I look forward to reading it. But are the right people (by which I mean the people who might be able to change things) going to read it?
Some years ago, Seddon originated a concept called “failure demand”. This concept was taken up (and, according to Seddon, completely misunderstood) by the regime. When he wrote to representatives of the regime explaining their error, he got a “snotty, curt reply”. Well, who could have predicted this?
This raises an interesting question. Seddon and his colleagues have some pretty sound insights on the flaws in the regime. But the regime is unable to accept these insights. This is not very surprising – regimes do tend to be resistant if not immune to external criticism. So how can Seddon (or anyone else) use these insights to cause real change? Okay, I’m sure he will be happy to sell more copies of his books, but I don’t think he merely wishes to bask in the warm glow of “I told you so”.
From an insider’s perspective, uninvited “insights” from consultants might possibly seem like unwarranted meddling. I use the word “meddle” deliberately, because this is a word Deming uses for attempts to change a system without systemic understanding. Seddon understands what the regime is doing wrong, and he may well be working brilliantly behind the scenes, but his public interventions to change the regime seem to be based on the optimistic logic that telling people what they are doing wrong is going to persuade them to do things differently.
Sadly, the exact opposite is true. Telling people what they are doing wrong makes them defensive, it encourages them to construct elaborate rationalizations for why they are doing what they are doing, and makes them all the more determined to continue along the same track.
Meanwhile, some organizations have a sophisticated mechanism for resisting alien ideas, which is to introduce these ideas in a deliberately weakened form. This is like vaccination: you expose people to cowpox so they won’t succumb to smallpox. Perhaps some highly intelligent and utterly devious people within the regime deliberately exploited some vagueness in Seddon’s original formulation of “failure demand”, implemented something that conformed to the letter of the concept but not the spirit, and then sat back with smug satisfaction when Seddon protested that his original idea had been misapplied, knowing that the regime cannot now succumb to the original power of “failure demand”.
In situations like this, I believe the would-be agent of change must change weapons – relying not on rhetorical insight but on analytic rigour. Concepts must be razor sharp, evidence must be carefully assembled and meticulously deployed. I hope that’s what I’m going to find when I get hold of the book.
Related posts: Vaccination (September 2004), Notes on the Value of Culture (January 2010), Easier Seddon Done 2 (October 2010)
This kind of analysis is absolutely in line with the kind of analysis we have been doing here on the POSIWID blog. I have ordered a copy of the book, and I look forward to reading it. But are the right people (by which I mean the people who might be able to change things) going to read it?
Some years ago, Seddon originated a concept called “failure demand”. This concept was taken up (and, according to Seddon, completely misunderstood) by the regime. When he wrote to representatives of the regime explaining their error, he got a “snotty, curt reply”. Well, who could have predicted this?
This raises an interesting question. Seddon and his colleagues have some pretty sound insights on the flaws in the regime. But the regime is unable to accept these insights. This is not very surprising – regimes do tend to be resistant if not immune to external criticism. So how can Seddon (or anyone else) use these insights to cause real change? Okay, I’m sure he will be happy to sell more copies of his books, but I don’t think he merely wishes to bask in the warm glow of “I told you so”.
From an insider’s perspective, uninvited “insights” from consultants might possibly seem like unwarranted meddling. I use the word “meddle” deliberately, because this is a word Deming uses for attempts to change a system without systemic understanding. Seddon understands what the regime is doing wrong, and he may well be working brilliantly behind the scenes, but his public interventions to change the regime seem to be based on the optimistic logic that telling people what they are doing wrong is going to persuade them to do things differently.
Sadly, the exact opposite is true. Telling people what they are doing wrong makes them defensive, it encourages them to construct elaborate rationalizations for why they are doing what they are doing, and makes them all the more determined to continue along the same track.
Meanwhile, some organizations have a sophisticated mechanism for resisting alien ideas, which is to introduce these ideas in a deliberately weakened form. This is like vaccination: you expose people to cowpox so they won’t succumb to smallpox. Perhaps some highly intelligent and utterly devious people within the regime deliberately exploited some vagueness in Seddon’s original formulation of “failure demand”, implemented something that conformed to the letter of the concept but not the spirit, and then sat back with smug satisfaction when Seddon protested that his original idea had been misapplied, knowing that the regime cannot now succumb to the original power of “failure demand”.
In situations like this, I believe the would-be agent of change must change weapons – relying not on rhetorical insight but on analytic rigour. Concepts must be razor sharp, evidence must be carefully assembled and meticulously deployed. I hope that’s what I’m going to find when I get hold of the book.
Related posts: Vaccination (September 2004), Notes on the Value of Culture (January 2010), Easier Seddon Done 2 (October 2010)
Monday, January 01, 2007
Root Cause
In some versions of systems thinking, we are urged to see "the big picture" and look for "the root cause". Consultants and other practitioners often describe themselves and their practices as "holistic".
Other versions of systems thinking open our eyes to the possibility that there may be many different big pictures, many different root causes. Given this possibility, we may be wary of the "holistic" label, because it is sometimes attached to a fixed way of constructing big pictures and finding root causes, rather than an open-minded appreciative system.
In my previous post on Bullying, I contrasted two possible interventions
- dealing with a single manifestation of bullying
- dealing with the "root cause" of bullying
Using ID cards to prevent (some instances of) bullying is hardly dealing with the root cause of bullying. (Unless you believe that it is the lack of ID cards that somehow causes bullying in the first place.) In terms of Donella Meadow's 12-point framework for system intervention, the ID card introduces an additional information flow (leverage point 6) that enables an additional control or constraint (leverage point 5).
There are two problems with the "root cause" approach to solving complex problems. Firstly an epistemological one - it encourages us to imagine that there might be a single identifiable thing called "the root cause". And secondly an ethical one - understanding causes is sometimes interpreted as providing excuses for the perpetrators.
If we wish to understand bullying, we may observe that many bullies have a history of being bullied themselves, and so we may come to feel some sympathy for the bullies as well as for the victims. If we see bullying as a chronic problem, we may wish to look for systemic long-term solutions rather than merely quick fixes, and this may include providing some healing for the historic pain suffered by those who are currently inflicting their pain on other people.
If we imagine there is a single root cause, and it is a Good Thing to tackle root causes, then healing may come to take precedence over punishment and retribution. We live in a society where the criminal sometimes seems to get more care and attention than the victim.
Some people go to the opposite extreme. The purpose of toughness is to send a clear message - bullying will not be tolerated. Anything that smacks of sympathy for the perpetrator may dilute this message, and may therefore encourage bullying.
But if we see bullying as a many-headed monster, with no single root cause, it may make more sense to institute a diverse cultural anti-bullying programme with a tough combination of preventative and remedial (redemptive) action.
Some people (from both ends of the political spectrum) are convinced they know what is morally right, and therefore have no need for practical knowledge of what really works.
But in my view, the moral problem and the epistemological problem and the practical problem are inextricably linked. How many causes, how many effects? If we pay proper attention to the causes of bullying, what effect does this actually have? What is the real purpose of toughness?
Wikipedia: 12 leverage points appreciative system root cause
Related posts: Anonymity (January 2007)
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Purpose and Meaning
Philosopher Julian Baggini reckons he knows the Meaning of Life (article) and What It's All About (book).
Baggini is apparently equating meaning with purpose.
Aristotle distinguished between efficient cause (what a system does) and final cause (what a system is for). Weak POSIWID asserts that we can infer the final cause (purpose) from the efficient cause. Strong POSIWID asserts that the final cause is identical to the efficient cause - in other words, that's all that purposes are.
Teleological thinking asserts that we can explain the efficient cause (and Aristotle's other two causes as well - formal cause and material cause) in terms of the final cause (purpose). For teleological thinking to make sense, we either have to imagine the system to be self-creating (autopoietic) or imagine another external designing system that owns the purpose.
In general systems thinking, we can usually frame any system of interest inside one or more larger systems, relative to some observer position. But considerable difficulties emerge when we try to apply systems thinking to Life, The Universe and Everything. What kind of system is the entire universe - open, closed, autopoietic, designed? And where (on Earth) can we stand to get a meaningful answer?
Technorati Tags: 4cause Aristotle autopoiesis meaning POSIWID purpose systems thinking
The only sense we can make of the idea that life has meaning is that there are some reasons to live rather than to die, and those reasons are to be found in the living of life itself.
Baggini is apparently equating meaning with purpose.
Aristotle distinguished between efficient cause (what a system does) and final cause (what a system is for). Weak POSIWID asserts that we can infer the final cause (purpose) from the efficient cause. Strong POSIWID asserts that the final cause is identical to the efficient cause - in other words, that's all that purposes are.
Teleological thinking asserts that we can explain the efficient cause (and Aristotle's other two causes as well - formal cause and material cause) in terms of the final cause (purpose). For teleological thinking to make sense, we either have to imagine the system to be self-creating (autopoietic) or imagine another external designing system that owns the purpose.
In general systems thinking, we can usually frame any system of interest inside one or more larger systems, relative to some observer position. But considerable difficulties emerge when we try to apply systems thinking to Life, The Universe and Everything. What kind of system is the entire universe - open, closed, autopoietic, designed? And where (on Earth) can we stand to get a meaningful answer?
Technorati Tags: 4cause Aristotle autopoiesis meaning POSIWID purpose systems thinking
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Baghdad Stampede
It is easy to trace the cause of yesterday's tragedy in Baghdad, in which nearly a thousand people lost their lives (BBC news report). The much-overused word tragedy is appropriate here, because of the terrible way in which the crowd's response to a rumour amplified its effect.
The effect of terrorism is to create a climate in which people are easily terrified. (From resistance and stoicism to susceptibility and panic.) In a climate of fear, a rumoured attack can be as devastating as a real attack.
There had been a mortar attack earlier in the day, but the stampede was not just the aftershock from this single incident. The fear was not the result of a single act of terror, but of a series of attacks over an extended period. It is this aggregation (and the uncertain probability of repetition) that turns terror into terrorism.
Systems thinking should remind us that we can frame a complex tragedy in many different ways. What causes and effects do we include in the frame, how far back into history do we take the analysis? Systems thinking explains why there are so many conflicting explanations and excuses - because there are so many different frames. And why there are so many competing solutions for resisting and battling terrorism. Meanwhile, the appalling terror continues.
My deepest sympathies to the victims of the stampede, and to the people of Iraq.
Previous post: Does Terrorism Work? (July 2005)
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