🌿🧭🌳 OD51: Dimensions of Impact ∙ Journey to Systems Mastery ∙ Institutional Failure ∙ Complex Systems
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1. Sense & Explore
Curiosity fuels exploration. Curated resources that might come in handy.
#practice
INSEAD: First pick this week is about the three dimensions of (social) impact: Scale, Depth and Duration. Prof. Jasjit Singh makes the case for this multi-dimensional view of impact, as opposed to focusing only on scale.
Bigger scale = touching the lives of more people
Superior depth = making a bigger difference in the lives of those people
Longer duration = offering value that is more persistent to those people
How might these three dimensions of impact apply to your practice?
(reply to this e-mail with your thoughts 💡)Medium: If you’re interested in becoming a systems practitioner, Philippe Vandenbroeck shares a path with five horizons.
Horizon 1: Tools
It is not unusual to become acquainted with systems concepts, and to get a first taste for systems practice, through the use of distinct, well-codified frameworks and tools. The scope of a systems practice toolbox extends beyond various types of system maps and simulation models and may include elements from many other disciplines, such as design thinking, network science, business strategy and ecology.
Horizon 2: Method
Methods are structured approaches that reflect systems principles and encompass a range of tools. They are intellectual Swiss Army knives that can be deployed to pursue different purposes in different contexts.
Horizon 3: Learning
I see this horizon as the core of systems practice. It is where we engage in sustained efforts to embrace the unruliness of wicked problems. Uncertainty, bounded rationality (we can’t know everything) and multiple perspectives (we don’t see challenges in the same way) are inextricably linked to these longer term learning processes.
Horizon 4: Ethos
Systems practice comes with the requirement to constantly question ourselves in relation to the ethics and the risk of failure associated to complex learning processes. It is the sort of learning that is bound to challenge our sense of identity.
Horizon 5: Epistemology
Systems practice is rooted into a systems worldview or ‘epistemology’ that revolves around the experience of interdependence, the power of love and the intelligence of life. Gregory Bateson: “The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and how people think.”
I experience the overall journey to rounded systems mastery as a movement from ‘systems thinking’ (horizon 1 and 2) to ‘systems tinkering’ (horizon 2 and 3), to ‘systems being’ (horizons 4 and 5).
Do you think these horizons reflect development paths in other disciplines as well?
#reflect
Postshift: Lee Bryant shares his reflections on institutional failure. This piece made us think about how learning from what happens in the society can inform better org design:
(…) it is important to codify our organizational values in the very structures and processes that comprise them, and to build in checks, balances and dampeners against runaway failure or capture by bad actors.
(…) we need to constantly balance our individualism with our responsibilities to each other (…)
Do you notice the checks and balances in the organizations around you?
#study
Society of Complex Systems: The Conference on Complex Systems 2020, organized by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, has published its book of abstracts. There’s a richness of insights in the document. Here are the titles that piqued our interest:
Cascading Failures and Recovery in Complex Interdependent Networks - p6
Self-Organization and Developments of Super-Individuals in Large Scale Systems: HoneyBees, Tetrahymena, Web data, Boids - p7
Percolation on feature-enriched interconnected systems - p36
A new representation framework for social temporal networks - p49
Diffusion Geometry of Multiplex and Interdependent Systems - p56
Multiscale analysis of complex networks: from micro- to macro- with spectral entropy - p97
Self-Organization In Stellar Evolution: Size-Complexity Rule - p130
Complexity in the Military Domain: An Analytical Framework for Modeling Complex Tactical Decisions - p151
Self-Healing Strategy for Improving Robustness in Limited Resource - p166
The role of geography in the complex diffusion of innovations - p187
Identification of skill in an online game: The case of Fantasy Premier League - p219
Long-term feedback mechanisms underlying societal collapse - p260
Managing complexity through the complexity of our thinking: Key research questions and challenges to the development of a meta-heuristic - p296
Based on the brief study of the abstracts above, we discovered some concepts that might be useful: percolation theory, superindividual, mutualism, temporal networks, random walks, information entropy, dialectical materialism, human-machine teaming, resilience-based system design, adaptive capacity, self-healing systems, spatial adoption dynamics, stochasticity, herding dynamics, cliodynamics, ecological economics, metaheuristics and knowledge as a complex system.
Enjoy the exploration!
2. Sense & Connect
The wisdom is in the conversations. Opportunities to connect and learn with peers.
Kairos Future: The International Certified Future Strategist program is developed by 5 international partners, with support from EU’s Leonardo da Vinci Program for lifelong learning.
Topics
Environment Analysis - scope, timeframe, trend scanning, trend analysis, trend research, certainties vs. uncertainties, systems analysis, big data and data retrieving
Scenarios - theory and methods, contextual understanding, strategic uncertainties, scenarios logic, characteristics, stories and illustration, quality and tension
Vision and Strategy - visions and desired future, assets, strategy models, developing strategies from future
Strategy and Action - strategy testing, action planning, change agents, stakeholder participation, continuous trend-scenario-strategy-innovation cycle, monitoring and scanning
The program starts in March and is fully online (paid).
We don’t receive any sponsorship for promoting the learning opportunities in this section. We share events that we’re organizing for you, or pick the ones that we’re interested in participating as well 🌿
3. Sense & Change
Understanding new concepts and putting them into practice.
As we mentioned last week, we’re exploring creating in February a detailed guide for the Team Chemistry Framework, along with tips and team meeting designs for team facilitators. If you want to support this new endeavor, we invite you to join the waiting list (all of you on this list will receive a 100% discount code for the guide when it's ready). Special thanks to the 16 readers that already joined.
The second version of the Guide to Dynamic Stakeholder Mapping is still work in progress - more details next week!
Thanks for reading
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This newsletter is curated by Raluca and Bülent Duagi, the Sense & Change team.
As Strategy & Organization professionals, we're using systems thinking and behavioral science to advise VPs, Directors and their teams to make their organizations more effective.
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