Transduction — leading transformation — Issue #122
This week:
- Upcoming Events
- Systems and Complexity in Organisation
- Cybernetics
- Local Government
Upcoming Events:
SE Stakeholder Engagement — Productive Conversations (0.5d)
This training programme could equally be called ‘honest conversations’, ‘difficult conversations’, ‘constructive conversations’, or ‘challenging conversations’.
Fundamental to the success and flavour of organisational life — and systems practice interventions — are the quality of conversations we are able to have. If we can develop an honest and shared attempt to get at shared understanding — shared ‘truth’ if you like — or at least to fully appreciate each others’ understanding — then we can make true progress.
This interactive session will:
- Discuss different types of feedback / difficult conversation
- Understand how the brain rationalises and protect us
- Increase awareness of our own habits and perceptions
- Prepare and plan for a difficult conversation
- Have effective performance conversations
- Learn how to respond / look after yourself in the moment
And help you to have productive conversations even when it seems most unlikely. You will need to bring a record of an ‘unproductive’ conversation you have had, or fear having, and be prepared to work with others around it and other examples. You will end the session with the ability to surface more productive conversations even when it is difficult.
Trainer
These courses are delivered by Benjamin P Taylor, an expert in systems, cybernetics, and complexity in service transformation.
Pricing Info
£250 +VAT
To enquire please go on this link: https://www.systemspractice.org/courses/ise-stakeholder-engagement-productive-conversations-05d
ILG Large Group Interventions (1.0d)
In a classic 2005 article, ‘Techniques to Match our Values’, Weisbord set out the ‘learning curve’, with a movement from ‘experts solve problems’ to ‘’everybody’ solves problems’ to ‘experts improve whole systems’ to ‘’everybody’ improves whole systems’. Inherent in the development of systems practice from the start has been recognition of ‘the whole’, which comes in various forms from group dynamics to organisational viability.
This programme will give an overview of intervention approaches which ‘bring whole systems into the room’ rather than have a few experts work on individual issues. We will look at some of the history and the wide range of interventions that have been developed, and provide an overview of some of the most interesting.
We will compare and contrast these approaches and provide ‘ways in’ to consider when, and which, large group intervention might be an appropriate part of a systems practice intervention.
Trainer
These courses are delivered by Benjamin P Taylor, an expert in systems, cybernetics, and complexity in service transformation.
Pricing Info
£500 +VAT
To enquire please go on this link: https://www.systemspractice.org/courses/ilg-large-group-interventions-10d
ICS3 Workshop Design (0.5d)
This module provides learners with an understanding of the design of workshops and relevant considerations, taking into account the potentially very different contexts and definitions of what a ‘workshop’ is. It introduces a range of tools and approaches for workshop design, building on the facilitation module. It gives tools to consider evaluation and learning about workshop design, and compares various approaches, enabling learners to better select and apply appropriate workshop design approaches to their context.
A workshop can be distinguished from a meeting (though the boundaries may be blurry at times), by some of the following indicators:
- intensive discussion and activity, designed to progress thinking and planning
- intentionally designed activities (rather than simply an agenda), or flow
- an impact focus, usually above and beyond just a discussion or decision — some kind of output taking an intervention or initiative forward
An alternative use of the work, to workshop (something), refers to taking a product or idea into a period of intense focused experimentation and development, often bringing in fresh or different perspectives than the original developers of the product or idea. This is of course closely related, but implies some partly-developed ‘content’ as the workshop focus, as opposed to simply a product or idea. In either case, some input is expected to a workshop, whether process, content, or both.
The learning will cover:
- What a workshop is
- Where and when we might use a workshop
- A range of tools and approaches
- How to appropriately select an approach, and design a workshop to fit the requirements in context
- The importance of reflection and how to evaluate and build a learning loop
- Workshop design tools, core and conceptual
This is a very practical, hands-on course based on you creating an initial workshop design from your context, using sources offered, and sharing and discussing it in the session.
This course complements the course on Facilitation for systems practice interventions, though they can be done independently or in any order.
Trainer
These courses are delivered by Benjamin P Taylor, an expert in systems, cybernetics, and complexity in service transformation.
Pricing Info
£250 +VAT
To enquire please go on this link: https://www.systemspractice.org/courses/ics3-workshop-design-05d
ICS2 Facilitation Skills for Systems Practice Interventions (0.5d)
This course provides learners with an understanding of the facilitation relationship in the context of systems intervention itself, and of the challenges it brings. It introduces a range of tools and practices for facilitation and provides guidance on workshop planning. Finally, it compares various approaches to facilitation, enabling learners to develop a stronger sense of the kind of facilitator they want to be.
Topics covered include:
- The facilitraining rainbow — where do you stand?
- Divergence, emergence, convergence;
- Differentiation and integration method;
- Adaptive change;
- Facilitation for ‘robust systems’;
- Session planning and session flow;
- The perceptual positions;
- Ground rules for workshops and ways into partnership;
- Maintaining your authenticity;
- Peter Block’s ‘six conversations that matter’;
- Chris Corrigan’s ‘seven little helpers’;
- Hosting and guiding and/or customer services;
- Context cues;
- History and three futures;
- Power tools and making concrete — Naming The Thing.
Trainer
These courses are delivered by Benjamin P Taylor, an expert in systems, cybernetics, and complexity in service transformation.
Pricing Info
£250 +VAT
To enquire please go on this link: https://www.systemspractice.org/courses/ics2-facilitation-skills-systems-practice-interventions-05d
ICS1b Consulting for Systems Practice Interventions — (b) Core (0.5d)
This course provides learners with a deeper understanding of:
- Discovery and research into the client system;
- Power questions, layers of analysis, and objectifying ‘the system’;
- Research and action-based approaches;
- Third-party and whole systems approaches;
- Maintaining the balance of responsibility for deep engagement;
- Structuring analysis and feedback, developing commitment;
- Choosing dirty or clean consulting.
To maximise your chances of being effective in achieving positive change, you should combine a sound understanding of systems approaches with well-developed intervention skills.
This in turn requires a clear conception of the role of the systems practitioner as ‘consultant’, of their relationships with stakeholders, especially the ‘client’, and the nature of the practitioner’s influence on the organisations they seek to transform.
Drawing on Flawless Consulting, Barry Oshry’s Organic Systems Framework, and more, Consulting for Systems Practice Interventions emphasises a collaborative approach and equal responsibility between the intervention practitioner and the client, navigating a path between the twin traps of ‘consultant as boss’ and ‘consultant as servant’.
These courses are relevant to anyone — consultant or not! — who is engaging in organisational change.
Trainer
These courses are delivered by Benjamin P Taylor, an expert in systems, cybernetics, and complexity in service transformation.
Pricing Info
£250 +VAT
To enquire please go on this link: https://www.systemspractice.org/courses/ics1b-consulting-systems-practice-interventions-b-core-05d
ICS1a Consulting for Systems Practice Interventions — (a) Foundation (0.5d)
This course will provide learners with key principles and a structure for interventions. Topics covered include:
- The five phases of the consultative process;
- ‘Techniques are not enough’: relationships in consulting;
- Dealing with ‘the space of service’;
- Setting up a clear ‘contract’ for interventions — including triangular and rectangular contracting;
- Authenticity and setting your assumptions;
- The client behind the client and the problem behind the problem;
To maximise your chances of being effective in achieving positive change, you should combine a sound understanding of systems approaches with well-developed intervention skills.
This in turn requires a clear conception of the role of the systems practitioner as ‘consultant’, of their relationships with stakeholders, especially the ‘client’, and the nature of the practitioner’s influence on the organisations they seek to transform.
Drawing on Flawless Consulting, Barry Oshry’s Organic Systems Framework, and more, Consulting for Systems Practice Interventions emphasises a collaborative approach and equal responsibility between the intervention practitioner and the client, navigating a path between the twin traps of ‘consultant as boss’ and ‘consultant as servant’.
These courses are relevant to anyone — consultant or not! — who is engaging in organisational change.
Trainer
These courses are delivered by Benjamin P Taylor, an expert in systems, cybernetics, and complexity in service transformation.
Pricing Info
£250 +VAT
To enquire please go on this link: https://www.systemspractice.org/courses/ics1a-consulting-systems-practice-interventions-foundation-05d
Link Collection:
My Weekly Blog post:
Accounting operates as a language, both revealing and concealing aspects of business and public service operations, entrenched with assumptions and norms. Its evolution spans millennia: from Mesopotamian agricultural records to Pacioli’s double-entry system and McKinsey’s management accounting. Yet, modern accounting lacks a model for sustainability, overlooking the interplay between service provision and demand. Business distinctions between revenue and capital spending fail to reflect true assets like reputation and community. For me, traditional accounts fail to capture core decisions and investments in my ventures. A reimagined accounting language should encapsulate holistic value creation, fostering learning and collaboration. Can we envision an accounting framework truly serving our needs?
Does accounting serve public services? Is it serving your business?
Cybernetics Within Us — Saparina (1966)
h/t to this mini-thread on twitter by Olivia Guest on archive.org:
Can a rat tell the difference between a Raphael Madonna and a Picasso Girl in Blue? Would a Martian (if there is such a thing) recognize a live cat after having seen a photograph of one? Can a “seeing”electronic machine be made to tell a cat from a dog or an A from a B? How would it go about “computing” the image? And is “machine thinking”anything like human thinking?
These and other such problems are investigated in the branch of cybernetics that studies living systems: bionics, as this ultramodern science is now called. It developed when scientists began to compare the design and operation of electronic systems with living organisms. Our body, they found, is a complex cybernetic system controlled by countless self-regulating devices. In fact, every single cell of our body is an automatic control device in its own right. Millions upon millions of tiny cybernetic units are constantly at work within us. They maintain normal blood pressure, control the composition of the gastric juices, ensure the rhythmic contraction of the heart and lungs, and do a thousand other things that come under the heading of “vital functions”of the organism.
How they work and how our body functions is described in this popular exposition, which requires no previous knowledge of cybernetics, biology, electronics, or any other subject for that matter (except reading, of course).
The book was translated from the Russian by Vladimir Talmy and was published by Peace in 1966.
Cybernetics Within Usby Yelena SaparinaPublication date 1966Topics science, popular, mir publishers, peace publishers, machine, perception, learning, vision, language, information, logic, circuits, pleasure centre, brains, cognition, cybernetics, cognitive science, automata, molecules, interaction, systems, levels, neural architecture, neurons, mindCollection mir-titles; additional_collectionsLanguage EnglishCan a rat tell the difference between a Raphael Madonna and a Picasso Girl in Blue? Would a Martian (if there is such a thing) recognize a live cat after having seen a photograph of one? Can a “seeing”electronic machine be made to tell a cat from a dog or an A from a B? How would it go about “computing” the image? And is “machine thinking”anything like human thinking?These and other such problems are investigated in the branch of cybernetics that studies living systems: bionics, as this ultramodern science is now called. It developed when scientists began to compare the design and operation of electronic systems with living organisms. Our body, they found, is a complex cybernetic system controlled by countless self-regulating devices. In fact, every single cell of our body is an automatic control device in its own right. Millions upon millions of tiny cybernetic units are constantly at work within us. They maintain normal blood pressure, control the composition of the gastric juices, ensure the rhythmic contraction of the heart and lungs, and do a thousand other things that come under the heading of “vital functions”of the organism.How they work and how our body functions is described in this popular exposition, which requires no previous knowledge of cybernetics, biology, electronics, or any other subject for that matter (except reading, of course).The book was translated from the Russian by Vladimir Talmy and was published by Peace in 1966.
Cybernetics Within Us : Yelena Saparina : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Hiroki Sayama, Chrystopher L. Nehaniv
The year of 2024 marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of evoloops, an evolutionary variant of Chris Langton’s self-reproducing loops which proved that Darwinian evolution of self-reproducing organisms by variation and natural selection is possible within deterministic cellular automata. Over the last few decades, this line of Artificial Life research has since undergone several important developments. Although it experienced a relative dormancy of activities for a while, the recent rise of interest in open-ended evolution and the success of continuous cellular automata models have brought researchers’ attention back to how to make spatio-temporal patterns self-reproduce and evolve within spatially distributed computational media. This article provides a review of the relevant literature on this topic over the past 25 years and highlights the major accomplishments made so far, the challenges being faced, and promising future research directions.
[2402.03961v1] Self-Reproduction and Evolution in Cellular Automata: 25 Years after Evoloops
Western Complex Systems Conference 2024
Western Complex Systems Conference 2024 explores the application of complexity theory and systems thinking across disciplines. Over vast diversity in academic fields, methodologies, and domain expertise, our common thread is curiosity about the ways that nonlinear dynamics and systemic thinking invite us to understand and respond to our world.
- Thursday, March 28, 2024, 9:00 AM — 12:30 PM ESTAttend in-person at Arthur and Sonia Labatt Health Sciences Building (1151 Huron Dr), Room 232, Western University (Canada)Attend virtually via Zoom WebinarHosted by the Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) Lab at Western UniversityQuestions? Contact planning team at wcsc@groups.uwo.ca
See conference schedule and registration for more details. Registration is free.
A wise and well-balanced man. Reflections on Deming, Musk, ‘AI’, self-driving, kaizen, (the absence of) just-in-time, and more…
Jim Womack’s Observations and Reflections on the Evolution of Lean — Lean Blog podcast https://overcast.fm/+J18vPu4M
A neat example of the AInshittification of the web…
‘Samuel Moore’ (more! more!) is truly cranking out ‘top tens’ with text that’s… slightly off… these days…
World’s biggest cumulative logjam mapped in the N.W.T. — and it stores tons of carbon | CBC News
Cells Across the Body Talk to Each Other About Aging | Quanta Magazine
The Drystone Company — Dry Stone Wallers in Perthshire, working throughout Scotland. Drystone walls, drystone features and repairs.
There’s a completely different type of bread — risen by bacteria!
Salt-rising bread — Wikipedia
