Transduction — leading transformation — Issue #97
This week:
- Upcoming Event
- Systems Thinking
- Net Zero
- Local Authorities
Upcoming event:
Leading Self, Leading Systems (October 10 & 17): https://bit.ly/3JWV1go
Are you ready to embrace profound transformation in today’s rapidly changing world? Join our highly engaging and thought-provoking workshop to become a catalyst for positive change in your life, organization, and community.
🌐 Online Sessions: October 10th & 17th, 2023 🕘 Time: 0900–1300 BST | 1000–1400 CEST
💡 Unlock Your Leadership Potential: Leadership is not confined to titles; it’s a practice available to everyone. Discover the power of leading self and systems to create something new in the world.
🔍 Session 1 — October 10th: Explore the impact of context on relationships and behaviors through an interactive online simulation. Distinguish between personal and systemic factors with powerful frameworks. Increase self-awareness to overcome reactive patterns and boost your contribution.
🎯 Session 2 — October 17th: Immerse yourself in an organizational exercise designed to challenge your assumptions about leadership. Break down communication barriers, generate a shared vision, and lead in partnership. Learn to recognize underlying patterns that influence relationships and enhance your leadership choices.
🌐 Where: Online on Zoom 💲 Workshop Fee (Both Sessions):
- Standard Fee: £399 (VAT included) for private sector companies.
- Reduced Fee: £299 (VAT included) for charities, public sector, NGOs, and non-profits. 👥 Group Discount: 20% off for 3 or more participants from the same organization (use promo code GROUP).
🤝 Making a Difference: We believe in widening the impact of our work and offer bursaries for grassroots change-makers who cannot afford organizational rates. Reach out to john.watters@livingleadership.org.uk to request bursary places.
🗣️ What People Say: Our workshops bring together diverse participants from various sectors and communities, providing a stimulating and revelatory experience. “Experiential, immersive, illuminating.” “A game-changer in online learning.” “I was engaged throughout the session and immediately saw opportunities to grow and build on my work.”
🚀 Embrace the Future Today: Seize this opportunity to become a transformative leader in your life and beyond. Spaces are limited. Secure your spot now by visiting our website: https://bit.ly/3JWV1go
Link Collection:
My Weekly Blog post:
LinkedIn, as an organized system, aims to make people and topics legible by categorizing them neatly into boxes, like ‘marketing professionals.’ However, this approach has limitations as it can overlook valuable insights found in the rough edges and complexity of individuals and fields. Similar to the concept of the ‘Normalbaum,’ simplifying forests for taxation led to lost value and diversity. Conway’s Law explains how the design of a system reflects the organization’s structure. LinkedIn’s emphasis on specific categories, like IT and marketing, restricts diverse perspectives. Embracing interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches can reintroduce valuable possibilities and creativity.
Government Office for Science — Systems thinking case study bank
Updated 12 January 2023
This document is a case study bank of systems thinking for civil servants. It is one component of a suite of documents that aims to act as a springboard into systems thinking for civil servants unfamiliar with this approach. These documents introduce a small sample of systems thinking concepts and tools, chosen due to their accessibility and alignment to civil service policy development, but which is by no means comprehensive. They are intended to act as a first step towards using systems thinking approaches to solve complex problems and the reader is encourage to explore the wider systems thinking field further.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/systems-thinking-for-civil-servants/case-studies
Event details
- 21 Feb 202215:00–16:00 GMT / 16:00–17:00 CETZoom Webinar
- 50 Anniversary Network Biodiversity, Ecology, and Conservation (BEC) Afghanistan United Kingdom
The UKRI and IIASA hosted a critical dialogue on the benefits of systems thinking in biodiversity research.
https://iiasa.ac.at/events/feb-2022/biodiversity-from-systems-perspective
Hughes, Alan and Ulrichsen, T. (2019) Value Chains, Systems Thinking and Science, Technology and Innovation Policy:Implications for place based policy development in the UK A Critical Assessment. Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge, Cambridge.
The net zero transition: more systems thinking, please — Witten (2021)
Neil Witten
Innovation Lead for Advanced Materials, Innovate UK
25 October 2021
https://www.ukri.org/blog/the-net-zero-transition-more-systems-thinking-please/
BBC Radio 4 In Our Time — Elizabeth Anscombe
A core philosopher deeply aligned with a lot of contextualised systems | cybernetics | complexity, and of course deeply linked to her teacher/mentor and friend, Wittgenstein, whose posthumous work she translated and edited. (Note mostly to self: I hadn’t realised until this show how she connects Wittgenstein and Alasdair MacIntyre, another deeply systems | cybernetics | complexity philosopher).
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential thinker who rejuvenated moral philosophy in the postwar period.
Ecosystem Building at Systems Innovation Network
I sometimes get asked which organizations are doing systems innovation. So here is my very subjective list of the organisations I find most interesting in this area*
The Cybersyn Revolution — Medina (2015)
Five lessons from a socialist computing project in Salvador Allende’s Chile.
https://jacobin.com/2015/04/allende-chile-beer-medina-cybersyn/
Thinking about Teaching Systems Thinking with Technology — Cunningham (2014)
A presentation about the use of technology to teach systems thinking at the k-12 level
Professor at National-Louis University
Ian Glendinning on The Santiago Boys
(As interesting as the article, are the comments, in which he talks about his own path of discovery and exploration of cybernetics)
Econtalk podcast — Michael Munger on Obedience to the Unenforceable, and Ram Dass
Two contrasting podcasts happened to come up back-to-back on my app (both available in any podcatcher, but shared here from youtube as it’s more visual).
Both provide very interesting systems perspectives on multiple dimensions of politics, law, and society, based on different degrees of enforceability and temporality (think ‘time ‘pace layer’) in multiple dimensions with interesting overlaps (and with costs and benefits to each seen differently from different positions)….
Michael Munger on Obedience to the Unenforceable 6/19/23
19 Jun 2023
Civilization and the pleasantness of everyday life depend on unwritten rules. Early in the 20th century, an English mathematician and government official, Lord Moulton, described complying with these rules as “obedience to the unenforceable”–the area of personal choice that falls between illegal acts and complete freedom. Listen as economist Michael Munger talks with EconTalk’s Russ Roberts about the power and challenge of the unenforceable. Links, transcript, and more information: https://www.econtalk.org/michael-mung… Subscribe to EconTalk on YouTube: / @econtalkwithruss Subscribe to the audio episodes: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast… Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/econ… Spotify:
… and wherever you listen to podcasts.
Ram Dass: You Can’t Have An Us and Them — Here and Now Podcast Ep. 228
141K subscribers
Premiered on 19 Jun 2023
Ram Dass — Here and Now In this episode of the Here and Now Podcast, Ram Dass talks about practice in daily life and answers questions about polarization and fundamentalism, integrating psychodynamic and spiritual techniques, dealing with addiction, and more. Today’s podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/ramdass This podcast is also brought to you by Magic Mind. Magic Mind contains a magical combination of 13 active ingredients, scientifically designed to improve energy, focus, and mood while decreasing stress — all things that, combined, improve your productivity. For 50% off your subscription to Magic Mind, visit magicmind.co/ramdass “And I said I’m not going to get discouraged because I can see that a centrist position, this is a hard one, a centrist position… That at this point in the way the world game is a falling, either everybody goes or nobody goes. You can’t polarize it again. You can’t have an ‘us’ and ‘them.’ It’s got to keep embracing people, embracing people. And I saw that would demand much more centrism than I was used to or wanted from a Democratic president and so on.”
Forbes: We Must Embed Systems Thinking In Education. Here’s How — World Economic Forum
By Breanne Pitt, PhD Candidate; Project Researcher, Strategic Intelligence, Trinity College Dublin and Abhinav Chugh, Content and Partnerships Lead, Expert Network and Content Partners, World Economic Forum
Same article at
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/07/systems-thinking-education-future/
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Innovative Learning Solutions to Navigate Complexity: Adapting Systems Thinking to Future Classrooms
In an era defined by intricate challenges such as climate change, inequality and biodiversity loss, a systems perspective has become paramount. The interconnected nature of these issues demands a deep understanding of patterns, relationships and dependencies.
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LinkedIn piece where I saw this
12 July 2023
This paper by John Beckford, Beckford Consulting and Katie Barnes, Executive Director of the National Preparedness Commission explores the concept of systemic resilience and failure in the face of crises. This is the third of a series of papers commissioned by NPC on applying systemic thinking to the notion of national preparedness. The first paper discussed the role of data in preparedness and the second paper explored crises, resilience, and complex systems.
This paper discusses the importance of stakeholder priorities in understanding where to focus resources during a crisis. It emphasises that the value of a system lies in the eyes of the beholder, and different stakeholders may have different interests and needs. Understanding these varying interests is crucial in determining system success and resilience. During crises, system owners should prioritise understanding the needs of stakeholders and communicate with them effectively. A systemic mapping of the elements and interactions within a system is also vital for identifying alternative solutions and managing dynamic risks.
The dystopia of self-sovereign identity (SSI) https://philipsheldrake.com/2020/11/the-dystopia-of-self-sovereign-identity-ssi/
Google’s Plan To DRM The Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For https://www.techdirt.com/2023/08/02/googles-plan-to-drm-the-web-goes-against-everything-google-once-stood-for/
I’m speaking: Cadenced culture: the key to high-performing teams based on trust, Tue, Aug 22, 2023, 6:00 PM | Meetup https://www.meetup.com/agile-speakers-lab/events/295004566/?utm_content=bufferdecd5&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Fragmented funding — the complex local authority funding landscape https://www.local.gov.uk/fragmented-funding-complex-local-authority-funding-landscape
Gut microbiome composition and diversity are related to human personality traits https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8336012/
Sustainably Run and proud, making a difference every day https://portal.sustainably.run/showcase/rqpstasustainability
portal.sustainably.runSustainably Run and proud, making a difference every dayGiftTrees certificate
What went wrong with Horizon: learning from the Post Office Trial https://www.benthamsgaze.org/2021/07/15/what-went-wrong-with-horizon-learning-from-the-post-office-trial/
New data institutions are the key to London’s growth https://www.standard.co.uk/business/new-data-institutions-are-the-key-to-london-s-growth-b1097350.html
Evening Standard · 6dNew data institutions are the key to London’s growthBy Evening Standard
How to campaign effectively — Taxpayer Fairness https://www.taxpayerfairness.org/how-to-campaign-effectively
www.taxpayerfairness.orgHow to campaign effectively — Taxpayer Fairness
Scientists develop game-changing vaccine against Lyme disease ticks https://www.newsweek.com/lyme-disease-tick-vaccine-developed-1815809
Newsweek · Jul 27Scientists Develop Game-Changing Vaccine Against Lyme Disease TicksBy Jess Thomson
