Posts Tagged ‘Complexity Theory’
Poiesis
I learned something very interesting just now. The Greek word for poetry is poiesis – ‘making’.
That wouldn’t have been too dramatic a discovery but management theorists are fond of the word auto-poesis.
Auto-poiesis
Autopoiesis literally means “auto (self)-creation” (from the Greek: auto – αυτό for self- and poiesis – ποίησις for creation or production), and expresses a fundamental dialectic between structure and function.
We like this word in management because it expresses the constant interplay between our relationships with the world and ourselves.
Autopoiesis vs allopiesis
An autopoietic system is to be contrasted with an allopoietic system, such as a car factory, which uses raw materials (components) to generate a car (an organized structure) which is something other than itself (the factory).
Management theory in the 21st century
Much of the management theory I grew up with was about allopoietic systems. How do we turn inputs into something that we will send out or away? X and Y.
Indeed, even allowing for the transformation of X into Y is somewhat of a novelty for a psychologist. To have a feedback loop from Y to X is so challenging that the loop mysteriously disappears from some text books!
When we think of ourselves as autopoietic, we allow that “if organization of a thing changes, the thing changes.” Here we are saying that every time a bolt and a washer, or indeed anything enters a factory, or a car leaves a factory, the factory itself has changed.
We are less concerned with what goes in and what goes out and more concerned with way the factory reinvents itself minute-by-minute.
An example of an autopoietic system
It’s a bit giddy-making when we switch from one idea to the other.
For the research minded
It is easier for research, stats-minded people to see the idea when they think of Losada’s work on the maths of happiness. Happiness is made up of three things yet any one these is not happiness, or even the beginning of happiness. The three things are a positivity/negativity ratio of around 5 to 1, slightly more curiosity than advocacy, and slightly more interest in the outside world than ourselves. We don’t add up these three variables. Rather, they “feed” off each other. At any one time their coordinates (x,y,z) can be anywhere in a 3D space shaped like a 3D butterfly.
Happiness means we have a big plump space and the coordinates swoop around. Unhappiness means they have a repetitive circle or limited space. Here we see the dialectic between structure and function.
We are healthy when we are constantly regenerating ourselves in response to the world around us and what we were a minute ago.
We become ill when we don’t look after who we were one minute ago (right now in other words) and we don’t attend to what is going on around us. We are ill when our head is anywhere except here and now.
There is room for day dreaming, planning and reminiscing. But as the icing on the cake. Devoting space to what we are not is not healthy. A healthy mind is asking what is going on now and celebrating what is rather than what is not.
For the non-research minded
For the non-research minded, lets think of a cake made of flour, eggs and sugar. We can vary the proportions, or at least good a baker can, and by varying proportions we get a good range of delicious cakes. To have one type of cake all the time is boring. Happiness, in this analogy, is a wide variety of cakes from plain biscuits to luscious forest cakes. We have a plain biscuit today and we feel like a rich cake tomorrow, and vice versa.
Life becomes grim when the recipe never changes or we try to swap eggs for something else (like potatoes). We need constant variety within broad rules.
We need to enjoy each cake for what it is. A dry biscuit is that. It is not chocolate cake. It never will be.
We also need to bake the cake. Happiness is the cake. Not a line of eggs, sugar and flour on the kitchen table. It is a baked cake. It is the product of interacting parts mixed sensibly.
Poiesis
I didn’t know that poetry means making. Auto-poiesis is the poetry of ourselves. The constant interplay between structure (me) and function (the world).
The psychological breakthrough of the noughties
One of the most surprising yet little understood results of psychological research this decade has been the Losada ratio. Simply, you will get depressed if you experience more than 1 minor negative event to every 3 moderate positive events.
How do we remain sane on trains and tubes and cramped uncomfortable workplaces, I wonder. Well we don’t. We languish. We become inflexible. Our creativity drops. And all our energy goes into managing the negativitiy.
Of course, we should become resilient. Some even say we should become ‘hard’. But we aren’t saying we should extinguish all negative results. When negative stuff falls below 8%, we get manic. The flip side of the 3:1 ratio is 11:1. We need to be somewhere in between.
We will take 17% of nonsense
The optimal rate is 5 moderate positive to 1 mild negative events. Let’s spell that out. People will take a mildly negative comment in the company of 5 moderately positive comments. You can be mildly unpleasant 17% of the time without demolishing the creativity productivity and creativity of your team. Surely that is sufficient quota for you!!
A simple model of 3 factors
The amazing thing about this research result is the positivity/negativity ratio is believed to interact with two other ratios. In addition to being positive, it is also healthy to ask slightly more questions about facts, figures and other people’s views than to put on the table what we already know. Moreover, it is healthy to be slightly more concerned with life outside the group than with internal processes.
Groups that interact in these ratios have moments when they are positive, questioning and externally-oriented and moments when they are negative, internally-oriented and pushing their own point of view. They also have all manner of combination in between the two extremes. If we assume they are one-or-the other, they have 2x2x2, that is 8 states they can be in.
Understanding whether a group is healthy
How can we tell whether a group that is presently negative, internally-oriented and pushy is permanently in that state, or in a natural swoop of mood?
Simply we cannot tell, until they change. Life isn’t a spectator sport. If we want to know what kind of group we are in, we have to hang about long enough to find out.
Funnily enough, if we are curious enough to stay, if we are willing to put our eggs in their basket, then they are more likely to swing into a more positive state. We should remember though that emotion is contagious. If they are in a very bad mood, take care to give yourself space to stay positive. And don’t preach. Ask! Or as Ben Zander says, apologize and invite. Preaching to preachers doesn’t get them to listen!
Understanding whether a group will stay positive
Also remember, that joining a positive team that seems on top of the world is no guarantee that they will stay there. Indeed, if they are healthy, they will not stay there. They will swoop downwards and they are probably about to begin a downward sweep. So be sure you are happy to join them on the ride. Be happy that you will join them . . .
That’s the way to judge a project. Are you welcome and do you trust this group enough to put up with the bad times? In sickness and in health?
The question for New Year’s Eve
Remember life isn’t a spectator sport. Who exactly are you loyal too? That is the question for New Year’s Eve. That’s the reason for New Year’s Eve. To remember those to whom are we deeply committed in the year ahead.
Tell me about the people in your life and I will show you a successful business and a blossoming career
Posted on: December 9, 2009
Our strengths are our connections to the environment
Our strengths are not in ourselves. They are in our connections with our environment. So says Ralph Stacey, complexity theorist at University of Hertfordshire.
What on earth does he mean? Is this just some abstruse idea that I can safely ignore? Is it some pop idea that it is not what you know, it is who you know?
Use systems theory to understand your business and take action!
I am going to explain this idea using ideas from MGMT101: very basic systems theory.
Imagine the world as set of concentric circles. Go on. Draw them. Draw three.
Outer circle : macro-environment ~ the cloud
The very outer circle is the big bad world ~ the macro environment ~ the cloud. This is where you do your PEST analysis. This is where we worry about Politics, Economics, Social Trends like birth rates and Gen Y and Technological Change like Social Media. What is happening in the stratosphere of our lives? It is important to know this stuff. In the slow moving world of the 1950’s, it was possible to look up and do this once a year. In this day and age, you should have a set of Google Alerts just for this purpose. If you are a large organization, you should have part of your intranet reserved for articles on these topics written by your own staff in their areas of expertise.
Outer circle but one : micro-environment ~ your pond
The next circle are your competitors ~ your micro-environment ~ your pond. Who is in your pond? This is where we use Porter’s Five Forces. We think about what your customers actually want. What are the benefits of our products and services (rather than our features). We think about what it takes to get into this business (barriers to entry). We think about the suppliers on whom we depend (and how much they or we call the shots). We think about who else ‘wants in’ to the business ~ who are our competitors. We think about what our customers could use as a substitute for our service our product.
The ecosytem of our pond is quite complicated and we are sometimes overwhelmed by thinking it out. I’ve found two concepts really help.
- Think of your lunch. Who wants your lunch? The answer is often very surprising. After all, if scientists depend on government for their money, then they are in the businesses of public administration, government or politics. This is usually an aha moment.
- Think of the food chain. We are often make jokes about being at the bottom of the food chain. Actually you want to be at the bottom of the food chain. If you are nobody’s lunch, then there is no reason for your existence. Who dies if you die? Often your existence is rather diffuse. So let’s phrase that a little. Who would be inconvenienced if you closed down? You can see why businesses try to create monopolies. They are safe if they are indispensable. Here is another aha moment when you see clearly who are your allies in the great game of commerce.
When we have our competitors (they want our lunch) and our customers (they eat us), we are on the way to describing the ecosystem of our pond.
Defining your micro-environment ~ your pond ~ is work that you have to do yourself
Both these questions about ‘lunch in the eco-system’ are hard to answer. They are not like PEST which is common to huge swathes of people and answered in The Economist and other general sources like that.
These are questions you must answer. I can suggest ideas. We can borrow ideas and insights from other people in the trade. Occasionally we find a really good book on our business like Michael Riley’s Human Resource Management in the Hospitality Industry. Mostly we have to sit down and answer
- Who wants my lunch?
- Who thinks I am their lunch? Who depends upon me?
We need concrete answers. Take photos for me. Tell me what they had for breakfast and where they are are 2.17 in the morning. Why that time? Because you know them so well.
The third circle – who are you and what is your agenda?
With those concrete and specific answers we can define the next circle. Who are you and what are your strengths?
Now we do the SWOT analysis. What are your strengths ~ your internal capacity, or things that you do every day, that allow you to be who you are. Your weaknesses ~ those things you wish you weren’t (but might just be the flip side of your strengths). The opportunities ~ those things coming up that you really want to do. Threats ~ those things upcoming that you want to get out of. You SWOT analysis is just a fancy ‘to do’ list.
Your strengths are the things you like to do and that you probably did yesterday too. That’s what makes us thing they are us.
But they are really a story that we tell ourselves about us. That’s why we look partly at our inner talk. We have a story of who we are, who we secretly fear that we are, we we secretly want to be. We will always have our secret fears and aspirations, but our happiest times are when most of our story is out in the open.
And what is our story? It is the story of what we do with other people for other people while we are up against a threat (those who want our lunch!). It is a playful story about people who are in this game ~ with us and against us. Cheering us on and getting in the way!
We cannot tell this story with the story of the outer two circles. We cannot tell this story with the story of our times – the PEST analysis. We cannot tell the story without the story of our pond – Porter’s Five Forces.
Our story is a story about real people. You must tell me who those people are.
Your strengths are your participation in the game of life. Everything you say and everything you do, with real live people.
Tell me that story and I will show you a successful business and blossoming career.
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Writing to understand
I’ve been writing myself into this this morning.
Does active listening work? And who for?
When someone is angry, and we are genuinely curious about what led to their anger, won’t they calm down?
Is active listening fair?
Do they have any other choice? If they have no choice, are we bullying them? Do they lose out, in real terms or in psychological terms, when we really listen to them?
Will passive-aggressives let you listen to them? Won’t that spoil their fun?
Of course, someone who is in the habit of passive-aggression, or who habitually plays a “double-bind”, might be very disconcerted. They might feel deprived. But how long will that last? I think we need some clinical psychologists to comment on that!
Aren’t misunderstandings the key to getting along?
Earlier today, I wrote on the value of misunderstandings. If we go around the world looking for misunderstandings, relishing them, enjoying them, then aren’t we able to listen to people who seem to blunder from one misunderstanding to another?
So what can we do about people who enjoy being angry?
To give my thoughts a more real-world test, I ran my mind over several people I know who really enjoy being angry. It is their modus operandi. I think they would prefer not to be. But they daren’t not be.
When we listen to persistently angry people, they won’t let us listen.
They quickly side-step any inquiry about who they are or what they want from life.
Yes, we do have to hear their anger first.
- We have first to deal with the immediate situation that has got them going.
- And then the general situation about what made them feel disrespected by the world.
- And then with what is deeply valuable about their contribution to our well-being.
Modern day maths helps explain being in love with anger
The maths of phase-states might help. This is a relatively new form of maths for me and I hope I don’t mis-explain or misunderstand it.
When we are healthy, we loop about through all moods adjusting to reality and because of reality. It makes no more sense to be permanently cheerful than it does to be permanently angry.
Systems flip out of control though.
We can get in a rut where we use a very limited range of emotions. We go in circles, rather literally when our moods are drawn on a graph.
And when we are in a very bad way, we get stuck on a single point. Let’s assume that people who are in a very bad way will get the help of a professional and put them aside for a moment. We don’t help them on a day-to-day basis.
Let’s just think about ourselves when we flip out of the swooping 3D butterfly that is normal and healthy and limit ourselves to an endless repetition of happy-sad, happy-sad, never growing and doomed to repeat ourselves rather precisely, often in the sad belief that this is normal.
Still thinking in numbers and graphs ~ it is quite normal to have fluctuations – a zig zag – Zig zags will remain and it is unhealthy when they are not there. Remember that! The first sign of ill heath is the lack of a zig-zag – you know like the line on the heart monitor – when there is no zig zag you are dead!
Let’s keep using that as an analogy. Imagine your pulse is racing. We want it to slow down to a more normal level – for the graph to point downwards. For the line to move downwards, it must zig zag down. It is the zig-zagging that brings it down. If it was dead straight down you would wonder where it will stop – your instinct, and accurate instinct – is that you must slow-down the freefall – you’ll introduce some zig-zagging in other words!
We don’t wnat the zig zag to be so wild that we can’t zig afte a zag, or vice versa. But it should zig zag.
That’s why misunderstandings are so important.
Misunderstandings, however uncomfortable, reveal what is “true and good and better and possible”. They are zig which we can turn into a zag. And after a while we realize the line is going up (more mental health) as we muddle along.
Endless circles
People get on an endless repetitive circle when they shut down negative feeling rather than explore it.
And they shut it down, when no one believes in them enough to listen to them. Learning ends and they repeat themselves in an effort to be heard.
If only someone somewhere would just listen!
If only someone somewhere would afford them the respect of assuming their temper tantrum is about something important!
If only someone somewhere would give them the respect of assuming that their temper tantrum is valid because they are valid.
Then they have a chance of learning from the zag.
And we would too. Misunderstandings tell us a lot when we start by assuming the other person’s point of view is valid.
I hope that active listening is not unfair
I hope I don’t spoil the day of the passive-aggressives.
No that is not quite true! When they are annoying me, I probably do hope I spoil their day because they are making mine worse.
But from the luxury of a sunny English autumn morning, I hope I don’t spoil their day. I just want them to be happy. I don’t mind that they are angry. Anger is a legitimate emotion. I just want to say that to them. It is OK. Be angry. We understand. You are still important to us . You are still one of us.
Endless curiosity
And being endlessly curious, I’ll learn what they are about and why they are so important to our story on this earth.
Irrepressible enthusiasm. Damn, you can’t keep an exuberant person down!
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Lose weight by weighing less
So said The Atlantic in a side-swipe at Gary Hamel, the management professor. They meant to damn him They meant to say he was being tautological – or in plain language – saying black is black. Unknowingly, they were being profound! What they don’t realize is that management theory has moved on. Like modern psychology, it has expanded its horizons. The mathematical models we use have changed and to say we lose weight by weighing less is sound modelling.
Cause-and-effect was our first question
One hundred years ago, we were captivated by questions of cause-and-effect. What causes overweight, we might ask. And we came up with models that said the more food went in the more fat on our body. Food is is food. Fat is fat. They are different and one causes the other.
And so it went on. We said intelligence led to success in later life. We said that eating well led to intelligence. On and on.
Actually few of these factors are independent of each other. Fat is transformed from food. And intelligence is a make-believable variable that exists only because it is associated with success.
Now we ask how a phenomenon changes over time
That said, we aren’t that interested in these models any more or the general question of what causes what.
These days we are more interested in recursive models. Lose weight by weighing less is exactly what interests me. Today I might way 60 kg. Tomorrow I may weigh 59.9 kg or 60.1 kg. What is the natural fluctuation in my weight and what leads to the weight getting greater (or less) and then reversing direction.
We know weight is caused by what goes in and what goes out. And both of those are dependent on each other. I will eat more more I have skipped meals and I will exercise less when I’ve had too much or too little to eat. We are interested in all the relevant factors change in time and how they interact with each other in a highly fluctuating yet essentially self-correcting and stable system.
What doesn’t change may well be sick
Illness comes from lack of fluctuation. We should worry about utterly static weight and a completely constant appetite.
How do we shift systems?
Anyone who has tried to shift their typical weight, for vanity or to please their doctor, knows that it is quite hard to do. There seems to be homeostatic levels which remain fairly constant given any set of circumstances. Complexity theorists know that systems are self-replicating. They also know the “shape” of the system matters. We expect a system to fluctuate a lot but like our weight, in a general range. When we get no fluctuation, or when our weight rockets or plummets, then we are ill!
Shifting entire systems requires a different form of thinking. More on that another day.
For now, yes – we can lose weight by weighing less. It is a weak system of change to look at the scales each day. But it will work. Just weigh less every day and you will lose weight. Perfect mathematical model. Perfect science.
Sorry The Atlantic. Misguided taunt. Another one of these areas where the world has changed a lot in the last five years. Now we do recursive models not cause-and-effect models.
- Image via Wikipedia
“It’s about survival, not ego”.
So said Techcrunch about Pandora’s founder.
Hmm. Losada used Lorenz equations to find 3 factors to distinguish successful business teams from unsuccessful teams.
- Sincere requests for information slightly outnumber proposals for action
- Positive comments outnumber negative statements by 5 to 1 (83% in other words)
- Talk about the outside world slightly exceeds talk about the team.
So sometimes the team is complaining that the team is shite. Inactive, negative and internal. That’s fine. As long as later in the day they are talking about what their customers like and the positive points they will push off from.
Unsuccessful teams get stuck in a place of gloom, or, in a place of self-congratulation.
Successful teams swoop gloriously around the whole emotional space like a happy butterfly tracing its own shadow and colouring in the outline in 3D technicolor.
Being in touch with reality in all its forms, good and bad, is what it is all about.
Oh, I am so irritated. I’ve been doing tax returns all day. They have to be one of the most irritating things in life, and not because someone is taking money off us. They are irritating because they are convoluted, fiddly, and complicated.
There are plenty of other complicated things in life too. Airports with signs that send you anywhere except where you want to go. Bosses who change their minds quicker than change their socks. And road signs! Zemanta, the Firefox Addon which searches the web while you write your blog, found this humbdinger of signage from Toronto, dubbed ‘The Audacity of Nope‘.
The opposite of complicated is complex
Instead of the stop-start sensation we get when details are allowed to disrupt the flow of the whole, complexity is when the parts come together to make something bigger themselves – like the mexican wave in a home crowd.
Is eliminating complicatedness and creating complexity the essence of professional life?
Do architects create buildings where we flow, never having to stop and scratch our heads, or to backtrack?
Do brilliant writers grab attention our attention in the first line and take us with them into a world where we follow the story without distraction from out of place detail?
Do leaders describe our group accomplishment, and draw us into a collective adventure, to play our part without constant prodding and cajoling?
How do you create complexity in your work?
In what ways do you help us experience the whole where parts fit in without discord?
- What is the ‘whole’ thing that you make? If you can’t name it, can you visualize it, or hear it?
- What are the essential parts of the whole, and the linkages between the parts that are essential to form the whole?
- What are the signs that you look out for that the whole is ‘forming’, or ‘not forming’, as it should?
- What are the extra bits of help that from time-to-time you add for the whole to come to fruition?
I’m interested in the complexity you manage, and the beautiful and satisfying experiences you add to the world.
Come with me
Share your experiences with us?
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Image via Wikipedia Any of these topics – psychology, chaos theory and complexity theory – is heavy reading on its own. All three together?
David Pinctus’ new blog explains chaos and complexity theory in psychology and is tucked away at the end of the Self-Help blogs on Psychology Today. David’s blog is probably far too heavy reading for the typical self-help audience. It is important reading for anyone interested in positive psychology and where this new field is going.
- Psychology has traditionally looked for linear models. We look for phenomena that grow bigger or smaller in direct proportion to something else. Happiness is likely to be a non-linear phenomenon. A small thing can make us very happy; a large event can wash over us.
- Psychology assumes that my behavior is essentially unconnected from yours. Our models require all our observations to be independent of each other – do you remember that distantly? Though much of the positive psychology empirical research is still conducted in the ‘old school of research’, it is our interconnections with others that are more interesting.
- Psychology has difficulty with time. We are taught simply to use time as sparingly as possible in our models. As a consequence we have little idea “what will happen next” or how long anything takes. If tomorrow is a result of today, how do we describe that trajectory?
David Pinctus explains “non-linear dynamical systems“. Though he hasn’t talked directly about positive psychology as yet, listing him under “Self-Help”, tells it all.
He also devoted three posts to a series on Batman. Ordinarily, you would have had to drag me along kicking-and-screaming to a batman movie. I hated it too! But his review gave the movie depth I wouldn’t have fathomed on my own and a useful way of thinking about the deep, festering conflicts in many organizations.
I am glad to have a blog written by an academic who has deep mastery of the methodology in this field and who writes well. I am subscribed, watching, reading and learning!
So what does fractal mean in plain language?
In the social professions that are my milieu – psychology, HR, workplaces – fractal means “walking the talk”. It means using the working procedures you would like to see in an organization to bring those working practices about.
It means delivering democracy through democratic means.
It means having the same pattern of organization throughout the organization.
I attended the Bucks08 Social Media Camp
at Bucks New University in High Wycombe on Saturday 17 May 2008. It was organized by Chris Hambly and kindly hosted by Bucks.
It was an unconference. It is free, and registration is simple on an open wiki. Any one who wants to present, signs up in the room and time slot of their choice. It is gently organized with people changing rooms on the hour as they wish.
Around 60 people converged from as far afield as Brighton, Leicester, Nottingham and Sweden (yes, it was international with people from at least 7 countries there). Personally, I went to sessions on
- online recruiting
- wiki and facebook support for the careers section at University of London
- community management in a newspaper group
- a 2.0 application ‘Sketchbook’ for assisting arts students develop their portfolio from Julia Gaimster
- a double session on metrics
- running fashion shows in 2nd life from Julia Gaimster and Andy Savery
- my own on personal journeys into 2.0.
How was this fractal?
Social media capitalizes on self-organization. We provide a framework where people can “read and write”. Social media is a framework in which the audience has a voice.
An unconference is minimally structured and, far from being disorganized, captures the energy of people with a purpose. So it is fractal in the subject matter is participation and the method of organizing is participative.
And then it becomes fractal again, because participants leave and blog about the conference on their own initiative and using their own resources. Before I had got home, a High Wycombe website designer, Paul Imre, had written up the session on metrics. Dan Thornton wrote up his take on social metrics with a parallel on reflecting on your marriage. Michael Clarke provided a running blog on the same session with comments on the whole day.
And it becomes fractal again, in that Dan & Paul summarized the discussion with the metaphors of marriages and “investing in a dam” to build and release potential. Dan’s metaphor was about managing social media. Paul was talking about deciding how much to invest in social media. In so doing, they effectively advanced the discussion and took it to another level. Within the afternoon, several people had replied, continuing the engagement, which I suspect will continue in other forums too.
Bucks New University must be very proud. They would have been happy, I am sure, with a smoothly organized event. This was so much more: it illustrated the power of social media, it supported a community of practice, it engaged new people, it generated new material.
To use Paul’s metaphor, investment that increases potential and to use Dan’s, when we enjoy ourselves, we come back for more!
PS The next media camp is at SAE in London on 5 July 2008.
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flowing motion 
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