Sufficiency

I've begun reading a book called 'The logic of sufficiency' by Thomas Princen and its stimulating - dealing as it does with the central problem that we have with the dominant idea of 'efficiency' . He points out that the concept of sufficient is so lost to us as a society, that we find it almost backward. I have considered that one of the reasons that I’m not 'successful' relative to the social blueprint, is that I’m not DRIVEN. This is something that is an inherent problem for me in the pursuit of my ideal as a millionaire. Yet there’s nothing that I seem to be able to do about it. When the chips are down, and the bills are all overdue, I’m focused on making some money and keeping the wolf from the door. When there’s money in the bank, I’m content. Not much money, you understand, just enough to be reasonably OK this month. To have a buffer that would last a couple of months is unheard of…I’d be tempted to spend that sort of money before it ever got so much.

So the idea of ‘sufficiency’ is a welcome one to me. It seems to be saying that its OK to stop when you’re full, rest when you’re tired.

I’ve also been reading a fair bit about the coming fuel crisis that will reform our working model for society. When we begin to feel the pressure of an oil shortage, there will need to be some profound and deep re-evaluation of our world models. Things that we are currently taking for granted, as if they are a basic right, like the right to affordable personal transport, the right to clean water, the right to education, the right to heating and a ‘life’.

Sound apocalyptic? Think about the way our society is constructed on oil. Nearly everything that we use has been touched by it in some form or another, from the food on our table to the water in the tap. Farm equipment, oil based fertiliser, processing machinery, transportation and the network of distribution nationally and globally, the cookers we cook on, (OK some are gas…but guess what…that’s running out too!)…filters for the sanitation facilities, waste disposal, and of course the fuel in your car. You will of course be thinking of the millions of other uses that we take for granted.

….because we don’t know what sufficient is.

More about organisational learning...

Do organisations learn?

Much is made in the literature of the ‘fact’ that it is individuals rather than organisations that learn, and that the ‘learning organisation’ is therefore a misnomer. This view is endorsed by the likes of Argyris, who’s searching and incisive mind is highly reflective of its own preconceptions, and Gregory Bateson, who mind sears with insightful connections.

Yet it seems to me that the seat of learning is not entirely placed in individuals, and somehow this feels like a very important issue.

If we are making wrong assumptions about the nature of learning, then we may also be making wrong assumptions about the nature of innovative and creative thought.

Current interest in the power of networks and their connecting functions, prompt questions regarding the nature of the ‘basic business unit’ and indeed basic units of any sort! In my view, the application of ‘fractal thinking’ to networks – or anything else, undermines the working assumptions of individualists like Satre, and supports social constructivist claims of contextual influence at all levels.

If we see business’s as networks, and networks as social systems, then the ‘unit’ is difficult to define. Where does one social system end, and another begin? If an organisation cannot strictly operate unilaterally because of its links with other organisations in a network, then where are its boundaries? What is a unit?

Similarly, individuals are not strictly autonomous, and ‘no man [sic] is an island’ as the famous saying goes. Learning does not reside exclusively within the individual as such, but also within the relationships in the network (s?) to which that individual is a part. A football team is not just a David Beckham, a happy family is not just a Mother, a learning organisation is not just a Ricardo Semler. But learning is obviously not limited to cognition, and also takes place at deeper and complex levels beyond the apprehension of conscious thought. The work of Bateson deals with this in a slightly more academic manner than Argyris, and talks about levels of learning that are reflections of the maturity of the mind. Learning is not all the same, and some of it requires a higher order of thinking – and comfort with ambiguety – and ability to parralell process, and connect things…..like in a network….

This depth of understanding is regarded as a phenomenon of the individual, but there is evidence that it is also cultural. Comprehension of an idea, might easily be conditional on a pre existing facility that is culturally derived. The notion of social obligation for example, is more embedded in the Eastern mind than the Western mind, and filters the sense that we make of the idea of human rights. If social networks accept foot binding or slavery, then the individual may be unable to ‘see’ another way because the social ‘mind’ is not open to another way. How far then, can we say that the learning that foot binding is acceptable is individual learning and how much can we attribute to context? Where is the boundary of the thought?

In other words, is ‘learning’ a process of change that originates in some ‘other’ node or connection, and if so, how do we define the connection? Whilst the nature of the connection is presumed to denote an interior or/and an exterior source, the destination is presumed to be internal. Is a social system that advocates a particular form of behaviour a collection of individuals that all think the same, or do they all think like that as a result of being a part of that culture? If, at least in part, they think like that as a result of the culture, then the culture must be more than the sum of its parts. We cannot establish the purpose of a door without knowledge of the system from which it comes. An analysis of its components will reveal nothing of its purpose. Yet its true functional value becomes apparent if you see it in context.

Nature draws boundaries between substances, and the physical world is broken down into elemental substances. Some of these are more volatile than others, and their behaviour depends on the context in which they exist. In combination, chemicals are constrained in their behaviour by the previous combinations, or networks to which they have belonged, but nothing is lost and all can ultimately be re-combined. All the

Yes but what of levels of learning?

Yes but what of the miscible and immiscible layer thing?

Hmmm,

I was thinking about what i just wrote while i was in the bath just now, pretending to study...

(This is from a series of posts on the Open University's First Class server for B825 Marketing in a complex world)

The thing is, that decisions are made about purchases using criteria that we are often only slightly aware of. The natrure of a strong brand that is often overlooked is that "meanings elaborated in decision making have importance beyond the mundane realities of rendering decisions". (March 1994) Buyers of Apple computers, for example, are subscribing to the meanings attached to the slogan 'Think different'. They want to align themselves with a social meaning that is 'independent thought is better than conventional thought'. It's an integrated message that is savy to the segement that are hard core Apple 'advocates' (Yawn - and aren't they!). I use both Apple and PC. There's nothing in it...its a conditioning thing. This brand is not in the least bit fragile. People are not buying them for the price. They're not buyng them for the functions....thought they wont admit it....but there's hardly any programs written for them that are actually useful to me...(and one of my roles is as a storyboard artist) They're buying them because of the way that owning one makes them feel about themselves.

Decision outcomes communicate meanings and can be seen as occasions for the validation of social order in any particular society. To the extent that a brand is associated with some aspirational state that the decision maker values – will it face a secure future. The associtaton of self to the decision making process is tantamount to universal, and the branding process is, in this presentation, far from a desperate last ditch clawing at life for distributors of commoditites, since the commoditiy to which they are aligning their product is self esteem itself.

The role of information in the decision making process is not as central in this conception as it is in a purely rational one. Most decision makers searching the web will come away with more information than they need or want, and they subsequently may ignore the content of it, whilst being justified in their decisions BY the act of searching rationaly. The information is ‘reasurance’ of the validity of the decision, but is not a call to action. The process is the thing that is important. The validity of the claim that Apple is for ‘artists’ is highly contestable. It is not the same thing as Apple is for people who like to think of themselves as ‘artists’. We assume that a decision process is to be understood in terms of its outcome. But it is also to be understood in terms of meaning. What does it ‘say about you, about your life, aspirations, sucesses and failures, background, intelligence, ability to cope, to cook, to enunciate, to understand, to drive, to attract the attentions of those you value, to fit a ‘blueprint’? Heinlien (1978) says ‘specialisation is for insects’. I say rationalisation is for the deluded. Everyone gets suckered by brands…because ‘price only’ IS a fate worse than death.

Chris

"The term 'Organisational learning' is, strictly speaking, false: organisations cannot learn - only people can learn". Walsh and Ungson (1991)

If this is the case, the idea that an organisation is more than the sum of its parts is also strictly speaking, false. Whilst the process of learning requires cognition, and this is a human attribute, my view is that organisations can and do learn. To say otherwise would be to suggest that the football team does not score a goal, or that a Formula One racing team do not win a race. Organisational objectives are beyond the reach of individuals.

Chris Argyris ('On Organisational Learning' - 1999) states that "Organisations do not perform the actions that produce the learning. It is individuals acting as agents of organisations who produced the behaviour that leads to learning". The ability to learn is a predisposition, not a given. While most of us like to think that we are thinking, in reality, very few of us do.

Learning does not require us to think however, only to acquire ability or capability. Certain individual high flyers, once removed from their organisational incubators are unable to reproduce their performance elsewhere. The learning organisation, one assumes, must be capable of collectively learning from the collective mistakes that it makes. Just because an organisation is comprised in large part from tacit knowledge that can get up and walk away, doesn't mean that it's not capable of learning. In a large organisation, the strategy makers don't always know what the shop floor are up to, at least not all the time, and they have to be able to take it for granted. They use business models for cognition of their business just as they use 'world models' for cognition of their role in life.

It could be argued that ideas are in themselves a single entity, and that only those minds that are receptive to them will assimilate them. Group behaviour such as that seen in Mi Li during the Vietnam conflict and elsewhere, muddies the idea of individuality, explained away by 'groupthink' and 'mob mentality'.

That may be so, but surely it boils down to a question of levels of entity. Strictly, an individual is not a single entity, but a collection of thoughts, pre-dispositions, attachments, weaknesses, capabilities, futures, commitments, fears, past achievements, strengths etc. Is it the intangible nature of this collection that leads us to arbitrarily collect them into 'one individual'? We tend to think of a person as a tangible being, whereas in reality the parts of you that you would really describe as 'you' are not in general physical. Similarly, an organisation comprises many intangible elements that are embodied by our perception of the organisation.

So…do organisations learn?

Any thoughts?

Chris

Compelexity and OU B825

I wonder if the distinction that the course draws between complexity in nature and social complexity is right. The complexity of systems in nature, could be seen (and is by many) as just as complex as social systems. The issue seems to be one of detail, and perception. I raise this because the way that the course deals with the subject - in a 'reductionist' way worries me a bit.

Complexity 'theory' is not less defined than chaos theory – it’s a big subject, but it is considered (by some) to be more intractable. Complexity in relation to marketing refers to decision making by both sides of a relationship that are constrained by histories, so complex and unique that they are more than just intractable. When something has no simple yes/no answer, it can be said to be intractable, but the nature marketing means that the assumptions of reality (episteme) of one entity are interacting with the those of another. This is like the effect of a double pendulum, whose movements are complex until the they reach a level of dynamic that they are said to become chaotic. http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/DoublePendulum.html

In a network – the interactions are even more unpredictable…more pendulums, more influences on the simple dynamic, less predictability.

What we've been studying used to be called 'systems theory' which is a collection of interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks about complex adaptive systems. Complex adaptive systems are things like bee colonies, the immune system, the ecosystem and of course the social terrain within, and for which our organisations exist. According to Pascale (1999) In order to qualify as a ‘complex adaptive system’, an entity must pass 4 tests:

1. It must be comprised of many parallel acting agents. These are not controlled hierarchically
2. It is in continuous re-organisation
3. It is subject to the second law of thermodynamics, exhibiting entropy – and ‘winding down’ over time unless replenished with energy
4. It exhibits a capacity for pattern recognition that it uses to adapt to its environment

Complex adaptive systems are at risk in equilibrium. Yet the pull of equilibrium to managers is highly seductive as it is disguised by strong brand values or a close knit culture. It is THIS that we should be aware of surely. The oscillations of ‘bounded instability’ are to be celebrated as opportunity and embraced. Self organisation arises out of the intelligence in the nodes of the constantly re-organising network. It is not hierarchical and as such we cannot direct it, or control it, only ‘disturb’ it.

Because they are self organising, and because they are marching to a drum that is among a great many other beating drums, they don't submit to easy analysis. From a marketing perspective, it is generally agreed that they are characterised by weak cause-effect linkages, and phase transitions in the oscillations of those pendulums can create disproportionate changes…or non at all. Positive or negative.


In the natural sciences, the search to understand self-organization derives from a very large question. How does life create greater order over time? Order is the unique ability of living systems to organize, reorganize, and grow more complex. But theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman has demonstrated that the inevitable desire to organize is evident even in a non-living system of light bulbs. Kauffman constructed a network of 200 light bulbs, connecting one bulb to the behaviour of only two others (using Boolean logic). For example, light bulb 23 could be instructed to go on if bulb 46 went on, and to go off if bulb 67 went on. The assigned connections were always random and limited to only two. Once the network was switched on, different configurations of on-and-off bulbs would illuminate. The number of possible on/off configurations is 10 to the 30th, a number of inconceivable possibilities. Given these numbers, we would expect chaos to rule. But it doesn't. The system settles instantly (on about the fourteenth iteration) into a pattern of on/off bulbs that it then continues to repeat.

http://www.margaretwheatley.com/articles/irresistiblefuture.html

Kauffman’s subsequent work illustrates that the more connections that there are to each node in the boolean net, the greater the tendency towards chaos. But there’s a hook here. The simplification of a random principle in this way shows that a pattern emerges in a discernable time frame, but the addition of a few extra connections renders the pattern more difficult to see. It doesn’t mean that there’s no pattern – and if there’s a pattern, presumably, it could be tested in a mathematically rigorous way if that did it for you.

This is what Oliva et al (1992) are suggesting with the ‘purchase response model’ – which attempts to model behaviour (particularly loyalty relative to satisfaction) around the complexities of divergence, catastrophe, hysteresis, bimodality and inaccessibility.

There is a place for a reductionist approach in complexity, but as Stapleton and Ali suggest this on page 79 of unit 2, it is probably as metaphor – at least for most of us. Thinking of these things seems to require a certain distance, as if one needs to stand back to gain appreciation of the form.

Beinhocker (not referenced in the course material to my knowledge) argues that “strategy development inherently requires managers to make a prediction about the future. Based on this prediction, managers make big decisions about company focus, the investment of resources, and how to coordinate activities across the company. Yet developing strategies based on narrow predictions about the future is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline”

Eisenhardt and Brown’s recommendation for ‘time pacing’ rather than ‘event pacing’ therefore seems backward to me. We spend all this time getting our heads around discontinuity and the reflexive nature of networks and self organising systems – and then this idea (it seems to me) flies in the face of all that! If, as Stapleton and Ali suggest, the natural order of things is to be ‘event driven’ (page 97) – doesn’t that suggest that to be ‘time driven’ is ‘un-natural’?

From a theoretical perspective, all this complexity stuff is enthralling, and enlightening. From the perspective of a manager trying to do the job right here and now, its almost irrelevant. I say this because, as Kauffman’s experiment illustrates, each sub unit of each network is dependent in some real way on the units to which it is connected. If the other units don’t GET complexity theory, then the decisions that they make will not be cognisant of it either. Now if you happen to be the Boss, like Steve Miller at Shell, you can ‘make it OK’ to fly in the face of convention – but for the rest of us- its back to reductionism….as our current swatting is testament to.

(I failed my Art History dissertation at art college because (it was about Dada-ism) I tore it into little pieces and presented in a tesco’s bag – (as they might have done at the time of the Dada movement). I got 0% No one had ever got that before. The moral is that we have to boil down all this lovely stuff into – ‘complexity is less mathematically rigorous than chaos’ or something so ‘small’ that it’s a bit like calling a rainforest ‘green’. It is, but its SO much more too.




Beinhocker, E.D. (1999). Robust adaptive strategies. Sloan Management Review, 40(3),
95-106.


Pascale, R.T., Milliman, M. and Gioja, L. (1999)”Surfing at the edge of chaos”, Three rivers press.

I was intrigued and horrified at the speed that the social situation in New Orleans disintegrated into the horrible dog eat dog scenario that it did. Like many people I felt alerted to the proximity of chaos, the fragility of our developed society and the dark side to otherwise pleasant ordinary people.

It seems unbelievable to us that a society that has so much material wealth and holds itself in such high esteem, could have coped so badly, and displayed itself as rotten with such speed. This was not nice.

Yet we are faced with the facts that for all the resources at their disposal, they didn’t get it together. Why?

Exams

A test...of more text..
At the ripe old age of 44, i'm cruising up to my third exam, in two years. I'm going to be finishing my second year of an Open University MBA next month, and I have one more year, (two more courses) to complete. I have been fairly good with the running scores that they give you for course work, averaging higer than 80%, but have really done badly with the exams. I DO think that the exams are a bit of a strange thing. I know that the markers, have only a few ways of assessing you and virtually no time to do it...but if my marks can be so divergent (41 in the last exam - 39 is a fail!)...what is going wrong?

Clearly, there is a very strong and, given my limited capabilities, likely chance that I just dont know the stuff. But I DO understand it well enough to get the course marks. The fact is that I find it difficult, and slightly pointless to memorise what are no more than flawed theories. The way that we adopt the latest theory in business, and behave as if it will prevail long term, is counter to all the evidence that suggests that most of the theories that were hot even ten years ago, like Business Process Re-engineering, JIT, Quality circles, 360 degree feedback and others, have been fashionable, only to wane. I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't read about these things, and learn from the past. It is all to true that we are constantly re-inventing the same processes and having the same 'groundbreaking' thoughts, as our forefathers, only the context changes and perhaps the use of language. What I am suggeting however is that the process of teaching business school students to be able to spout the theories and their authors, apply them to case studies and real life, and qualify from the University with a mindset that says 'I know what i'm doing' is dangerous.

If we are to really improve the way that managers manage, they really ought to be taught HOW to think for themselves. I mean by this that the level at which we are digesting these ideas is basic. There is little thought given to the cognitive processes that we ought to be propagating. At this level, social psychology should be a major part of the curriculum. If the aim of modern management is to improve efficiency in the workplace, then it really makes sense to me, to teach them about the functioning of the most difficult to manage entity, the employee.

Rough draft...sorry its a test.