Complexity
Complex problems may not have solutions. You can maybe make them better or worse, but they remain unresolved and stubbornly recalcitrant. So we add another expert solution and before we know it we are entangled
Tag: living systems
Self Organising
Our identity is inevitably shaped by our history. The changes we have been through to arrive where we are now determine our form in the world. They also determine how we make sense of our
Doomed to Failure
In a living system the clue is in the name. You have to ‘grow’ something. Something that infects the system and spreads through it such that each node or place in the system grows its
An Organisation is a Living Thing
Since Descartes we have tried to understand the world by dividing it into its constituent parts. By breaking things down into their basic building blocks we have sought to gain a deeper understanding of how
The NHS is alive but rather unwell
The NHS is alive but rather unwell. Much great work is being done and we remain the envy of many. And also we are locked in a cycle of increasing pressure. To keep the NHS
Rules That Limit Us (Emergence)
In our normal lives these rules may be quite evident or quite deeply hidden, even unconscious. What are the rules that allow us to weave our way along a crowded rush-hour pavement without repeated collisions
Donella Meadows: Leverage Points: Places to intervene in a system
A wonderful article from Donella Meadows drawing on Jay Forrester pointing out the places to intervene in a system that have most leverage. Almost invariably you find they are intuitively known yet somehow being used
Donella Meadows: Dancing With Systems
(By Donella Meadows. Available from donellameadows.org ) 1. Get the beat.2. Listen to the wisdom of the system.3. Expose your mental models to the open air.4. Stay humble. Stay a learner.5. Honor and protect information.6. Locate responsibility
Feeling Fractals
By John Atkinson One of the things you notice when you work with human systems is that things keep recurring in the same way at different levels. For example, you notice that a difficult relationship
The Nature of Scale
As more people join, the levels of complexity grow both in terms of who ‘we’ are and how we relate to the rest of the world. By the time it has become a global corporation
Fritjof Capra- The Systems View of Life (video)
Here's a short clip from Fritjof Capra introducing the concept of systems thinking and living systems, from the point of view of sustainability and ecology. Capra suggests that the most appropriate framework for developing ecological communities
Bateson: An introduction
Gregory Bateson was one of the key thinkers in developing ways of seeing the world as a connected whole, challenging more traditional patterns of understanding that segregated the world into separate boxes.