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TB871: Modelling myself as a viable system

Posted on by Doug Belshaw

Note: this is a post reflecting on one of the modules of my MSc in Systems Thinking in Practice. You can see all of the related posts in this category. 

Activity 3.12 (The Open University, 2020) asks me to model my (sad little) life as a viable system. So here goes:

Diagram depicting various personal roles around a central photo of Doug, featuring roles like Father, Gamer, Husband, Son, etc. These are connected to other circles with titles such as Friends and Family

My life in systems

Thinking about the roles I play in my life as systems, I can represent them in the following way:

  • Father: I am a system to nurture and support my children.
  • Husband: I am a system to partner and collaborate with my wife.
  • Son: I am a system to support and assist my parents.
  • Gamer: I am a system to enjoy video games.
  • Member: I am a system to engage in work or organisational activities.
  • MSc student: I am a system to learn and apply systems thinking.
  • Runner: I am a system to maintain physical fitness through running.
  • Gym user: I am a system to enhance my physical health.

I guess I didn’t include ‘friend’ as one of the eight things on there, but it’s implied 😅

Identifying sub-systems

If we take one of these roles, let’s say father and identify sub-systems, then we get:

  • Provider: helping ensure financial stability and resources for my family.
  • Educator: guiding and teaching my two teenagers in terms of values, knowledge, and life skills.
  • Caregiver: providing emotional support, care, and attention.
  • Disciplinarian: enforcing rules and standards to ensure appropriate behaviour and development.
  • Companion: engaging in leisure activities (i.e. play) to build bonds.

Sub-sub-systems?

Going a stage further, we could take one of the above sub-systems, let’s say educator and go a stage further. Kind of like the film Inception (2010) which I watched again recently with my son:

  • Helper: assisting with school assignments and educational activities to help my children understand and complete their schoolwork effectively.
  • Life skills teacher: educating my children in terms of practical skills (e.g., putting together furniture, digital literacies) so that they are prepared forindependent and responsible living.
  • Moral guide: inculcating ethical values and appropriate social behaviour to instil a strong moral foundation and social awareness.
  • Supporter of interests: encouraging and supporting my children’s sports and hobbies to help them develop their talents and curiosity.
  • Problem solver: assisting my children in developing critical thinking and problem-solving skills by guiding them through challenges and obstacles.

References

TB871: Only variety can absorb variety

Posted on by Doug Belshaw

Note: this is a post reflecting on one of the modules of my MSc in Systems Thinking in Practice. You can see all of the related posts in this category. 

Heavy duty shock absorbers. Black and white photograph.

Imagine a typical classroom full of young people. The amount of variety that’s possible within this environment is almost infinite. During my teaching career, I’ve certainly taught in schools where this was the case, and managing behaviour was a challenge. But I’ve also taught in schools where expectations were clear, and classroom environments were very orderly. That is to say, the amount of variety was much lower.

A system for teaching and learning, therefore, needs to limit the amount of variety within the environment. That’s the job of the teacher, in terms of choosing material at the right level, diversity, and interest for the students. It’s the job of the school management to ensure an appropriate level of discipline and reward to ensure that lessons aren’t unduly disrupted, and it’s the job of students to limit their behaviours to those that are going to be conducive to learning.

(Note: I’m not advocating for the above, merely describing a state of affairs with which we are all reasonably familiar.)

Good teachers are able to respond spontaneously to events. That is to say they have a wide repetoire of responses. The same is true of successful organisations: they need to be able to handle variations within their environment. Just as a good teacher isn’t one that just treats every student the same way, so successful organisations aren’t ones that treat their environment as fixed and unchanging.

Viable systems, then, don’t just reduce the amount of variability in their environment, they increase the range of responses to the challenges raised by it. As John Naughton explains:

In colloquial terms Ashby’s Law has come to be understood as a simple proposition: if a system is to be able to deal successfully with the diversity of challenges that its environment produces, then it needs to have a repertoire of responses which is (at least) as nuanced as the problems thrown up by the environment. So a viable system is one that can handle the variability of its environment. Or, as Ashby put it, only variety can absorb variety.

Until comparatively recently, organizations coped with environmental challenges mainly by measures to reduce the variety with which they had to cope. Mass production, for example, reduced the variety of its environment by limiting the range of choice available to consumers: product standardization was essentially an extrapolation of Henry Ford’s slogan that customers could have the Model T in any color so long as it was black. But the rise of the Internet has made variety-reduction increasingly difficult. By any metric that one chooses—numbers of users and publishers, density of interactions between agents, pace of change, to name just three—our contemporary information ecosystem is orders of magnitude more complex than it was forty years ago. And its variety, in Ashby’s terms, has increased in proportion to its complexity. Given that variety reduction seems unfeasible in this new situation, the implication is that many of our organizations and social systems—ones that have evolved to cope with much lower levels of variety—are no longer viable. For them, the path back to viability requires that they have to find ways of increasing their variety. And the big question is whether—and how—they can do it.

(Naughton, 2017)

So, applying this to my own life and the variety of activities I undertook yesterday (Activity 3.11), I reduced variability by setting distinct hours for work and leisure time. I also responded to emails and professional communication via LinkedIn and elsewhere in ‘batches’ which is another way to reduce variability. I went for a run before my work day started so that this did not interrupt the flow of the day.

And then, of course, there are things I have automated. For example, I noticed that a payment to my accountant automatically left my business account yesterday. Social media posts I had scheduled went live. A calendar notification popped up reminding me to do certain tasks. Not having to remember to do things is another way of reducing variability.

It’s a delicate balance, I find. I’m a big fan of routines such as going to bed and getting up at the same time, doing different forms of exercise on particular days. ‘Coupling’ particular tasks such as eating breakfast and doing Duolingo. But too much of it feels very constraining. I guess this is the point: as your environment changes, the amount of variability in your life needs to change until you’ve got a harmonious routine. The same is true of organisations.

This is another opportunity to trot out my favourite Clay Shirky quote: “current optimization is long-term anachronism” (Shirky, 2014). This is true for individuals, and it’s true for organisations.

References

Photo by streetsh

TB871: Context and perspective in systems thinking

Posted on by Doug Belshaw

Note: this is a post reflecting on one of the modules of my MSc in Systems Thinking in Practice. You can see all of the related posts in this category. 

Lion lying down on green grass field with trees in background

As people in both my personal and professional lives are probably sick of me saying, context is everything. Just because this project looks like one we’ve done previously, doesn’t mean much. Just because we managed to move house in a stress-free way last time doesn’t mean we will this time. And so on.

Part of this is because we think in nouns rather than verbs. The module materials, which talk of the Viable System Model (VSM) as drawing on Eastern traditions, give a good example of this:

You might normally think of the lion in the zoo as the same animal as the lion in its natural habitat. The focus of this deduction is on the shape, colour and form of the lion, i.e. the lion as an object. But the lion in each of these cases is not the same system. If you focus on the relationship between the lion and its environment, then it is easily seen that there are great differences between the two situations. In the first case, the lion’s role is to be a supreme attraction for people to the zoo; in the second, it is to enact the role of supreme predator in the wild.

(The Open University, 2020)

We usually think of systems as relatively static things which are made up of nouns. But this is not the way the world works. The VSM represents the parts of a system as part of a transformation process defined by the purpose you assign to it: for example, the lion is transformed from being a ‘supreme predator’ to a ‘supreme attraction’.

In addition, not only can contexts change, but perspectives can be different too. These can be differing perspectives between stakeholder groups, within stakeholder groups, or different perspectives taken at different times and in different contexts by the same stakeholder. For example, I might frame something much more negatively when I’m angry compared to other times.

Activity 3.8 asks us to identify and define different perspectives in our area of practice. So let’s consider five different stakeholder groups:

  1. Library Management
  2. Library Staff
  3. Visitors/Users
  4. Community Members
  5. Local Government

1. Library management

Managers of libraries focus on the efficient use of resources so that they can improve service delivery and attract more visitors. A system definition for them might therefore be something like “a system to manage library resources and services efficiently to enhance user satisfaction and engagement.”

2. Library staff

Staff members in libraries are interested in ongoing training and development to improve their skills, so they can better serve visitors. So a system definition might be framed as “a system to ensure continuous staff development and effective service delivery.”

3. Visitors/users

Visitors to the library are primarily concerned with the availability and quality of library resources such as books, digital access, and study spaces to meet their educational and recreational needs. A system definition for them could be “a system to provide accessible and diverse library resources and services.”

4. Community members

Some visitors aren’t necessarily interested in the library as being anywhere other than a place to meet. So if we conceptualise these ‘community members’ we can appreciate their view of the library as a hub for social interaction and support services. A system definition for this group might be phrased as “a system to enhance community engagement and support through library services.”

5. Local government

Northumberland County Council has responsibility for all public services, so needs to ensure that they contribute effectively to community development and public welfare. This happens through adequate funding(!) and policy support. A system definition from this perspective is “a system to integrate library services into the broader public service infrastructure to support community development.”

Perspective 5: Local Government

  • System Definition: A system to integrate library services into the broader public service infrastructure to support community development.
  • Reason: Local government aims to ensure that public services, including libraries, contribute effectively to community development and public welfare through adequate funding and policy support.

References

Photo by Zdeněk Macháček

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