Interesting quote...

One thing I have proposed to many people to try and grasp this concept is this:

Let's say you have a 5 year plan to accomplish certain goals and objectives for certain reasons...

Well that also means that you, as well as all other forces in the universe, have 5 years as well to NEGATE the need to accomplish those certain goals and objectives.

And that more likely than not, by maintaining those needs in the mean time will leave you so cut off from how things emerge up to that point, that it will be a rare occassion for those accomplishments to still carry the same meaning 5 years into the future that they do now.

The typical response I get from people is that it comes off as me condoning being lazy and not striving for success, or something of that fashion... because in their mind, the definition of success will not change over time, but this is as well an interesting part of the equation.

So it becomes, "how can I push myself away from my current state" as opposed to "how can I pull myself closer to my ideal state".

Hi Dave

Excellent description of the problems which beset public services in England at the moment; without even taking examples from Government, concrete illustrations of the three dangers set out above can be readily found in every Children's Trust in every local authority area in England:

- developing a glossy, shiny 'Children and Young People Plan'is much more comfortable for the Chief Officers of public services than effectively working out how to configure the services they lead in ways that can evolve into actually making a real and sustainable difference with children and families;
- consultants appear to be increasingly like rashes in this area of work - everywhere; all too often pedaling pet solutions that failed to be effective when they were a senior manager somewhere else; and
- as you have pointed out elsewhere, people modify their behaviour so as to hit the targets they've been set. So long as Government retains a belief in target driven top-down command-control, the flexibility needed to pursue goals that are meaningful with local children and families will remain a dream (paradoxically for the vision).

It would be fascinating if a Children's Trust were to decide to use SenseMaker and the Cynefin framework - I'm sure the fitness lanscape arising out of the range of stories (children's experience of services, those of their parents, practitioners at 'the sharp end' of service delivery, etc) should offer a powerful opportunity for change.

Best Wishes

David

Great Post Dave - really suits an organisation I am working with at the moment. Particularly amused by your consultants comment. Does the reverse hold true - if your clients do not like you are you doing a good job?

Hi -

There is nothing wrong with visionary leadership.

If the future is “split off and exclusively focused on in the form of vision, simple rules, values and plans” and it is the 'dominant view' then the organization is obtuse, the leaders are dopes and the people are imbeciles.

I can see this profound dysfunction at IBM in Westchester County. However, at HP, in Palo Alto, for example, this defect was never manifest.

HP was famous for its ‘vision’ spinning a global monolith like a top, e.g., going from an instrument company (1970s) to minicomputer company (1980s) to a systems company (1990s) to a printer company (2000s) to today a PC and cartridge company (2010s).

The ‘vision thing’ was important @HP. However, in the distributed, federate model, present possibilities were ALWAYS far more compelling than the future visions. I was instrumental in bringing Hoshin-Kanri into HP in the early 1980s. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoshin_Kanri

2009 Outcome? HP >> IBM.

Not at all ironic, “Vision” was the code name for HPs next strategic chip architecture in the 1980s. It was tanking badly and personally canceled by the founders. Total investment lost was in the 100s of millions. That’s how ‘vision’ worked @HP.

“Consultants like to be liked.”

Never had that problem.

Far better to be an ‘insultant’ not a ‘consultant.’ Consider the root of consultant: “con” equals flim-flam, scam or trick.

Great post, thanks!

-j

Dave,
I'm not sure that you and I have been reading the same Griffin book, because he takes up Mead extensively.

So why the obsession with Mead? Actually, it's not just Stacey who thinks Mead is cool - so do Jurgen Habermas and Pierre Bourdieu. The reason they all do is because in Mead you have the beginnings of an explanation as to how the global emerges from the local in human interaction. Taking the analogy from complex adaptive systems theory, local agents interacting with other local agents create global patterns which shape the local interactions. In Mead's terms, conversations of gesture and response with another also involve generalised tendencies to take the attitude of the other to oneself. This, then supports a focus on conversations in organisations and begins to explain how global themes of organising arise.

From reading your posts I'm afraid I am not clear about what your own theory would be about how the global arises from the local, except that you appear to be critical of a 'polemic' against systems theory. To put forward the idea of a system implies a system designer: this presumably is you, or the manager.

A radical understanding of complexity theory would put forward the idea that there is nowhere for the systems designer, or manager, to stand which is somehow outside 'the system'. Otherwise things are complex, but not quite complex enough.
Cheers,
Chris

Lots of people use Mead Chris (Hari T for example). My point was that Griffin has a sense of proportion about its use, and is not as doctrinaire in rejection of systems thinking. Some of the developments of Mead's ideas give insight into the development of global themes, but we should also draw on Douglas's work and many others. Its not just about conversation.

My point on systems thinking is separate from this. I think the Stacy school mistakenly reject systems dynamics, rather than bounding its applicability. There are many aspects of an organisation where the level of constraint allows external design.