Thanks, Dave, for the invitation to this shared inquiry. There is nothing like a probing question, a rousing discussion, or a disturbing story to move me to challenge old assumptions and build new insights. In fact, that is the greatest thing about my current role as founding Executive Director of the Human Systems Dynamics Institute—I get to have lots of stimulating conversations. Each one strikes a match that could land on dry kindling or soggy leaves. Sometimes a bonfire erupts, and sometimes the energy smolders for months. Of course the outcome depends more on the environmental conditions than on the match manufacturer. The match is still necessary, even if it is not sufficient.

Lunch on Friday was with a particularly business-savvy academic. We are committed to offering a Masters degree in Human Systems Dynamics, and he is interested in building an international reputation for state-of-the-art social science.

I found one of his questions particularly challenging, “Is that all?” It came in response to my response to his first question, “What is the content for an MA in HSD?” I had answered simply and, I thought, rather elegantly:
• Self-organizing systems
• Praxis
• Inquiry
• Intersubjectivity

So, he asked, “Is that all?” As most good questions do, this one made me stop and challenge my own assumptions and his. I realized that the elegance of my answer hid a whole host of diversity.

The “edge of chaos” doesn’t exist in my world. Yes, I know it is only a metaphor, but I don’t think it is a very helpful one. The reason became obvious in a conversation I was having yesterday.

A government client is developing a massive information system to support a wide variety of functions. Old processes work in silos, abuse customers, are difficult to maintain, expensive to upgrade, and out of compliance with federal regulations. The vision is to create a system that is reliable and flexible, secure and accessible, coherent and optimized for individual functions, available to a wide network of users and tightly controlled, easy for newcomers and efficient for experts. In short the goal is to create an information environment that is simultaneously tightly and loosely constrained. Both technical and business experts wish there were an edge of chaos upon which they could build a system, but try as they might, no edge is in sight.

Of all the chaos and complexity metaphors, one that is increasingly relevant to my work in communities is the scale-free network. We can speculate about why:

• The ubiquitous internet gives us new ways to think about human systems.

• Escalating challenges and diminishing resources push us toward new models to support action.

• In-coming generations have transformed our traditional organizational and social systems into their own network architectures.

• Changes in network theory help us imagine dynamic and dynamical transformation over time.

• Old hierarchical relationships and distributions of resources and power are breaking down under the load of fuzzy boundaries, global reach, and massive diversity.

You probably have your own list of reasons why network-based explanations are showing up in surprising places.

I’m preparing for the next webinar in the series Strategy to Action: The Power of Human Systems Dynamics (http://www.uliveandlearn.com/). This session, on December 10, is about communications in a complex system. Of course, if human systems are self-organizing, agent-based, pattern generating entities, communication takes on an essential theoretical role. When you live and work within such systems, communication also becomes an essential element in practice. We are dealing with communication explicitly in many projects right now:

• Conflict resolution that retains diversity of thought and action.

• Collaborations among government and private industry to deliver high-quality, cost-effective services.

• Planning in the midst of very dynamical landscapes.

• Research partnerships across geographical and disciplinary distances.

• Using multiple media to educate and facilitate our expanding network of certified associates.

Conflict is ubiquitous. Employees cope with anxiety. Blog readers challenge bloggers. Family members fight for attention. Neighbors bicker over boundaries. Elected leaders wrangle over priorities. Nation states compete for natural resources. Religious communities struggle over eternity. What can human systems dynamics, chaos, and complexity teach us about the causes and resolutions of conflict across all these scales of organization?

Over the past months, I’ve engaged in conversation with mediators from across the philosophical and professional spectrums as well as from around the world. I’ve met with systems thinkers and peace keepers, NGOs and faith communities, US Department of Defense, and professional ombudsmen. Everyone seems to realize that traditional theories, models, methods, and tools are not working. In spite of the investment of time, money, and blood, intractable conflicts continue to traumatize individuals and institutions around the world.

On December 9 from 2 to 4:30 CST, HSD Institute is hosting a Virtual Open House. The theme is CELEBRATING UNCERTAINTY. Please join us. It is free, but registration is required. To register, visit:
http://www.uliveandlearn.com/dsp_breezelivedetail.cfm?ProgramID=07e46373-245a-454b-8ca9-2c26b33ee43b

We will be exploring six questions that squeeze juicy information out of any situation—no matter how surprising.

1. What are the three most important things you notice about the present situation?

2. How do you want these three things to be the same or different in the future?

3. What do you think you know for sure and what are your questions?

4. What are the contradictions you are encountering?

5. What has surprised you in the recent past?

6. What are you going to do to make a difference in the near future?

We’ve used these questions with families, friends, and clients and find that they open a whole world of possibilities in the midst of confusion and disruption. Join us on-line to explore how these questions can unfold opportunities for individuals, organizations, and communities. You can even plug in your USB headset and add your voice to the mix!

The Virtual Open House was great fun! We had holiday tunes, pictures and quotes, greeting cards, audience chat, multiple voices, a video, a poll, presents for all, and a list of fascinating questions sent in by guests. The only things missing were the mistletoe and the eggnog, and I’m not completely sure about that.

Thanks, again, to our Webinar Wizard, Denise Easton, of www.ULiveandLearn.com !

The slides, a link to the archive, the chat stream, and other relevant documents will appear on our public network site at http://humansystemsdynamicsinstitute.ning.com/ sometime in the next few days. In the meantime, there is one question that we wanted to respond to and ran out of time. (It is amazing how quickly 2.5 hours passes by!)

Recently many of my conversations have focused on accountability. Sometimes the context is management of a complex project in an unpredictable landscape. Sometimes it is demonstration of outcomes and impacts for international programs to shift massively complex patterns such as nutrition and livelihood. Sometimes, it is simply a prickly relationship between a supervisor and a technical professional. Sometimes it is a new resident in the White House and his retinue.

Unpredictability makes accountability a problematic concept in complex systems, especially ones that are recognized to be adaptive or self-organizing. If you don’t know what an outcome will be, how do you hold self or others accountable to produce a result?

I’m curious these days about dominance, its role in human systems, and its function in complex adaptation.

In an intervention today, I was working with a male supervisor of an all-female team. As I watched them interact in a formal, conflict resolution conversation, I became painfully aware of his unconscious—and incredibly powerful—dominant behaviors. I watched the women react and heard them give feedback about everything except those specific signals of power and control.

This guest blog has been a great example of self-organizing process for me. At least at my intrapersonal scale, it has set all three of the (necessary and sufficient) conditions for self-organizing in human systems. The space and time established a container that held my attention and focus. My various experiences and parsing of sense-making differences established the potential energy for change. Finally, the conversations I described and reflection coupled with writing completed the conditions for active self-organizing pattern formation. Container, difference, and exchange forming similarities, differences, and relationships that have meaning across space and time.

The guest blog is now open to contributions from anyone, including past guests. Details in the header on the front page of the web site

In order to graduate with an MSc in Information and Knowledge Management I was required to submit a research dissertation. This research acknowledges that knowledge management is a cross-disciplinary practice with strong links to organizational learning and complexity theory. Organizational learning is the process that enables an organization to adapt to change and move forward by acquiring new knowledge. Complexity theory is the theory that argues that acquiring new knowledge evolves through the cognition in human organizations. So, to compete and be innovative in a fast-moving environment, organizations should enhance organizational learning by understanding the strength of cognition. Managing this cross-disciplinary practice requires a new form of leadership and therefore the research discovered crucial leadership behavior and generated evidence of how leadership behavior enhances organizational learning.