Asymmetry

July 21, 2009

I am staying in the Swiss Hotel, Stamford in Singapore. It’s an old haunt from IBM days and has one of the best swimming pools I know. Its a large circular pool with six water feeds in the form of small concrete ornamental fountains around the edge. At 0530 in the morning I have the pool to myself. I tried a variant of the normal too and fro this morning taking a triangular route between alternative ornamental fountains, but then passing over the same ground. If there had been five or seven, then swimming between alternatives would have provided a pleasing asymmetry and I would over the course of an hour tracked most of the pool. As I got frustrated by symmetry, I remembered that most human features are also asymmetric and that we like things in threes, fives or sevens but the even numbers somehow seem wrong. When did you last see a Prince sent on four quests? Asymmetry is of course not the same as inequality. The hotel fills up every day with Qantas crews on stop over, the Qantas pilots however stay in the slightly superior next door hotel. I would have thought better of Australians than to see them perpetuate class differences! The final asymmetry of the morning was the sweeping in of a tropical storm. The staff had just finished laying out tables around the pool for breakfast when tablecloths and crockery were swept up and into the pool. For the next twenty minutes I retrieved debris from the pool to a grateful staff, then spent half an hour hunting through the undergrowth to find my glasses (to correct a asymmetric vision). It also gave me some thoughts for the lecture tomorrow on the future of Government, more on that then and hopefully a podcast.

Recent Posts

About the Cynefin Company

The Cynefin Company (formerly known as Cognitive Edge) was founded in 2005 by Dave Snowden. We believe in praxis and focus on building methods, tools and capability that apply the wisdom from Complex Adaptive Systems theory and other scientific disciplines in social systems. We are the world leader in developing management approaches (in society, government and industry) that empower organisations to absorb uncertainty, detect weak signals to enable sense-making in complex systems, act on the rich data, create resilience and, ultimately, thrive in a complex world.
ABOUT USSUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER

Cognitive Edge Ltd. & Cognitive Edge Pte. trading as The Cynefin Company and The Cynefin Centre.

© COPYRIGHT 2024

< Prev

‘Real’ speak not academic speak

Well having survived a night in the hotel room with a 7 year old who ...

More posts

Next >

Complexity in Government

Today was the first day of my three day programme at the Civil Service College ...

More posts

linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram