An Introduction - Complexity, Emergence and Feedback
July 10, 2017
I. Traditional Management Thinking and Universal Education
As leaders or facilitators, it seems that from a general standpoint, actions related with strategic planning, plan implementation and follow up or "continuous improvement" represent the core elements for the success of organizations within the private or public sectors. Many of us have pursued graduate or post doc studies in areas related with business, science (natural, social), law, engineering, technology or a mix of them with the main objective of achieving the necessary intellectual knowledge to make the organizations we represent "successful". The foundation of said knowledge is mostly acquired through a universal education system vehicle better known as the "University". In it, we follow the path of framed curriculums according to the areas of study we choose. But the problem is, that said areas of study offered by the "University" emerge from the definitions and mixes of concepts related with history, philosophy, arts, sciences ,humanities and theology. These areas would then be "locked" into individually designed standard programs within a faculty. For example, a degree in physics within the faculty of arts and sciences. In this case, physics is defined as: the branch of science concerned with the nature and properties of matter and energy. The subject matter of physics, distinguished from that of chemistry and biology, includes mechanics, heat, light and other radiation, sound, electricity, magnetism, and the structure of atoms.
So, if we study physics, we'll be part of an intellectual journey related to a "branch" of science focused on the "natures and properties of matter and energy". Our actual education system obeys a "pathway behavior" since our elementary and secondary school studies. This system has trained our minds to focus on individual fields of study, limiting our natural abilities to create and think outside of framed boxes by means of systematically interrelating emerging knowledge from different subjects. Systemic thinking would lead us to think differently and obtain non-traditional better outcomes based on empirical data in whatever we do. Imagine us, all members of an existing society, systematically thinking and executing this way?
II. A Holistic Universal Education System in Need; Our Responsibility
In 1900, Louis Bachelier , physicist and mathematician, who arrived in Paris at his early 20's in 1892, had laid out the mathematics of financial markets. The basic idea of his thesis was that probability theory, the area of mathematics invented by Cardano, Pascal and Fermat at the 16th and 17th centuries, could be used to understand financial markets. Bachelier, by 1900 had worked on the mathematics that Paul Samuelson (economics professor at MIT) and his group of students were working on in 1955 for purposes of adaptation in economics. Samuelson, nor many of his peers, knew anything about Bachelier nor his critical contributions to economics and finance, until 1955! I find this incredible considering the Universal Education System in the US! Indeed, our universal education system should have a new non-traditional holistic approach, and some universities are already changing. But for now, the challenge is ours as individuals. We need to read and educate ourselves in different subjects, concepts, and interrelate with existing knowledge. We need to understand the history of our greatest painters, musicians, scientists in the social and natural sciences, and so forth. It is our responsibility to adopt this systematic "meeting of knowledge" thinking approach, model, and deploy it in our organizations, especially in the government. We need to free our minds by seeking new innovative structures of schools of thought that are geared towards Complexity Science and Complexity Thinking.
II, Complexity Science School of Thought
Complexity, Emergence, and Feedback
Complex Systems - Definition
A complex system is composed of many interacting agents in which the emergent outcome of the system is a product of the interactions between the agents and the feedbacks between emergent outcomes and individual decisions of agents.
Agents - Definition
An individual that exhibits the capacity to achieve a goal or to effect an outcome. Often the term "agent" implies that an agent operates within a population and interacts with other agents as well as with a more passive environment.
Emergence - Definition
Emergence is the idea that the action of the whole is more than the sum of the parts (John Holland, 2014). The interaction of agents produce emerging outcomes. Emergent outcomes may be patterns or trends that are predictable, but in many cases, the underlying variables associated with each agent's behavior, properties and changes in the environment in which the system under study operates, many produce unpredicted outcomes.
Feedback - Definition
Feedback loops describe a relationship within a system where events feedback on themselves to create relationships of interdependence where different events work to balance each other or amplify each other. Feedback loops are central to the dynamics of nonlinear systems of all kind, from financial crisis to population growth, to ecosystem collapse to the outbreak of conflict; they are the engines of self-organization, being what drives the process as it develops over time. The are two types of feedback, positive feedback, and negative feedback. Positive feedback loops work to accelerate change while negative feedback, works to dampen down change, constraining the system towards a stable state. Positive feedback loops can be a powerful force that if left unchecked will take the system out of its current overall state and into a phase transition as it moves into a new regime.
Next week I'll post information about tools that will help us work with the Complexity Science School of thought and provide examples of related applications with some projects I'm currently working with.
Nilza Cruz
939-644-7683
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