Human Systems Dynamics: Patterns at Work

Israeli Spring

2011-10-11T07:27:00.000-07:00

On September 1, I arrived to see tent cities along every major boulevard in Tel Aviv. They arose spontaneously in response to an impulsive act of a single college student. She was struggling to make ends meet when her landlord raised the rent. Desperate, and expecting an eviction the following morning, she posted on Facebook: At 7:00 tomorrow morning, I will be evicted from my apartment because I cannot afford the rent. I will pitch a tent on Boulevard Rothschild, and there I will live. Within the hour, 60 others had responded to her note: Me, too. And they did, by the hundreds. Among them were middle-class professionals unable to buy homes, parents with young children to educate and care for, students hoping for meaningful work, elders worried about transportation and health care. Their concerns were diverse, their dialogue dissonant, but their desire for change was undeniable.

The French would call this a manifestation. Deep dissatisfaction and frustration of the Israeli people manifested itself as a widespread movement, literally, to the streets. At every street corner, bedraggled furniture was pulled into circles where the cool of the evening brought people to discuss their hopes, fears, and plans. The following Saturday, I joined 360,000 people marching to the center of Tel Aviv, demanding social justice. In cities all across Israel people marched. Reports told of 500,000 demonstrators, in a nation of only 7,000,000 inhabitants.

A week later, the day after I left Tel Aviv, 5,000 people met in round tables to dialogue about the challenges of life in Israel today. As a result of the demonstrations, nine councils of experts have been convened to explore concerns and recommend action to right the wrongs that had inspired the civil awakening. They focus on the wide variety of concerns expressed by demonstrators, including: health, economy, education, transportation, and land use.

It was difficult to get news of this emergent phenomenon outside of Israel. The nation’s foreign affairs filled the airwaves and preoccupied the formal power structures around the world. In the meantime, within the community, individuals and groups began to express their frustrated hopes and personal and financial disappointments with the internal affairs of the State.

I don’t know enough about the circumstances to comment on their messages, and I’m not a member of the community to earn my own say in the melee, but I do know that the demonstrations manifested some fundamental truths about the complex emergence of human systems dynamics.

The diversity of the movement gave it power. The press and members of the establishment said the group shouldn’t even call itself a movement because it had no single vision or purpose. On the contrary, the diversity of concerns made it quite difficult to counter the claims. The government had no choice but to explore a complex response to such a diverse and unpredictable message.

The coherence of the movement gave it power. Within a tradition of radically diverse views and habits of assertive interaction, this movement brought people together with hope and joy. Even in the press of masses streaming into the square on Saturday night, people were smiling and greeting each other warmly. It seemed a bit like a massive block party of neighbors who knew and cared about each other.

Clarity of action engaged swift and coherent response. Put up a tent. Move into it. March with others. Meet for dialogue. At every point, though the message was complex, the invitations were simple. Anyone who wanted to be involved knew exactly how to do it.

The butterfly effect was not about the butterfly. The small “cause” that prompted the enormous response succeeded because it ignited a smoldering pattern of dissatisfaction. The environment already held the potential for the pattern that emerged, and the young woman and her Facebook note simply released the pattern to inspire action across the system.

Emergent change demanded action from both the powerless and powerful. The individual passion that initiated the movement could not, by itself, have sustained change over time. On the other hand, the power of political and policy infrastructures, which will be required for sustained change, were incapable of igniting the fires of passion for change. Transformative change required the sustained commitment of both the individual and the State.

Difference without dialogue is dead. None of the concerns voiced by the movement were surprising. Everyone knew that costs are rising and services are declining. Nothing happened until the dialogue began, and nothing will be resolved unless the dialogue continues.

We can surprise ourselves. As we streamed toward the city center on Saturday night, I was thrilled and moved to tears. The inequity they fought was miniscule when compared to that in my own country, but I could not imagine the America of today taking such action in support of social justice. I said as much to my friend who marched beside me, and she responded, “Six weeks ago, I did not see this potential for powerful action among the Israelis, either.”

Glenda Eoyang, Ph.D.
Executive Director
HSD Institute

Beyond Capitalism: A New Game

2011-10-11T07:20:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine defines economic depression as, “after the old rules stop working and before the new ones emerge.” He is an economic forecaster, and today he has a significant investment in the old rules and incredible curiosity about the new ones. Conditions of the 21st century have shaken the rules of the old economy, and the new rules aren’t obvious yet. I’m not an economist, but I am an observer of human systems. It is in that spirit that I share the following reflections.

Rules and Games

Traditional economic systems—both capitalist and communist—make some basic assumptions about value and its transmission. Some of those are implicit, others are explicit, but all of the assumptions are challenged by the complex dynamics emerging in the 21st century. A new game has come onto the economic playing field. The rulebook hasn’t been written; we don’t know who the referees, coaches, or players will be; and we certainly can’t predict who will win or lose. What we do know is that the game as we have known it since the industrial revolution is no more. Evidence of the radical change appears in newspapers, contracts, pocketbooks, legislative agendas, government policy, and faces of both the sometimes rich and the newly poor. I believe the foundations of the new economy emerge from complex, nonlinear dynamics.

The Long Tail

The first assumption of the old economy was based on a predictable relationship between supply and demand. We expect a change in supply to generate a dynamic adaptation of demand and vice versa. The tight coupling between supply and demand is assumed to be the primary determinant of prices and to inform decisions of those who produce and those who consume goods and services. This expectation only holds true when both supply and/or demand is limited. If either one is unlimited, the predictable relationship breaks down. Unbounded supply erases value as we knew it. Unlimited demand (if we could even imagine it in the old system) depletes supply and collapses the market. The 21st century game is entirely different because both supply and demand become functionally infinite in the world of virtual commerce.

In the virtual marketplace, there is no physical limit to the number and variety of goods available. There is no practical limit to the number of potential buyers. As a result, the simple relationship between supply and demand disappears. It is replaced by a more complex relationship described as the power law. Sometimes recognized as the “long tail,” a power law relationship is a statistical property that presents the non-intuitive fact that the space within the tail of a probability distribution is larger than the space under a 'normal' or Gaussian distribution. For practical purposes, it means that more wealth may be generated by selling a small number of many individual products than by selling a large number of a few high-valued products. This relationship is described in detail in The Long Tail (Anderson, 2006). He tells the story of a publishing industry gone crazy when the Internet lets anyone publish, and wealth is derived from relatively low numbers of sales for many, many products.

Can we make the connections required to exploit this new economic pattern?

Zero-Sum Game

The second assumption of the old economy was that the whole is always equal to the sum of the parts. If you have more of something of value, that means I have less of it. Often referred to as the “zero-sum game,” this assumption shapes economic decision making in many ways. Calculations of costs and benefits, return on investment, and profit margin all rely on the assumption that value can be divided into parts or added together without changing its absolute value over time. This assumption is the source of greed; it incites theft; it rewards saving; and it inspires current tax, intellectual property, and monetary policies.

This assumption, too, falls apart in today’s information economy. Unlike items of physical value, information is not a zero-sum game. If I know something and tell you, I don’t lose that knowledge. In fact, I may even have more if you can show me a new way to use it, or if we create something new together. Under this radical assumption, generosity increases my own wealth while contributing to others’. Hoarding information becomes its own punishment; and return on investment may be impossible to perceive, much less to predict or control.

What does it look like to increase gains by giving value away?

Conserved Quantity

In the old, material economy, we assumed that something of value should retain that value indefinitely. Speculative bubbles (whether in real estate or tulip bulbs) were seen as aberrations when perceived value disappeared over night. We assumed that, in general, a thing of value would remain a thing of value. As a result, we expected to be able to accumulate wealth, save, invest, and leave a legacy to our children. As a matter of practice, we assumed that if we held something of value longer and more tightly, it would retain its value, and we would win the economic game in the end.

Again, an information economy blows this assumption apart. The new economy recognizes a paradox in the value of information. On the one hand, when information is hoarded, it loses its value spontaneously over time. It may become less relevant, or it gets distributed too widely to bring any advantage to the knower. On the other hand, a piece of information shared may increase in value when it’s managed as a shared asset among network partners. Knowledge only has value when it is given away.

Will these habits of generosity and curiosity help us thrive in the emerging economy?

Near and Distant Neighbors

Another key assumption of the old economy was that natural resources were unlimited, while the market for products was finite. Not only did this set the supply and demand relationship in place, it also established what we considered to be reasonable production resources and distribution networks. Regional and national markets thrived as producers consumed available resources and built sophisticated delivery infrastructures.

Today, we see a very different world. Our earth is overburdened, and we face the challenge of sustaining ourselves on the finite resources of our planet. At the same time, ubiquitous information and transportation networks allow us to reach markets around the world quickly, easily, and cheaply. We know that our resources are limited while our potential consumers are without number. These new conditions restructure the marketplace radically. Rather than robust regional and national markets of the mid-20th century, we see two new markets emerging.

One of the new markets appears in community gardens and farmers’ markets around the country. This emerging marketplace focuses on local production and local consumption. It makes efficient use of micro-resources that are more reusable and sustainable. This market also builds the social capital we need for adaptive action in these turbulent times. The other emerging market focuses on the global level. It transcends political and geographical boundaries to consolidate resources from around the globe to meet demands of distant markets.

Can we leverage our sensitivities to appreciate value in our local economic landscapes?

Networks

Traditional economic systems have been driven by intermediaries. Farmer grows produce; processor prepares it; wholesaler stores; retailer sells; consumer consumes; and various other middle-people influence and benefit from this simple transaction. This process is supposed to add value at each step. It also generates wealth that is invested in a complex and diverse infrastructure that has in the past lent stability and predictability to market dynamics.

The Internet has “dis-intermediated” economic and social transactions. From EBay to on-line banking to heart.com, network interactions are replacing structured, mediated interactions. This new phenomenon puts many out of work, including travel agents, local bookstore owners, bank tellers, and marriage brokers. At the same time, it reduces transaction costs and democratizes access to resources and markets. As one effect of this shift, we are seeing a surge in freelance consultants and work-at-home opportunities.

What are we willing to invest in sustainable networks of relationship and information?

Looking to the Future

Whether we were conscious of them or not, our assumptions of the past established foundations for economic success. Year to year or economic cycle to cycle, the system experienced variations that turned winners into losers or losers into winners, but still the game was always the same. Those assumptions were based on the limitations of physical material and geographical space.

Today, in an Internet world of information and networks, those same limitations no longer apply. As we pass through the current economic depression and into an unknown future, a new game and its economic rules unfold. I suspect that success in this new world won’t look like success in the old, but failure won’t either. Those who step into their new positions of power and stand proudly in instincts for curiosity and caring may have the opportunity to experience a level of influence and freedom they never knew before.

How will we, individually and collectively, play and win this infinite game?

To find out more about human systems dynamics and how to see and influence patterns in complex systems, visit us at www.hsdinstitute.org.

Glenda Eoyang, Ph.D.
Executive Director
HSD Institute

References
Anderson, Chris. (2006) The Long Tail: Why the future of business is selling less of more. NY: Hyperion.
Eoyang, Glenda. (1996). Coping with chaos: Seven simple tools. Circle Pines, MN: Human Systems Dynamics Press.
Keynes, John Maynard. (1936). The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. New York: Classic Books America.
Marx, Karl. (1867). Capital: Criticism of the Political Economy. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc.
Olson, Ed & Glenda Eoyang. (2001). Facilitating organization change: lessons from complexity science. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer.
Smith, Adam. (1776) An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Building Networks

2011-07-05T18:33:00.000-07:00

People build structures to bring order and predictability to their worlds. Agendas give structure to meetings; a calendar to tasks and time; folders to documents; and house numbers to neighborhoods. These are only a few of the simplest cases of a practice that defines identity, gives shape to culture, and simplifies the ordinary to release energy for the extraordinary.

Every structure brings both costs and benefits. The costs are real, but sometimes they’re invisible. Structures require investment of resources to construct and maintain. They lock in behaviors that may lose their usefulness over time. They require individuals and groups to agree and to commit to shared, systemic goals. They may lull us into thinking that change is not inevitable. On the other hand, the benefits of structure are overwhelming. They distribute goods across a group. They relieve individuals from constantly negotiating relationships. They concentrate resources that may take the form of art or innovation. They encourage discipline and reduce some kinds of waste.

At HSD Institute we try to build structures that generate the benefits of our internal and external interactions while limiting the costs.

We look for a variety of structural options to select one that is most fit to purpose. For example, we use different information storage structures to track our finances, contact information for clients, and intellectual property.
We review our structures often and change ones that no longer serve us well. For example, in our annual planning sessions, we review our operational infrastructure and plan for innovations that might be needed to adapt to an ever-changing environment.
We don’t over structure. Some activities beg for structure because it makes them repeatable, reliable, and consistent. Others resist structure because they are unique, surprising, and diverse. We try to match the investment with the need. For example, the process we use to write proposals is very flexible, while our billing procedures are highly structured.
We share infrastructure when possible. Many small businesses need similar supports and services. Sharing those resources conserves while optimizing learning. We contract with external services to support publishing and distribution, financial planning, computer support, and online learning. We choose to develop our own internal infrastructure for training and communications.
We know when to let go. No structure is permanent in a human system. Even the ones that we hold most dear—family or faith community—are open to transformation over time. It is just as important to let go of a structure with grace, as it is to build it with courage and insight. For example, as our network has grown, we have adjusted our procedures and replaced some of the more intensive leadership activities with looser, more self-organizing structures.

Whether and how much to structure are important questions, but another critical question is about the kind of structure to build. We think of three structural architectures for human systems and try to choose the one that best fits a particular need and level of resources.

Blueprint. Architects use blueprints to communicate with their clients and their construction crews. Such a structure divides a whole into parts. It establishes categories and sorts things into those categories. Examples of such a structure in human systems are the school (grade levels), unions (management and labor or seniority), political parties (Democrat and Republican). While this structure makes things easy to identify, it constrains interaction and reduces innovation. It also contributes to various –isms when we overgeneralize or categorize unfairly or incorrectly. The benefit of a blueprint is that it facilitates the efficient distribution of people, functions, or objects.

Hierarchy. Many current management gurus dismiss hierarchy as antiquated and not agile, but I disagree. For some functions, a hierarchy is perfect. Such a structure sets clear levels of priority and relationship. Biologists use hierarchies to define the classification of plants and animals, the military uses it to manage material in times of peace, and programmers use hierarchies to create automated decision-making machines. The strength of a hierarchy is that it efficiently distributes resources and authority. Its weakness is that it depends on and reinforces a power structure that may be unfair or unresponsive to change.

Network. The network is the emerging structure for the 21st century. It consists of nodes (for example, individuals or organizations) who are connected to each other so that they receive, hold, and transport information, material, or energy. Social networks, like those supported by Facebook and LinkedIn, are great examples of how networks develop and function. Other examples include the internet, the energy grid, highway systems, and terrorist organizations. The strength of a network is that it gives both freedom and connection to participants, there is no natural boundary to its size, and it can recover quickly when disrupted. The drawbacks are ambiguity about who or what is “in charge,” autonomy and accountability of the parts, and a tendency to see from the point of view of the part rather than the whole. Networks efficiently distribute energy and information.

That is why networks are emerging as essential structures in our fast-paced, information-rich, massively entangled, and highly diverse world of the 21st century. That is why the science of networks is increasingly insightful as we build today for the human systems of the future.

This coming week, I will participate in a meeting that was designed to create a “Network of Networks.” Along with a design team and our federal clients, we are setting the conditions to encourage a national collaboration for Preventing Child Maltreatment and Promoting Well-being: Network for Action. Next month I will share with you the principles we used in the design, lessons we learned in the implementation, and our observations of an emerging future.

In the meantime, look around you. What kinds of structures influence your action? What structures do you create and/or encourage? Are those serving you well, or should you begin to recreate the structures that will fit the future you imagine? Share your insights with me by email. And find out more about human systems dynamics at www.hsdinstitute.org.

Glenda Eoyang, Ph.D.

Executive Director

HSD Institute

Co-evolution: Path to Innovation

2011-06-11T15:15:00.001-07:00

Our culture idolizes inventors, creators, sources of innovation. We think of them as the brave souls who wander out into the unknown and return with ideas that transform our lives. We see magic in an imagination that inspires creativity. We marvel at the special thinking that draws something completely new out of the unknown. In this technology- and entertainment-driven society, our adoration of innovation is becoming a cult.

We are served in several ways by this perspective. The one thing it does not do is to make us more innovative. If the process of invention is magic, then we can admire it and be amazed by it, but we don’t expect to do it ourselves. We let ourselves and our teams think of innovation as something that happens among the young, in high tech industries, on the coasts, in the artist’s studio, in any place or time other than our own. Not here. We might try to come up with something new, but we’re not surprised when we don’t. It is magic, after all, and we can’t be blamed if we don’t have the magic. We convince ourselves that real innovation is rare. Breakthrough ideas are few and far between, so we cannot expect them from our everyday interactions.

What if we find another way? What if innovation is as common as avoiding a traffic jam, adapting a recipe, resolving an emerging conflict, or putting together a drop-dead outfit? Many ideas from nonlinear sciences focus on novelty, how it arises and how it is damped or amplified by complex interactions. What if we use these ideas to build new pathways into innovation? What if we find ways to think about innovation that empower each of us to wander into the unknown and return with ideas that transform?

The field of human systems dynamics draws its foundations from these nonlinear sciences. One HSD idea that might shine light on innovation is co-evolution. It gives us an innovative way to think about innovation.

Co-evolution is a metaphor drawn from biology and ecology. It posits that two entities can become entwined so that a change in one prompts a change in the other, and vice versa. Classic examples from biology include bumblebees and flowers, antibiotic resistant microbes, orchids and moths. Metaphoric applications in human systems can include obesity as a communicable disease, owners who grow to look like their dogs, and patterns of child maltreatment and other forms of domestic violence that spread from generation to generation in a family or from one household to another in a neighborhood.

What does this have to do with innovation? What if innovation is co-evolution? What if innovation comes from diving into the present and connecting in profound ways with the world rather than trying to step outside of it? If so, then one becomes more inventive by engaging with others and with the environment, by observing carefully, asking provocative questions, and converting observation into action. The process of innovation, then, becomes one of careful connection rather than lucky magic.

Consider some common examples of innovation, and see what happens if you think of them as ordinary co-evolution rather than extraordinary flight of fancy:

Alexander Graham Bell knew about advances in electricity, the expanding commercial industry, increasingly geographically dispersed population, and a growing middle class. Those environmental changes spoke to him of an innovation that could improve long-distance communication.
Art Fry of 3M put together failed glue, a church choir, a bunch of hymnals, and the now-ubiquitous post-it note evolved.
The movie Social Network tells the whole co-evolutionary story of Mark Zuckerberg and his buddies developing and marketing Facebook. That idea didn’t come from nowhere, it grew from observation and exploitation of patterns in university experience of their “here and now.”

It is possible to think of all of these cases in terms that anyone can replicate. Maybe we won’t find an innovation to change the world as these did, but we can engage with our own worlds in ways that create surprising connections and uncover opportunity. It isn’t magic, but it does take a very special kind of work. Here are some of the capacities that feed into innovation as a co-evolutionary strategy:

Observe. Don’t waste a good surprise. Pause and wonder when something unexpected arises. It may be the weak signal foreshadowing something important to come.
Connect. Nothing co-evolves in isolation. The key is connecting in inquiry with the environment, with current and historical patterns, and with other thoughtful people.
Question. Our assumptions blind us to the world around and lock us into our long-held problems and their failed solutions. A good question can break through the expected to discover the possible.
Try it out. Of course expectations based on past experience will make us question anything we haven’t experienced. To see something new, we really have to see it. Try a new idea out, see what happens, adjust and try again. We call this adaptive action.
Reward thoughtful risk taking. Not every surprise is full of potential. Not every experiment will end as expected. Not everything will move directly toward new insight. But something, sometime will. Patience with self and others makes it easier to test out co-evolutionary opportunities until the big one emerges.

I invite you to take one day to focus on your own environment in search of ordinary opportunities for extraordinary co-evolving innovation. What will you create? Send me a note and let me know how it goes. And find out more about human systems dynamics at www.hsdinstitute.org.

Glenda Eoyang
Executive Director and Founder
HSD Institute

Sabbaticals

2011-06-11T14:48:00.000-07:00

Kristin came to see us yesterday. It was a real treat! She is an HSD Associate, and she and her family are on sabbatical. Kristin, her husband, and their 10 year-old daughter are traveling around the world this year. They plan to discover themselves and each other, connect with fascinating people and places, and come back refreshed and refocused. At this mid-point in the journey, they came home for a visit, which included an afternoon with Royce and me. Her stories made me smell the soil in Northern France, engage in dialogue in a London neighborhood, and wrestle with the culture shock of coming home to a world both same and different. She absolutely glowed. Rested and relaxed, she shared highlights of the past, questions of the present, and hopes for the future. When she left, I felt that I’d been on sabbatical, too. That’s what I’d like to share with you today—the hope that you’ll go on sabbatical with Kristin and me.

From Latin sabbaticus, from Greek sabbatikos, from Hebrew Shabbat, a sabbatical is literally a “ceasing” or a rest from work. In some cultures, young adults or those reaching middle or old age take time away from the world for reflection and transition. Academics include the expectation for sabbatical in their employment agreements—at least they used to. The arrangement reflects the belief that academics are scholars as well as teachers, and that they need time to focus on learning to enrich both their fields of study and their engagements with students.

For most of us, our culture does not allow for such an indulgent escape. Especially in these times of hyperchange and 24/7 connectivity, we are expected never to cease. I invite you to do the unexpected. I invite you into a sabbatical. In fact, if you’re reading these words, you are already taking a time out from your routine life. Congratulations!

One of the lessons we’ve learned is that time seems to contract as complex change increases. I think that is why time is such a precious commodity for my clients and me. Many things are happening around us. We are increasingly engaged in events that are distant. We have more information than we can digest about events both near and far. Our schedules are squeezing us. Time, as we know it, cannot hold so much for so long.

This connection between time and complex change opens a crack of opportunity for us, though. When nothing is happening, time seems to expand. We can use this discovery to our benefit by choosing to go on sabbatical—not for a year, but perhaps for moments at a time. We can use our in-betweens as sabbaticals. Rather than using moments of transition to worry about the past or prepare for the future, we can use them to cease. When the elevator doors close, take a deep breath and listen to the proverbial music. When you’re stuck in a traffic jam, turn off the radio and feel your heart beat. When you’re standing in line at the company cafeteria, look into the eyes of the one who picks your pickles.

As you drive to work, as you wake up or go to sleep, as you walk from one room to another, take a deep breath, cease what you’re doing and just be. It may only take seconds, but when you return, you will glow. Maybe not as much as Kristin, but more than you did before. Open time, and it will open for you.

Then get back to work!

A fascinating community of people will be gathering in Columbus, Ohio June 24 to July 1 to share a sabbatical experience http://www.aliainstitute.org/summer-institute-2011/. ALIA Summer Institute is the epitome of ceasing because it is based on two very powerful disciplines of being. One, creative process, teaches us to draw from experience and perception to generate something new in the moment. The other discipline, mindfulness, teaches us to clear our minds of clutter and breathe into what is. Together, in the context of the Summer Institute, professionals take time out to see how these powerful disciplines might inform leadership practice.

For the third year in a row, Wendy Morris and I will be leading a module entitled Adaptive Action, Artful Perception. It is always great fun for me—and a transforming learning experience for students—to braid Wendy’s wisdom of movement and spirit with my insights about complex dynamics of human systems. It is also immense fun to hang out with interesting and committed leaders from every sector and around the world.

Please consider taking this particular sabbatical with us.

For more lessons from human systems dynamics, visit us at www.hsdinstitute.org.

Resilience in Human Systems

2011-03-30T13:04:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking about resilience lately. It seems there are many, far too many, occasions to marvel at the resilience of human beings:

A trip to Burkina Faso in Western Africa, where heat and poverty don’t keep the locals from a pleasant demeanor and creative expression.
Stories from Japan about individuals and families who wait with patience and move forward with courage.
Conversations with committed and experienced public servants who are insulted and excluded from policy making, even when (perhaps because) they know the dire consequences of public greed and lack of empathy.
Photos of crowds around the world rising up in the face of fascism and torture.

Each of these situations is challenging almost beyond my imagination, but these communities recover—sometimes even thrive—in response to overwhelming odds. In retrospect, you can describe such resilience as a personal or cultural pattern that is inborn or inbred. You can recognize it in hindsight, but it can only be developed with foresight. I’m thinking about how human systems dynamics, and our understanding of patterns of performance, can help us build resilience to prepare for the unpredictable challenges that lie in our future.

The key may be in a simple definition of “resilience” based on the patterns of the natural world. One way to think about resilience comes from physical science—stable and unstable equilibrium. An object or a system is in equilibrium when it is at rest. All the forces that would move it one way are balanced by forces that would move it another way. The coffee cup on my desk, the teams in a tug of war game, the ballerina en pointe—all of these are in equilibrium.

Not all equilibrium states are the same, however. Sometimes, equilibrium is “stable.” Stable equilibrium means that if the balance is disturbed, the system will bounce back to where it was before. A pendulum on a clock, a marble in a round-bottomed bowl, water in a pond—any one of these systems will recover from a disruption and return to its earlier, more stable state.

Sometimes a system will be in equilibrium, but it is “unstable.” It may look still and balanced, but when it is disturbed, it doesn’t go back to its initial state. Instead, it moves to a new equilibrium position. The ballerina, a pencil balanced on its point, a toddler, a learning bicyclist—all of these systems are balanced for a moment, but they are vulnerable because a small change can send them careening off into some new place. They are in a state of unstable equilibrium.

So, what does that have to do with Burkina Faso, the Japanese, Egypt, or your organization?

We can think of resilience for an individual or a group as stable equilibrium—the system is balanced and is able to return to its original state after it is disturbed. The lack of resilience is unstable equilibrium—the system doesn’t return after being disrupted. We can use this distinction to build our capacity for resilience in three ways.

1. Take the opportunity in quiet times to gauge the stability of your own equilibrium with the following questions:

How quickly do I recover from little disturbances?
How comfortable am I in my current state and how afraid of disruption?
What was the last time I was really surprised (positively or negatively), and how did I respond?

2. Assess the factors that influence the stability of your equilibrium with the following questions:

How many and what kinds of connections hold me in place?
Who are the people that I interact with each day and how do they make me more comfortable or less comfortable?
What resources (emotional, financial, relationships, etc.) do I have and how long and how well could they sustain me?

3. Test your own equilibrium to build your resilient capacity by:

Challenging your own assumptions and values
Playing “what-if” games with others and by yourself
Noticing how you respond to the small, everyday disruptions of life and finding ways to react with more grace and good humor

None of us knows how we would respond in such extreme stress as the Japanese, Egyptians, civil servants, or Burkinabe. We also do not know what challenges await us in a future that will test our stability, but we do know that our equilibria will be tested in the months and years to come. Will we find a stable equilibrium? Will we respond with resilience?

And, like many HSD concepts, resilience has a flip side. It is possible to be too resilient. That happens when the stable place is not serving you, your organization, or your community well. Libya has a “resilient” leader; an obese person has a “resilient” relationship to food; a dogmatist has a “resilient” commitment to a single idea. In all of these cases, the resilience may be holding a dysfunctional pattern in place. The same questions that helped you build healthy resilience can help you avoid the wrong kind. You can ask: What is the nature of my stability around the issue? What factors reinforce my stable position? How can I shift my equilibrium toward less stability?

So, it looks like HSD can help us think about resilience, but even more than that, it can help shape choices and inform actions to strengthen useful resilience and weaken resilience that blocks life and growth. With the idea of stable and unstable equilibria in mind, we can learn many lessons from people who deal with overwhelming challenges every day.

To see how human systems dynamics can support you as you see, understand, and influence patterns in your life and work, visit us at www.hsdinstitute.org.

Glenda Eoyang, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Human Systems Dynamics Institute

Questions in Chaos

2011-02-28T14:13:00.000-08:00

These are turbulent times. Cairo, Madison, and Christchurch all speak to us of stable systems destroyed by social, political, or natural forces. Each of these crises is unique, but they all share the patterns of unpredictability and turbulence. In spite of the personal tragedies they represent, they offer hope because they promise to transcend the problems of the old stability. They are full of fear because they promise to transcend the stability of the old problems. This pattern—of dissolving order and emerging chaos—is becoming rather commonplace these days in every scale of the human system. Individuals, families, neighborhoods, corporations, industries, economies, nations, and global regions are breaking old patterns and evolving toward new ones.

Other people write about the reasons for such massive disruption. Still others praise the one or rant against the other. Though my personal views are strong, human systems dynamics and its study of systemic patterns are without opinion. As Royce Holladay says, “There ain’t no naughty or nice” that we can know. One situation might seem better for system sustainability and health, but we cannot know for sure. In a trivial but familiar example, it might be a stroke of bad luck to be sick, but if the sickness keeps me from some fate even more dire, then it seems like a pretty good thing.

Even if I could collect all the data in the world, I cannot know whether a particular pattern will be positive or negative because the character of a pattern may depend on events in the past that I cannot know. Fitness might be determined by a shift in some invisible variable at another place in the system. Success might be completely redefined by new patterns and opportunities that emerge in the distant future. We cannot know in a given moment which disruption will result in new, more productive patterns; which ones will remain locked in chaos; or which ones will settle into a stability that is worse than the one that preceded it.

Even if no one can know, some of us still have the responsibility to act. In the most turbulent situations, parents care for their children; leaders speak and act on behalf of others; clerics defend and protect beliefs; professionals contribute their skills and knowledge. Everyone takes action without full knowledge of the present and without any certainty about the future.

How do we bridge between our confusion and our action? With good questions. Here are three sets of questions, drawn from HSD theory and practice, that we can ask ourselves in the midst of chaos to help inform action.

What patterns are beginning to emerge?
So what would the world be like if those patterns were amplified?
Now what actions can I take to amplify (or damp) the patterns as they emerge?

Based on news stories in the West, as the demonstrations in Cairo slowed down, two distinct patterns emerged. People formed work groups to clean up the litter that had been left in the square. Men brutally attacked women who had stood beside them in protest. Both of these patterns emerged from the chaos, and individuals have a choice about which of those patterns they choose to reinforce and which to denounce.

What of these many changes are likely to affect me (us)?
So what difference will those changes make to me and those I care about?
Now what can I do to respond in ways that may use the change in positive ways?

As strange as it might appear to political activists in the West, the Egyptian military was seen as the strongest force for justice in a time of turbulence. In their public statements, military leadership echoed these three questions as they searched for ways to support the new world without losing all the benefits of the old.

What are my options for action?
So what are the possible implications of each of those options?
Now what will I do, and how will I know whether it worked?

Facebook fueled the dissent with information about who, what, when and where. When the internet was shut down, people found new ways to collect and share intelligence. At each point, individual people were exploring what was possible and taking action to use the resources and opportunities that were open to them. They chose to take action and to adapt when another option looked better.

These sets of questions are based on what we call Adaptive Action—What? So what? Now what? This cycle of questions can inform action, even in the most difficult and turbulent times. Repeated moment to moment or crisis to crisis, these questions support adaptive decision making and responsible action. Whether conscious or not, many brave and gifted people all over the world have taken adaptive action in the past few weeks, and the emergent patterns show great promise. But we cannot know. We can only ask:

What sense can we make of the news that we hear?
So what can the emerging patterns tell us about what it means to be human in the 21st century?
Now what can I do to build my own adaptive capacity to prepare for the future unknown?

For more information about HSD and adaptive action, visit our website at www.hsdinstitute.org or visit our social network site at www.hsdcommunity.ning.com.

Glenda Eoyang, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Human Systems Dynamics Institute

Reduction or Emergence: That is the Question

2011-02-12T12:12:00.000-08:00

Complexity isn’t always the answer to difficult challenges in teams and organizations. Some hard problems really can be solved by dividing them up into smaller problems, working on them one at a time, and putting them back together into a whole system solution. Mechanical processes, inventory management, logistics, and facilities offer opportunities to divide and conquer some hairy problems. In the interest of simplicity, let’s call this approach reduction.

On the other hand, some challenging issues just get worse when you work on them piecemeal because the trouble lives in the relationships among the parts of the whole. Teams, innovation, reputation, sustainability, individual and group performance, learning, and organizational change are all examples of challenges that emerge in the context of complex relationships among parts. As complex problems, they demand complex problem-solving approaches. Let’s call these approaches, emergence.

So, any effective, long-term strategy requires two approaches. Reduction works on complicated, but not complex, problems where the parts can stand alone. Emergence works on complex issues where the parts are intimately connected. Both approaches require discipline, tools, methods, and careful analysis, but the disciplines are distinctly different. Some people (even popular pundits) claim that complex problems require art, rather than science. They say that intuition is the only path through a complex challenge, and that emergence is an “unknowable” process. As practitioners of human systems dynamics we disagree. We believe there is a discipline for solving complex problems, it is simply a discipline that is different than the one that tackles problems that are merely complicated. HSD offers a wide variety of models and methods to support emergent problem solving processes, but the first challenge is to know whether reduction or emergence is the better approach in a given place and time.

How do you know? We could give a complicated or a complex answer to this question. Many people have developed classification systems based on mechanics, philosophy, mathematics, experience, or chemistry. These are all well and good, but in the heat of the moment, when the client needs an answer or the employee needs support, none of us has time for a complicated decision-making process. HSD supports a simple way to distinguish the complicated from the complex challenge. It involves three questions.

Is the situation more open or more closed?
An open system is either unbounded or lightly bounded, so that external factors can shape what happens inside the system. In real life, no human system is perfectly open or closed, but the question is which better describes the situation you are interested in. For example, a teacher might think of his classroom as a closed system if the situation has to do with assessment, behavior management, or instructional design. On the other hand, the class might be seen as an open system situation on days of show and tell or when issues of race or ethnicity arise. The more open a situation is, the more likely it is that emergent solutions will succeed.

Is the situation dependent on lots of factors or only a few?
Traditional, reductionist problem-solving techniques assume that every problem is driven by a few, key variables. The fewer variables there are, the easier the problem is to understand and solve. Emergent situations, though, are shaped by many, many factors. Often you can’t know what all of them are, and sometimes a factor can be irrelevant at one moment and really important in the next. For example, if you think of nutrition as a reductionist challenge, then you measure the nutrients in the food that is consumed. If you see it as an emergent issue, then you consider cultural patterns, family dynamics, availability, income, exercise, physical condition, and so on to consider nutritional status. (Note for complexity geeks: Deterministic chaotic systems are considered to be emergent even though they are driven by few variables. This makes lots of mathematical sense, but it isn’t very helpful yet for solving real problems in real human systems.)

Are the causal connections two-way or one-way?
It is easy to track what causes what in a one-way connection. The temperature goes up in a room, the thermostat cuts off the furnace. This slice of the system includes only a one-way cause—one cause and one effect, but this isn’t the whole story. When the furnace turns off, the temperature in the room goes down, and at some point the temperature gets low enough to trigger the thermostat, and the furnace turns back on again. The temperature in the room is both the cause and the effect of the change in the thermostat. The thermostat is both a cause and an effect of the temperature of the room. This is an example of two-way causality.

Applying this to a human system makes it even more complex. When most individuals receive positive feedback about their work, they will try to perform at least to that level to continue to receive the positive reinforcement. Praise “causes” better performance; better performance “causes” praise. If your situation involves two-way causes, then you should think about using emergent, rather than reductionist, discipline to find a solution.

So, if you are working in a situation that is (for all practical purposes) closed, shaped by few factors, and engaged with one-way causes, then the traditional reductionist disciplines of problem solving will work just fine.

On the other hand, if your situation is (for all practical purposes) open, shaped by many factors, and engaged in two-way causes, then you need the new discipline of HSD methods and models to find effective and efficient solutions to your most challenging issues. It really is that simple.

For more information about HSD approaches to complex problems, visit our website at www.hsdinstitute.org or visit our social network site at www.hsdcommunity.ning.com.

Thanks, and happy problem solving!

Glenda Eoyang, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Human Systems Dynamics Institute

Reflection on 2010: Boundary Crossings

2011-01-04T06:40:00.000-08:00

2010 was a year for crossing boundaries at HSD Institute. We . . .

* formed partnerships with ALIA Institute, Edna Pasher and Associates, and the Ball Foundation;
* delivered HSDP Certifications - ten-day professional certificate courses - outside of the Twin Cities in Washington DC, London, and Ottawa, as well holding our annual HSDP in the Twin Cities;
* founded Centers (and Centres) for HSD in Israel and the United Kingdom;
* spoke publicly about racism and social justice;
* began to translate our key documents into Hebrew, Spanish, and Millennial languages;
* established opportunities for HSD Associates to share their emerging learnings with each other and the world; and
* explored new business models for training and consulting to move the Institute into its next phase of development.

All in all, we ventured into new and exciting territory and learned many things in the process.

We were not alone in our breakthrough journeys. Our colleagues and clients are charting new paths, as well. These complex times invite—indeed demand—that individuals and organizations break through old boundaries and explore new terrain. The only way to thrive in a turbulent environment is to move out of the comfort zone and engage across differences. In human systems dynamics, we call this adaptive capacity.

HSD theory and practice point to a cluster of competencies that help people adapt to unpredictable change. These skills build learning bridges across boundaries. Over the past year we’ve listed and tested skills that we think form adaptive capacity. We plan to continue improving this list over the year to come. We invite you to help us test and revise these skills that help us all cross into the unknown and return informed and refreshed.

Curiosity. I remember a book I read as a child that included a picture of two ancient explorers. One carried a flag to mark discovered territory, and another carried a book to record discovered ideas. These two images have become icons for me of two ways to engage with the unknown—one with intent to claim ownership and the other with intent to learn. Adaptive capacity lies in the second. When we move across boundaries with curiosity, then we encounter opportunities for learning and growth. As we adapt to the unfamiliar, we fulfill our own potential and become the best we can be. Each time we began to translate HSD fundamentals into other languages and cultures, we learned more about ourselves, our colleagues, and our world.

Discernment. It is a common misconception that intelligence is synonymous with judgment. People generally assume that the smarter a person is the more exacting his or her opinions will be. This assumption limits adaptive capacity because it locks us into preconceptions and absolutes that may not serve us well in a changing environment. On the other hand, mindless acceptance won’t serve either. Adaptive capacity grows out of the ability to notice and distinguish, not to judge and dismiss. When one discerns, he or she acknowledges difference but avoids labeling one as good and the other as bad. Skillful discernment focuses on differences that make a difference and draws attention to what is both true and useful. As we establish new centers for HSD work, we are careful to distinguish the dynamics of one locale and network from the patterns of others.

Clarity. Crossing a boundary and engaging with the other doesn’t mean that you give up your own identity. Adaptive capacity means that you retain yourself in the midst of growing and changing. In myths of adventure, the hero comes home at the end of the journey transformed, but still recognizable (except for Odysseus, but that is a different story). One of the most satisfying aspects of our year of boundary crossing is that we have been forced to think and speak more clearly about human systems dynamics and about the HSD Institute. Such clarity strengthened our ability to engage and learn.

Imagination. When confronted with novelty, it is tempting to revert to solutions that worked in the past, but that path rarely improves the ability to adapt. The alternative we have sought this year was to explore creative options together. This required an active imagination. Engaging with new groups or in new ways is a creative act. Each moment opened opportunities for seeing and responding to patterns that were sometimes strange or disruptive. When we were ready and able to adapt, we drew energy from the differences, pictured a future that included them, and created new patterns for sustainable success. As our board of directors continues to consider emerging business models, we continue to imagine and create the most innovative and productive future for the HSD Institute.

Connection. No boundary stands alone. One leads to another and crosses a third and joins up with yet another. As we crossed one boundary we found that our many connections across that and other boundaries helped prepare us to build new healthy and profitable connections. The friendships and alliances we developed over the seven years since the Institute’s founding prepared us to be successful in each of our new journeys of discovery. As an added bonus, the connections allowed us to share our learnings to support the adaptive capacity of others. The power of connections was demonstrated as we took our HSDP certification program “on the road.”

So, these five are what we’ve identified as the key adaptive capacities: curiosity, discernment, clarity, imagination, and connection. How do these match your own experience of exploration and learning? How do you experience each of them in your life and work? What do these capacities look like for individuals, teams, organizations, and communities that reach out to cross into the unknown? What additional capacities have you developed or observed in others?

Share your insights with us online at http://hsdcommunity.ning.com/forum/topics/adaptive-capacities. For more information about HSD and our HSDP certification training, visit our website at www.hsdinstitute.org.

Thank you for your support in 2010, and I hope you make 2011 a year of boundary crossing and adaptive action for yourself and your communities.

Glenda Eoyang, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Human Systems Dynamics Institute

Simple Rules: Radical Inquiry Into Self

2011-01-04T06:32:00.000-08:00

This month, Associates Mallary Tytel and Royce Holladay introduce a new HSD-based model that is the focus of their soon to be released book, Simple Rules: Radical Inquiry into Self.

How can HSD help individuals think about their own choices and the patterns in their lives? At the heart of HSD is an understanding that any individual’s life is shaped by patterns of interaction and decision making generated in the context of daily activities. People make choices about how to live their lives and how to respond to events in their lives. Those choices generate the patterns that shape the tapestry of each life. In complex adaptive systems, those patterns then influence further choices about responses and interactions.

How can HSD help individuals see, understand, and influence patterns of interaction and decision making that shape their lives? One approach to this question has been described in our soon-to-be-published book, Simple Rules: A Radical Inquiry into Self.

We believe simple rules provide a powerful metaphor for understanding how our life experiences shape day-to-day choices that generate predominant patterns in our lives. Once we articulated that perspective about simple rules and how they emerge, we began to wonder about whether and how emergent patterns might be influenced through intentional inquiry and reflection.

We began to wonder how individuals might shape their life patterns by defining and using a short list of simple rules to guide their own actions and decisions. We found this to be an intriguing question and have developed a process of self-inquiry we believe offers this potential to anyone who is willing to engage in personal reflection and exploration.

Simple Rules: A Radical Inquiry into Self offers a straightforward, uncomplicated approach to using one’s beliefs and understandings about the world to create positive action toward goals. Simple rules guide behavior and ensure coherence in life. A short list of simple rules, however, is more than a checklist: it is part of the larger dialogue a person has with him- or herself and the world, and points a way to achieve authenticity and satisfaction.

What makes this work “radical” is that it asks a person to explore deeply, allowing questions—rather than answers—to move the inquiry forward.

Moving from systems theory to practice, we engage readers in a process of understanding what they can do to influence the direction of their lives. Simple Rules encompasses both a discipline that generates new knowledge and the application of this knowledge to transform action and results.

We encourage you to watch for this book, and the accompanying journal, and use it to gain a greater understanding of your own personal growth. For more information about this book, please visit www.simplerules.org or contact us at info@simplerules.org. For more information about simple rules and human systems dynamics visit the HSD Institute website.

Royce Holladay, M.Ed, HSDP
Director of the Network
Human Systems Dynamics Institute
HSD Associate

Mallary Tytel, Ph.D., M.B.A., HSDP
President and Founder
Healthy Workplaces
HSD Associate

Networks and HSD Institute

2011-01-04T06:22:00.000-08:00

Royce Holladay, Associate and Director of The Network for HSD Institute is the guest author this month to talk about the HSD Network of Associates and colleagues.

Recent social and cultural changes have brought about a strong focus on the growing phenomenon of social networks—their values, uses, and potential importance to individuals, groups, and organizations. One area of focus is online networks where individuals become “friends” with each other and can “post”, “tweet” or “text” their status and pictures and thoughts anytime, day or night, sharing with one or two selected individuals or with the vast unknown in virtual space. These venues have become alternative or supplemental opportunities for businesses to reach out to known and unknown potential customers and clients, and more recently by political groups to their constituencies.

As Director of The Network for HSD Institute, I watch this burgeoning presence of networks, both online and not. I have recently been reflecting on what I can learn from this growth that can help me support the network of Associates and colleagues who share information and experiences of learning in this relatively new field of human systems dynamics.

I continue to return to Linked, by Albert-László Barabási, where he describes three characteristics of strong networks. He says they must be sensitive to the environment, responsive to change, and resilient to challenges. HSD practitioners also believe that these three characteristics are most effective when there is system-wide coherence across all nodes. Those four terms guide the work we do to expand, strengthen, and nurture the HSD network.

Networks are coherent when the hubs and nodes are similar in perspective and purpose. They don’t have to be identical by any means, but there does have to be a way to build shared meaning and commitment among nodes and hubs. A number of activities we engage in at HSD Institute are aimed at increasing that shared meaning – classes, courses, this ATTRACTORS e-article, our NING site, website, publications, and ongoing communications around using HSD in the world. Beyond shared interest in HSD, coherence of this network grows as people experience the simple rules that drive our decisions internally in the Institute, and also inform progress in the field. These instances of shared meaning and common experience increase the chances of self-similarity across the whole.

Networks—or the individuals and groups that comprise them—are most sensitive to their environments when they stand in inquiry about patterns of interaction, behavior, and decisions that surround them. Because they actively observe their worlds, remaining curious about choices people make and ways in which those choices impact the world, members of the HSD network have meaningful information to build shared knowledge and understandings. When each node gathers information, makes meaning of it through the lens of HSD, and shares it with other nodes, the entire network is more sensitive.

Networks remain responsive as they are open to new information and as individual nodes maintain degrees of freedom to make their own choices and decisions in response to local change and challenges. In client relationships, classes, and the HSDP certification program, people join the network as they learn about HSD-based metaphors, models, and methods they can apply in day-to-day action and work. Individuals take what they learn and expand the uses and applications to fit their own needs and situations. Often they create new methods and models and share them back into the network. Because of this system-wide creativity and exploration, HSD isn’t tied to one niche, and is better able to support members of the network as they respond to myriad challenges and changes they encounter in their own local environments.

Network resilience increases as individual nodes multiply in number and gain their own strength. The HSD network began as a simple set of individual nodes (people) that were all highly dependent on and connected to Glenda Eoyang, the founder of the field and Executive Director of HSD Institute. In this situation, the strength of the network was strongly linked to Glenda. If she had decided to pursue a different area of interest, the network would not have survived. Over time, those individual nodes have become more connected to each other and have brought HSD into their own networks of connection and influence. Additionally, the HSD network has expanded geographically to reach around the globe, with nodes across five continents. Each node represents an individual, and those nodes collectively have a capacity to ensure the worldwide network continues to grow in size and strength, beyond Glenda’s direct influence.

We continue to seek ways to use HSD models and methods to expand and strengthen our network. From marketing strategies for courses and classes, to venues and messages for written and spoken communications, to multiple publications that tell the HSD story—we use HSD to inform our decisions and actions.

As your own networks grow, and as you support clients in building networks, HSD offers models and methods to help you build coherence across the whole, even as the network becomes more sensitive, responsive, and resilient. Stay in touch and thanks for remaining an active part of the HSD network. For more information, visit our website or email us and become a part of the network.

Royce Holladay, M.Ed, HSDP
Director of the Network
Human Systems Dynamics Institute

Process Improvement: Linear Approach Meets Non-Linear Human Organizations

2011-01-04T06:16:00.000-08:00

In a recent edition of Attractors, Glenda Eoyang reflected on some of the disciplines touched by Human Systems Dynamics (HSD) and its members. HSD Associates Brenda Fake and Larry Solow have focused their efforts in the area of business and process improvement in their recently released book, What Works for GE May Not Work for You: Using Human Systems Dynamics to Build a Culture of Process Improvement. This month's ATTRACTORS features their thinking.

Many business professionals in profit and nonprofit companies have been asked to help improve processes and overall outputs. It is difficult to argue the value of improving work processes. Most of us come up with ways to improve our work every day. Six Sigma and Lean are two approaches to process improvement that provide very clear and valuable tools and methods for increasing business productivity.

The linear, disciplined approaches of Six Sigma and Lean have been hailed as successful by companies like GE, Motorola, and Honeywell. The language and standardization of these approaches clearly communicate to shareholders and customers what the company is doing to improve output. These approaches depend on being driven from the top down and can be a good fit for a company’s budgets, skill levels, and culture.

As HSD Associates in the field of process improvement and organizational effectiveness, Larry and I both saw the need to address the “wicked issues” of process improvement implementation. The most prominent of issue is that process improvement approaches follow a linear, step-by-step path for implementation and practice, regardless of the size or specific needs of the system.

It would be easy to assume that what works for mammoth, global organizations should work for any company trying to improve their business processes. This faulty assumption provides the foundation for our book. Our goal in writing the book was to respond to business professionals who feel that process improvement initiatives are being implemented in ways that are detrimental to their organizations and the individuals who work there. We intend to help increase the adaptive capacity of individuals and organizations to enable them to address effective business improvement change.

The book shows the application of HSD principles to influence process improvement change at all levels of the organization. By introducing and translating the theory, models, methods, and tools of HSD as it applies to process improvement, we can teach business professionals to influence and set conditions for both initial implementation and adaptive change over time for a process improvement initiative.

Why HSD and Process Improvement?
Human systems dynamics connects to process improvement as complex systems—individuals, teams, and organizations—work together to bring about orchestrated change. The introduction of HSD into process improvement enables individuals who work in those systems to create new possibilities for action. HSD provides:

* new perspectives for choosing an approach to business improvement implementation,
* new tools to see the patterns for improvement, and
* a deeper understanding of the level of communication exchange needed to provide value within organizations.

What Works for GE May Not Work for You was published by Productivity Press in May 2010 with a warm welcome at the American Society for Quality (ASQ) Global Conference. Readers see the benefits of HSD as a complementary set of tools to help build capacity for teams as they influence process improvement in their organizations.

We look forward to introducing the application of human systems dynamics to business improvement. If you are interested in joining us for a deeper dive into solutions for your organization using HSD and process improvement, contact the HSD website or email us.

Brenda Fake
Principal/Founder
O-2 Optimizing Organizations
HSD Associate

Larry Solow
President
3-D Change, Inc.
HSD Associate

Leading Dynamically: Achieve What Others Say is Impossible

2011-01-04T06:12:00.000-08:00

This month's ATTRACTORS is written by Associate, Kristine Quade, JD, MSOD, HSDP.

Environmental conditions change rapidly. Information is available to anyone at any time. Social networks erode the established hierarchy. Product development cycle times decrease at a shocking pace. Market conditions respond to a different set of rules. In these shifting conditions, traditional leadership models are not working. How can any modern-day leader function effectively in the face of these enormous challenges?

In turbulent times, when outcomes are unpredictable, those who lead dynamically will succeed. Dynamical leaders pay attention to three conditions to ensure an effective, highly functioning organization: coherence, resilience, and fitness. The leader who masters these conditions will achieve what others say is impossible!

Coherence can be thought of as smooth functioning among interdependent parts. An organization needs to be coherent with market conditions to remain strong in its strategic space. Departments need coherence of both process and outcomes to ensure their activities are well coordinated. Teams need coherent behavior among team members and with organizational direction and goals to work effectively for the organization’s benefit. Patterns of interaction and decision making that build coherence keep communication open and honest, ensure clarity of roles and responsibilities, build shared identity, and create a rhythm of high performance.

Resilience is the ability to integrate, re-calibrate, and recover quickly when challenged. The normal inclination is to fall back to familiar ground, carefully observing and exploring until the new becomes familiar once again. Resilient leaders constantly place themselves in unfamiliar conditions, stretching their capacity to absorb and adjust. They seek what is different in perspective, approach, or opinion; they connect across boundaries; and they explore new ideas and technologies like curious scientists. Resilient leaders regularly look for constraints in thinking, decision making, relationships, and behavior. They actively explore their own and others’ filters, viewpoints, and judgments. They constantly seek ways to break constraints to keep themselves open and adaptive. Patterns that build resilience include multiple perspectives, continuous learning, and effective feedback. The resilient cycle of exploration and knowledge generation depends on insights about external markets, interactions with customers, attention to shifting conditions, and employee curiosity. A resilient leader notices patterns such as creativity, exploration, collaboration, and integration.

Fitness, from a leader’s point of view, is not about athletics. Instead, it is about constantly scanning the environment for potential surprises to see how their organizations can use new information, prepare for possible challenges, and avoid potential pitfalls. As leaders scan their environments, they regard blips of activity and trends of behavior as pieces of a larger puzzle to be solved. They know it is their job to make meaning of the valuable information drawn from these changes. These leaders have inquiring minds and build organizational cultures where people talk candidly about what they notice, listen attentively to different perspectives, and discern emerging patterns from what they see, hear and experience.

How does paying attention to coherence, resilience, and fitness ensure capacity to accomplish what others think is impossible? Some leaders choose to focus their attention on building coherence. For instance, they focus on clarity of mission, vision, values, etc. Other leaders use their energy to build resilience and strength across their organizations. A few leaders even seek to learn from their environments. YES! These are all necessary to organizational success, but none of them alone is sufficient. Coherence forms the ground floor of an effective organization, but what keeps an organization alive is resilience and fitness—the ability to adapt to what is important.

Sad as it may be, it is no longer possible to execute a strategic plan that projects out five years. Dynamical leaders know their approach to business opportunities requires constant vigilance for shifting environmental conditions and the ability to adapt with urgency. Operating in these conditions means that leaders must expand their focus to grow their organizations’ capabilities to be resilient and fit into an environment of rapid change.

If you wish to learn more about this type of thinking and how to become a dynamical leader, register for the two-day course Lead Dynamically: Achieve What Others Say Is Impossible offered by The Center for Human Systems Dynamics at St. Thomas University. You can also buy the book Dynamical Leadership: Building Adaptive Capacity in Uncertain Times on the HSD Institute website.

Kristine Quade
JD, MSOD, HSDP

Why Now?

2011-01-04T05:52:00.000-08:00

Over the past month, I’ve taken a rare opportunity to reflect on the evolution of human systems dynamics (HSD)and the HSD Institute. One theme emerges in many forms: Demand for our products and services is expanding quickly.

Our work, which lies at the intersection of complexity and social sciences, is relevant in any place where human beings work or play together. Our associates influence theory and practice in education, human services, conflict resolution, leadership, process improvement, service delivery, product design and manufacturing, program evaluation, international development, occupational therapy, economic development, healthcare, and the list goes on. We have focused on complex dynamical change in human systems since the late 1980s.

Why do we see interest and commitment growing today? I believe there are several reasons, and they all result from the ways change is changing in the complex interactions of the 21stcentury. Today, change is unpredictable, global, diverse, and fast.

Unpredictable change. There was a time (before AIDS, 9/11, Afghanistan, the economic collapse of 2008, and Deepwater Horizon) that we were convinced of our power to control. With the technologies and resources of our “advanced” civilization, we believed we could orchestrate even the most complicated of scenarios. Today that delusion is dissolving for most individuals, organizations, and communities. We can no longer ignore the ways in which we are neither omniscient nor omnipotent. On the other hand, we cannot give up our practical and ethical commitments to effective action. We have to ask ourselves, “If we cannot predict and control, what can we do to act effectively with courage, clarity, and wisdom?”

HSD does not provide a new way to predict or new tools for control, but it does articulate theory, models, methods, and tools to influence the conditions of self-organizing dynamics that lie beyond traditional methods of knowing and action.

Global change. In a discussion about rising violence in his city, a colleague of mine once said, “I’m not worried, the incidents are all on the other side of town.” Today, no one can ignore the effects of change as it happens across town, on the other side of the continent, or around the world. Cheap and easy travel, global economies, and ubiquitous technology ensure that a minor event in a distant locale might have drastic effects on us and our families.

HSD will not insulate individuals or organizations from the effects of massively entangled, global networks. It does, however, offer ways to see and influence systemic patterns as they emerge over time. It includes a simple and effective decision-making process that doesn’t reduce risk but mitigates it by ensuring quick and effective action to counteract risks as they become realities.

Diverse change. When I began my career, I started to write a list of all the things that could happen in a project and how to respond to each. I was convinced that this would be an easy task and couldn’t understand why someone hadn’t done it before. It was obvious that the number of possible problems was limited, and that I could compile the best responses to each problem for my own reference and for others. Well, it was a nice illusion while it lasted. Before long I realized that, though patterns repeated, each situation brought its own unique challenges. Over time, I realized that I would never encounter exactly the same problem twice. That each issue, each question
required imaginative and creative thought and action. In these difficult times, more people are breaking through this illusion to recognize the infinite diversity of our complex challenges.

HSD is not a theory that condenses the world into a small set of problems and solutions. HSD recognizes the staggering variability of change in human systems and provides simple tools and processes that support creative responses to emergent challenges.

Fast change. Finally, 21st century change is fast. Even Superman’s speeding bullet wasn’t fast enough to capture the pace of change today. Increasingly my clients experience change at the speed of light. Traditional data collection, analysis, and problem-solving methods are simply too slow. Even before a formal environmental scan gets started, the system has shifted, and opportunities have slipped away.

HSD methods are simple and streamlined. They help individuals and groups see coherent patterns in messy situations and take adaptive action to influence the patterns as they emerge. HSD engages people in co-evolution with their environments, so that problem and problem solving move forward at the same rate.

So, that’s why I think people are discovering the power of HSD. Unpredictable, global, diverse, and fast change surrounds them. Their old tools are not up to the task of seeing and influencing change at its own pace. HSD, with its evolving toolbox, gives individuals and groups the capacity to engage with their environments and with each other. Through HSD, people build the adaptive capacities they need to thrive in a world of 21st century change.

For more information about HSD and the HSDP certification training, visit our website or email us.

Glenda H. Eoyang, Ph.D
Executive Director
Human Systems Dynamics Institute

Deciding in Uncertain Times

2011-01-03T15:05:00.000-08:00

Dana taught me a wonderful lesson about making decisions in uncertain times. Dana is my niece. She'd just finished college and was looking for her first professional job. When I asked her what she wanted to do, she said she didn't know. Then she smiled and said she didn't need to know. All she needed to know was what she was going to do FIRST.

As a child of complex times, daughter of high tech, sister of globalization, and student of social disruption, she knew that a life journey could not depend on a single decision. At 22, she would not make a decision to determine the rest of her life. She would decide to shape the next stage in her life journey. She anticipated that at some point in the future, she would make other decisions to shape the emerging path of her life. Since then, she's become a wife and mother, she finished a Master's degree, and worked with people in all kinds of need. Her life continues to unfold—one FIRST decision at a time.

Why is Dana's insight a profound lesson?

The world around us is changing in ways we can neither predict nor control. Economic shocks shrink retirement funds and make jobs evaporate. Social changes shift relationships and cultural norms. Technology brings global news to your fingertips. Irrational violence disrupts peace and justice. Political wrangling confuses news with propaganda. Family violence, hunger, and homelessness in our neighborhoods, and unprecedented levels of drug and alcohol abuse, challenge our fundamental belief in the kindness and stability of our society. What does it mean to make decisions in such uncertain times? What does it mean to act responsibly when you cannot predict or control the consequences of your actions?

It means to decide what you'll do FIRST. Though this may sound easier than making decisions for the rest of your life, it certainly is not. Every single moment, each decision, is a step into the unknown and the beginning of an unknowable path toward the future. Each one requires you to be awake and aware, to make sense of reality in relation to your beliefs and values, and to act with courage and determination, even in the midst of fear and unknowing.

Be awake and aware. Complexity researchers talk about dynamical change, and human systems dynamics borrows that concept to talk about change in human systems. Dynamical change is sometimes slow and smooth and at other times swift and surprising. There are many examples of dynamical change in human systems, but let's just consider one—a developing friendship. A first meeting is a string of delights as two people discover each other. Over time, the pair become comfortable with each other and flow along with shared interests and activities. At some point, though, circumstances change, and an argument arises. The friendship moves into a dangerous time of conflict. Ultimately, the issue is resolved or forgotten, and the pair returns to a new level of shared experience and mutually satisfying relationship. Or it's not resolved, and each person turns to existing relationships or moves to new ones. Like dynamical physical systems, this path is predictable in its general shape, but in any moment it is truly unpredictable. Does one ever know whether the next moment of friendship brings reassurance or surprise? No, so a good friend is constantly aware of circumstances, as well as the needs of self and other.

My niece Dana expected dynamical change in her professional life. She knew that sometimes it would be smooth and other times it would be disrupted, and that she had no control over the long-term path. She also realized that, by staying aware, she could continually make decisions to influence the overall pattern of happiness and success.

Make sense of reality. Everyone has heard, 'Assumptions make an ass out of u and me.' This is especially true in times of complex change. When things are calm, it is easy to fall into habits of seeing and thinking. We can ignore the world around us because it is pretty much the same as it was before. Our expectations and assumptions are close enough to reality that we can get by. In times of complex change, though, we need to be critical of our own assumptions. We need to think carefully and clearly about what we see and what it means. We need to be in touch with others to test our assumptions.

We need to challenge our own expectations so that our decisions and actions are connected to an ever-changing reality.

Dana was realistic about her own knowledge, skills, and experience. She recognized that her FIRST choice would be the beginning of a learning journey that could build her capacity to engage with reality and prepare her for her NEXT job decision.

Act with courage. Making a decision in the midst of uncertainty can feel like standing on the edge of cliff and stepping off into empty space. We don't know what the future holds. We don't know how others will respond to our actions, and we have no idea what other factors are shaping the future. Each moment and each choice holds the potential for boredom, excitement, or devastation. We never know. Nevertheless, we must act. To stand in inaction, frozen in fear of the unknown, is to lose the opportunity to engage in the learning and growth of life.

Dana's smile let me know that she was ready and eager to step off the cliff and into the unknown. She was sure that whatever surprises the future held, she would meet them with open eyes, thoughtful meaning making, and sufficient courage to thrive on the shifting complex landscape of her tomorrow.

Some people are born with the capacity to see and influence surprising dynamical patterns of change. Others learn these skills through the school of trial and error. Both can find theoretical guidance to engage with emerging changes in society, business, personal relationships, and politics. The theory, methods, models, and tools of human systems dynamics are designed to support this journey toward individual mastery in complex times. In our classes, webinars, and HSDP certification program, we introduce simple, powerful ways for individuals and groups to continually make the FIRST decision of the rest of their lives, and the next one, and the next one. For more information about human systems dynamics and our HSDP certification training, visit our website or email us.

Glenda H. Eoyang, Ph.D
Executive Director
Human Systems Dynamics Institute

Adaptive Action, Artful Perception

2010-05-27T11:40:00.000-07:00

>What does it mean to lead in these days of rapid and unpredictable change? In the past, we thought leaders should:

· Speak softly and carry a big stick

· Be in front of the curve

· Drive toward a compelling vision

· Keep the troops in line

This isn’t bad advice, but it will not sustain productive work in complex situations like the ones most of us confront on a day-to-day basis. Today, leaders work in situations that are open to many outside forces beyond prediction or control. They support change from the tops, middles, and bottoms of organizations and communities. They have to think about a wide array of factors that influence success. They recognize that their actions may have unintended consequences, and that their followers will be challenged to be creative and innovative. They must see and respond to surprise while helping others hold onto a stable core of identity and action. In short, they have to be prepared for adaptive action and artful perception.

Three groups of HSD colleagues not only demonstrate these leadership characteristics, they also help others build their artful and adaptive capacities. Their stories, and the stories they tell, can inform your leadership practice as you cope with your own chaos.

The Authentic Leadership In Action (ALIA) Institute brings together mindfulness, creative process, and leadership action in their annual Shambhala Institute experience. For five days (June 6-12, 2010) a diverse group comes together to explore innovative leadership theories and practices. In this creative space, leaders of all kinds find new ways to see emerging patterns and take effective action to shape individual and collective futures. Wendy Morris and I will be leading one of the modules this year. We call it Adaptive Action, Artful Perception, and its goal is to help people see and influence the future of organizations. You can find out more about the Shambhala Institute at http://www.aliainstitute.org/programs/2010summer/index.html

The HSD Institute is also collaborating with ALIA to present a Human Systems Dynamics Professional certification course in Ottawa in the fall. This experience will be co-hosted by Wendy Morris, and it will integrate experiential and somatic perspectives with the traditional HSD theory, models, methods, and tools. For more information, go to www.hsdinstitute.org/hsdp.

The CEO of ALIA Institute, Susan Szpakowski, has written a lovely book called Little Book of Practice for Authentic Leadership in Action. It unfolds the many threads of insight and relationship that have emerged from the Shambhala Institute over the past decade. You can get more information about the book at http://www.aliainstitute.org.

Kristine Quade and Royce Holladay have been leading and talking about leadership for decades. They bring their shared insights together with HSD tools and models in their new book, Dynamical Leadership. It is an exciting and accessible journey into the variety of perspectives and behaviors that empower and enlighten the leaders of tomorrow. They also share their work through webinars, public speaking, and experiential classes in the Dynamical Leadership Academy. You can find out more about their work at http://www.dynamicalleadership.com/.

Brenda Fake and Larry Solow take on one of the major challenges of business today—how do you make internal processes more predictable while adapting to unpredictable changes in the market? They are masters of Six Sigma and Lean Enterprise, and they recognize the limitations of these approaches in complex and emergent times. The title of their new book says it all: What Works for GE May Not Work for You: Using Human Systems Dynamics to Build a Culture of Process Improvement. The book is practical and easy to read, and they are providing free sample chapters at http://www.whatworksforgemaynotworkforyou.com/

Each of these colleagues and collaborations rises to the leadership challenge of today and provides practical answers to our question: What does it mean to lead in these days of rapid and unpredictable change? They draw on different traditions and practices. ALIA is grounded in mindfulness practice and creative process. Dynamical Leadership draws from interviews with more than 30 emerging leaders. What’s Good for GE delves into the lived experience of two effective leaders. Their sources and stories are quite distinct, but their message is the same.

Effective leaders for today and tomorrow observe the world around them with open eyes and generous hearts. They draw from a wide array of creative options, they take courageous action, and they adapt quickly as those actions shape and reshape their environments.

I invite you to reflect on your own experience as an adaptive leader and to draw inspiration and information from these innovative partners. Please share your thoughts about leadership in complex times by joining us in conversation at http://humansystemsdynamicsinstitute.ning.com/.

Glenda Eoyang, Ph.D.

Executive Director

Human Systems Dynamics Institute

Racism

2010-04-23T19:07:00.000-07:00

It would be more politically correct to talk about “diversity” or “bias” or some such, but I’m not going to pussy-foot around today. We’re talking about racism. Unfortunately, racism is an undeniable pattern in human systems. We might call it xenophobia or parochialism or prejudice or a hundred other names, but “racism” is the name that lays the pattern bare and makes us—of all genotypes—wince.

I am white. I am not frequently a victim of racism. Why do I wince? It is about fear. It is about patterns that were laid down in my psyche so long ago that I can’t distinguish them from reality. It is about playing a game with somebody else’s rules. It is about me and you meeting in a place that is dangerous and unpredictable. It is about an ever-present risk of hurting someone else or being hurt myself. It is about identity. It is about fundamental worldview and assumptions—assumptions rooted in patterns.

HSD provides theory and practice to see and influence patterns in human systems. We like to tackle the most wicked of issues because HSD opens opportunities for action where other approaches have failed. What does HSD have to say about racism and its effects on human systems?

In March I had a chance to explore the intersections between racism and HSD when I gave a keynote address for Transforming Race: Crisis and Opportunity in the Age of Obama at The Kirwan Institute of The Ohio State University. You can watch the video and leave comments at http://transforming-race.org/media/312_8amPlenary.mov but here is the gist of the talk.

Human beings do three things really well. We perceive patterns; we replicate patterns; and we disrupt patterns. That’s what makes us poets, parents, leaders, lovers, politicians, engineers, and racists.

A pattern, in the world of HSD, consists of similarities, differences and relationships that have meaning across space and time. For example, my lover’s face is a pattern of expressions of subtle similarities, significant differences, and complex relationships that can hold enormous emotional meaning for me. I engage with a team as a pattern of people with similar goals, different areas of expertise, and ritualized relationships that lead to success or failure. My family, my organization, my community, my nation all embody patterns in their characteristic similarities, differences, relationships, and habitual meanings.

The particular patterns that influence my thoughts and actions emerge from my own history and the ways that I have learned to see and name my own reality. The patterns you see are different because your history and ways of seeing and knowing are shaped by your unique experiences in your unique community.

Because I am not always attentive, I may or may not be aware of patterns when I encounter them. If my friends accept a pattern as an undeniable reality, it may become invisible to me. If so, I can become an unconscious racist. I may also distort a pattern if I focus on imagined or irrelevant similarities, differences, or relationships. I may silently disagree with others about the primary pattern that emerges from a situation, or I may stubbornly proclaim a pattern unchanged, even when time and circumstance have transformed it into something entirely different. Unfortunately institutions frequently embed policies and processes that reinforce destructive patterns based on race and culture. As I reflect on my life experiences, I acknowledge times when I have ignored, distorted, or perpetuated patterns of bias and disrespect.

Whether or not we perceive patterns “truly,” we have the power to change them. No matter how locked-in a pattern may seem, it can be changed (for better or worse) in one of three ways:

1. Focus on more productive similarities.

2. Amplify more generative differences.

3. Establish new (or change old) relationships.

It really is that simple to transform a pattern and to reshape how we understand reality. But what can patterns teach us about racism?

I experience racism (as a perpetrator or a victim) as a pattern, in which the similarities, differences, and relationships carry a meaning of “other.” If I can perceive the pattern and my discomfort, I become free to make a choice. I can choose to replicate that pattern by reinforcing the similarities, differences, and relationships that characterize the “other” for me. Or I can make another choice. I can disrupt the pattern by shifting my attention to similarities that bind me to the other, differences that enrich my world, and relationships that feed our shared humanity.

I gave many examples and stories in the Kirwan talk, but I would like to share one with you here. In the presentation I used pictures of two women. One had dark skin, and the other had light skin. In the patterns I saw, the dark skinned woman was strong, forthright, brave, and self-possessed, while the light skinned one was weak, lost, frightened, and dependent. In the question period, I was asked why I had selected images that focused on the sexuality of the black and the contemplation of the white. I was surprised and embarrassed. I had moved into that dangerous place, broken another’s rules, stepped on a landmine, and hurt someone else. I immediately apologized for being insensitive to the ways the audience might perceive the patterns of those two pictures. Frankly, I had been so convinced of the pattern I saw that I had not even imagined another one until it was shown to me.

This story might spark some totally irrelevant questions: Who was right? Who was wrong? Who was the perpetrator of racism? Who was the victim of racism? Did I set this trap for myself, and if so, how?

These questions are irrelevant because they will not inform action. They will not help us increase our capacity to engage across the chasm between self and other. On the other hand, if we stay engaged and curious, we can ask questions that transform what we see and how we see.

The person who wondered about the pictures could have remained anonymous, but she chose not to. She approached me after my talk with another insightful question, “How could I have phrased my question in a different way, so that I could avoid causing you discomfort?” Now, that is a great question! I assured her that her courage in asking and generosity in listening to my response were much more important than the words she chose to frame her inquiry. That she asked and listened intently was more significant than how she asked.

Like this wonderful woman, we can challenge obvious patterns and ask questions that will make a difference:

· How can I reinforce similarities that bridge to the other?

· How can I see differences as another might see them?

· How can I be sure to establish a relationship with another that will allow her to ask the transforming question, even if it might embarrass her or me?

· How can I choose to break patterns that hurt and distort?

· How can I replicate patterns that empower and enlighten?

These are the questions that human systems dynamics brings to racism. These are the options for action that increase the potential for productive engagement. These are the questions that bring us both crisis and opportunity in the age of Obama. In these dangerous times it is possible to transform our racist fears of unfamiliar patterns when we engage with curiosity, courage, and empathy.

We invite you to join a dialogue about patterns of racism. Does the capacity to perceive, replicate, and disrupt patterns capture your experience? What are the methods you use to transform racism? What are the barriers and bridges to seeing patterns differently and helping others do the same? What are your questions and emerging insights? You will find on-going conversations about diversity and human systems dynamics at http://patternsandpossibilities.squarespace.com/. Welcome to these conversations as we get better at doing the things people do so well—perceive, replicate, and disrupt patterns.

Glenda Eoyang, Ph.D.

Executive Director

Human Systems Dynamics Institute

Attend to the Whole, the Part, and the Greater Whole

2010-02-09T11:20:00.000-08:00

Over the years, we’ve learned many lessons about dealing effectively with human systems. This month’s lesson is—

Attend to the whole, the part, and the greater whole. [1]

I am sure you have been watching the reports from Haiti with horror and sympathy as I have. Along with stories of destruction and death, there have been many images of courage and hope. One in particular struck me as a perfect example of whole, part, and greater whole.

One man’s brother was suffering from serious internal injuries. He needed oxygen, but the hospital had none. Patience, a strong personal network, and a telephone put him in touch with another hospital that had a canister of oxygen. They were willing to share. The brother was stabilized and sent off to a hospital ship, but the oxygen stayed behind for others who were in need. In the midst of his concern and fear for his own, our hero said he was pleased that others were using the oxygen, and that he’d be proud and happy to complete his commitment to return the container when it was empty.

The whole. The part. The greater whole. One hospital. One courageous and resourceful fellow. A community of strangers.

We usually think that a choice must be made to benefit the individual or the group. When we think of a whole as a simple summation of the parts, then either individuals are sacrificed for the good of the whole, or the individual is served at the expense of others. Complexity presents an alternative.

In complex adaptive systems, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Agents work together to generate system-wide patterns. Those patterns, in turn, interact to form larger patterns, which interact to form larger patterns over time. In these massively entangled, emergent systems, the actions of a single agent at a single level can shift the pattern of the whole with benefits—and sometimes consequences—for self, other, and the system at large.

Our Haitian hero didn’t work to save the system, but his actions had benefits beyond his immediate purpose. He recognized this “unintended consequence” and took pleasure in it.

Most of us don’t face such dramatic situations on a day-to-day basis, but we do have many opportunities to leverage our local actions for the good of the whole. We can make choices and take responsibility for considering how our interventions might have far-reaching consequences.

Effective work in a team benefits the individual members as well as the sponsoring organization.
Strong institutional ethics set the conditions for productive staff and contribute to a community of care and concern.
A strong family builds healthy, happy children and becomes connective tissue for a safe and pleasant neighborhood.
A political caucus expresses the needs of individuals while contributing to a lively and productive democratic process. (Well, at least one might imagine that it could.)

In all of these cases, effective work at one level of a complex system provides benefits at levels above and below. Productive patterns ripple across a system and replicate coherence and health in other parts. Knowing this natural dynamic can help organization development practitioners (and others) leverage their interventions for the betterment of wholes, parts, and greater wholes. Here are some tips for using this power of self-organizing, complex adaptive systems to supercharge your work:

Think about and act with a sensitivity to context.
Know the networks and systems within which you work.
Try to anticipate “unintended consequences.”
See and celebrate outcomes that reach beyond the immediate goals.
Search for solutions that are likely to generate benefits for parts and greater wholes, as well as the whole on which you focus.
Cultivate empathy and inquiry as ways to engage with all the entangled sub- and super-systems.
Listen to the consequences of actions, and learn the lessons they teach.

As Haiti and its citizens regain a sense of order and stability over the coming months and years, they will be rebuilding patterns at many levels. Individuals will heal in mind and body. Families will come together to mourn and care for their members. Communities will welcome those who come in need and in support. A government will arise from the ashes. Any action in any of these domains will ripple through them all. Increasing strength and health in any will increase the strength of all. An HSD-inspired hope will be that those who provide assistance from inside and outside of the ravaged communities will act in full awareness of the whole, the part, and the greater whole. We must hold this hope aloft because we, you and I, are part of the greater whole of which the Haiti of today is a part.

Glenda Eoyang

info@hsdinstitute.org

[1] This is one of HSD Institute's Simple Rules. To learn more, go to:

http://www.hsdinstitute.org/hsd-institute/evolution/simple-rules.html

Complex vs Complicated

2009-12-28T17:44:00.000-08:00

Over the years, we’ve learned many lessons about dealing effectively with human systems. This month’s lesson:

Distinguish between complex and complicated.

At this time of year we at HSD Institute look back to evaluate past performance and forward to plan for the future. Though the Institute is a small organization, this annual ritual poses a variety of challenges that are common for all our clients, no matter how large they are.

Who’s got time for reflection? What should we focus on? What should we do with too many expectations and not enough resources? How will the environment change in the coming year? What patterns will influence us? What patterns will we influence? What will happen to the value of the dollar, the success of our clients, the political landscape, the technological capacity, and our personal and physical wellbeing?

All of these questions (and many others) quickly turn planning into a very complicated process. Each question leads to more unanswered—and sometimes unanswerable—questions. If we are not careful, we drown in details and fail to see the overarching patterns of learning from the past and preparing for the future.

It may seem ironic, but complex planning is much simpler.

In general practice, complicated and complex are often used interchangeably, but they mean quite different things in the world of human systems dynamics.

Complicated: composed of many parts; difficult to analyze or understand.
Complex: emerging from repeated interactions of a few, simple parts or factors.

When we consider our annual review as a complicated process, we can list all the different things HSD Institute did this year:

· Taught collaboration skills

· Helped resolve conflicts

· Supported strategic planning

· Developed adaptive capacity for teams

· Facilitated community engagement

· Designed, managed, and documented meetings

· Developed coaching skills

· Created retreat experiences

· Implemented focus groups

· Consulted with researchers

· Managed projects

· Developed leadership capacity for boards

· Completed needs assessments

· Designed, created, and archived webinars

· Made public presentations

· Maintained our website

· Stayed in communication

· Expanded our contact data base

· Coached leaders

· Designed and implemented evaluations

· Built adaptive capacity

· Inspired vision

· Recommended management changes

· Articulated coherent visions

· Reflected opportunities and constraints

· Made friends

· Participated in think tanks

· Practiced listening with our backs

· Presented at conferences

· Explored research opportunities

· Improved clients’ processes

· Welcomed new HSD Associates

· Improved our own processes

· Supported HSD communities and projects

· Planned strategically with our Board of Directors

· Learned from our Network Board

· Forged strategic partnerships

· Developed products

· Celebrated many remarkable contributions of Associates

· Wrote books and articles

· And so on . . .

That sounds pretty complicated! Such a laundry list doesn’t do much to help us plan for future. On the other hand, we might take a complex approach to thinking about 2009:

We helped people see and influence patterns.

This simple statement becomes complex when seeing and influencing enfold in repeated interactions for us, for our clients, and for the learning teams that include us all.

This simple, complex statement of our work leads us to equally powerful plans for 2010. How will we see and influence the patterns around us? How will we help others see and influence their patterns?

During this time of uncertainty and transition in our economy and our culture, we would like to thank you for being with us as the complexity of the past year unfolded, and we welcome you into the emerging and rich complexity of the coming year. We hope your holiday and your new year are more complex than complicated.

Sincerely,

Glenda Eoyang

Royce Holladay

De Krengel

Julia Herzing

Describe vs Explain

2009-12-09T12:26:00.000-08:00

Click and Clack know the power of explanation. Every Saturday morning on NPR, Tom and Ray Magliozzi (known by their friends as Click and Clack, the Tappert Brothers) talk about cars on Car Talk. Mr. Helpless Driver calls to DESCRIBE ho his pile of junk is behaving badly. Tom and Ray EXPLAIN what might be causingthe problem and resommend (not too gently) what Helpless should do to get back on the road.

With practice and sufficient attention, anybody can describe a problem, but an explanation requires more. To generate an explanation, Tom and Ray depend on background knowledge, a set of assumptions about how cars work, hypotheses about why they work, practical experiences about what is likely to go wrong, and how broken cars can be fixed. Explanation requires a mental model that is coherent and consistent with experience.

One of our HSD lessons is:

Move beyond description to explanation that informs action.

Description isn’t bad, but it can be limiting. I met with Herman (not his real name) last week. He described the problem of his team, “We just don’t know how to communicate with each other.” This was a description of a problem, but it was not an explanation. What is the real difference?

Description	Explanation
Perception	World view
Looking back	Looking forward
Measures of change	Reasons for change
To name	To act
On the surface	Under the surface
Categories	Mechanisms
What is?	Why is?

When Herman chose to describe his situation as a failure to communicate, he was looking back and naming his superficial perception of “what was” (at least in his view). The description wasn’t a bad thing, but, depending on the power and clarity of the perception, it can limit options for action. From this description, his only choice was to improve communications. What that meant and how to go about it was still a mystery.

Herman went even a bit further to give what he considered to be an explanation. “We’re all stars in our own right, and we don’t know how to work as a team.” Certainly this includes reasons and looks beneath the surface behavior, searching for a “why?” It is an explanation, but it is not an explanation that informs action. Why? Because there is no way that Herman can undo the star-studded history of his team and convince them they are not individual winners. This explanation gives him no options for action.

As many of us (and certainly our clients) do, Herman had chosen a description and an explanation that gave him absolutely no choices for action. He presented the problem to himself and to me in a way that made it completely intractable. He was stuck.

The purpose of HSD methods, models, and tools, is to get people out of such sticky places by helping them move beyond mere descriptions into explanations that open options for action. What did this mean for Herman?

I asked some questions:

· When do you notice the bad communication most?

· Is the bad communication always the same?

· If it changes, what makes it better or worse?

· What happens when someone new joins the group?

· What happens when someone leaves?

I didn’t know what specific questions to ask because I didn’t know this particular pattern. But I did know that it would have something to do with habitual similarities, differences, and relationships because that is what a pattern is.[1] As Herman answered my questions he began to focus on team meetings, where people didn’t listen to each other because they were all talking at the same time. (Now we are getting to an explanation that leads to action.) Maybe, if we could get them to talk one at a time, they’d be able to share information more effectively. I suggested that they practice using a talking piece—whoever holds the talking piece can talk, and everyone else must listen. (This action is pretty obvious, once the explanation emerges.)

Is this the only description and situation Herman might have focused on? No, the team demonstrated many non-productive behaviors. Herman could have described any other as a starting place.

Is “talking all at the same time” the only explanation for their inability to communicate? No, the team practiced many equally non-productive behaviors. Herman could have explained it as coming unprepared, having unstructured agendas, competing priorities, or any other reasonable cause. Any of these explanations would have suggested a reasonable—though different—course of action.

Does it matter which description and which explanation is the focus? No, as long as the description is one that leads to an explanation that leads to action AND as long as Herman doesn’t stop testing his explanations against reality by doing the action and watching the reaction. If the talking piece doesn’t work, then another action generated by the same explanation might. If that explanation doesn’t seem to hold, perhaps there’s another explanation for the description. If none of the explanations for a description works, then perhaps another description will be better.

It is significant to remember that explanations of complex phenomena do not imply predictions. Complex systems are radically unpredictable, but thoughtful explanations can suggest actions that influence the future, and careful observation completes the learning loop. As long as Herman engages in a process—by himself or with a colleague—to move beyond description to explanation that informs action, he will eventually influence the patterns of interaction to shift them from incoherent and unproductive to coherent and productive.

Click and Clack play with descriptions and possible explanations. They tease their callers into seeing and saying what feeds into their automotive expertise. The process is fun, and it usually ends up with a clear and satisfying answer. Sometimes, though, time and/or patience runs out and they have to send the caller to a local garage. There, the driver will find someone who specializes in describing, explaining, and taking action to repair cars. What the auto mechanic does is not a mystery. She is simply working in a world where her explanations have repeatedly proven to inform effective action. She understands that success depends on a constant cycle of observation (description), meaning making (explanation), and action. The same can be said for HSD Practitioners.

Other people who apply complexity to human systems often use the ideas just to describe phenomena. Fractals, attractor patterns, tipping points can be used merely as descriptive applications of complexity. HSD’s deeper reliance on the science and math, however, lead to explanations that open more naturally into options for action. Conditions for self-organizing, emerging patterns, degrees of constraint are explanations of underlying complex dynamics, and each one of them can inform simple and powerful action.

Join us to learn more about how to see and influence patterns in your crazy and chaotic environment! Next month we’ll explore the distinctions between complex and complicated patterns. Have a great month.

Glenda Eoyang, Ph.D.

info@hsdinstitute.org

Lessons Learned

2009-11-11T07:36:00.000-08:00

Last week over lunch, a client asked about the lessons I’d learned from working with messy, apparently intractable problems in human systems. I told him stories about successes and failures and reflected on the fact that both have contributed to the theory and practice of human systems dynamics. His question continued to haunt me, so last night I captured the many threads and tried to weave them together into a coherent list of “lessons learned.” There are six:

See and influence patterns.
Move beyond description to explanation that informs action.
Distinguish between complex and complicated.
Attend to the whole, the part, and the greater whole.
Simple tools are the key to changed behavior.
Take adaptive action.

Over the coming months, I will dig into each of these lessons to share with you where they came from and how they help us act with wisdom and power to implement sustainable change, even in the most disrupted and chaotic environments.

First, what does it mean to “see and influence patterns?”

Some people assume that pattern thinking is an innate gift that is available only to an elite few. Artists, scientific geniuses, and charismatic leaders have it, but the rest of us have to depend on them to see the “big picture” and to share it with us.

Our experience has taught us that this is not true. Anyone can see and influence patterns in human systems, if they have tools and practice to build the skill. We’ve also learned that many wise practitioners in a wide variety of contexts see and influence patterns intuitively. But, because they don’t have language to describe what they see and do, their insights seem magical. Our job, at the HSD Institute is to help people put language to what they know, use tools that leverage their natural abilities, and work together to shift their human systems into more healthy and productive paths.

We begin with a practical and concrete definition of “patterns.” In HSD, a pattern is, “Similarities, differences, and relationships that have meaning across space and time.” Such a simple, operational definition can be quickly learned and successfully applied by anyone in an organization. Any group—functional or dysfunctional—can describe how they are same and different. They can also describe the ways they relate to each other, whether good or bad. When they’ve answered these three questions, they have seen the pattern that holds them in their current behaviors, and they can begin to work together to make the changes they desire.

A few years ago we were working with a middle management team. They were Midwestern, white, middle-aged men who had been commanded to “become a team.” After months of work, they still bristled at the thought of collaborating with each other. In a simple pattern-spotting exercise, I asked them to brainstorm the ways they were same and different. After a slow start, they were laughing and adding things at random to their lists when a strange thing happened. Someone said, “the schools we went to,” and the room got very quiet. What under the sun, I wondered, could such a difference make to these guys? Turns out that, in this agriculture-based business, two university experiences are not generally considered equal. In almost every state in the US, there is an elite school of ag theory and an aggie school of ag practice. This difference in focus and methods generated in our group of powerful professionals a pattern of distrust and competition.

When I saw the pattern, I began to push it. I asked them to line up—left and right—according to where they went to school. Each group was to quote the worst things they thought the other said about them. Dirty fingernails. Bookworms. Smell of the farm. Can’t find the hind end of a cow. Bumpkin. Know-it-all. And on it went until someone recognized a new pattern. “Hey, we couldn’t do what we do without you, and you sure couldn’t do what you do without us!” The pattern shifted, and the group was free to establish new foundations as a team of diverse professionals.

When individuals or groups come to shared understanding of a current pattern, they are immediately empowered to influence that pattern.

In a more recent example, government workers were asked to integrate their services to aging and disabled persons. After rough starts with collaborative teamwork, the groups stopped, assessed their patterns, and realized that their relationships frequently assumed negative intent from the other side. They decided to adopt a new simple rule, “Assume positive intent,” and shifted how they engaged with each other in both formal and informal venues. Together, they saw and influenced a pattern and improved their individual and group productivity.

Many different tools, methods, and approaches help people recognize and shift patterns in human systems:

Simple Rules
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
Lean and Six Sigma
Diversity training
Strategic planning
360 degree feedback

You probably have your own toolbox. When you think of the real purpose of these tools as “seeing and influencing patterns,” each one takes on a systemic power. You can use your tools in non-systemic ways to push and prod individuals and to search for single points of leverage, or you can think of the ways your tools help to see similarities, differences, and relationships. Then, once you’ve seen, you are ready to explore your adaptive options for action. Many viable options emerge, when you can focus on important similarities, find the differences that really make a difference, and/or build (or break) relationships that support (or disrupt) the work. Any of these actions shifts the pattern and leads you into the next cycle of seeing patterns as they emerge and influencing them toward greater health and productivity.

Join us to learn more about how to see and influence patterns in your crazy and chaotic environment! Next month we’ll explore the distinctions between description and explanation. Have a great month.

Glenda Eoyang, Ph.D.

Articulating Simple Rules

2009-09-30T12:34:00.000-07:00

In last month’s Attractors, Glenda talked about simple rules and their role in contributing to coherence across a human system. In this month’s edition, we’ll address how simple rules might work in your own organization.

Look around at patterns of behavior and interaction that happen in your organization everyday—those patterns that characterize the overall “feeling” or culture of your organization. Do people work in teams or are they individually competitive and isolationist? Do they provide excellent customer care or do they focus more on production and internal concerns? Are people formal with each other or are they more relaxed? These are examples of patterns that can emerge in systems, and they are dictated by a set of simple rules that inform individual and group decisions at all levels. Those rules may be unspoken and operate beneath the surface, or they may be articulated across they system so that everyone can use them to make coherent, focused decisions about their interactions and work.

How can you, as a leader, use simple rules to establish a culture to move your system toward the best fit in your environment? The following steps will help you map out a process for developing simple rules in your organization. Because simple rules have to be “owned” by everyone across the organization, engage as many people as possible. In large organizations, it might be wise to start with a smaller, representative group to draft a list of rules, then take them to the broader audience for feedback and refinement.

Step 1 – Establish the context by discussing the meaning and importance of simple rules. Use examples from family life, community life, and your organizational patterns. Describe effective simple rules.

Step 2 – Talk about the current patterns that exist in your system and identify the simple rules that generate those patterns.

Step 3 – Define the culture you want to have in your organization. Who are you and what do you value? What’s important? How do you want to share information and interact with each other? Describe the patterns that you want to characterize your organization.

Step 4 – Brainstorm a list of simple rules that might generate patterns you would like to establish. Keep what is currently working and identify new simple rules that will move you toward the culture you want. At this point don’t worry about the form or number you generate. Just get all the ideas out on the table.

Step 5 – Refine the list by asking the following questions:

Which of these are redundant and can be eliminated?
Which of these are really subsets of others?
Which of these will be done anyway? For instance, if people do show each other respect already, you don’t need a simple rule to address that.
Which of these are so specific that they become norms or instructions rather than simple rules?

Step 6 – Check the refined list to be sure they each adhere to the following “rules” about simple rules:

Use the rules to amplify what you want to see.
Keep rules to the “Minimum Specifications.” (Remember that these should be generalizable to any area of the organization.)
Keep the list short—5 to7 rules would be the maximum number.
Include at least 1 rule about each of the questions:

Who are we and what do we value?
What’s important around here?
How do we want to share information and interact with each other?

Start each rule with an action verb. (Give, Engage, Offer…)
State them as positives (What you will do, rather than what you won’t do.)
Remember that simple rules are different from values – they tell you what to do, rather than what you value. Also simple rules are different from norms, as they are not tied to time or place.

Step 7 – Identify steps to implement the simple rules across the organization. Post them, talk about them, agree to what they mean to different activities, and incorporate them into feedback systems and policies. The most important step, however, is the use of the simple rules by leaders across the system. Simple rules are about behavior, and modeling those behaviors at the management level increases the chances that the simple rules will be used in all areas at all levels of the organization.

For your simple rules to be most effective, you need to take steps to assure that the simple rules you have chosen do, in fact, inform all activities, decisions, and interactions across the landscape of your organization.

For examples of how the simple rules are used to guide behavior in an organization, visit the HSD Institute website at http://www.hsdinstitute.org/hsd-institute/evolution/simple-rules.html. Share your own simple rules and how you are using them on the public HSD Community on NING http://humansystemsdynamicsinstitute.ning.com/ . In the mean time, stay in touch and let us hear from you.

Royce Holladay
Director, The Network
HSD Institute
www.hsdinstitute.org
866-HSD-INST

Simple Rules for Complex Times

2009-09-06T13:31:00.000-07:00

Human Systems Dynamics Institute engages 135 people in a loosely knit web of the Associates’ Network. Our Associates are a diverse group: public, private, and not-for-profit; multiple sectors and industries; academics and practitioners from a wide variety of core disciplines; internal and external consultants, managers, technical contributors. In spite of this diversity, the Network is held together as a learning community because members share the theory, methods, models, and tools of human systems dynamics. A volunteer board and a part-time Director provide the governance structure, set policy, and support projects and communities that bring small groups together for focused work.

Shared skills and centralized management would not be strong enough to sustain such a wide-flung and diverse group of strong-minded and busy people. In addition to these, we depend on a short list of simple rules to help order emerge from the creative chaos of many people doing many kinds of work in many different places.

In a complex adaptive system, each person is free to make decisions and adapt to local and immediate concerns. On the other hand, the group as a whole maintains shared work and identity. Everyone participates in the same emergent pattern because each one follows the same short list of simple rules. Computer simulation models like “boids” demonstrate how group coherence can emerge from a collection of individuals who apply the same set of simple operating rules. HSD Institute uses this idea to provide both consistency and freedom for its complex network of gifted professionals. These rules define the pattern that we value and believe to be the most creative, adaptive, and productive way for a human system to function.

HSD Institute operates inside six simple rules.

Teach and learn in every interaction. Every engagement—from performance appraisal to marketing call—presents an opportunity for transformation and growth. Associates approach every person and each moment with a passion for sharing and challenging what they know.

Reinforce strengths of self and other. Of course we all have weaknesses and opportunities for improvement, but in the HSD Associates’ Network, we choose to focus on strengths. Positive feedback generates energy, provides direction, and empowers each one of us to be even better than our best.

Search for the true and the useful. HSD is a new field of theory and practice. Many truths come out of nonlinear dynamics, the scientific foundation of HSD, but not all of them are useful in productive human systems. On the other hand, some apparently useful strategies are based on false assumptions or delusions. Our Associates explore and apply ideas and tools that (to the best of our current knowledge) fit BOTH scientifically proven fact and the practical demands of the real world.

Give and get value for value. A healthy, sustainable human system is based on fair and balanced exchanges of energy, money, time, and commitment. Over time, each participant must feel a “balance of payments” or burnout, guilt, or resentment can begin to influence patterns of the whole.

Attend to the part, the whole, and the greater whole. Human systems are massively entangled. Every social structure is built on structures within and depends on structures beyond. Individual people manage their own intrapersonal dynamics while pairs and teams engage in shared work. These influence and are influenced by neighborhoods, organizations, interest groups, and nation states. When one engages with a human system, it is not sufficient to pay attention to only one level—team or family or company—because a change there will certainly ripple into effects above and below. Responsible human systems dynamics practitioners are sensitive to the impacts of their actions on the part, the whole, and the greater whole.

Engage in joyful practice. Many human systems around the world are in crisis today, but we miss opportunities to make a difference if we slide into anger, pain, or despair. When we find excitement and satisfaction in our work and each other, then we build our capacity to make a difference for the people and human systems that surround us.

These six simple rules shape individual and group action in the HSD Associates’ Network, determine our quality measures, shape our policies and procedures, inform communications and product development, and shape our relationships with clients and with each other. We have chosen these rules because we believe they will generate the institutional patterns of performance that we want for our organization.

A different set of rules shape behaviors in your organization. Can you see the implied and explicit simple rules that are in effect for you and your team? Next month, we’ll talk about simple rules in your organization, and lay out a step-by-step plan to develop your own list of simple rules.

Glenda H. Eoyang, Ph.D.
www.hsdinstitute.org
866-HSD-INST

Networks

2009-08-13T08:17:00.000-07:00

Why has “networking” become such a hot topic?

Policy and practice are pushing public-private partnerships.
More complex problems demand more collaborative action.
Silo structures that were effective in the past are too expensive, slow, and information poor to meet future challenges.
We all need to access more resources more often and from ever-more surprising partners.
Learning is the key to success in an information-dependent economy.
Maintaining the capacities of our systems to adapt and respond well (sustainability) is high on our list of expectations for our social and organizational (as well as for our environmental) systems.

Network structures open opportunities to respond to all of these 21st century challenges, so we need to understand enough to leverage the power of networks in all facets of our personal, professional, and organizational lives. So, here is a quick, simple intro to the complex and emergent world of networks.

What?

A network is a system of parts (nodes) that are connected to each other for some specific purpose. On-line examples include you and your links on LinkedIn, friends on Facebook, members on NING communities. Sometimes, the old-fashioned networks are even more powerful. Examples include fraternities, old-boys’ clubs, quilting circles, religious communities, and any of the myriad other ways individuals connect with each other for business or pleasure.

A network diagram (sometimes called just a network, which just confuses the map and the territory) is a picture that points out who (or what) counts, and how they are connected to each other. Such a picture can be developed through low or high technology.

A low-tech network diagram is created when you draw circles for all the players in a project and lines to indicate which of the players are connected to each other. All you need is paper and marker and garden-variety knowledge about what’s going on. You may find it helpful to use sticky notes as you’re creating your low-tech network diagram, because as you put it together, you’ll learn new things, and your picture will change quickly and repeatedly as you learn.

You might construct a low tech network to diagnose a communication problem or to decide who you want on a team.

A high-tech network diagram is created by a computer in response either to data or to a hypothesis.. One such program that we have used at HSD Institute is called CRAWDAD and was created by Kevin Dooley and his colleagues, who analyze discourse or conversation to understand how language connects a group. Data-based (empirical) networks usually begin with a survey. All the known nodes are interviewed about their connections to all the other known nodes, then the computer puts the picture together. In addition to simply graphing the relationships, most high-tech network tools can calculate statistics about the network structure and tell you things like which node is the most connected, which is involved in most meaningful paths, which function as outliers or bridges, and so on.

A high-tech, empirical network can tell you lots about leverage points, opportunities for rich connections, unused resources, or dead spots in an organization or a community.

Hypothesis-based (theoretical) networks begin with a definition of rules that guide relationships and a range of characteristics each node might have. The computer, then, uses those characteristics and those rules to generate a likely pattern of relationships. Which nodes with which characteristics are likely to hook up with which other nodes/characteristics?

Theoretical networks have been used to study migration patterns, real estate policies, and dissemination of information, for example.

So what?

You can use high- and low-tech networks (and network diagrams) in four ways.

First, you can use them to look backwards. We have clients who want to know how integrated their service delivery processes are or how effectively diverse service providers are working together or how well scientific research responds to the needs of citizens. Retrospective network analysis can tell very interesting stories about what has been and what currently is.

Second, you can use networks to understand what is happening in the present. If information is moving too quickly—or not quickly enough—across your organization, if you want to assess sustainability, if you want to know who is most influential in your environment, a network diagram can be quite helpful.

Third, you can use a network diagram to consider options for future action. Who should we rely on to champion an organizational change? How can we become more agile and responsive to our customers? Where should we invest training and development resources? How can we increase our individual and institutional resilience? An effective network diagram can help you answer those questions.

Fourth, you can use a series of network diagrams that have been constructed over time to evaluate the effectiveness of a change effort. Have our activities increased the density, variety, or coherence of the network? What new nodes have been added to the network? What kinds of new connections have been created among long-time nodes? Which nodes are making the greatest change over time in the number and kinds of their connections?

Now what?

Without either a low- or a high-tech network diagram, most of us are conscious of how we depend on networks and how our networks depend on us. In times of complex change, those relationships become more important at the same time that they become more ambiguous and difficult to maintain. When you begin to question your intuitive grasp of the networks that sustain your work, then it is time to dive into more rigorous network analysis. It is easy enough to begin with a low-tech network diagram. Whether you do it on paper or with the Tinker Toys we all used as children, you and your colleagues will gain new insights into the dynamics of what works and what doesn’t for you and your team. Next month I will focus on some of the specific lessons network analysis has taught us about thriving in complex and turbulent times. Until then, stay connected.

Glenda Eoyang, Ph.D.
info@hsdinstitute.org

New Ways of "Seeing"

2009-06-24T20:12:00.001-07:00

Attractors
The Info-letter of the
Human Systems Dynamics Institute
Volume 6.6
June 2009

In this month’s Attractors, Glenda Eoyang, Ph.D., shares her real-time experience at Shambhala Institute, where she is facilitating a module this week. We invite you to discuss this topic. Please share your thoughts and insights with us as we continue to hear from Glenda throughout the week.

I am spending this week at the Shambhala Institute in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I pause tonight, in the middle of this complex and ever-changing white water rafting trip, to reflect on what I am learning and how it might inform me, my colleagues, and our various institutions and communities.

When I arrived, the first question was, “What is your question?” I often begin training sessions in the same way, and standing on the other side, I gained new appreciation for the challenge this poses for my students. My response, inspired by my friend Wendy Morris who was inspired by her friend Arawana Hayashi:

How can I see with my back?

This question enfolded a whole range of notions about me, my world, my practice, and gaps in all of them that need filling. I want to know how I can:

Anticipate the future, which I cannot see, while my past lies so plainly in my front-focused view.
Stimulate my capacity to perceive things that lie beyond my current perspective.
Be aware of the world that surrounds me—360 by 360 degrees.
Develop connections with what lies beyond my own habitual blindness.
Lead into the future, being sensitive to the needs and resources of those who follow.

On Saturday morning, it seemed an impossible quest, but it also carried a sense of urgency for me and those I serve. We all face greater and greater challenges as our worlds transform around us. To survive we will need profound flexibility of thought and action. To thrive, we will have to cultivate new and more sensitive ways to see what was invisible before. We need the support of all of our faculties at their highest level of performance if we are to succeed in the uncertain, but certainly turbulent, future. Though my quest is far from complete, I have begun to see how I might turn my back into a sensing organ.

I have learned that boredom can be a gateway to innovation. When the repetition of thought or action is unbearable, then someone somewhere does something exciting. If we can learn patience and focus, our systems may generate their own creative phase shifts.

I have learned what it feels like for sound to come into and through my whole body. When my eyes are closed, my mind is quiet, and my body is attuned, I feel the vibrations of sound and distinguish them from “noise.” If my teams can listen in this way, we may build the capacity to adapt more adroitly.

I have learned that creative process can be a bridge between thought and action. When I practice noticing, deciding, and acting in the context of jazz or improvisation or dance or calligraphy, I build capacity to notice, decide, and act in response to real-world situations. Each of my actions takes on more natural grace and accuracy.

I have learned to trust in the teaching/learning expertise of others, even when my own intuitions are challenged. When I let go of my expectations and assumptions and follow another’s process to completion, both the journey and the outcome can be gloriously rewarding. Seeing with my back is transformed into seeing through her front.

I have learned that some people learn in action, not just from the metaphors that mimic action. My knowing is stored in words, but some others store knowing in sense and sinew. For them, teaching and learning come alive in action at a particular place and in a particular time.

I have learned that when people talk about “energy,” “field,” and “gestalt,” they are talking about what we call “pattern.” We name and operationalize the concept in different ways to make it actionable, depending on how we understand our capacities to act.

I have learned how phenomenology can be a sensual experience.
I have learned some really good philosophical jokes.
I have learned that listening can be a meditative practice.
I have learned that if I loan my (often forgotten and unused) camera I get great pictures and a new friend.
I have learned that I can speak slowly and still express my overwhelming enthusiasm for human systems dynamics.
I have learned new things about the wisdom of youth and the exuberance of age.
I have learned that I can hear the music of self-organizing processes, even when a group works in silence.
I have learned that in at least one language, kids are referred to as “the ones I live for.”

And this is only Tuesday!

As all good questions do, this one has transformed itself even before it is completely answered. Today, a new question emerges:

Would you like to see with your back?

If so, join me in this discussion as I move forward into this question.

Glenda H. Eoyang, Ph.D.
www.hsdinstitute.org
866-HSD-INST

Patterns

2009-06-11T06:16:00.000-07:00

John Eoyang
Born: December 7, 1929, London, England
Died: May 10, 2009, Maplewood, Minnesota, US

It is about patterns—Similarities, differences, and relationships that have meaning across space and time.

When John and I met 32 years ago next month, we came from radically different worlds. His, cosmopolitan and musical. Mine, rural and philosophical. In a chance conversation about Pascal’s Pensees, we found a shared pattern that caught our attentions and, ultimately, our hearts.

As our passion deepened, we drew our families into the emerging pattern. Megan came to color Easter eggs. Loren let me play Mother of the Bride. Ruth gracefully accepted the little orange owl and laughed at all John’s jokes. Peggy said, “I’m glad he has you," and I replied, "I’m glad he had you.” Siblings and in-laws opened hearts and minds and homes to embrace the pair that we were becoming.

Friends, too, (at least most of them) found ways to fold the John/Glenda pattern into their own. Each of our communities was a complex tapestry accumulated over decades and continents.

Robert and Kat were John’s adopted grad school parents—half his age, but his equal in curiosity and generosity. My Johnnie friends came to visit. Chicago and Canyon. Mike and Tom. Red cooked hocks and a can of English peas. His clean kitchen and my messy office. Similarities made it seem safe and familiar and easy. Differences kept it stimulating, rich, irritating, and fun. Relationships held us together with each other and with all the other people and institutions that defined who we were as individuals and knitted us together as a family.

Our libraries told many stories about who we were, what we knew, and who we admired in the past, present, and future. The redundancies and wild diversity of our books reflected the paths that each of us had traveled. Merging lives was much more difficult than alphabetizing by author, though. There was no Dewey Decimal System for deciding what stayed and what went and how the collection came together. The process allowed, even required, innumerable conversations about what mattered and what didn’t to him and me and us together.

John had a way of shifting others’ patterns. Our friend Elizabeth says that he always asked the question she least wanted to answer, and she was always glad he did. In the prison he taught coping skills to the guards, believing that the context was the key to prisoners’ mental health. In the grocery store, he asked people about their lives in the form of culinary advice sought and given. On vacation, he asked the provocative question that sparked evening-long chats and life-long friendships. (He bummed a cigarette from a stranger in a campground shower house, and when asked for a light, he replied, “Get your own **** match!”) When he chauffeured elderly ladies to medical appointments, he offered an ear in exchange for stories and cookies. He uttered puns that have stuck in memory for half a century. (Did he really make up, “Goy meets Beryl” on the spot?) Though the edge was sometimes raw, the curiosity and concern were deep and abiding.

We argued. At first it was about whether psychology was a science. At the end it was about whether the curtain was pulled all the way and whether the light was left on in the bathroom. Each question engaged us with ourselves and with each other to weave a life that was unique in every single minute and across a lifetime.

So, tomorrow we will hold a memorial gathering at our home on the lake. Friends and family from across the country and across our lives will come together to tell John Stories. The crowd will include the little nieces who love Unyon, the merchants who are friends, the family who opens their hearts to the surprise and inevitability of our union. You will be here, too, in all the ways you touch us or those who touch us. Megan says we must come together to see who we are, now that he is gone. The pattern that emerges will enfold our past and unfold into the future. Thank you, my love, for both.

Dr. Glenda and Mrs. John Eoyang

HSD uses principles from the new sciences to help professionals understand and influence their systems to develop positive and coherent options for action.

Want to learn more about HSD? Visit our website.
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Dancing with Uncertainty

2009-05-04T07:26:00.000-07:00

For me these days every conversation either begins or ends with uncertainty. When will we know? What will they (or we) do? How will we recover? Who? What? When? Where? How? We are full of questions as we sense both deep and superficial changes in the contexts that shape our health, success, happiness, and livelihood.

This uncertainty is not simple uncertainty where we can wait for the game to play out according to well defined and widely accepted rules. No, it is radical uncertainty in which the rules, even the game itself, are transforming in surprising ways. We thought we were playing baseball, and at the top of the fourth the umpire signaled a tie ball and the opponents went into scrum. Not only do we not know what the future holds, but we don’t know how to think about what the future might hold!

There is not an approach that can answer these urgent questions better than any other. But human systems dynamics poses questions that can help you engage productively and effectively with massive and unpredictable change. We learned and have adapted one of those key questions from Barry Johnson’s polarity management (http://www.polaritymanagement.com/). This question deals with the underlying differences that establish meaning and motivate action in complex human systems.

The question is:
What are the irreconcilable tensions that influence patterns of thought and action for this group in this context?

As with most of the HSD questions that move quickly from description to action, this question is immediately followed by:
What decisions and actions will optimize the benefits and minimize the risks of both poles of this tension?

So, what does that really mean for adaptive action in times of uncertainty? I will give you some examples of ways that we’ve helped clients navigate these tensions and turn them from perennial conflicts into generative engagements.

Standard (and not so standard) operating procedures. One large design and manufacturing company had worked as independent silos for decades. Separate funding streams encouraged autonomous administrative functions. Ample resources allowed for locally optimized procedures. Weak executive management, rapid growth, multiple acquisitions, global expansion, and poor communications all contributed to a patchwork of inconsistent policies and procedures.

Recent shifts in markets and technology put stress on the organization to increase quality and to reduce costs. The obvious solution was to centralize and standardize policy and process, but every effort to develop and implement standard operating procedures met with massive resistance or (worst yet) passive resistance.

In a management workshop, we explored this challenge as a tension between reality (what one sees and hears) and story (what one tells oneself about what one sees and hears). As the group explored their divergent and convergent realities and stories about standardized practice, the energy in the room shifted. Rather than a holy war between those who wrote and those who were supposed to follow procedures, the conversation turned into shared problem solving in which everyone recognized both the costs and benefits of standardization and customization. From this new perspective, the group explored options for action that included defining levels of customization and criteria for selecting the most appropriate level for local situations.

The dance of difference. This is one example, but we’ve helped many clients deal with a wide variety of dynamic tensions. Some of these may be familiar to you:

Tradition and innovation
Individual and group benefits
External and internal accountability
Qualitative and quantitative evidence
Quality, cost, and schedule (three-way polarities are particularly challenging)

Using polarities to transform conflict into creative action is particularly useful in times of uncertainty. Individuals and groups need ways to make meaning and take action, even when they can’t foresee the future. When the rules are changing, individuals and groups need some way to understand and influence themselves, each other, and the world around them. They need to dance with the uncertainty. At the same time, irreconcilable tensions become evident in times of rapid and unpredictable change. Here are some tips for using these tensions to dance with uncertainty.

Name them. Many tensions lie hidden under the surface of public discourse, inaccessible to rational action. When a group names its underlying polarities, they build the capacity to make conscious and shared decisions about them.

Keep dancing. The real juicy polarities are ones that you cannot resolve and that you wouldn’t want to even if you could. Take the standard operating procedures example. Resolving the conflict to either of the poles (everything standard or everything unique) would be costly and ineffective. Finding some compromised middle ground might reap the costs of both with the benefits of neither. Instead, the most effective solution is a dynamic moderation and mediation between the two extremes.

Do it again, and again, and again. As time passes and things change, the polarities, their relative strengths, and potential options for action change quickly. Return often to observe, assess, and plan action to get the most out of your most important polarities.

Resolve the things that are resolvable. Not all serious concerns are polarity based. Sometimes, a challenge simply needs to be met and a problem needs to be solved. Before you begin to engage with a pattern based on an underlying polarity, ensure yourselves and others that it isn’t simply a way to avoid doing the tough work of moving along a predictable path toward a known outcome.

Spend some time thinking about the fundamental tensions that absorb resources and keep you stuck in old, unproductive conversations. Explore new options that will allow you to get the best and avoid the worst of each extreme. Call one of your friends in the HSD Associate network, and we’ll be happy to talk with you about how to dance more effectively with uncertainty.

Glenda H. Eoyang, Ph.D.
www.hsdinstitute.org
866-HSD-INST

Balance

2009-03-23T09:57:00.000-07:00

In this blog posting, Glenda Eoyang reflects on
Balance

We all strive for balance: Work/life, expansion/stability, asset/liability, risk/reward, freedom/responsibility. We think of balance as bringing physical health, emotional resilience, organizational sustainability, team productivity, and community stability. In all these contexts we find it much easier to talk about balance than to achieve it. More often than not, potential clients call me because they recognize something in their world is out of balance. They hope that I, as an external observer and experienced consultant, will be able to help get them back into balance again.

Like many things in complex adaptive systems, though, balance is more interesting and challenging than it appears at first glance. Balance is complicated enough in chemical and biological systems, and it can be completely confounding in human systems. Human systems dynamics has several tools to help assess and influence balance for individuals, teams, organizations, and communities, but the most important thing is to understand what “balance” means in the context of a complex human system.

The technical definition of balance is equilibrium.

The traditional understanding of equilibrium assumed that it was the endpoint of most spontaneous motion. If a closed system was left alone, it would tend toward equilibrium. Differences across the system would balance out, and the system as a whole would come to rest when energy was equalized from one part to another. Hot and cold blend, and the whole becomes luke warm. High energy dissipates across the system, until the whole ends up with a homogenous distribution of energy. Resources flow from high concentrations to low, until all parts of the system are the same, then change ceases.

This process makes sense in physical systems, but it doesn’t always work in human systems. Because human systems are open and their causal relationships are nonlinear, we seldom see situations where excitement, information, money, or other critical differences distribute themselves easily across a whole community. Instead, we see human patterns where differences increase over time. The rich get richer; the smart get smarter, and excitement (or fear) builds over time, rather than dissipating. These non-equilibrium seeking patterns match our experience and common sense, but they require a nontraditional understanding of how the desire for balance shapes change in human interaction.

Nonlinear dynamics deals with two critical distinctions in equilibrium, both of which are critical to understanding balance in our personal, professional, and organizational lives.

Static or dynamic. Static equilibrium describes an object at rest, where all the forces are equal, balanced, and unchanging. We see this sometimes in human systems when people are deadlocked in conflict or when confusion brings about inaction. We often talk about systems being “stuck” when they’ve fallen into a static equilibrium situation. To get the system moving again, something (like power, information, innovation) must be introduced to disrupt the current balance and get the system moving again.

Dynamic equilibrium describes an object that is moving, but moving in a perfectly predictable way. Think of a rock at the end of a string that swings around and around, an efficient assembly line, or a high performing team. This kind of equilibrium also holds until it gets an external shock, but the change it experiences is going from ordered to disorderly motion. Shifting into dynamic equilibrium is the sometimes subtle change of going from bumpy and surprising to smooth and predictable motion.

Stable or unstable. In addition to static or dynamic, equilibrium can be either stable or unstable. A system that is in a stable equilibrium will return to its initial position after it is disturbed. Think of holding the eraser end of a pencil and letting the pointed end dangle. Push the point to one side, it will swing a bit and eventually return to where it started. In human systems, this is called “resilience.” A child is resilient (stable equilibrium) when he or she can absorb shocks and return to stability quickly and completely. The same is true for an employee, a team or a whole workforce. Today, our hope is that the world economy was in a stable equilibrium before the shocks of late 2008.

Unstable equilibrium, on the other hand, is where the system is disturbed from either rest (static) or predictable motion (dynamic) and does NOT return to its original state. Balance the pencil on its point, and you’ll have a perfect unstable equilibrium—if you move it even slightly, it will fall over completely rather than bouncing back to where it was before. Process and system breakdowns, violent conflicts, and competition in an immature market all show signs of unstable equilibrium.

The diagram below summarizes how these two distinctions play out in multiple forms of balance in human systems dynamics.

So, when you are searching for balance in your life and work, consider which of these you may already have, which one you might want, and the many options for action that could help you shift from one to another. We will be glad to help you keep or shift the balance of your own far-from-equilibrium system!

Glenda H. Eoyang, Ph.D.
www.hsdinstitute.org
866-HSD-INST

Dynamical Change

2008-11-09T16:22:00.000-08:00

The election.

The economy.

Two bigger-than-life patterns loom large in our shared environment. How many different ways can we say that the future will be different from the past? What exaggerated phrases of shock and awe have we heard over the past weeks? Each day brings new surprises and more uncertainty about how the future will unfold. How can we as individuals, families, communities, and nations cope with such instability?

First, we need to realize that these big patterns are not different in kind from the patterns of change we face every day. When changes are smaller or more local, we can convince ourselves that we know what is happening. We take change for granted. We help ourselves believe that we have been there before, that the future isn’t all that different from the past, that we can continue “business as usual.” But even the changes we can comprehend and cope with carry the seeds of a radically new kind of change.

In human systems dynamics, we call this new kind of change dynamical.

Static Change

Since the time of Galileo, we have understood the nature of static change. Static change begins with an object at rest. The purpose of change is to move that object to a different, equally stable, position. To accomplish static change, we just have to answer two questions: Which direction should I push? How hard should I push? This simplistic perspective can be quite useful when it works. From this perspective, my clients:
· Enter existing product niches
· Engage with competitors
· Deal with resistance to change
· Provide advice to a failing employee
· Explore the gap between current reality and future dreams

When systems are stable and change is slow, these approaches can work perfectly well. In complex situations, like today’s election and the roller coaster markets, such an approach can be worse than doing nothing at all. Consider the negative advertising that candidates are heaping on each other. Consider the “bailout” plan that pumped money into a “locked up” credit market. In both cases, our smartest leaders told us we were pushing hard enough and in the right direction. In spite of our faith and our subsequent surprise, these static change strategies did not work. Young voters didn’t know what a Socialist was, and institutions didn’t have faith in borrowers’ ability to repay loans. Our static understanding of change was not enough.

Dynamic Change

Since the time of Newton, we have understood the nature of dynamic change. Dynamic change assumes that an object is moving in a smooth path from starting point to logical conclusion. The purpose of dynamic change is to kick off a chain reaction and to anticipate the predictable stages of evolution. To predict and control dynamic processes, we must answer two different questions: What are the initial conditions? What are the forces working on the object? Like static change, dynamic change works wonderfully when it works. From the dynamic perspective, my clients and colleagues:
· Set objectives and outcomes
· Track trends of change over time
· Expect developmental phases like storming, forming, norming, and performing
· Look for root causes
· Plan and execute projects

When conditions are right, dynamic change works beautifully. When conditions are complex, it does not. Politicos and economists have had their share of frustrating dynamic tactics in the past few months. Consider the political strategies based on historical voting patterns or expectations of racism or sexism. Consider the traditional relationships among the values of commodities, stocks, bonds, currency, and real estate. We all expected a smooth curve of relationship and predictable patterns of behavior. We were surprised.

Dynamical Change

The many fields of nonlinear dynamics have opened our eyes to a new kind of change—dynamical change. Dynamical change relates to the behavior of complex systems, where patterns of change are completely unpredictable. Dynamical change is marked by:
· Fractal patterns when change at one level instigates or prevents change at another level
· The tipping point when a system is poised far from equilibrium and a small change triggers an avalanche
· Intermittent jumps and cascades when the system seems stuck as tension accumulates then breaks loose with abandon
· Networks of connections that can either hold a system stable or move it quickly into new patterns
· Self-organizing patterns when interacting parts generate coherent system-wide patterns

Dynamical change influences objects that are already in motion. It does not follow smooth dynamic paths because the number of variables is large and/or unknown, the system is open to outside influences, and the forces have the potential to amplify each other.

The conditions for dynamical change should sound familiar. They are exactly what we are experiencing in the election and in the economy.

An election campaign engages with individuals and groups that are never completely at rest. Though pundits try to simplify constituencies, each person is a unique combination of expectations and options for action. The political landscape is influenced by a wide variety of other landscapes including the media, literature and arts, economy, service delivery, and even the weather. Finally, the political world is full of mutually reinforcing factors. Campaign funds increase advertising, and advertising increases campaign funds. Dirty ads increase fear, and increasing fear generates new, more egregious ads. Politicians and voters both feed on the byproducts they create. These conditions set the stage for unpredictable, dynamical change.

The same is true for the market economy. Selling and buying are continuous, especially in this global economy. The number of variables that affect market behaviors are enormous including everything from superstition to rainfall to the price of oil. To make matters even more dynamical, the relationships of prices and markets are tightly coupled. A falling market increases fear, and fear makes people sell, and sales lower the market. A trader on Wall Street watches the Hong Kong exchange, and the Chinese trader is watching New York. And so it goes.

We live in the middle of dynamical patterns that we neither understand nor control.
Though there is no silver bullet to resolve issues in dynamical change, human systems dynamics does offer some survival tips:

· Watch multiple time horizons. Be concerned about tomorrow, but don’t forget about next quarter and next year. These days it might even be a good idea to think about the next decade.

· Attend to the whole, the part, and the greater whole. Dynamical systems depend on the interdependencies of massively entangled parts and wholes. Consider yourself, your company, and your industry. Consider yourself, your family, and your neighbors. Consider the middle class, the rich, and the poor. And consider the complex relationships among these self-organizing levels.

· Stay connected. Time and space in dynamical change are “lumpy.” Nothing may be happening where you are, but things might be spinning around your buddy down the block. The more networked you are, the better prepared you’ll be with information and options for action.

· Watch for weak signals. Media focuses on the big messages, but in dynamical change the big messages don’t show up until the real change is over. The key to riding the waves of dynamical change is to see and respond to the whispers of change before the tsunami takes over.

· Hold tightly to your ethics. What do you trust when change is unpredictable and out of control? You can only trust yourself, and other people need to trust you, too. That is why times of dynamical change challenge us to know what we value and to act with conviction and courage.

Whether you are watching the race for the presidency or the dance of the markets, you are witnessing dynamical change at its most extreme. Don’t be fooled by those who spout static or dynamic explanations and advice. Keep your eyes and mind open for adaptive options for action that will help you learn from the past, manage the present, and prepare for the future.

Glenda H. Eoyang, Ph.D
www.hsdinstitute.org
866-HSD-INST

2008-09-21T16:17:00.000-07:00

Recently, we asked out CEO and founder, Glenda Eoyang, to talk about how she would answer some of the difficult questions that organizational leaders face. In today's Blog, we are sharing her responses to three of those questions.

How do I build and maintain a coherent team when my workforce is so diverse in age, culture, gender, and world view?

As in so many instances, same and different is a major issue. What similarities keep the team together—goal, deliverables, location, purpose, function, etc.? What differences make a difference to them—expertise, seniority, learning style, etc.? What are the relationships inside the team and out that either give or disturb coherent functions?

Then ask what you can do to shift only one of these conditions—similarities, differences, or exchanges. Take steps to build coherence by establishing common goals, measures, and purpose, while using the critical differences to move forward. Build open and honest relationships about the work, and damp those similarities and differences that contribute to relationships that disturb the coherence. Focus on the differences that make a difference in the work, and ignore the others.

Then do it. Then begin your analysis again.

How do I establish a culture of collaboration and cooperation instead of mistrust and competition?

You do it one interaction at a time.

Collaboration, cooperation, mistrust, competition are patterns that emerge in a system over time. You cannot mandate a change in such a pattern, you have to set conditions for it to emerge.

Each interaction has to be structured to contribute to the new pattern—that includes you as well as them. Act in collaborative ways and reinforce others who do the same. Be cooperative and support cooperation in others. Over time, as the new pattern emerges, it must be reinforced with stories and recognition and celebration consonant with the change.

Consider a short list of simple rules that everyone follows to create emergent patterns. Document your current rules that generate your current pattern and explore ways you might shift the rules to create a different pattern. The patterns emerge across the organization. Engage others in this exploration and in creating the simple rules that will move you toward collaboration and cooperation.

How do I move forward  when all I am doing is  putting out fires?

A fire only becomes a fire when someone (maybe you) fails to blow out a match. When you have an early and systemic view of the environment, then you are less likely to encounter fires, and when they arise you’ll be more able to intervene quickly, easily, and effectively. What does this mean in practical terms?

At the moment: When you encounter a fire that is begging to be put out. Pause. Breathe. Ask yourself the question, “If this isn’t resolved now, what is the worst thing that could happen?” Or the question, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how critical is this really?” This simple filter will let most people prioritize and avoid focusing on things that appear urgent but are not important.

In the longer term: Track the fires you fight over the course of a week (or a day if things are really bad for you). Put each one on a post-it note. Cluster the notes to see what patterns show up. Ask yourself what is one thing—simple is good—that could blow out those matches before they catch fire. Do that one thing and see what difference it makes. Whether or not that one helps, do the whole cycle again. Each time you try something new, it will reduce disruption in the environment and eventually reduce the fires to fight and your compulsion to fight them.

At HSD Institute, we offer simple solutions for complex challenges. Check out our website at www.hsdinstitute.org and see all we have to offer you.

Vision

2008-09-11T13:25:00.000-07:00

For years, I avoided the “vision thing.”

I dodged a personal vision by telling myself that my real present was much more interesting and exciting than anything I could have envisioned before.

Our HSD Institute vision was developed to aid communication, not creation, of who we are and what we do. I helped my clients consider opportunities and options, but I found discussions about vision to fail them in one of two ways. Either the conversation was bogged down in the present, so the statement was uninspiring and turgid; or it was flying in the clouds to land on something that was fuzzy and/or unrealistic.

So, for years “vision” was not a part of my personal, leadership, or professional practice. In 2007 my mind and practice were changed, thanks to George Johnson (http://www.telavision.tv) and Malcolm Cohan (http://malcolmcohan.com/home.html). What did I learn from them about building and living a vision in the midst of complex adaptive human systems dynamics?

Future possibility comes from present action. A vision has to influence what I do today, or it cannot influence what I will experience tomorrow. For me, that is the difference between a vision and a dream. I can dream of being/doing anything in the world, but it is not a vision unless it informs my choices, decisions and actions today. The future will not come to be all at once in a whole new pattern. It self-organizes over time, based on the conditions I set in everything I do or think about today, tomorrow, and the day after that.

I can set the conditions for the future I desire. In HSD we understand the uncertainty of human systems. We know that we can neither predict nor control the future because of the nature of complex adaptation and self-organization. On the other hand, we are not helpless. We can influence the conditions that influence the emergent patterns. We can focus on or strengthen the boundaries within which patterns will emerge; we can focus on differences that truly make a difference; and we can establish or sustain connections that generate new insights and energy. Through the vision, we set the conditions.

More distinct is easier to replicate. A pattern can be crisp and distinct or fuzzy and unclear. In complex human systems, there is no better or worse, there is just fit. Sometimes a fuzzy pattern is a better fit for the current situation and needs, and sometimes a distinct pattern is more effective. Every pattern has its own benefits and risks. One of the benefits of a clear pattern is that it is much easier to recreate. I’m creating a pattern for the future I desire. The clearer it is, the easier it will be for me (and others) to move it from imagination to reality.

Focus on differences that make a difference. Every day is full of noise—differences that are disruptive but insignificant. Many days I find myself chasing after the most trivial and absurd issues because I haven’t asked myself whether or not they make a difference. An effective vision codifies the differences that make a difference for the pattern I see as a future I desire. It provides a filter that supports my daily (minutely?) choices about where to put my attention and energy. It helps me be sure that I’m focusing on the conditions (containers, differences, and exchanges) that will constitute the patterns of the future I want to see.

Medium matters. Malcolm invented a fabulous method to create visions and move them toward reality. The idea is simple and incredibly powerful. During a visioning process, you create a video that carries the pattern of your vision in words, music, and images. New technologies make it easy to bring these elements together, and the vision video creates a transforming exchange on many, many levels. You can see examples on the web at
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hsdinstitute&search_type=&aq=f .

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. One of Malcolm’s rules is that you watch your vision two times each day—upon rising and before sleeping. It only takes about ten minutes, but it makes a tremendous difference. First, like any self-respecting nonlinear system, the iterative processing builds resilience and robustness into the patterns. Second, (or maybe just the subjective view of the first) the experience is a kind of meditation in which I reflect on my actions of today and plan my actions for tomorrow. The ritual becomes a reinforcing learning/planning cycle that builds a bridge from the patterns of today toward the patterns of a preferred tomorrow.

Go public. Another gift of emerging technologies is the ability to “put it out there.” In the same way that a spoken promise is more binding than an implied one, a vision made public is more powerful than one held privately. Before I started my first vision statement, I had no interest in broadcasting it to the world. The whole idea seemed crazy. By the time I finished it, though, I wanted to share it. I wanted others to see it. I wanted to commit myself publicly to the future I could create.

It is fun. We often consider doing the right thing as painful (at worst) or boring (at best). Creating a vision statement is fun! I have never thought of myself as creative or artistically gifted, and even I lost myself in the journey of exploration and discovery. Every step along the way is fun—if you can overcome the lurking technophobia. As the pieces come together, you see new ideas and spark new possibilities. Each word and every picture can be a new delight.
Ultimately, I’ve begun to think about this vision creation experience as an analogy for building the future itself. Is it possible that I might see my own life’s work as naming the conditions for the pattern I want to create? I would see my life as searching for the words, images, and music to embody that pattern; discovering surprises along the way; and making choices that reinforce and strengthen the pattern when it appears.

If so, then I’m committed to that “vision thing.”

Glenda H. Eoyang, Ph.D.
866-HSD-INST
www.hsdinstitute.org
Email Glenda

Can't "Fix" the Organization

2008-08-24T17:09:00.000-07:00

Wouldn’t it be great if you could “fix” your human system the way you fix your mechanical world? You could take the team in for a tune-up, replace parts and improve performance immediately, depend on experts and high-quality materials to ensure predictable outcomes.

It is no secret that individuals, teams, organizations, and communities defy mechanistic fixes. The internal dynamics of human systems shape their emergent behaviors in complicated and subtle ways, so mechanistic, deterministic methods have unpredictable outcomes—and sometimes have no outcomes at all! Remember the last time you:

Replaced a team member hoping for less conflict and more productive work.
Improved working conditions to increase employee satisfaction.
Delivered tough messages in a performance appraisal hoping for a turnaround in attitude and performance.
Engineered a change in management to improve organizational culture and effectiveness.
Supported a merger or reorganization to gain efficiencies and raise the bottom line.

Each of these actions is based on the assumption that you can fix your organization like you fix your car—by replacing, removing, or tuning. Sometimes these approaches work, but rarely for long. Human systems follow different organizing rules than mechanical systems, so they need different change strategies. At the HSD Institute, we know that the dynamics of human systems are:

Emergent, not developmental, so HSD practitioners are attentive and adaptive. As we facilitated a strategic planning session for an international financial services organization, the management team recognized and responded in the moment to late-breaking economic news.
Dynamic, not static, so HSD practitioners are curious and respectful. Evaluating a change initiative for a large urban county, we acknowledge and incorporate changes that are not directly attributable to the planned intervention.
Shaped by multiple, not single, causes, so the HSD practitioner is flexible and responsive. To design a state-wide conference on technologies and services in the coming decade, we investigated and wove together emerging market, demographic, technological, political, and social trends.
Coherent across scales, so HSD interventions are elegant and fast. Supporting a change initiative for a Washington consulting firm, we used the information and energy generated from individual conflict resolutions to define an organizational transformation of services and structures.

Our network of certified HSD professionals can help you imagine and implement change processes that work with the natural dynamics of your organization. Take your car to the shop, but bring your organizational challenges to us!

Simple solutions for complex problems.  
Learn from the past. Take action in the present. Create the future.

For more information about HSD Institute visit
www.hsdinstitute.org
or contact us at info@hsdinstitute.org.

When is talking not enough?

2008-08-13T16:11:00.000-07:00

Does this sound familiar to you?

You talk, talk, talk, but don’t seem to get your message across.
Meetings get mired in conversations that are dominated by one or two participants.
Leaders don’t seem able to keep conversations moving toward productive outcomes.

So, what does a “good” conversation look like? A productive conversation—one that is moving toward individual and group understanding or action—will usually exhibit the following characteristics:

Participants are relaxed and engaged, whether or not they are talking.
The ratio of questions to statements is balanced.
Participants comment on individual or group insights as they occur, and they occur frequently.
A shared, short-hand language emerges.
The group occasionally breaks out in laughter.
Waves of confusion or tension move through the group, and resolutions emerge.

How can a leader, facilitator, or active participant help shape these productive patterns? At the Human Systems Dynamics Institute, we recognize importance of maintaining this level of conversation. Our approach offers leaders and facilitators tools to:

Shift the mode of speech, speed, or topic until all participants are able to connect comfortably.
Ask questions to clarify points and discover common ground.
Honor and use the words and energy of the group to keep the conversation moving.

Simple solutions for complex problems.  
Learn from the past. Take action in the present. Create the future.

Contact us today for
consulting, coaching and teaching
or to sign up for one of our training programs.

Strategy to Action

2008-08-04T10:14:00.000-07:00

When a client comes to HSD Institute for help, they usually have a very specific and pressing need. They need to plan in spite of a constantly changing environment. Groups who must work together are at war with one another. Processes and procedures that performed perfectly last year are insufficient to meet current demands. Collaboration and integration are mandated, but skills and traditions encourage competition. Management imagines and expects a change in culture. Customers want services and products that are more responsive. What pressing needs of your own could you add to this list?

Human systems dynamics offers theory, models, methods, and tools that can make a difference in any of these situations. The real challenge, though, is to translate insights about complex dynamical change into real, practical options for action.

In the past, other HSD Associates and I have built the bridges between theory and practice one at a time. In collaboration with clients and colleagues, we invent interventions that embed wisdom about human systems dynamics into individual and group action for change in particular situations. The benefit of this approach is that customers receive products and services that meet their needs and move their agendas forward. The difficulty of this approach has been that each and every project is unique, so the speed and breadth of the spread of HSD has been constrained.

We are beginning an experiment that we hope will help us respond to this challenge—a new webinar series called Strategy to Action: The Power of HSD. In this seven-part on-line series, I apply HSD to specific challenges that our clients have faced, including:

Project management
Performance management
Planning
Communications
Training and development
Virtual teaming

Each session, including the first introductory one, defines the challenges that seem intractable using traditional tools and methods.

Project managers plan for stability and encounter surprise.
Performance demands creative response to changing environments, but traditional performance management systems assume predictability.
We plan as if the future were knowable, when we all agree that adaptation is the path to success.
Additional investment in communication media fail to resolve the communications issues that are pervasive in organizations.
Training and development groups are asked to respond more quickly and reliably while content and contexts are more time constrained, complicated, and diverse.
Individuals and groups spend more of their time engaging electronically, while the efficiency and effectives of virtual teams are still in question.

In this series of hour-long webinars, we move beyond the traditional challenges. We share the common and not-so-common knowledge about why old rules no longer generate the old successes in each of these domains. Each session introduces the theory, models, methods, and tools from HSD that are most relevant to one specific challenge. Participants and I share stories about new ways to approach each of these critical functions. The materials, as well as an on-going on-line conversation, provide HSD tips and tools to support everyone in resolving their own issues.

Our hypothesis is that information this specific will help others—even beginners—learn enough about human systems dynamics to find innovative options for action. Over the coming months, we will be testing this hypothesis and adapting the content and process of the webinars as we learn more about how people respond. I invite you to join us in the laboratory. You will provide feedback about how HSD can help you resolve your own challenges in these and other functional areas. Each session begins at 12:00 Central time and ends promptly at 1:00. The first session, Introduction to Human Systems Dynamics has already been delivered, and we recommend that participants view it in archive form before participating in any of the other sessions. The schedule for the rest of the series is:

September 10 HSD and Project Management
 October 8 HSD and Performance Management
 November 5 HSD and Planning for Change 
December 10 HSD and Communications
 January 7 HSD and Training and Development 
February 11 HSD and Virtual Teams

Each session will be recorded and archived. Registrants receive permanent, free access to the archived versions of the sessions.
To register for the webinars, go to uliveandlearn.com.

To provide feedback, join us in the on-line conversation or drop me an email. I look forward to your insights about whether and how these webinar programs help you bridge between HSD strategy and action to help you and your clients build adaptive capacity.

Glenda H. Eoyang, Ph.D.
geoyang@hsdinstitute.org
www.hsdinstitute.org
866-HSD-INST

Seeking Sustainability

2008-07-21T09:06:00.000-07:00

For organizations—for profit and not, large and small, public and private—in today’s fast-paced and changing landscape, sustainability is a critical factor in the development and implementation of change efforts.

“How do we make sure that today’s changes will sustain inside our organizations over time?”

“What programs or structures do we implement to support us in the face of constant change and challenges?”

These questions haunt leaders as they work for long-term success for their organizations; their employees; and their shareholders, communities, and other stakeholders. Organizations are complex human systems where the factors that influence sustainability are massively entangled. No one factor can be teased out and pointed to as the “magic one” that assures long-term sustainability. In fact, sustainability is affected by a milieu of interdependent and interrelated issues that must be addressed.

Even the definition of “sustainability” is evolving over time. In the past, sustainability meant building structures that could withstand the test of time. Today technology brings greater power and facility, environments evolve, economic and demographic landscapes shift, so any structures that we build today can, in fact, be obsolete tomorrow.

The challenge change agents face is to build flexible systems that sustain the original purpose of the initiative, even as the structures change in response to the needs of the organization. Sustainability was about building structures that would last. Sustainability today is about maintaining the purpose of an initiative, regardless of the structures that support it.

Think about leadership development programs. A company may invest huge resources in developing a program to identify and develop potential leaders from its own ranks. Structures are established for selecting and supporting these people, mentorships are set up, and an entire series of training events is scheduled. This can be a very expensive proposition.

Then, when the company goes through a time of fiscal challenges and budgets have to be decreased, hard decisions have to be faced. Leadership development is often seen as a luxury, and eliminated early in times of fiscal difficulty. Leadership development has not become a sustainable program in those organizations.

On the other hand, in organizations where leadership development has been established as a “concept” rather than a “program,” it has been sustainable. More experienced employees mentor newer employees. Training is scheduled when it can be. Young, promising leaders are identified and nurtured through networks in the organization.

In the Human Systems Dynamics Institute, we use a model that helps us build this flexibility and adaptability into our systems to assure the long-term sustainability of projects and initiatives. It is built around 7 concepts that enable us to embed the purposes our work into the organization, rather than relying on structures of the organization to sustain our work. These concepts are listed below.

Connections - We look at how our work is connected in the organization. Connections to current work, connections across departments, and connections to the community and customer base assure that others know about the work and understand its benefit to them.

Coherence - This sustainability model reminds us to assure that the work we are doing is coherent with the organizational direction, that it fits with the internal policies and procedures, and that it fits with external forces and trends.

Constructs - Too often, initiatives are "person dependent" and when the champion of the work leaves, its history goes with that person. We believe that documentation of planning, of resources, and of decision making helps to sustain our work, regardless of shifting personnel.

Commitment - Sustainability requires the commitment of individuals across the organization, of resources to support the work, and of the organization, itself. By helping people see the value of the work, by garnering resources to support the work, and by aligning with the stated values of the organization, we increase the overall commitment of the system.

Continuous Assessment - Work that is successful in contributing to the overall goals of the organization is more likely to be sustained in times of change. From the initial planning through implementation and operation, measures of outcomes and progress must reflect powerful contributions to the organization's overall success.

Communications - People cannot support what they don't know about. From the earliest stages of an initiative, a thorough and up-to-date communications plan is crucial to keep people informed of the goals and progress of the work, as well as the benefits the initiative offers to the organization.

Capacity Building - These six concepts become a part of the overall planning and implementation of an initiative, and are developed in a context of increasing the capacity of the organization to sustain and benefit from the work. Capacity building focuses on assuring that employees have the necessary skills to do the work, and it also focuses on the capacity of the organization to hold and maintain the work.

We refer to this model as the Legacy Model because it provides a foundation for establishing lasting and important contributions to the health, productivity, and success of an organization. We invite you to talk with us about creating a legacy in your organization. For more information, visit our website at www.hsdinstitute.org.

Constraints

2008-07-13T20:41:00.000-07:00

In HSD, we pay attention to the constraints that influence a system. These are not external constraints put on the system by the environment; they are, however, the degrees of freedom that exist as a result of the interactions of the agents in the system.

The appropriate degree of constraint is determined by the system's ability to sustain itself--its fitness in the environment. For example: Two systems may have similar communications systems. Few messages sent infrequently, with limited information being shared. For one organization this may work fine--the system is appropriately constrained. A loosely connected book club may be this type of system. On the other hand, in a high-tech, highly competitive company, the same level of communications would allow too many degrees of freedom in the system, and it would not be able to survive. It would be under-constrained.

When a system is over-constrained, the agents have few degrees of freedom to operate on their own. For example, a new hire needs carefully planned support and orientation in the first few months of work. This high level of constraint is appropriate in such a situation. A long-time, trusted employee, however, would probably feel over-constrained in such a situation. The appropriateness of constraint depends on the needs of the system and its agents.

Another area where constraint is important to consider is in working with conflict. Conflict emerges when a system is over-constrained or under-constrained. Think for a moment about the relationship between a normal teenager and her parents. Curfews, house rules, dress codes, and work expectations are all forms of constraints that the parents feel they need. In many families, that level of constraint is more than the teenager wants or feels that she needs. This difference between the parent and the child triggers a pattern of conflict among the family members.

On the other hand, think about anarchy. There are few, if any, constraints on the system. Too many voices, too many choices, and too much freedom bring about conflict among the members of the system. It is under-constrained and cannot be sustained.

Anyone who is called upon to mediate conflicts at any level or in any situation would do well to examine the patterns of constraint in the system. Where is the system over-constrained by too many demands or expectations among the agents in the system? Where is the system under-constrained by lack of clarity or too little accountability? Where is there conflict among the agents because of a disagreement about the required degree of constraint?

Constraint, in and of itself, is neutral. It is neither naughty nor nice. It is only in the context of the system needs that it either adds or subtracts value in the system. The following definitions provide a general thumbnail sketch of constraints and their meanings in a system.

Ideal Constraint - The system is free to adapt to its environment and move smoothly and productively toward fitness. Such a system is sustainable.

Over-Constrained - The system is limited in its ability to self-organize and adapt, due to limitations in its freedom to respond to the environment. Such a system is unsustainable because it is limited in its generative and creative abilities, and conflict will emerge.

Under-Constrained - The system has too much freedom in its options for adaptability and cannot settle into patterns of self-organization. Such a system is too random and unfocused to be sustained, and conflict will emerge.

In HSD we have tools and approaches that give us a framework to think about constraint, which helps us take specific and intentional actions to shift the constraints to increase the system's adaptive capacity. If you want to know more about how to deal with a system that is over- or under-constrained and unable to sustain itself. Visit us at www.hsdinstitute.org to see all we have to offer. Or you can email us. We will be happy to talk with you about your system.

Networks

2008-06-30T17:33:00.000-07:00

Networks are becoming the skyscrapers of the 21st century. Just like those breathtaking buildings of the past, networks use state-of-the-art resources and design principles to meet the needs of a growing business segment. The early 20th century needed tall buildings to support expanding industrial and managerial demand in the narrow spaces of cities around the world. The early 21st century needs information architectures to support wikinomical markets and information resources that grow exponentially. The answer for today appears to be the NETWORK.

Our clients, friends, and colleagues see the power of networks, but they are not intimidated by them. We all realize that even the most powerful network emerges through massively entangled and iterative, one-to-one interaction. We recognize in ourselves and our communities the power to build and sustain networks that are both creative and resilient. Networks provide exactly the qualities that we need to reach our goals and improve our performance:

Sustainability
Variety and coherence
Dissemination of innovation
Shared resources and learning

Sustainability. A foundation client of HSD Institute had invested well in community capacity development, but its leadership wanted to encourage individuals and organizations to sustain themselves in the future. Rather than continuing to select and fund specific efforts, the foundation hoped to establish an ecology of interdependent agencies that would exchange value for value in relationships of shared learning and growth.

In response to this goal, a network was established that identified players, tracked their resources and needs, and supported open and enthusiastic communications. In fact, the effort began by recognizing and celebrating the fact that an underground network of support already existed. A project was established to make the shadow network explicit and to strengthen and extend its connections.

Variety and coherence. In April I wrote about the CAN DO Minnesota Network. It is a state-wide, informal organization of people who feel passion and responsibility to improve services and outcomes for people with disabilities. Concerned people came together into a network structure because traditional institutional solutions failed them. When a problem is simple, when differences are few, when one size fits all, then bureaucracy is a perfect solution. Unfortunately, that is not the situation for people with disabilities. They are not a homogeneous group. Each one has unique strengths and challenges, so each one needs a unique solution.

On the other hand, government is not equipped to provide customized support for every person who needs it. The CAN DO team saw a network as an innovative and effective solution.

They share a common goal, define their passions and responsibilities, and share information over the internet and in face-to-face Action Conferences. Individuals with resources and ideas meet individuals who have needs and offer opportunities. Each pair who find each other through the network establishes its own, unique way to respond to highly variable conditions. Still, as a whole, the CAN DO Network has an identity and an on-going focus for work.

Dissemination of innovation. People around the world engage in efforts to transform conflict into productive action. Each one comes to the work with personal and professional insights and expands their capacity through learning from every new encounter. If they worked in isolation, then each would re-create the wheel. Not only would they learn more slowly, they would burn out faster without connections to sympathetic others.

Werner Institute at Creighton University sponsored a conference on complexity and conflict in early June. They invited me to share basic principles of HSD as a way to bridge between conflict and complexity as well as between theory and practice. Over the three days, we observed a new network emerging as scholar practitioners in HSD and conflict shared insights and opportunities. The organizers have established an on-line network to sustain the teaching/learning opportunities that were generated by our wonderful face-to-face networking opportunity. This network will help us continue to innovate and to disseminate innovations.

Shared resources and learning. The network of HSD Institute Associates supports shared learning and growth. With over 100 Associates, the Network includes multiple nodes of activity. Clusters of people come together around topics such as education, evaluation, project management. Other clusters form around projects such as developing training, preparing presentations, writing papers, or doing research. Still other groups take advantage of location to have regular face-to-face encounters. While each functional group is unique, they all provide opportunities to give and receive value. We also support on-line mechanisms for communication and connection.

The HSD Institute recognizes the power of networks in an economy and a culture that is driven by information. We’ve used that knowledge to develop a new website, which will launch on July 1, 2008. The purpose of the website is to support the network of people who are curious about or are committed to human systems dynamics. Our expectation is that the new website, with its exciting features, will support the sustainability of the research and practice of the field, will enhance both the variety and the coherence of our diverse constituencies, will help develop and disseminate innovation, and will continue to strengthen our community of shared resources and learning. Please join us on-line to explore the power of the HSD skyscraper of the 21st century.

Performance Measurement in Complex Systems

2008-06-13T13:02:00.000-07:00

Outcomes and measures have become the gold standard for performance improvement over the past decade. Return on investment (ROI), SMART objectives (specific, measurable, achievable,realistic, time); benchmarks; score cards (balanced and not); control charts,; and a host of other tools, tricks and techniques shape decision making and action around the globe. Theories and methods abound for using such certainty-based approaches to predict, manage, measure, and control performance.

These approaches are great--maybe even necessary--but they are not sufficient to support performance for CHANGE in human systems.

Why not? They make fundamental assumptions about what it means to work effectively, and those assumptions do not match organizational reality in times of change. We are currently working with a client to implement a broad-based cultural transformation. We use numerical measures of performance, but we also reach beyond them into other ways of know how performance changes over time. Here are some of the assumptions that influence the traditional bias for numbers and how we transcend those assumptions in one particular project.

Measurement is the only way to know "for sure." Scientists have known for generations that measurement is not always a path to certainty. IN 1981, Stephen Jay Gould wrote a thought-provoking book entitled, The Mismeasure of Man, in which he demonstrated how quantitative data had been used to perpetuate misconceptions and prejudices as "objective and quantifiable" truth. Numbers can help us see and understand reality in new ways, but they can also blind us to realities that live beyond their reach.

We are incorporating both quantitative and qualitative data as we support emerging change in this international technology company. A scientific survey prompted the project. We know that many people attend sessions for how many hours. During sessions we use anonymous voting tools. Following the sessions we collect numerical data about participants' experiences. In addition, we share stories about change among the project team members participants, and senior management. Stories have revealed new personal relationships, innovative processes, personal insights, and extraordinary customer interactions. These are arguably the most powerful and sustainable indicators of change, but they do not lend themselves to traditional measurement.

Good performance can be predicted and controlled. In stable times, this assumption is certainly true. In times of change, however, prediction may be risky, and control can be deadly. Technology, markets, regulations, organizational relationships, demographics, and customer expectations are changing very quickly today. Even a good prediction may have a short shelf life before conditions shift, and the future changes course. Control in such situations is costly, and the investment increases exponentially as change accelerates.

The alternative is to consider performance as an emerging property. We are helping our client's managers think about past, present, and preferred future as a process of adaptation. We ask them periodically to consider three assessment questions:

Where are we now?
Where do we want to be?
How do we get there?

From this perspective, performance is based on the speed, creativity, and effectiveness of adaptation. They observe and improve their adaptive capacity in a changing environment rather than wasting precious resources on unreliable prediction and expensive delusions of control.

Surprises don't count. Measurement processes that seek to predetermine the future (such as ROI and SMART objectives) filter out the power of surprise. Ralph Stacey tells of the stark contract between his strategic plan and year-end performance reports. Excellent performance was based on exploring and exploiting unexpected opportunities, not on maintaining focus on what was expected. We like to think of surprises as doors opening onto opportunity, so an effective performance improvement systems needs a way to capture and interpret surprise.

In our project we have made a ritual out of surprise. At the beginning of each meeting we ask the simple question, "What surprises have you seen since we met last?" Those surprises become a art of our meeting minutes. They supply data for us to assess our project process and changes that occur in the organization and the environment over time. Of course what is surprising one week is old news the next, and the patterns formed by the surprises over time can be quite telling about how performance is changing even in a changing context.

I can only influence what is "inside" my system. Silos, rigid scopes of control, and the preoccupation with turf were adaptive responses to an accountability-driven system. If one is to be held accountable, then it is imperative that the bounds be set within which accountability will be measured. Not necessarily a bad thing, this systemic process forces people to attend to the part rather than the whole or the greater whole. In times of rapid and systemic change those boundaries can be death traps. Real opportunities may cross organizational silos, connect staff with their customers, and establish cross-functional teams. To take advantage of these opportunities, people must see themselves as contributors to the world beyond their own narrowly defined bounds.

Our project has brought people together across diverse functions, organizational silos, and geographic locations to identify and address issues that are critical to corporate objectives. Each manager has been invited to redefine his or her own role as a contributor--beyond personal roles and responsibilities--to company-wide success.

Complex change challenges our assumptions about excellent performance. We discover that numbers may not tell the whole story; that adaptive performance cannot be predicted or controlled; that surprises are a valuable asset, and that each person may influence the effectiveness of the whole. These new assumptions require new ways to know about and to improve performance. HSD generates new theory, models, methods, and tools to help our clients respond to these emerging demands. If you would like to join us or to hear more about this journey, please contact us at info@hsdinstitute.org. or by phone at 866-HSD-INST.

HSD Institute Simple Rules

2008-05-16T13:14:00.000-07:00

In complex adaptive systems, a short list of simple rules can generate complex and adaptive action for individuals and collectives. The Human Systems Dynamics Institute has framed such a list of rules to shape the emerging patterns that bring Associates together toward a common mission: to support people and groups in increasing their adaptive capacity. These rules govern the actions and decisions of HSD Institute staff and board members. They also communicate what Associates can expect as they participate in the HSD Institute and its activities.

Short List of Simple Rules

Teach and learn in every interaction.
Reinforce strengths of self and others.
Search for the true and the useful.
Give and get value for value.
Attend to the whole, the part, and the greater whole.
Engage in joyful practice.

We want the experiences of the Associates and others in HSD Institute to be meaningful and rewarding and intend that the short list of simple rules will guide our interactions toward that end.

Short List of Simple Rules
What do they mean for you?

Teach and learn in every interaction.

Individuals come together in HSD Institute to share ideas, to listen to others and to experience the emergence of new ideas. They can do so with the understanding that they will be treated with respect.
Those engaged in group discussions or dialogues welcome all voices into the discussion and seek to learn from each other.
Participants attending development opportunities are invited share their insights as part of the learning process.
Participants provide feedback to HSD Institute staff to increase the value of the goods and services offered.
Associates are invited to contribute to on-line discussions in ways that are meaningful and thought provoking.

Reinforce strengths of self and others.

HSD Institute provides multiple opportunities for exchanges between and among Associates.
Those who participate in development opportunities contribute to the overall success by providing feedback to others concerning their strengths and by supporting their own and others' learning.
Associates use accepted rules of appropriate citations to acknowledge sources of ideas in discussions and in writing.
Individuals have opportunities to participate in diverse groups in HSD Institute.

Search for the true and the useful.

As researchers and practitioners come together in HSD Institute, they push each other to further questions, new applications, and a richer understanding of human systems dynamics.
Researchers and practitioners share ideas and provide feedback about each others' work.
Associates create research questions from quantitative or from qualitative perspectives and share their research with each other.
Associates have multiple opportunities to contribute to HSD Institute publications from their own experiences of research and/or practice.
Associates are encouraged to seek out other members who can give them valuable feedback about both the truth and usefulness of their work.

Give and get value for value.

When individuals come to HSD Institute learning activities, they share their palette of study and experiences so that they can learn from each others' lessons. While they add value by their knowledge, they also benefit from the wealth others bring.
Those who attend learning opportunities participate fully in the work and contribute to others' learning as they are able.
Individuals' contributions to Institute publications are designed to build an exchange of concepts and practices.
Participation in HSD Institute enhances learning and insights about human systems dynamics.
Participants contribute to HSD Institute's success to assure continued development of the field of human systems dynamics.
Associates experience an array of benefits from their participation in HSD Institute activities.

Attend to the whole, the part and the greater whole.

As individuals participate in HSD Institute's opportunities and activities, they consider issues systemically and at multiple levels of interaction.
Through participation in HSD Institute opportunities, Associates understand their relationships to the greater whole to which they belong.
Associates have multiple opportunities to contribute to HSD Institute publications and opportunities by sharing perspectives from various levels.
Associates understand that HSD Institute decisions may focus on their needs in the context of the greater whole.

This is the level of experience for which we strive at HSD Institute, both for Associates. who have participated in our 10-day training to become certified Human Systems Dynamics Professionals, and for individuals who participate in other activities. Our learning sessions are designed along these simple rules; our consulting is done within this context; and our individual coaching activities follow these rules.

Join us for some of our learning opportunities and see the simple rules in action. Become a part of the growing network of individuals who come to understand their world in a new way that helps them increase their own adaptive capacity.

For more information about HSD Institute visit our website or contact us at info@hsdinstitute.

Royce Holladay
Director of The Network
HSD Institute

Self-Organizing in Action

2008-05-02T06:52:00.000-07:00

People often ask how self-organizing works in human systems. It is easy to say that it happens whenever a group of people come together, but that isn’t a very satisfying answer. It is hard to see the patterns of self-organizing unless you come to expect them and look for cues that the emerging patterns were not exactly predicted, planned, or controlled.

Over the past few months, I have had the honor and pleasure of watching self-organization in a project that is now known as CAN DO Minnesota. I will share that story with you, point out what appeared to be the critical points of transformation, and peer into the future of this exciting, emergent community.

It started with a complex challenge: How can people who are concerned about and committed to change take effective action? An insightful and energetic leader at the Minnesota Department of Human Services acknowledged such a challenge with regard to people with disabilities. Multiple services are available to help people with disabilities find employment, transportation, health care, housing, and other supportive services. Many individuals and groups are committed to improving the lives of people with disabilities, including federal, state, and county government agencies; multiple private agencies; families; supportive communities; and people themselves who live with disabilities.

In spite of their best efforts, however, services are often insufficient, difficult to access, and poorly coordinated. In recent years, numerous studies have documented the need for more effective methods to improve services and outcomes. An abundance of ideas was generated by these studies, but the challenge lay in transforming the ideas into action. How might this diverse community of committed individuals and groups come together to make a difference?

In response to this challenge, the leader from DHS convened a group of people from across the system for informal conversations about options for action. The group had no formal power or standing. They were given neither resources nor any official status. What drew them together was their commitment and hope for better ways to make a difference in the lives of their clients.

In their first meeting, this grouop outlined issues and concerns. They also shared information about what was happening and about their frustration with the difficulties of translating hopes and commitment into effective action. At their second meeting, they explored alternatives to standard services and service delivery approaches. At one point in that meeting, one person said, “What we need is not another study. We need to stop studying and take action on what we already know.” Someone else proposed, “We don’t need another organization or any more formal structure. What we need is a network that connects us all together so that we can improve what we know and do. The network should also connect us directly to people who could contribute and benefit.” Those bits of ideas began a snowball of conversations that set the conditions for a self-organizing community of individuals and groups who are committed to changing ideas into action to improve services and outcomes for people with disabilities across the state of Minnesota.

Over the following months, the group:

Catalogued and consolidated findings from more than 15 previous studies that documented the needs, aspirations, and opportunities for people with disabilities.
Learned about self-organizing change and fundamental principles of human systems dynamics that allowed them to take intentional action to influence productive self-organizing processes.
Planned regional Action Conferences to be held across the state.
The Action Conferences formed the core strategy of the group. These were powerful self-organizing opportunities because they:
Brought people together to explore their own hopes and opportunities to work collaboratively to make a difference.
Included all individuals and organizations who wanted to take action to improve services and outcomes for people with disabilities. Everyone was welcome.
Encouraged participants to follow their own passion and sense of responsibility as they defined projects to make a difference in people’s lives.
Celebrated any and all ideas that inspired passion and responsibility.
Established minimal structures to support communication and action.

The result of the Action Conferences was more than 100 projects; each defined by a group and led by a member of the community. The groups committed to work autonomously and to report regularly on their progress. You can find out about the community and their project plans on the CAN DO Minnesota Network site at http://www.candomn.ning.com/.

Today, the projects move forward, and the original planning team has disbanded. It has been replaced by volunteers who chair CAN DO Committees that oversee essential system-wide functions:

Capacity Development,
Evaluation, Funding,
Action Conference Planning, and
Communications.

One of the participating organizations provides a part-time administrator to support the network. On the first Monday of every month, those committee chairs--and anybody else who is interested--joins a conference call to find out about new developments, to share insights and questions, and to sustain the self-organizing momentum of the CAN DO Network.

It is clear that challenges remain:

How will annual follow-up Action Conferences be funded and supported?
How can the effects of the CAN DO project be documented and measured?
How will the momentum of the project be sustained over time?
What on-going resources will be available to ensure implementation of the actions that emerge from CAN DO activities?

It is equally clear that action has been taken to improve the lives of people with disabilities in Minnesota. Individuals and groups have recognized that they have the power to make a difference when they participate in self-organizing dynamics of human systems. The productive patterns that emerge when people come together under self-organizing conditions are natural, and they seem spontaneous. The more remarkable aspect of the CAN DO Network is the insight, courage, and enthusiasm of that original planning group who saw a possibility and overcame their institutional habits of prediction and control to allow the self-organizing patterns to emerge.

If you would like more information about the principles that informed the evolution of the CAN DO Network, contact the Human Systems Dynamics Institute Network of Associates (rholladay@hsdinstitute.org) or me (geoyang@hsdinstitute.org) or join the CAN DO team on one of their First Monday meetings!

Glenda Eoyang, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Human Systems Dynamics Institute

Journey from Conflict to Peace

2008-04-27T16:18:00.000-07:00

This past week we hosted the three-day workshop, Journey from Conflict to Peace. It was the first workshop about peace and conflict to be sponsored by the HSD Institute. We had 16 participants there to talk about the applications of HSD principles in conflict resolution and peace making.

In the past year, four members of the HSD Institute have met frequently to talk about the applications of HSD in the field of peacemaking. We have met with and learned from professionals who do peacemaking and conflict resolution, and we believe that we have co-created a set of tools that provide powerful insights about conflict resolution and peacemaking. Over that time, some of our most powerful insights provided the foundation for our workshop.

Conflict emerges when a system is so over-constrained or so under-constrained that it cannot self-organize or adapt toward "fit" with its environment.
Over constraint happens when the rules or laws in a system--both covert and overt--force the participants to behave in similar and predictable ways. The greater the consequences for not obeying the "rules and laws," the greater the constraints and the less likely the system will be able to adapt. Gangs are an example of this over constraint in a system. Their internal rules make them very strong and almost impenetrable, but they are unable to adapt to the environment and the greater community.

Under constraint happens when there is not enough governance or when no one set of governance is strong enough to draw all the participants in the system together to act in concert to self-organize or adapt. One example of this is what sometimes happens in a country after its government fails. There are parties and factions that fight for control, but when no one group is able to take over power, anarchy reigns and the country cannot begin to self-organize and rebuild.
The transformation that happens as the system moves toward peace or as the conflict reduces results in coherence throughout the system. Coherence brings about reduced tension in the system, aligned goals, complementary functions, and shared meaning, as well as the ability for the system to adapt both internally and externally. If you think about how it feels in a family when a conflict has been resolved, it's easy to see how this desired state is more conducive to healthy family interactions. All members of the family are able to work together to understand each other, share common goals, and function in the community.
Conflict is a function of the balance of power in the system--who has power, who doesn't have power, and how that power is used to constrain other parts of the system. This is not just a reference to the positional power that individuals have because of their elected or appointed positions in the government. It also refers to the degree to which individuals and groups have the ability to influence what happens in the system. In HSD, we refer to this power to influence as "voice." When others "speak," do those in power listen? Do groups and individuals see "Others" as viable and able to fully participate? Is there a balance in the give and take that happens between and among the groups in a society? Where that balance is not there, conflict will emerge.
The role of the peacemaker is to see and understand the dynamics of a situation, and then take steps to shift those dynamics toward appropriate levels of constraint that allow the system to adapt. The tools and principles of Human Systems Dynamics are useful to peacemakers as they take steps to resolve conflict. Many powerful peacemakers have used these insights intuitively over time, but often what we saw was that what worked in one situation didn't or couldn't work in another. By understanding the underlying dynamics in the system, peacemakers will be better able to identify those actions that are most likely to move the system toward coherence and "fit" in its environment.

I had always thought that peacemaking was for the missionaries, the NGO's, governments, or powerful people like Jimmy Carter. What I am realizing is that anyone who has the tools can understand the dynamics of a situation and take steps to support the members of that system take steps to resolve conflict. The powerful organizations and individuals can do it for other countries and large numbers of people, but I can do it for me and for my family, for my community, and for those with whom I work.

If you are interested in finding useful tools to resolve conflict at any scale, visit us at http://www.hsdinstitute.org/ and join us in our ongoing inquiry about the dynamics of peace and conflict.

What Does HSD Offer Me as a Practitioner?

2008-04-11T15:18:00.001-07:00

I have been working with different Associates through the past week or so, and I continue to be amazed--and excited--at the ways in which HSD principles are applicable to such a wide array of challenges. While I should just understand and accept it after this many years of working in the field, I am still like a kid in a candy shop when a new application emerges for me.

That realization has triggered some thinking about what it is that makes HSD such an adaptable, flexible approach to problem solving, decision making, and understanding what is going on inside your own "system."

First and most important, is the fact that HSD principles allow you to "see" the underlying dynamics of the system. Tools and concepts help us to gain that level of understanding.

Complex Adaptive Systems - Understanding that the individuals in a system make choices and interact in ways that produce patterns that, in turn, influence behavior is a profound insight into how the culture of an organization forms. When people interact in healthy, productive ways, those patterns then reinforce other actions toward health and productivity. Alternatively the same happens when those emergent patterns reflect fear or anger or any number of unhealthy, non-productive ways of working and interacting.
Eoyang CDE Model - Knowing that there are conditions that determine the speed, path, and direction of self-organization helps me to see those conditions in the situations I face. Understanding that there is a way to influence those conditions gives me options for action in a way that other approaches don't.
The Landscape Diagram - This tool provides a wonderful way of "mapping" my system so that I can understand more about why some actions might be effective in one situation but not in another. Most leadership models do not provide such a clear delineation about what dynamics cause that.
Decision Map - Sometimes people make decisions that I just don't understand. The Decision Map helps me to consider how a particular World View, specific Rules, and the Reality of life at any given moment can produce a decision that--even though I don't understand it--may be perfectly plausible if I stand in another position.

The second way in which HSD helps, is that I can take action that is directed at the point in the system where the difficulties manifest themselves. After years of hearing leadership gurus tell me to "Just do something," it is refreshing to have an approach that tells me how to decide what it is I can do.

CDE Constraints - This tool helps me to see where the constraints in my system are decreasing the effectiveness of the work. If the system is overconstrained or underconstrained, I can see where, and then take steps to shift the system and bring relief. HSD helps me to see and respond to those constraints.
Butterfly Effects - Understanding that the initial conditions influence how well or quickly self-organization will happen helps me identify ways to influence those conditions from the start to help amplify or damp the change that is moving through my organization.
Stretch and Fold - After learning about this metaphor from mathematics, I came to understand that my system can only stretch so far before it will need to fold back on itself and enter a resting period. As a leader, this helps me be alert to how I can support people in both phases, as well as to assure smooth transition between the two.
Simple Rules - It has never been enough for me to hear others extol a leader to "Walk the talk." Human beings are meaning-making entities, and without a set of articulated "rules," they come their own conclusions about what that "walk" might mean or how it influences them. When an organization has, at its core, a set of Simple Rules, there is a way to open discourse about what the "walk" is and how it can be modeled at all levels.

That brings me to the third way that HSD helps me more than any other approaches have in the past. It works at all scales in the system. I can talk with individuals about how to apply the principles in their own lives, I can talk with teams or departments about the principles and their usefullness, and I can talk with the CEO about using the principles at the organization level. HSD principles even provide a better way for me to see and understand the dynamics of situations at the national, international, and global level.

I have only hinted at the ways in which HSD provides a powerful and effective way to approach the challenges in your life. For more information, please contact us, and let's have a conversation about what HSD can do for you.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Royce Holladay
Director of The Network
Human Systems Dynamics Institute

Adaptable Responses to Crisis

2008-04-06T06:44:00.000-07:00

In recent years, a number of natural and man-made disasters have splashed across our news sources as earthquakes, hurricanes and wars have ravaged parts of the globe. The effects on people, families, and communities are beyond imagination. Can the emerging theory and practice of human systems dynamics (HSD) contribute to understanding or responding to crisis on this global scale? The answer is “no” and “yes.”

HSD cannot predict the unpredictable, but it can help identify and develop the skills to adapt effectively when emergencies arise. Here we describe five competencies that are critical to dealing effectively with crisis and how HSD helps clients build those competencies every day.

Attend to the part, whole and greater whole.
Families cannot be healthy and whole until communities become safe. People will live disrupted lives until networks of shared intimacies emerge in place of shattered families. The world depends on nations, nations on their institutions, and institutions on their people. All levels of coherence and structure are dependent on all others. While one rescue initiative may invest in a single level, the entire process must include strategies to address all.

For organizations, day-to-day experiences provide opportunities to practice this HSD skill. When people work in teams or participate in meetings, they learn to consider individual needs, the goal of the group, and the context of the larger cultural or organizational mission. As they take daily opportunities to consider the whole, the part, and the greater whole—each in the context of the other—they increase this capability that will be critical if and when crisis emerges.

Notice the noise.
Stories tell about animals sensing an approaching tsunami and moving away from the shore to safety. Other stories describe families reunited as if by miracle when an unlikely event brought loved ones together. In these and many other cases, an almost imperceptible signal may carry significant meaning. In normal times, we can afford to ignore many kinds of irrelevant noise. In times of crisis, the irrelevant may become quite significant.

Organizations do not have to become hyper-vigilant. They cannot afford to perceive or respond to everything in the world around them. They can, however, collect information from a variety of sources and filter it to find the “differences that may make a difference.”

Stay connected.
Both rescuers and those to be rescued depend on connections that remain after a disaster or ones that are rebuilt after. Many different kinds of connections play a role in the process of rescue: physical connections (roads and wires), emotional connections (friends and family), and communication connection (media and wireless networks). The earliest efforts in crisis situations rebuild failing connections that bring food, potable water, and information to sustain people as they begin to rebuild.

Staying connected is easy to do in our world of solid infrastructure and information technology. So easy, in fact, that we take it for granted. Healthy organizations work to become more aware of their networks, building the capacity to rebuild or replace them when they are disrupted by unexpected events.

Use what’s already there.
Much of any recovery effort involves making good use of whatever the disaster left behind. Acknowledging these resources and recognizing their value are keys to successful and rapid recovery. A special kind of creativity is required to use the residue from the past to build a foundation for the future, and that is exactly the capacity that will be needed as damaged regions begin to rebuild.

Organizations should identify ways to practice this skill and avoid falling into the trap of planned obsolescence by making the most of the assets they have. These principles work in many different contexts including physical, mental, relationship, and institution. Leaders recognize value in the present and use that value to establish foundations for the future.

Find strength in flexibility rather than rigidity.
Many areas hit by recent disasters had invested in up-to-date physical infrastructure in recent years. Those solid structures vanished in moments. In times of unpredictable turmoil, the flexible is more likely to survive than the rigid. This principle applies to both the physical and emotional domains. Persons whose expectations and world views are immovable have reduced capacity to respond to new and unexpected phenomena. Their rigidity makes them weaker rather than stronger in times of crisis.

To develop this capacity, leaders develop the ability to distinguish between essential and merely circumstantial issues. When they know what is of most central importance, they hold tightly to it and adapt flexibly in all other considerations.

No one can predict the unpredictable or know the unknowable, but using the principles of HSD in dealing with day-to-day challenges develops a capacity for dealing with the unexpected. The gifted and generous people who work today to rebuild devastated countries and communities are using a capacity for adaptation greater than any we can imagine. By exploring the principles of human systems dynamics, you can learn many lessons that will help you develop your own capacity for adaptation.

For more information visit
www.hsdinstitute.org
or contact us at
info@hsdinstitute.org.

Entrepreneurial Leadership:

2008-04-06T06:36:00.000-07:00

The difficulty, of course, is staying flexible enough to learn the right lessons and present enough to learn them in time! I am often struck by similarities between entrepreneurial leadership and leadership of any organization in times of change. Consider the following “entrepreneurial” questions and how you encounter them in your own leadership roles.

Who should be involved in what?
Even if formal documents describe roles and procedures, in reality it is the day-to-day experience that shapes the functional structures of an effective organization. Entrepreneurial leaders must continually ask themselves who should be involved in a particular event at a particular moment, and they have to be aware of the precedents their responses establish for the future.

How much difference is too much difference?
It is one thing to state a mission and vision, and quite another challenge to set the conditions that make the vision a reality. Essential elements must be consistent for stability and continuity. Non-essentials must introduce variability. Diversity at the edges is critical to the healthy development of an organization. Effective leaders must constantly balance similarity for stability and difference for growth and change.
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How do I spend my time?
The leader is the organization’s most valuable asset in the early stages of development or change. Later, other resources accumulate that far surpass the leader’s contribution, but at the beginning, allocation of the leader’s time constitutes a major investment decision. Strong entrepreneurial leaders establish an “investment plan” for their time and focus in a change effort.

How hard should I push; how fast should we go?

In times of great potential—like the birth of a new institution or transformation of an existing one— divergent and convergent forces are tremendous. New opportunities push the edges of the emerging organization toward rapid growth. On the other hand, resilient infrastructure and strong relationships evolve only over time. Moment to moment, leaders make critical decisions about whether to push forward or build stable foundations. For leaders in entrepreneurial or changing organizations, these questions are ever-present, but . . .

These questions have no answers. Only continually creative engagement with thoughtful partners and dynamical environments keeps these questions alive and builds adaptive action in times of change and uncertainty.

For more information about the Human Systems Dynamics Institute, visit
www.hsdinstitute.org
or contact us at
info@hsdinstitute.org.

Is Human Systems Dynamics for You?

2008-04-06T06:12:00.000-07:00

You do you NOT need human systems dynamics when . . .

you can predict exactly what will happen and when.
you can control all the behaviors of all the players.
you have perfect knowledge of all the factors at play.
you have been there, seen it, done it, and been successful before.
change is a smooth and incremental process toward shared goals.
all levels of your human systems--individuals, teams, divisions--are working together productively and masterfully.

If you are not living in such a well behaved and predictable world, then you need human systems dynamics to help you see and influence dynamic patterns as people live, work, and play together.

HSD tools and techniques help you . . .

name the complex dynamics that shape your world.
recognize your role as one who influences--rather than controls--behaviors of individuals and groups.
imagine innovative options for action that could reshape the future.
share your insights with others through simple language, models, and tools.

Your own experience and expertise might meet one or more of these needs. Organization development and management practices provide many models that name patterns of behavior in human systems. Leadership literature and lessons explain how to influence others, when control is not an option. Multiple disciplines provide advice for how to act with integrity and intention. Each of these helpful fields uses its own language and (sometimes complicated) models to explain what is happening and what you might do about it. Human systems dynamics draws all of these diverse disciplines into a coherent whole and provides simple, understandable ways to understand and influence the processes of change.

Human systems dynamics draws a wide variety of tools and metaphors from chaos and complexity, nonlinear dynamics, and social sciences. Each metaphor opens innovative ways to see and take adaptive action to influence what is happening as social, organizational, and political realities change. Three examples will demonstrate how the perspective of human systems dynamics shifts what we see and what we do in support of individuals, teams, and organizations.

Pattern: Similarities, differences, and relationships that have meaning across space and time. We talk about patterns. When change is rapid and perpetual, it is all too easy to lose track of where you are and where you’re going. Urgent details draw your attention and make it difficult to focus on the larger, systemic changes that surround you. HSD helps you become aware of patterns that will help shape the future. When you articulate the differences that make a difference, you discover sources of energy and meaning in a group. We’ve often been surprised what patterns appear when we focus on differences. A dysfunctional high school faculty found that differences in age disrupted their teamwork, so they formed mentoring relationships to cross the gap. A so-called team of middle managers discovered that their divergent interests in alcohol and golf disrupted their communications and interfered with their working relationships. These and many other cases demonstrate how important differences are in defining and improving patterns in human systems. High performing teams, cultural competency, innovation, and learning organizations are all patterns of behavior based on beneficial similarities, differences, and relationships. Cliques, bias, violence, and resistance are also patterns, but they form around other, less productive, differences. HSD tools and techniques provide a lens through which patterns become apparent. Once the differences are apparent, they become accessible to action for change.

Complex adaptive system: Collection of free individuals whose interactions produce system-wide patterns. We used to believe that human action in a business environment could be predicted and predetermined. In very specific situations and over short time periods, prediction and control may be possible. In our experience, though, unpredictability and surprise are the norm. That is why we use the concept of complex adaptive system (CAS) to talk about and to influence the relationships among individuals and between individuals and their groups. In a CAS, individuals make their own choices, and they influence and are influenced by others in the group. Over time, the influences and relationships strengthen until patterns (similarities and differences) become apparent across the group as a whole. As soon as the patterns begin to form, their influence over individual action gets stronger, and the pattern is reinforced again. This process influences individual action through habits, personal rituals, addictions, and basic attitudes. If I see the world in a negative light, the world looks dark, and my negative view is reinforced. The same process influences organizational action through organizational culture, performance expectations, group norms, and cultural expectations. Communities and nations demonstrate the same capacity to form and reinforce emergent patterns through individual action. HSD names this phenomenon, acknowledges existing tools that help shape patterns, and introduces new tools to support adaptive action in emerging situations.

Stretch and Fold: Difference brings in energy and possibility as a system stretches. Similarity reduces tension and builds stability as a system folds. A healthy complex adaptive system is constantly in motion. Parts of the system focus on differences that stretch beyond limitations of the past. Then, just as naturally, the parts move together as they focus on a joke, a shared experience, or common goal or understanding. This repeated process—stretching and folding—gives a group its resilience, diversity, and strength. The strength of the stretch, the coherence of the fold, and the time for a full stretch-and-fold cycle are never the same, but the alternating pattern can be seen and influenced using HSD tools and techniques. We have incorporated the dynamics of stretch and fold into designs for strategic planning processes, retreats, training sessions, or system-wide transformations. The approach introduces strategies and tactics that are more natural and ones that adapt easily to unexpected and uncontrolled changes in the situation.
Adaptive Action: Repeating cycles of observation, decision, and action that build capacity to respond quickly and wisely to unpredictable developments.

Today’s environment of rapid change, massive interdependency, and high risk and reward ratios require new ways to collect, analyze, and act on information as soon as it becomes available. When you depend on traditional planning and analysis procedures, you risk getting stuck in analysis paralysis and missing the next great opportunity. Adaptive Action offers an alterative. One of human systems dynamics’ fundamental methods cuts through tedious process, speeds up action, and still leaves room for on-going learning and adjustments. In the simplest and most streamlined form of Adaptive Action, the individual or group asks three questions: What? So what? Now what? These three questions move one along quickly from data collection to interpretation, to options for action. The process is perpetual. As soon as one action is taken, the first question--What?—becomes the focus again. Across a group, the Adaptive Action process works at many different levels and multiple cycle times. A whole organization might focus on the three questions annually in a planning process, while an individual computer technician might repeat the cycle many times in a single call. Like other HSD approaches, Adaptive Action opens the door to new ways of seeing and influencing patterns in times of rapid and unpredictable change.

Patterns, complex adaptive systems, stretch and fold, and adaptive action are only four of the many metaphors and models that Human Systems Dynamics Associates use to collect and analyze data about their environments and to take effective action to influence individual and group behavior. The HSD toolkit is virtually unlimited. Many of our tools come from traditional organization development and management practice. Others have emerged from related fields of complex dynamics. Still others have been developed by our Associates as they worked adaptively with their clients and colleagues. All HSD approaches are designed to be useful, simple, clear, sensitive to the complex dynamics of human systems, and adaptable to the unique circumstances and challenges of each new situation.

For more information about human systems dynamics and the HSD Institute:

Visit our website at http://www.hsdinstitute.org/.
Look for us on the OD Network website at www.odnetwork.org/resources/HSD/.
Read one of our books:

Voices from the Field: An Introduction to Human Systems Dynamics (Eoyang, ed., 2003)
Coping with Chaos: Seven Simple Tools (Eoyang, 1997)
Facilitating Organization Change: Lessons from Complexity Science (Olson & Eoyang, 2001

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter by sending a request to info@hsdinstitute.org.

2008-03-31T06:31:00.000-07:00

Journey Past Conflict

Schoolyard bully . . .
Bulldozing boss . . .
Irate customer . . .
Irritable, though significant, other . . .
War-dependent industries. . .
Political rivals . . .
Religious and cultural militants . . .

What can the theory and practice of human systems dynamics contribute to the journey toward peaceful and productive engagement?

On April 21 through 23, HSD Institute will host a time of learning and inquiry as people explore their own options for action to move from destructive conflict to productive engagement. Royce Holladay, Vic Ward, and Lois Yellowthunder will lead the way as a community comes together to explore the human systems dynamics of peaceful engagement. The lessons will be many, and they will include:

Peace travels across levels. Individual, couple, family, neighborhood, community, nation, world—every level has known and can know the destruction of conflict as well as the fruits of peace. Disruption at any of these levels influences stability of levels above and below. Peace at any encourages peace in all.

Peace is a dynamic pattern. We define a pattern as “Similarities, differences, and relationships that have meaning across space and/or time.” Seen as an emergent pattern, the search for peace boils down to three, rather concrete, questions:

What are the similarities that encourage (or force) us to interact with each other?
What differences between us are significant enough to warrant our shared attention?
What are the historical or current relationships that inform our actions?

Answers to these questions frame options for action to move beyond current conflict. Increase, decrease, or refocus the similarities and differences. Strengthen, weaken, or redirect the relationships. Of course the process isn’t quite as easy as it sounds. We think of five phases of action that help move individuals and groups toward more peaceful engagement.

Awareness. We are too often inured to violence. Our culture embeds destructive conflict in popular entertainment, media, and common figures of speech. Before we can overcome the forces of violent conflict, we have to become conscious of its presence and influence on our day-to-day lives. HSD encourages an inquiry stance in which each of us strives to be aware of and to challenge our own and others’ assumptions.

Analysis. We cannot begin to take intentional action to influence the patterns of conflict until we have some understanding of the dynamics that shape and are shaped by those patterns. Our understanding must progress beyond simple dichotomies like “us/them” or “good/evil” before we can imagine creative options for action. HSD introduces the CDE Model that defines three conditions for self-organizing systems. These conditions provide an analytical frame to help understand the dynamics of conflict without demonizing any of the players.

Engagement. Seeing and understanding are only the beginning of the journey past conflict. To influence patterns and shift them toward nonviolent relationship, we have to engage with others. After considering our options for action, we choose. We act. We observe the results of our actions, and we choose again. HSD calls this cycle of engagement the Adaptive Action Process because it enables individuals, groups, and communities to learn new ways to become more fit for survival.

Transformation. There is a part of the peace-making journey that is beyond prediction or control. We call that stage transformation. This is the stage where the massively entangled, self-organizing systems shift their patterns. Individuals have new insights and make new choices. Groups shift their focus toward shared concerns rather than divisive issues. Communities redirect their energies toward growth and opportunity for all, rather than fear and defensiveness for some. No intervention can be proven to “cause” transformation in human systems. Things that work one time and in one place may be totally ineffective at another time and place. Instead of promising power and control, HSD helps us set the conditions for transformation, and it teaches us to observe and encourage changes in the patterns as they emerge.

Sustainability. The long-term success of the journey past conflict depends on new patterns that are sustainable. The best outcomes are situations where the new similarities, differences, and relationships are productive and self-reinforcing because they do not depend on external investment. Principles of HSD suggest some specific factors that contribute to sustainable patterns in human systems. Each factor introduces practical options for action to establish sustainable patterns of peace on the other side of destructive conflict.

As students and teachers of human systems dynamics, we engage in an on-going inquiry about the theory and practice of peace. In April, we will invite others into the dialogue, share our emerging learnings, frame new and more powerful questions, and shape individual and shared action to see and influence patterns toward peace.

If you would like to join us or to hear more about this journey, please contact us by phone or on-line.

Glenda H. Eoyang, Ph.D.
geoyang@hsdinstitute.org
www.hsdinstitute.org
866-HSD-INST