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Transduction - leading transformation - Issue #28

Benjamin P Taylor
Benjamin P Taylor
@antlerboy
Published on LinkedIn, GetRevue and substack, this is my weekly roundup of things I’ve shared in the last week - and I’ve dropped back in time to share the highlights from two older newsletters from the summer…

top phive of the week
My top LinkedIn posts (you won’t BELIEVE number 77!) ;-) – the once-chosen path
I joined LinkedIn way back in April 2007, thanks to a colleague who came back from a course at the Harvard Kennedy School and told me that everyone in the US was on it. Around that period, and particularly from 2009 onwards, it was a good way to tell which public service clients were doing…
chosen-path.org
How to hack LinkedIn
How to hack LinkedIn
Every Monday and Wednesday I do a LinkedIn post that I put some special effort into. I’ve been doing this religiously for some time and (including a few ‘normal’ posts that got a bit of traction, I’ve now done 176 such posts. The last few have had really good ‘viewing figures’: 34,875 Will you come … Continue reading How to hack LinkedIn →
chosen-path.org
An outline approach to organisation or service review
An outline approach to organisation or service review
What tools, approaches, perspectives do you reach for when you have to review an organisation, service, team, or department? Here’s my ‘go to’ list when I am asked to look at a whole ‘service’, usually in public services. This is a sketch of methods and views we use to try to get a rounded view … Continue reading An outline approach to organisation or service review →
chosen-path.org
What do you think when you see someone flying this flag?
What do you think when you see someone flying this flag?
My view is that the least British thing of all to do is to fly the flag, outside of very special ceremonies and very limited occasions. In the ‘Cool Britannia’ era, ‘progressives’ like me began to feel it was ‘safe’ — and maybe a good thing — to embrace a bit of patriotism. This was perhaps not unconnected to … Continue reading What do you think when you see someone flying this flag? →
chosen-path.org
What is work? What’s your definition? – the once-chosen path
What is work? What’s your definition? – the once-chosen path
It’s a deeply cybernetic concept – and it’s incredibly useful to realise this. Gangs of men on relief work during the depression, 1930s, by Sam Hood Work is: >> ‘effort, to a purpose, using judgement and discretion, within boundaries, over time’. << (This is based on two definitions by Elliott Jacques, given with citations below).…
chosen-path.org
systems | complexity | cybernetics
Why fruit rots: theoretical support for Janzen's theory of microbe–macrobe competition | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
We present a formal model of Janzen’s influential theory that competition for resources between microbes and vertebrates causes microbes to be selected to make these resources unpalatable to verteb…
royalsocietypublishing.org
Lee Kee Kok – Life and thought 20210415 – YouTube | Systems Community of Inquiry
Lee Kee Kok – Life and thought 20210415 – YouTube | Systems Community of Inquiry
In the www.systemschanges.com chat on chat.diglife.coop, David Ing says: Keekok Lee was interviewed in April 2021 by the Global University for Sustainability, at https://youtu.be/BmaOTvwg2R8?t=3507 . I listened to the whole talk (while bicycling), and have provided the link with the index to 58m27s of a rather long life history running 1h52m40s. I’m a completist, so…
stream.syscoi.com
ISSS conference 2021 videos online | Systems Community of Inquiry
Online 2021 Public ISSS 2021 Annual Conference was online using the cvent platform, July 7-14 2021.  Select video recordings from essions are here for public viewing. For these videos all participants have agreed for the video recordings from sessions to be shared publicly. Many other video recordings are reserved for members only on a different pageOnline…
stream.syscoi.com
The Sciences of Complexity and “Origins of Order” | Kauffman (1990) | Systems Community of Inquiry
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association: Vol 1990, No 2 The Sciences of Complexity and “Origins of Order” Stuart A. Kauffman AbstractPDF Abstract This article discusses my book, Origins…
stream.syscoi.com
The Impossibility of Automating Ambiguity | Birhane (2021) | Systems Community of Inquiry
Artificial Life | MIT Press June 11 2021 The Impossibility of Automating Ambiguity Abeba BirhaneAuthor and Article Information Artificial Life (2021) 27 (1): 44–61 https://doi.org/10.1162/artl_a_00336 Abstract On the one hand, complexity science and enactive and embodied cognitive science approaches emphasize that people, as complex adaptive…
stream.syscoi.com
Systems Convening (Wenger – Trayner) – Systems Changes – Open Learning Commons ¦ David Ing | Systems Community of Inquiry
Systems Changes daviding Given that Etienne Wenger’s original research coming out of the Institute for Research on Learning at Xerox popularized Communities of Practice (mind the subtitle of Learning, Meaning and Identity), I can’t say that I’m surprised at the continuing development of their work. The focus is on the…
stream.syscoi.com
After “Jane-Jacobs-Thought”| Doug Saunders | 2021 – Systems Changes – Open Learning Commons | Systems Community of Inquiry
Systems Changes cities urbanism Aug 8 1 / 2 Aug 9 1m ago daviding 14h When Jane Jacobs passed in 2006, she was said to have been studying suburbs. Her work had been famous in urban cores. As a systems thinker, however, part of her curiosity about suburbs was…
stream.syscoi.com
Observations on Observing, The Case Continues: | Harish's Notebook - My notes... Lean, Cybernetics, Quality & Data Science.
Observations on Observing, The Case Continues: | Harish's Notebook - My notes... Lean, Cybernetics, Quality & Data Science.
Art by Audrey Jose In today’s post, I am continuing from the last post, mainly using the ideas of Dirk Baecker. We noted that every observation is an operation of distinction, where an observer crosses a line, entering a marked state. This is shown in the schematic below. Here “a” refers to the marked state…
harishsnotebook.wordpress.com
Complexity Management Theory: Motivation for Ideological Rigidity and Social Conflict – Peterson and Flanders (2002) | Systems Community of Inquiry
Cortex 38(3):429-58 DOI: 10.1016/S0010-9452(08)70680-4 Source PubMed Jordan B PetersonJoseph L Flanders We are doomed to formulate conceptual structures that are much simpler…
stream.syscoi.com
Finally – I’m seen! | Wenger-Trayner | Systems Community of Inquiry
Systems conveners: essential workers long term In 2014, we wrote a chapter on what we called “systems conveners,” people who work to increase learning capability across a whole social landscape that includes many practices, institutions, and stakeholders. It’s not just…
stream.syscoi.com
public | service | transformation
One Team Gov’s one big goal for 2022 (and a few smaller ones) | by DavidBuck | OneTeamGov | Medium
One Team Gov’s one big goal for 2022 (and a few smaller ones) | by DavidBuck | OneTeamGov | Medium
Drafted by Nour Sidawi and DavidBuck and reviewed by the ever generous Sam Villis on behalf of everyone at One Team Gov. One Team Gov is a public sector reform movement whose aim is to take practical…
medium.com
Long live commissioning - PSTA
Commissioning is dead. So why the hell won’t it go away?
www.publicservicetransformation.org
Long live commissioning! But what shall we call it? – the once-chosen path
What do you call an approach that moves #publicservices from ‘spending money on services to meet needs’ to ‘intervening and learning in the complex systems that actually shape our lives’? latest piece in the Municipal Journal The former sees ‘services’ as the whole universe, brought into being by our public service cash. The latter sees…
chosen-path.org
Level with us: Lords told social value must be 100% objective | The Social Enterprise Magazine - Pioneers Post
Level with us: Lords told social value must be 100% objective | The Social Enterprise Magazine - Pioneers Post
The House of Lords has been exploring how public services can be bolder in ‘levelling up’ communities around the UK. Three experts told the Lords Public Sector Services Committee why 15% ‘added value’ isn’t good enough.
www.pioneerspost.com
150 more councils close to financial brink, government admits | Inside Croydon
150 more councils close to financial brink, government admits | Inside Croydon
Other local authorities, including Tory-run councils, are also finding themselves  in a slough of despond Croydon is just one of 150 local authorities that have been in urgent talks with Whitehall over their precarious financial situation following 18 months of covid lockdowns on top of a decade of Tory austerity. That’s according to testimony to…
insidecroydon.com
@ServiceReform: Video: 'The Adaptive Council' - the PSTA at Essex LearnFest here:>> What capability do #publicservices most need in 2022 and beyond? <<
Video: ‘The Adaptive Council’ - the PSTA at Essex LearnFest https://t.co/PajVP98AbRmore here:>> What capability do #publicservices most need in 2022 and beyond? <<https://t.co/PbzJ7M3BP0
— PSTA (@ServiceReform) December 2, 2021
twitter.com
organisational development / transformation
Why we need #metaconsulting – the once-chosen path
Have you ever seen #consultants deliver the right thing — in the wrong time and place? Go wrong because they were trying to impose their model, not adapt to circumstances? Many consultancies are one-trick ponies, and that kinda works. They do one thing and they do it well, giving people variants of the same approach. The less…
chosen-path.org
The Peter Block Community Exercise 
connection, gifts, community: better than ‘a warmup’
chosen-path.org
Half of Gen-Z would leave job if not given a hybrid work option
Half of Gen-Z would leave job if not given a hybrid work option
Even though two-thirds of workers surveyed by workspace technology company say hybrid benefits mental health and ultimately productivity, over half believe that their employers don’t seem prepared to implement it.
www.computerweekly.com
ethics in public service
Travel: 'Profiteering' PCR test firms removed from Government website are 'reappearing under new names'
The Government has admitted that the providers listed on its own webpage ‘may not have full accreditation’ - and has insisted it has not ‘recommended or approved’ any firm
inews.co.uk
Traumatic Brain Injury and the criminal justice system - Russell Webster
Hope Kent and Professor Huw Williams highlight the prevalence of traumatic brain injury (TBI) among people in contact with the justice system, and its links with offending.
www.russellwebster.com
The Death of the Last Good Chap – Byline Times
The Death of the Last Good Chap – Byline Times
Why do those in positions of power now evade accountability despite numerous examples of incompetence, dangerous liaisons, lies, and even corruption at the heart of Boris Johnson’s Government? Because the British political system allows them to, says Gavin Esler
bylinetimes.com
Tories fined £17,800 for breaching electoral law over Downing Street flat refurbishment - Mirror Online
The Conservative Party has been fined by the Electoral Commission after failing to follow the rules over Boris Johnson’s lavish refurbishment of his grace-and-favour pad
www.mirror.co.uk
Capita undercuts British Council to run Turing student exchange scheme | Students | The Guardian
Exclusive: Government strips council of role in programme, which replaced Erasmus after Brexit
www.theguardian.com
Virginia Giuffre: Prince Andrew accuser files civil case in US - BBC News
Virginia Giuffre: Prince Andrew accuser files civil case in US - BBC News
Virginia Giuffre alleges the Duke of York sexually assaulted her when she was 17 years old.
www.bbc.com
environmental and social justice
S. Janoff Chapter: Striving for Wholeness | Future Search
Our global systems are fragmented and collapsing in front of us. Here I share my perspective on why systems are broken, my experience working with intractable issues that cross many boundaries and my call to leverage our role as social scientists. I believe we can create a world that works for all, but it takes seeing our differences as resources, faith that we all aspire to wholeness and courage to discover what we do not yet know.
futuresearch.net
more brain food
The world is grey – and it’s a lot more interesting that way. – the once-chosen path
The world is grey – and it’s a lot more interesting that way. – the once-chosen path
What does the shift to the collective journey mean to you? I was raised on Star Wars. stay on target Almost literally; we went on exchange to the USA when I was five, and I saw the movie 14 times that year. I’m sure I could have recited the entire script for you well into…
chosen-path.org
Seeing Like a Finite State Machine — Crooked Timber
Reading this tweet by Maciej Ceglowski makes me want to set down a conjecture that I’ve been entertaining for the last couple of years (in part thanks to having read Maciej’s and Kieran…
crookedtimber.org
There’s been a kerfuffle about ‘stage theory’. What do you think? – the once-chosen path
There’s been a kerfuffle about ‘stage theory’. What do you think? – the once-chosen path
Can we really say that people progress through different levels of ability to deal with #complexity across their life? And that we can measure and identify what level people are at? Predict how they’ll develop? And select and promote people based on that? Or, as Nora Bateson said when she began the tango, will it…
chosen-path.org
What does ‘the power to transcend paradigms’ mean? | by Benjamin P. Taylor | Medium
Epistemic status — just a rushed response when what I wanted to say became too long for a tweet stream. I agree — this is unlikely to happen unless people (or organisations) are at one of those ‘late…
antlerboy.medium.com
United on Sunday: The effects of secular rituals on social bonding and affect
Religious rituals are associated with health benefits, potentially produced via social bonding. It is unknown whether secular rituals similarly increase social bonding. We conducted a field study with individuals who celebrate secular rituals at Sunday Assemblies and compared them with participants attending Christian rituals.
journals.plos.org
2021/08/09 Normal Accidents, High Reliability, Wicked Messes | Coevolving Innovations | Systems Community of Inquiry
Have we learned from brushes with disaster, or have we become complacent about complexities in everyday life? On March 28, 1979, an accident…
stream.syscoi.com
Speaking gigs – what do you think? – the once-chosen path
Do you have tips how to get the best results out of them? My mission seems to be to spread the good-humoured word about systems | cybernetics | complexity. I wanted to change the world by transforming consultancy and transforming public services, and, well, in the words of Tesla about the ‘self-driving’ myth – ‘the…
chosen-path.org
interlude
tlk.io
Good old-school simple web chat.
tlk.io
Did you enjoy this issue? Yes No
Benjamin P Taylor
Benjamin P Taylor @antlerboy

systems|complexity|cybernetics in public|service|transformation, and stuff...

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