Peripheral Vision: complexity

what you get here

This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.

So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020

Showing posts with label complexity. Show all posts

Thursday, February 16, 2023

Swallowed by the Internet

These last few days, I’ve had the feeling of being completely inundated by the freebies and goodies available on the internet. My interests – as readers know – are rather weird things such as the process of change; the machinery of government; the strange fixation anglo-saxons have developed over the past 40 years or so for “reforming” it; and the mental maps we use to make sense of all these things.

At the weekend, I cam across a couple of items which took me back some 5 years to the

point at which I realised I had become totally confused by all the talk about “systems

thinking” and “complexity” and developed one of my famous tables to encourage me to get some clarification. 
Here I am some 5 years later still confused – so that clearly didn’t work.

But a couple of items looked promising – first Systems thinking for social change by David Stroh (2015)

which offered 2 pluses.

It’s a lot clearer than the books I listed in 2018 and

it’s in the field of social change which is one which has long fascinated me.

Sure it’s a bit repetitive – if not formulistic in that American way – but its clarity and optimism

encourage forgiveness. There’s an interview with him here. 
His approach has been much influenced by the work of Donella Meadows and, if you read

just one thing about systems theory, I strongly urge you to read her short paper on Leverage Points which just might take you to her “Thinking in Systems – a primer”; Donella Meadows (2008)

That then led me to a little 2017 publication from the OECD – "Complexity and Policymaking” and another intriguing pamphlet Building Better Systems; Charles Leadbetter (2020) which is certainly formulaistic as indicated by this excerpt

One simple way to sum this up as a rule of thumb is to remember that 3 x 4 = 12.

• System innovation involves work across three levels, the macro, meso and micro;

• Change is unlocked using the four keys: purpose, power resources and relationships;

system innovation involves people playing 12 roles

But that led me to a highly readable book which has just been published in open edition Wicked Problems in Public Policy by Brian Head (2022) and "Complexity and the Art of Public Policy – solving society's problems from the bottom up" David Colander and Roland Kupers (2014)

As if that wasn't enough, I was then sucked in by Martin Stanley's brilliant website named simply UK Civil Servant by a QUITE BRILLIANT summary of the various recent disasters which have struck the UK. Surfing brought me material I only vaguely knew about.