Self-OrganisationAnd its influence on the organisational reality.

Marcin Czenko

Presented at:

Presented at:

ASC Eindhoven 18 October 2012

"A (good) picture is worth a thousand words" (emphasis added), but it is still nice to know what these words are. If you really want to understand what I wanted to tell in this presentation, please refer to my blog for a more complete “picture” (blog entry coming soon).

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

Immanuel Kant

The message:

our understanding of self-organisation is deformed by strong attachment to the culture of certainty backed by ill-stated

theories of management.

As a consequence:• what we do in our organisations with respect to

individuals and teams is not necessarily what we think we do;

• to better understand what is really happening in our organisations we need to challenge the soundness of the scientific foundations of management;

• there is a benefit in acknowledging uncertainty and instead of trying to control uncontrollable, learning how to live with it.

Popular context: Agile Teams

• Cross-functional

• Self-organising

• Co-located

Arrow of time ?

• Can we understand the present by looking to the past ?

• I am afraid not. But knowing etymology of some popular terms may help us improve understanding of what we are actually saying. As Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein once said: The limits of my language are the limits of my world.

I will therefore:

• Re-cap the most significant management approaches driven by the so-called sciences of certainty.

• Show what the so-called sciences of uncertainty have to offer and why we should take advantage of it.

What is self-organisation ?

Is self-organisation only applicable to humans ?

What makes self-organisation of humans different any other form of self-organisation ?

Isn’t self-organisation an anarchy or isn’t it just the same as empowerment ?

Doesn’t emergence mean that things are happening by chance ?

PART ISciences of certainty.

Three causalities

Efficient causality (Newton): cause and effect relations of a predictive,

linear nature easy to express in linear mathematical formula or as ‘if-then’

rules.

a = –––Fm

Efficient causality

Formative causality (Kant): the cause of a form is the process of formation itself in which mature version of the phenomenon is already present at the beginning and is unfolded through formative process of maturing.

Formative causality

Rationalist Causality (Kant): the body is separated from the reason in a way that the body is subject to the fixed laws of nature but the mind is governed by laws of reason. The reason makes people free.

Rationalist Causality

Efficient causality

Formative causality Rationalist Causality

Pinky(Developer)

The Brain(Manager)

Organisations as seen by the sciences of

certainty.

Reductionism

Phenomena can be explained completely in terms of other more fundamental phenomena:

• the whole could be understood by understanding its parts,

• interaction between parts unimportant.

Reductionism

Systems Thinking

The organisation is understood not as parts adding to a whole, but as system in which the interactions between its parts are of primary importance.

• General Systems Theory

• Cybernetics

• System Dynamics

Systems Thinking

Second World War

Reductionism Systems Thinking

Human motivation• Elton Mayo (1880-1949) and continued by behavioural

scientists between 1940-1960.

• Values and goals of the group should be aligned with the goals of individual, empowered, members.

• Efficiency proportional to trust and confidence in each other in a supportive and harmonious atmosphere.

• The leadership has to be accepted by the group.

• Captured in motivational rules maintained by the manager.

Reductionists or Systems Thinking approach combined with Human Motivation form the essence of the so-called Managerial Capitalism.

Managerial Capitalism

Efficient Capital Markets

The price of an asset reflects all relevant information that is available about the

intrinsic value of the asset.

Since the late1980s...

September 15, 2008

Collapse of investment capitalism.

Why ?

People are not rule-followers. They have their own goals and objectives and they choose their

own actions.

People

Angelo MoziloPhil GrammAlan GreenspanChris CoxAmerican ConsumersHank PaulsonJoe CassanoIan McCarthyFrank RainesKathleen CorbetDick FuldMarion and Herb SandlerBill Clinton

George W. BushStan O'NealWen JiabaoDavid LereahJohn DevaneyBernie MadoffLew RanieriBurton JablinFred GoodwinSandy WeillDavid OddssonJimmy Cayne

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1877351,00.html#ixzz29eHliSiV

The systemic approach is not applicable to humans.

In the Sciences of Uncertainty.

Where can we then search for a valid explanation of self-organisation and emergence ?

PART IISciences of uncertainty.

We (humans) all have brains !

Individual, team, and organisation from the perspective of the sciences of

uncertainty.

Individual

Darkness Principle

Darkness PrincipleEach element in the system is ignorant of the behaviour of the system as a whole [...] If each element ‘knew’ what was happening to the system as a whole, all of the complexity would have to be present in that element.

K.A. Richardson

"A (good) picture is worth a thousand words" (emphasis added), but it is still nice to know what these words are. If you really want to understand what I wanted to tell in this presentation, please refer to my blog for a more complete “picture” (blog entry coming soon).

Individual’s View

Individual

Interactions

Complex Adaptive Systems

Brain

Connections

Neurones

Local Interactions

Individuals

*this is weak analogy - there are no boundaries, there is no system, but there are individuals and there are interactions.

*) local interactions do not respect organisational boundaries.

Conflict

Novelty requires diversity. Diversity will only bring unexpected when

differences are respected and conflicts are allowed.

If people follow simple rules nothing novel and creative will emerge from

their self-organisation.

Diversity

• Men, women ?

• Values ? Opinions ?

• Culture ?

Geert Hofstede

• widely known Dutch researcher of culture,

• during 1978-83, he conducted detailed interviews with hundreds of IBM employees in 53 countries.

• developed five dimensions of culture.

Geert Hofstede’sCultural Dimensions

• Power-distance• Collectivism vs. individualism• Femininity vs. masculinity• Uncertainty avoidance• Long- vs. short-term orientation

Diversity and Values. How to increase probability of a successful team ?

*too high level of diversity will not stop interactions, but may reduce their use in achieving our goals. When the differences are radical, collaboration may be impeded.

Our values form disjoint sets.

*Making sure that everyone shares the same set of values might be very hard to achieve. It may actually lower the diversity in some cases.

*Again, set-theoretic representation.

*This seems to be more realistic.

*This set-theoretic semantics would indicate there is no single value accepted by everyone. This is not the intended semantics of the picture presented on the previous slide.

*This set-theoretic representation gives a more precise semantics. There is a fundamental common ground for collaboration, but enough diversity to preserve conflict.

*Diverse, but well-founded team has a better perception of the reality then any individual member.

*Making someone managing such a team is like obscuring its bright view.

Summary

Self-organisation simply means interactions between parts.

What is self-organisation ?

Yes, but in this self-organisation what emerges is the developmental pattern of the whole, which is already enfolded in the system design. Thus, this self-organisation does not lead to novel forms, neither does it bring creativity.

But...wasn’t self-organisation already present in the formative causality ?

The systemic approach is not applicable to humans.

Self-organisation framed in formative causality is not

appropriate model for human interaction.

What emerges from self-organisation of non-humans is rarely novel or creative. This is because people have soul, free-will, and are different.

What makes self-organisation of humans different any other form of self-organisation ?

No. None of those. See also the power law.

Isn’t self-organisation an anarchy or isn’t it just the same as empowerment ?

No. The opposite is true.Emergence is the result of many local interactions. It really depends on what we are doing and what we are not doing.

Doesn’t emergence mean that things are happening by chance ?

Our job is to reassess our management practices in the

context of uncertainty sciences.

We are in charge but no-longer in control !*

Even though we do not know the outcomes of our actions we may now at least start thinking

about the dynamics of local interactions.

*) Ralph Stacey

Transformative Causality (Prigogine, Илья́ Рома́нович Приго́жин): local interactions (self-organisation) between diverse agents forms population-wide patterns (emergence) while at the same time being formed by those patterns.

1997

Ralph Stacey

?

Some of the pictures were used in this presentation without asking for permission.

These pictures are:

• Pinky and the Brain:http://4iphonewallpapers.com/pinky-and-the-brain-iphone-4-wallpaper.html

• Tom and Jerry:http://www.wallpapersfordesk.com/tom-and-jerry-wallpapers-2011.html/tom-and-jerry-wallpapers-2011-5

• Immanuel Kant:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant

• Three Little Pigs:http://www.kidsgen.com/fables_and_fairytales/three_little_pigs.htm

• Isaac Newton http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/universe/scientists/isaac_newton

Some of the pictures were used in this presentation without asking for permission.

These pictures are:

•A hammer:http://www.nvtc.ee/e-oppe/Marina/tools/materials.html

•Growing Potato:http://www.potato2008.org/en/kids/grow.html

• Brain:http://www.how-to-draw-funny-cartoons.com/cartoon-brain.html

•Duck of Descartes:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism

• Lehman Brothers Bonds:http://www.distressed-debt-investing.com/2010/08/advanced-distressed-debt-lesson-double.html

Some of the pictures were used in this presentation without asking for permission.

These pictures are:

• Lord Vader:http://weinterrupt.com/2011/04/little-girl-happily-submits-to-the-dark-side/

•Neurone:http://adrianbowyer.blogspot.nl/2010/12/hardwired.html

•Илья́ Рома́нович Приго́жин:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Prigogine

• Book covers:http://www.amazon.co.uk

• Ralph Stacey:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Douglas_Stacey