So what’s the big deal about 3-sigma. Is it just 6-Sigma for under-achievers? Is it only for statistical geeks? Why should anyone give a hoot?
As with all powerful ideas, 3-sigma is simple, yet difficult to get your head around. Although there is no short explanation, here’s the shortest answer I can provide. It goes like this…
——–Sticky Post——–
I have just finished reading a facinating and in my view, very important article on how the brain works. David Robson, in his article in New Scientist, “Disorderly genius: How chaos drives the brain”, explains recent research that confirms the theory that the brain is driven by a dynamic tension between stability and orderliness and instability and disorder. New Scientist includes includes an accompanying video clip that in my opinion, is best view after reading the full text of the article.
In a broad sense, the research findings represent a theory of the emergent properties of systems that can be applied as an explanatory framework for many types of systems. it is particularly powerful in describing the way in which knowledge is created.
In the section of my blog called “About Three Sigma Systems” I explain this and offer the following illustration of the process.
Catch the Wave
The wave in this illustration represents the ever-moving present in which we experience, do, and observe. Deming’s PDSA is illustrated in a dialectal form that represents our continuous efforts at interpreting the world in an orderly fashion. The dynamic tension between our experience of disorderliness and our construction of orderly explanations (theory) drives the process of knowledge creation forward in the same manner as that described in David Robson’s article.
The process is one in which successive tipping points are reached as each theoretical construction succumbs to the evidence of our “Doing”. With each collapse, small and big, we act to realign experience with theory—to restore order. In this way, knowledge is never repeated, it is only created.
C. I. Lewis, Walter Shewhart, and W. E. Deming were onto this idea of knowledge creation. Dr. Deming referred to is as “continuous improvement”. By understanding this process, it is possible for an enterprise to organize itself to operate closer to the fine line between order and chaos. This is the competitive edge of knowledge creation. In his article, Robson rightly explains this as process by which “genius” as realized.
One of my most popular workshops illustrates in very concrete terms, just how the process of walking the line between order and chaos makes things happen and I have been meaning to post it here and will do so as soon as I can get the content formatted for the Web, so keep an eye out for it.
“Information and entropy are not conserved, and are equally unsuited to being commodities.”
Norbert Wiener, “The Human Use of Human Beings”
In his book review “Priced to Sell” in this week’s New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell, auth0r of “Outliers” and “Tipping Point”, reviews Chris Anderson’s “Free” . Gladwell roundly criticizes Anderson, characterizing him as a “technological utopian”. Evidently Anderson takes the position that the price of intellectual products must be reduced to zero (i.e Free). Gladwell is correct in arguing that Anderson is getting it all wrong, but he only manages a glancing blow at the challenges posed by the ubiquity, accessibility, and low cost of the “new media”.
In his own way, Anderson is trying to deal with the observation that intellectual property rights are on the ropes under the new technological regime. The concept of intellectual property rights was founded on the model of tangible property rights that assigned legal ownership of land and material to individuals. When applied to intangible assets, some tortured logic is needed to draw the line between ideas that can be owned and those that are just “out there” in the ever-flowing stream of knowledge creation.
Prior to the electronic digital age, the principal means for controlling intellectual “property” fell to the publisher/gate-keepers who controlled the means by which ideas deemed by them as “valuable” enough, could be disseminated. The commercial alliance between publishers who controlled the means of dissemination and producers of ideas, is now being ripped apart.
The subject of ideas as property has long fascinated me as part of the puzzle of how humans continuously create new knowledge and how some new knowledge gains sway in certain circumstances. Rather than go into great detail regarding this process, I want to call to your attention to some very useful ideas put forth by Norbert Wiener in his book, “The Human Use of Human Beings” (1950). There is much to recommend in this book, but I want to direct attention specifically to Wiener’s discussion of the nature of information as a commodity (Chapter VII).
“There is no Maginot Line of the brain.”
The legalistic model of intellectual property rights is fast becoming untenable under the new technological regime. I believe that the new model will need to become one of “pay for performance”. This means that the producer of intellectual products becomes more like an hourly worker are the artisan. The idea creator gets paid for each performance and then moves on to the next performance. The ideas themselves, once created, have flown away to become part of the flow of human conversation. They become commingled and irrevocably transformed once they have entered the ever-flowing stream of knowledge creation.
In fact, as the Maginot Line between the “The Commons” and the multi-national corporation’s interests becomes increasingly fuzzy, this pay-for-performance model may pave the way to some new ways of looking at private ownership of “stuff” as well. (Norbert Wiener manages to take some stabs at the nature of material “stuff” as well.)
Ants, termites, and bees are arguably among the most successful species on earth. From an evolutionary standpoint they predate Homo sapiens and today it is estimated that they constitute a total biomass that is roughly comparable to that of humans. By most measures of biological success, they have done very well.
Casting of Harvester ant nest
In their book, “The Superorganism”, Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson argue that these species have survived, evolved, and prospered not as individual creatures, but solely in the context of their collective, colonial existence. Because the individuals among these species cannot survive alone, the authors speculate that the best way to understand their success is to view each colony as a super-organism in which individual behavioral groups act as organs of the greater organism.
The organization of the various representatives of these species varies in complexity, reaching its most complex form in the “eusocial” colonies that feature extreme physiological and behavioral division of labor. Altruistic soldiers and workers sacrifice themselves for the welfare of the colony as a whole. Multiple queens negotiate reproductive rights. Extra queens and reproductive workers refrain from laying eggs unless something happens to the reproductive queen. Some workers forage, others care for the young, and still others do farming and nest maintenance. The welfare of the colony as a whole is the supreme calling of these creatures.
The behavior of individual eusocial insects is actually governed by simple behavioral rules that are genetically programmed. Taken in isolation, these simple behaviors make no sense whatsoever. But when the rules are acted out among many, many, others, there emerges a complexity of combined behavior—a colonial “mind”—that boggles the imagination.
Without blueprints, genetic or otherwise, insect superorganisms produce nests the boggle the imagination. They harvest and cultivate plants. They create nurseries for their eggs and then others for their larvae. The physiological divisions among them are often determined by caregivers who nurture generic larvae in different ways, depending on the needs of the colony. And individuals bred for one job, shift jobs when the colony’s priorities change.
A good way to imagine how this works is to consider an instrumentalist playing the notes from an orchestral score without the other players. The notes played have very little musical meaning. The player stops playing from time to time, as if waiting for something—but what? It is only when the player begins playing with the orchestra as a whole that the interrelationships between all the players playing allows the sublimely elegant and complex music to emerge. Enthralled as we listen, our minds reach out to pinpoint which individuals are responsible for the music’s quality but our habit of knowing deceives us into such nonsense. No individual can make that music. Only the orchestral colony as a whole can do that.
An improvisational jazz ensemble is an even better example because the score played by the group is not written in advance. Instead, a theme is adopted and the players improvise on that theme using some basic rule of musicality—meter, scales, rhythm, chords, etc. The music that emerges from the interactions of the colony constitutes music but it is not the reproduction of some composer’s specification. It emerges as something altogether new!
I think humans are eusocial creatures. As individuals, they cannot come into existence alone and they cannot survive and prosper alone. Their repertoire of rules is made up from the language they share. Like a jazz ensemble, the interplay of their relentless conversation creates a constantly emerging music of new knowledge by which they make their way in the world.
Can you hear the music?
Long ago I travelled across Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan, who’s borders belie a greater region once known as Persia. In its time, the Persian Empire was populated by a people distinct in language and culture from the nomadic Arabs. The Persians, as most Iranians I know still prefer to be called, were able to create a high culture in which learning and discovery were much revered. V. S. Naipaul, in his book “Among the Believers” suggests that the 1979 Iranian revolution was more of a revolt against the oppressive American-backed regime of the Shah, than a move toward Islamic fundamentalism.
As a traveler, my experience with Iranians, nee Persians, was that their culture is the most urbane in the region called the Middle East. Though they take pride and joy in their history, they are quick to embrace and improve upon modern ideas and methods. I have a strong sense that repressive Islamic theocracy is not viable in their long-term and current events may presage a change toward the re-emergence of the best in Persian character.
Omar Khayyam (Persian, born 1048 AD, Neyshapur, Persia, mathematician, philosopher, astronomer and poet.)
Omar Khayyam, the Persian polymath, philosopher and poet born in 1048 AD, is credited with penning “The Rubaiyat” made famous by the English translator, Edward Fitzgerald. The Rubaiyat consists of a collection of short 4-line Haiku-like poems, called quatrains. I find many of Khayyam’s quatrains evocative of some key systems thinking ideas. Some argue that Fitzgerald’s translation cannot be trusted, but given Khayyam’s remarkable contributions in Algebra and Astronomical theory, I am inclined to think that the ideas conveyed in the English translation are more consistent with the original than some critics suggest.
On the nature of knowledge, Khayyam wrote:
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it
This quatrain, among my favorites, always comes to my mind when I reflect on a blog entry that I have posted and then later, regretted. I ask myself if I should erase it from my blog with a tap on the DEL key but of course, like it or not, the DEL key cannot erase the ideas I have unleashed into the world. I have no power to erase the past, I only have the power to shape my future in doing what I do here and now.
You cannot undo the past you created. You cannot unlearn, unmake, or erase. What is passed is now committed within you, here and now. Make of it what you can.
In another of my favorite quatrains, Khayyam evokes the the idea of transcending the reductive mind through intentional action.
For I remember stopping by the way
To watch a Potter thumping his wet Clay:
And with its all-obliterated Tongue
It murmur’d–”Gently, Brother, gently, pray!”
And then the potter’s hot pipkin product—-a quatrain about the coincidence of what is created and its creator.
Whereat some one of the loquacious Lot–
I think a Sufi pipkin-waxing hot–
“All this of Pot and Potter–Tell me then,
Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?”
The concept of evolution is often misapplied in discussions of social change. This is an obstacle to understanding and improvement. Although the process of evolutionary emergence articulated by Charles Darwin is continuous and ongoing, it is best understood as a “weak force” for change in the human circumstance. The “strong force” that propels change in human affairs is the interplay of socially constructed ideas about how the world works and how we can work our will upon the world.
Evolution refers to a process of random genetic variation, in which some genetically shaped phenotypes are “selected” in the context of a given environment. The characteristics that are “selected for” by an organism’s environmental circumstance, derive from a genetic pool of others who also vary, but in ways that are not quite as useful in terms of survival to reproductive maturity.The cornerstone of Darwin’s theory is that the process of evolution is devoid of intention.
When we seek an explanation for the emergence of the Homo sapiens as a phenotype, we are right to employ Darwin’s theory of natural selection. *Interestingly, I am currently reading a rather technical book entitled “The Superorganism”, in which the author’s put forth a Darwin-based explanation for the selection of altruistic genes over selfish genes in eusocial insects.) Although we should begin our explanation of the emergence of humans in terms of natural selection, the power of that explanatory framework for understanding socio-cultural change diminishes once humans have emerged as intentional beings. Darwin actually points the way in this regard in the first chapter of Origins, “Variation Under Domestication”, in which selection of animal phenotypes is determined by intentional human actors. In this case, randomness remains the engine of variation, but human intentionality becomes the selector. This might be called “unnatural selection”. Unnatural selection of phenotypes is ubiquitous in human affairs, and no more so than in the case of the selection of humans themselves. The selection criteria employed by intentional humans are culturally determined.
Understanding unnatural selection is useful, but even this understanding is insufficient for understanding the nature of change in human affairs. The most powerful change process at work in human society is the dialectical interplay of the ideas that shape our relations, our predictions, and our actions. This is the self-created symbolic world that uniquely defines what it is to be human. All to briefly, our consciousness emerges as a communal narrative which is generated in human interaction. The narrative must be communal because shared theory of the world is a necessary precondition for communication. But the communal narrative, like DNA, is never replicated exactly the same in every human actor. Each individual’s theory-based narrative (a predictive construction) varies on the basis of their individual experience as an actor in the world. In other words, we share the same symbolic/theoretical universe but we never share the exact same experience of that universe. We share a conception of the world but we are diverse in that conception. We vary.
As we act as predictive creatures in a theory-based reality, the efficacy of our actions is never perfect. As groups and as individuals, we observe that some of our ideas work better than others. It is the interplay of ideas, action, and observation that drives a conflictual/competitive process of knowledge creation in which anomalous outcomes force the revision of some ideas and overthrow of others. What is uniquely human is that we need not wait for random genetic variation to deliver solutions. Our collaborative intentionality drives a process of knowledge creation. (Interestingly, this interactive model of knowledge creation is mirrored in W. E. Deming’s PDSA, which is simply a rigorous application of the knowledge creating process.)
It should be clear that the process I describe above is idealized. Genetic evolution is messy and so too, is the dialectal process by which knowledge is created. The principle differences are:
— Evolution is driven by randomness and non-intentionality. The emergence of new characteristics in organisms is not a process of improvement but rather, an expression of what happens to work in a given time and place.
— Social change is driven by intentional actors who make theory based predictions., act on those predictions, and upon observing the efficacy of those actions, redefine, renew, and recreate their theory-based conception of reality.
The social change dynamic I describe here in idealized form, provides an answer to the question of WHY conscious social action was selected for in the process of evolution. As with all species, the process of selection is inherently inefficient. It produces very odd creatures who behave in very odd ways. The selection of social consciousness is part of a whole creature in which reside many paradoxes and contradictions. The contradictions produced by the reductive mind are emerging as particularly important in our time. Systems thinking represents one way of addressing the problems produced by the reductive mind. It is a product of the contradictions of reductionism that have arisen in our unique technological age in which the untempered technological power produced by our reduction threatens our survival as a species.
In the beginning there was “We”.
We are self-created beings We can either abdicate our responsibility to others through whom our illusion of individuality is created and sustained, or we can choose to embrace our responsibility to our creative fellows. Altruism is the wellspring of the socially constructed mind, self, and society. It is on the basis of human collaboration that we come into being and that we become able to create and continuously improve knowledge through the constructive interplay of competing ideas and methods.
Our options are indeed limited by our time and place in history, but our aims are not limited by these conditions. Nor are we fettered by so-called human nature. As intentional beings, we can undertake whatever journey we choose. Let us hope that our choice of aims is grounded in that which we value most as a species, for only these things can enable our continued survival. When we choose to act with a constancy of purpose, we will discover, create, and improve who and what we are. If we choose to believe that we are governed by some “true nature”, then we will surely succumb to that illusion.
We are the system and the system is us.
I always argue the we are products of our time and place in history. The meaning in our lives is made up from the story we continually strive to create among others out of the raw materials handed to us by our history. This morning I revisited a little book that did much to shape my life’s journey.
In his book, “Man’s Search for Meaning” , Victor Frankl, a psychiatrist and survivor of the Holocaust, remembers that in order to survive the trials of the camps….
“We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and mediation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual”.
W. E. Deming spoke of meaning in terms of creating “aims”.
In 1997, television journalist Clare Crawford-Mason, gave a speech to the Deming Institute in which she discussed the philosophical discoveries she made since her interviews with Dr. W. E. Deming in the documentary, “If Japan Can, Why Can’t We“. She began,
” I met Dr. Deming in his basement in 1979, interviewed him there several times, understood nothing of what he said except the statement, ‘I taught the Japanese to work smarter not harder.’ However, I recognized that he was a prophet ignored in his homeland and knew that this was a story and reported it with Lloyd Dobyns in “If Japan Can,Why Can’t We?” the NBC White Paper in l980.”
Clare’s far reaching speech was new reading to me but her discussion of the “philosophical” implications of Deming’s work was right on target. It has been many years since I read Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. I recall being much impressed by their writings, though I regarded them at the time as a bit too mystical for my taste.
Deming’s work represents a theory of knowledge which he came to by way of wrestling with the problems of variation’s ubiquity. This theory of knowledge can be readily translated as a theory of the emergence and structure of human consciousness. Over the years I have found many avenues of approach to this subject in the literature of both science and philosophy. I assume that Deming also found similar sources. What is clear is the work of the arch Pragmatist, C. I. Lewis, figured prominently in the thinking of Deming’s mentor, Walter Shewhart and by extension, I conclude the same was true for Deming.
My blog features a sticky post in which I make an all-too-clumsy effort at explaining in lay terms, how control chart theory is based in a theory of human consciousness (http://www.3sigma.com/whats-so-special-about-3-sigma/ ). I continue to work on it.
In a nutshell, a theory of knowledge (or consciousness if you prefer) speaks to the nature of knowing—it’s potential and its limits. Gurdjieff and Ouspensky tackled this subject with ideas about other forms of knowing. Deming’s other form of knowing was “statistical” and he carefully avoided anything that rang of mysticism. I fall into the Deming camp in this regard.
Systems thinking comes down to developing methods and instincts for hearing the voice of the process, or if you will, the voice of the system. This is the opposite of the reduction that has become the common sense of by-the-numbers and just-the-facts thinking in Western enterprise. Simply put, reduction destroys the object of study. Systems thinking preserves the interacting whole so that we can hear its heat beat, breathing, meaning, and other vital signs. Hearing and understanding the voice is the means by which the intractable interactions that define a system can be brought within the grasp of the naturally reductive mind. Prediction improves. Decisions become more efficacious. Doors to understanding open continually.
Without leadership that understands this way of seeing and understanding, our future remains determined by the fundamental flaws of scientistic reductionism. This was why Deming said, “How could they know?” Without this understanding, they can’t even ask the right questions.
As readers of this blog know, I am a fan of Simon Johnson and have written several blog entries calling his work to attention. His theoretical perspective is very interesting and definitely systems oriented. In todays Washington Post article, “U.S. Will Let Some Banks Repay Aid“, he once again consuls caution. All may not be what it appears to be.
Fat Cats (borrowed from http://groundnotes.wordpress.com)
As in IMF official Johnson’s job was to wrap his head around the economic systems of nations in dire straits in order to provide assistance that could predictably improve their situation. The one common denominator he found was that powerful oligarchies manipulated those systems in order to maximize their gains. Tampering effects rendered any theory-based reconstruction efforts ineffectual because the path of funds allocated for economic reconstruction were siphoned off or redirected in unpredictably cunning ways by oligarchs and regulatory efforts were consistently subverted. He said that in his practical experience, the solution always required the removal of assignable causes (my Deming-ese) by breaking up the oligarchies that are always emergent in order to clear the playing field, after which new oligarchies will emerge again. As the power of newly emergent oligarchies increase ever again, these too will need to be broken up to restore the “system”.
What is so very interesting is that Johnson sees that an economic system becomes unpredictable (becomes a non-system) once enough power is accumulated by self-interested parties for them to manipulate the system in devious and self-serving ways. In effect, oligarchical actors are system busters, not system builders. Johnson has advocated using the current melt-down as an opportunity to break up the massive and very sophisticated “to big to fail” oligarchical interests in order to bring stability and predictability to the Western economies.
In the moment, it is likely that the opportunity he saw is now lost. The financial industry, bailed out on the premise that they are “to big to fail”, has succeeded in forestalling serious efforts a busting their oligarchical powers. Current efforts at regulating their financial machinations are fast becoming window dressing. THEIR crisis is passed and they are once again hard at work manipulating the “system” in accordance with their “fiduciary responsibilities” to the corporation and the corporate shareholders.
In the meanwhile, small business failures, plant closures, and layoffs will continue unabated for some time to come. The problem of ongoing foreclosures is abated by government assurances.
Will things get back to “normal”? That all depends on who’s normal you are talking about.
Our educational system is stuck in a Henry Ford production line model that views students as the “objects” of the educational enterprise rather than as “participants” in the educational enterprise. What would you “learn” about the business of living if you spent 12+ years in the postion of an “object”?
(The following commentary is from a correspondence initiated by Alan Pippenger of Tallahassee, Florida in which he asks for ideas regarding the development of a systems oriented middle-school curriculum.)
I began my education and instructional design consulting career as a teacher and principal in public education. I specialized in the field then called “Alternative Education” which was dedicated to exploring alternatives to the so called “comprehensive” Henry Ford production line model. The high school I founded in 1974 under the “Necessary Small High School” provisions in the state of California, was built upon theoretical and methodological foundations that were fundamentally different from the production line model of education and, though I did not know of it at time, was entirely consistent with the teachings of Dr. W. E. Deming.
The dominant theory behind our current approach to education is mistaken. it views students as OBJECTS of the educational enterprise rather than PARTICIPANTS in the educational enterprise. A more useful theory recognizes that students (i.e. human beings) do not acquire knowledge. They create knowledge. The job of school faculty, administration, and staff is to facilitate and steer the process of knowledge creation.
This is based in a theory of knowledge that explains that knowledge is not external “stuff” that is contained in some repository. Knowing is an active process propelled by the continuous interactive generation of a community narrative. The school I led using this theory was cohesive. It produced excellent results on standardize tests and had the highest attendance rates in the district. In other words, it worked. Resistance to the school from “educational professionals” outside the school grew in direct proportion to the school’s success.
When I meet with teachers I always begin by asking them to explain their theory of how leaning occurs. They are invariably confused. At best, they come up with an incoherent jumble of theories from their college reading lists. At worst, they have only some management and control practices they use for their own survival in the classroom jungle.
Too many teachers, administrators and parents have no idea what learning means or how it occurs. They only know results in the form of test scores and grades. On that basis, they will do anything to maximize those results. The destruction wrought by this single minded focus on outcomes is incalculable.
What really bugs me is how how the supposedly “macho” game of football promotes Socialism. Football players are nothing but a bunch of sissy red-sheep dressed up in wolf’s clothing.
In the game of football, everyone agrees to a set of rules and plays by the rules. If an individual or a team as a whole, breaks the rules, big government refs slap them down with penalties that redistribute the wealth in the form of yardage. Leveling the playing field through government intervention is just plain un-American.
In our competitive free-market society, we understand the evils of big government. In the land of the free, government is a necessary evil at best. To be real competition, the game of football should be played using the same model that we value so much in our economic system. Down with big government and to Hell with the rules. Let nature take its course and may the best team win!
If we played football the way we run our economy the game would become a pure and simple competitive test of wills.
As coach, the first thing I would do is explain to my players that since the game is unregulated, they should expect the other team to do anything and everything to win. Then I would assure them that, since the other team can be expected to do anything it takes to win, we will do the same.
Finally, I would explain to them that will we use a “shotgun” game strategy. Just before game time, I would issue each of them a fully loaded, pump-action, shotgun with instructions to shoot first and ask questions latter. Lock ‘n load!
That’s the American way!
The role of leader is and must be a part of any system of enterprise—any collaborative effort applied to raising the value of inputs into outputs of greater value—and the role of leader only has meaning and can only be understood in the context of followership.
Although the role of leader is commonly designated by an organizational chart, that chart cannot make a leader. Within organizations the sociometric relations between leaders and followers are often at odds with the formal organizational chart and this phenomenon gives rise to many organizational problems. Giving a person the title of leader, the differential salary of a leader, and the power to lord over the fate of others, does nothing to make them leaders.
Followers make people leaders and leaders always emerge. When emergent leaders go away—when the head of some enterprise is for any reason, lopped off—enterprising groups always grow a new head. This is rooted in the tribe’s genetic wisdom. Organizations that mistake org chart titles for leadership are bound to suffer the non-alignment of effort that emerges from shadow organization.
Leadership cannot be understood on the basis of mystical personality traits nor styles of interaction. Correlation studies of what kinds of people and what styles of interaction are characteristic of “effective” leaders are meaningless. Effective leaders exhibit the gamut of physical and psychological traits.
Leadership is a necessary function of human enterprise. Abundant studies in many settings demonstrate that in the absence of leadership, all enterprising collaboration collapses—Entropy rules.
The tasks of leadership can be understood functionally. These processes can and should be learned and mastered by everyone even though not everyone can act as leader because the shape of the relations between leadership and followership is pyramidal. When everyone understands the role of leader in relation to the role of followers, the pool of potential new leaders among followers is better prepared and followers are better equipped to understand the optimal relation between followership and leadership.
The core functions of leadership in relationship to followership are:
* Clarify, codify, communicate and continually renew a set of aims to which followership can subscribe. Alignment of purpose is the pointy end of the enterprise.
* By every and all means, predict the future insofar as it applies to the aims of the enterprise in order to validate those aims and assess the risks associated with moving forward.
* Assume the responsibility and risk associated with the allocation of human and material resources to the system of enterprise in a manner that is consistent with leadership’s best, though always imperfect, understanding of future dangers and potential gains for all enterprise members.
* In concert with followership, invest the system of enterprise with methods that minimize risk to followers (who have no power to act on the system as a whole) so that they can operate and continuously improve the system with a minimum of fear.
The leader’s job is to hone the pointy end of the enterprise so that it can move forward with respect to its aims in the most effective manner possible. Leadership’s job is to bear the brunt of the risks inherent in moving forward by mastering the art of prediction. This requires a profound understanding of the nature of systems and variation.
A wise enterprise will invest in all its members, an understanding of the process of leading because to expect people to follow without teaching them what it means to lead is as useless as explaining an archer’s bow without explaining the arrow.
This summarizes a systems view of leadership and leaders who grasp the nature of their responsibilities and develop methods consistent with those responsibilities will do better at leading the system of enterprise of which they are a PART.
This blog entry is a contribution I made to the W. Edwards Deming interest group on LinkedIn. I will be posting a follow-up entitled “Primal Poodles #2″ today or tomorrow.
Psychological reductionism has created a system of belief in which the behavior of people is reduced to actions toward or away from some specific stimuli. The theory suggests that one can employ rewards and/or punishments to “motivate” (i.e. manipulate) people to behave in the ways one deems desirable for his or her purposes. Why is this theory of human behavior problematic?
Clearly, external stimuli do affect behavior. For example, throughout human history fear has been employed as a motivator to manipulate behavior. The recent debate over water-boarding demonstrates just how persistent our belief in fear-as-a-motivator is. There can be no doubt that fear moves people to action but just how predictable is the action that flows from the administration of fear? Will fear cause people to behave honestly or will it cause them to do ANYTHING they can get away with in order to ameliorate their feelings of fear?
Motivators
The evidence for the efficacy of fear as a universal motivator for producing desired outcomes is hardly convincing. As often as not, fear produces counteraction in which those being “motivated” seek to subvert the power exercised by the manipulators. What are these counteractions? Such counteractions are limited only by the imaginations of those being manipulated. In other words, counteractions are intended by those being manipulated, to be deceptive and unpredictable.
Are there better motivational gimmicks that can be substituted for fear by those interested in manipulating the behavior of others—-rewards for example? As with fear, it is clear that rewards also affect the behavior of people but again, how predictable are the outcomes? Will rewards cause people to behave more honestly and predictably or will they cause people to do ANYTHING they can get away with in order to receive the reward? Recent events on Wall Street demonstrate just how much we believe in the power of “motivators” and just how unpredictable will be the outcomes.
The paradigm of reductive psychology seeks to discover the magic keys to human action. Those who hold to this dogma believe that if they can just discover and apply the right set of “motivators” people will act in the manner in which they want them to act. The paradigm of behavioral manipulation pervades our society. It is to be found in our workplaces, our educational system, and our community and family life. The use of “motivators” does affect behavior—-in dangerously unpredictable ways!
There is another theory of motivation. In a systems view, people simply are genetically motivated toward becoming integrated into the social system into which they are born. In the absence of perverse external motivators such as fear and greed, they will act to construct shared meaning with others in their tribe. They will seek out recognition and approval from others by positioning themselves in a relationship of responsibility to others. They will seek to work with others to formulate shared aims and through collaborative action, realize those aims. When these human motivations are allowed to reign freely, shared aims, methods, and efficacy produce gains by which the tribe and each of its members, wins. There is, as W. E. Deming said, the opportunity for all to experience “pride and joy in workmanship”.
The psychological view invites us to apply motivators. The systems view suggests that we need to remove obstacles to collaborative action and let people get on with doing what they do best—-creating value for the tribe. Observations, when viewed through the lens of theory, can be used to support both views. In the long run, the most important question is which view produces the most desirable outcomes while minimizing the undesirable contradictions.
It’s always refreshing to read a book in which an author steeped in science takes on the fallacies of Scientism. After all, the idea that the world can be understood by reducing it to elemental parts is a persistent dogma of science that is rooted in 18th Century thinking. The hubris of shamanic science is the belief that our puny habit of reduction can reveal the “true” nature of the world.
“It Ain’t Necessarily So” is a collection of fascinating book reviews by scientist-author Richard Lewontin, in which he picks apart the hype of reductive science, explaining with a lucid and biting logic how it is often the case that “the emporer has no clothes”.
Underlying each of Lewontin’s essays lies a simple, if somewhat disconcerting, idea. We can cut the bovine system called “cow” up into pieces in an effort to figure out what a cow is, but once we have done so, we no longer have a cow. What’s more, we cannot yet put the pieces back together to remake the cow, a la Frankenstein’s monster, but even if we could reassemble the cow in some Transylvanian laboratory, we would still be no closer to understanding WHY the reassembled cow parts became once again, a “cow”.
Cutting up cows to understand the nature of cows is the central problem of reduction and the principal challenge of systems thinking.
I am gnawing on the question, “Does more choice make us freer?”, which is of course a question about the nature of freedom. This question has everything to do with 3-sigma because:
- Human knowing is built around theory for making predictions and,
- Prediction is a process for choosing a course of action and,
- 3-sigma is a theory for making choices.
I think systems thinking as a paradigm inevitably leads you to the idea that every choice we make and every action we take is determined, not by our will, but by the whole of state of the univese in a given present. Of course, this is of no great concern because the “true” nature of the causes that determine our choices are infinitely complex and therefore unknowable. So for our intents and purposes, the illusion of choice is persistent and consequential. Simply put, our humanness is all about the business of choosing courses of action, day-in and day-out. Since inaction is itself, is an action, we might conclude that the only thing we cannot choose is to not choose.
So in the final analysis, to be human is to be free to choose, but all of the choices we are faced with are not equal.
One class of choices are those that matter. They are choices like pursuing a profession, committing to a mate, raising children, being politically active, helping others, taking a new job or quitting an old one, and warring on others. These choices affect our future and the future of others. Our decisions are consequential and they carry with them the weight of personal responsibility. These choices involve freedom TO others rather than freedom FROM others. They are the choices that fill our lives with the meaning that only others can grant.
Another class of choices are those that are manufactured in order monopolize our attention and insulate us from choices that matter. These choices have no substantive effect on the course of our lives and the lives of others. Choosing between the lottery, slot machines, or craps, makes little difference. One way is as good as another when it comes to losing your money. Choosing between 30 brands of bottled water or 15 colas makes little difference. These choices are meaningless. When you act as if the making of these choices is consequential, you actually lose your freedom.
It seems to me that the quantity of choices presented to us has has little to do with our freedom. We do not become freer because we have more choices. We only become freer when we have a role to play in making those choices that actually affect the course of our lives and the lives of those around us. When we make these kinds of choices, we become more fully human.
How much of our resources are squandered in the manufacture of inconsequential choices? How much of our precious attention is diverted from choices that matter by the proliferation of irrelevant choices? How much opportunity to create value is squandered on such nonsense? To what degree does the proliferation of meaningless choices actually make us less free?
Homo predictus is is all about prediction. He is habitually preoccupied with the business of choosing and if he fails to gird himself against the onslaught of meaningless choice, his consciousness will be become entrained like that of a kitten tempted by a ball of string. Exploiting this habit of consciousness is a great ploy, not only for separating people from their money, but also for separating people from their freedom to make choices that matter.
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| By N2H | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
