Transduction — leading transformation — Issue #131
Benjamin P. Taylor
RedQuadrant | the Public Service Transformation Academy | systems | cybernetics | complexity / public | service | transformation business evolutionary | avid learner. Reframing for better outcomes. Connecting.
This week:
Upcoming Events:
SE Stakeholder Engagement – Productive Conversations (0.5d)
This training programme could equally be called ‘honest conversations’, ‘difficult conversations’, ‘constructive conversations’, or ‘challenging conversations’.
Fundamental to the success and flavour of organisational life – and systems practice interventions – are the quality of conversations we are able to have. If we can develop an honest and shared attempt to get at shared understanding – shared ‘truth’ if you like – or at least to fully appreciate each others’ understanding – then we can make true progress.
This interactive session will:
And help you to have productive conversations even when it seems most unlikely. You will need to bring a record of an ‘unproductive’ conversation you have had, or fear having, and be prepared to work with others around it and other examples. You will end the session with the ability to surface more productive conversations even when it is difficult.
Trainer These courses are delivered by?Benjamin P Taylor, an expert in systems, cybernetics, and complexity in service transformation.
Pricing Info
￡250 +VAT
To enquire please go on this link:?https://www.systemspractice.org/courses/ise-stakeholder-engagement-productive-conversations-05d
ILG Large Group Interventions (1.0d)
In a classic 2005 article, ‘Techniques to Match our Values’, Weisbord set out the ‘learning curve’, with a movement from ‘experts solve problems’ to ‘’everybody’ solves problems’ to ‘experts improve whole systems’ to ‘’everybody’ improves whole systems’. Inherent in the development of systems practice from the start has been recognition of ‘the whole’, which comes in various forms from group dynamics to organisational viability.
This programme will give an overview of intervention approaches which ‘bring whole systems into the room’ rather than have a few experts work on individual issues. We will look at some of the history and the wide range of interventions that have been developed, and provide an overview of some of the most interesting.
We will compare and contrast these approaches and provide ‘ways in’ to consider when, and which, large group intervention might be an appropriate part of a systems practice intervention.
Trainer These courses are delivered by?Benjamin P Taylor, an expert in systems, cybernetics, and complexity in service transformation.
Pricing Info
￡500 +VAT
To enquire please go on this link:?https://www.systemspractice.org/courses/ilg-large-group-interventions-10d
ICS3 Workshop Design (0.5d)
This module provides learners with an understanding of the design of workshops and relevant considerations, taking into account the potentially very different contexts and definitions of what a ‘workshop’ is. It introduces a range of tools and approaches for workshop design, building on the facilitation module. It gives tools to consider evaluation and learning about workshop design, and compares various approaches, enabling learners to better select and apply appropriate workshop design approaches to their context.
A workshop can be distinguished from a meeting (though the boundaries may be blurry at times), by some of the following indicators:
An alternative use of the work,?to workshop (something), refers to taking a product or idea into a period of intense focused experimentation and development, often bringing in fresh or different perspectives than the original developers of the product or idea. This is of course closely related, but implies some partly-developed ‘content’ as the workshop focus, as opposed to simply a product or idea. In either case, some input is expected to a workshop, whether process, content, or both.
The learning will cover:
This is a very practical, hands-on course based on you creating an initial workshop design from your context, using sources offered, and?sharing and discussing it in the session.
This course complements the course on Facilitation for systems practice interventions, though they can be done independently or in any order.
Trainer These courses are delivered by?Benjamin P Taylor, an expert in systems, cybernetics, and complexity in service transformation.
Pricing Info
￡250 +VAT
To enquire please go on this link:?https://www.systemspractice.org/courses/ics3-workshop-design-05d
ICS2 Facilitation Skills for Systems Practice Interventions (0.5d)
This course provides learners with an understanding of the facilitation relationship in the context of systems intervention itself, and of the challenges it brings. It introduces a range of tools and practices for facilitation and provides guidance on workshop planning. Finally, it compares various approaches to facilitation, enabling learners to develop a stronger sense of the kind of facilitator they want to be.
Topics covered include:
Trainer These courses are delivered by?Benjamin P Taylor, an expert in systems, cybernetics, and complexity in service transformation.
Pricing Info
￡250 +VAT
To enquire please go on this link:?https://www.systemspractice.org/courses/ics2-facilitation-skills-systems-practice-interventions-05d
ICS1b Consulting for Systems Practice Interventions – (b) Core (0.5d)
This course provides learners with a deeper understanding of:
To maximise your chances of being effective in achieving positive change, you should combine a sound understanding of systems approaches with well-developed intervention skills.
This in turn requires a clear conception of the role of the systems practitioner as ‘consultant’, of their relationships with stakeholders, especially the ‘client’, and the nature of the practitioner’s influence on the organisations they seek to transform.
Drawing on Flawless Consulting, Barry Oshry’s Organic Systems Framework, and more,?Consulting for Systems Practice Interventions?emphasises a collaborative approach and equal responsibility between the intervention practitioner and the client, navigating a path between the twin traps of ‘consultant as boss’ and ‘consultant as servant’.
These courses are relevant to anyone – consultant or not! – who is engaging in organisational change.
Trainer These courses are delivered by?Benjamin P Taylor, an expert in systems, cybernetics, and complexity in service transformation.
Pricing Info
￡250 +VAT
领英推荐
To enquire please go on this link:?https://www.systemspractice.org/courses/ics1b-consulting-systems-practice-interventions-b-core-05d
ICS1a Consulting for Systems Practice Interventions – (a) Foundation (0.5d)
This course will provide learners with key principles and a structure for interventions. Topics covered include:
To maximise your chances of being effective in achieving positive change, you should combine a sound understanding of systems approaches with well-developed intervention skills.
This in turn requires a clear conception of the role of the systems practitioner as ‘consultant’, of their relationships with stakeholders, especially the ‘client’, and the nature of the practitioner’s influence on the organisations they seek to transform.
Drawing on Flawless Consulting, Barry Oshry’s Organic Systems Framework, and more,?Consulting for Systems Practice Interventions?emphasises a collaborative approach and equal responsibility between the intervention practitioner and the client, navigating a path between the twin traps of ‘consultant as boss’ and ‘consultant as servant’.
These courses are relevant to anyone – consultant or not! – who is engaging in organisational change.
Trainer These courses are delivered by?Benjamin P Taylor, an expert in systems, cybernetics, and complexity in service transformation.
Pricing Info
￡250 +VAT
To enquire please go on this link:?https://www.systemspractice.org/courses/ics1a-consulting-systems-practice-interventions-foundation-05d
Link Collection:
My Weekly Blog?post:
In management cybernetics, we navigate five pivotal challenges in organising public services. These include addressing citizen needs adequately, ensuring seamless coordination among services, understanding and allocating resources effectively, fostering continuous learning and adaptation, and maintaining a consistent purpose amidst complexity. To achieve transformation, we must enhance our capacities while addressing governance concerns, particularly by addressing the apprehensions of decision-makers. Broadly, cybernetics prompts reflection on feedback loops, control mechanisms, and learning processes inherent in organisational change. My "five worlds model" simplifies the Viable Systems Model to aid comprehension. To make public services effective, we must prioritise meeting citizen needs, seamless coordination, resource allocation, continuous learning, and maintaining a clear purpose. These principles apply across different organisational levels and missions.
[Drawn to my attention by John Siegrist on this blog from Felix Hovespian]
John McCarthy Tue Jun 13 03:06:03 PDT 2000 https://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/reviews/bloomfield/bloomfield.html (From his interesting and very 90s website https://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/)
A book review, in which he says
Schopman mentions many influences of earlier work on AI pioneers. I can report that many of them didn’t influence me except negatively, but in order to settle the matter of influences it would be necessary to actually ask (say) Minsky and Newell and Simon. As for myself, one of the reasons for inventing the term “artificial intelligence” was to escape association with “cybernetics”. Its concentration on analog feedback seemed misguided, and I wished to avoid having either to accept Norbert (not Robert) Wiener as a guru or having to argue with him. (By the way I assume that the “Walter Gibbs” Schopman refers to as having influenced Wiener is most likely the turn-of-the-century American physicist Josiah Willard Gibbs, though possibly McCulloch’s colleague Walter Pitts). Minsky tells me that neither Wiener nor von Neumann, with whom he had personal contact, influenced him, because he didn’t agree with their ideas. He does mention influence from Rashevsky, McCulloch and Pitts.
__ On his own thread, Felix Hovespian had responded:
“Most of what is called hashtag#artificialIntelligence today is based on 1st order hashtag#cybernetics, and therefore it’s very like hashtag#behaviorism.
[Email newsletter being discontinued in favour of LinkedIn]
The IFSR Quarterly informs you of the latest developments in the systems community.
[There’s a reason Kauffman is an OG in this field – and even though I have increasingly less patience/excitement for discussions of the origins of life, life in the galaxy etc, this goes from (before) autocatalytic sets*, where a network of molecules mutually catalyze each other’s formation, to broader questions about the conditions and processes that facilitate life, potentially applicable across the universe, and broader concepts of complexity and evolution, economics technology etc.
Government plans to scan bank accounts of disabled people will lead to another scandal | Computer Weekly
ComputerWeekly.com Government plans to scan bank accounts of disabled people will lead to another scandal | Computer Weekly It looks like we’re sleepwalking into another Horizon scandal. Disabled people up and down the country are sounding the alarm ahead, with 6.3 million of us potentially affected by the government’s latest dalliance with untested, unscrutinised, and potentially unlimited powers for new “bank scanning” algorithms, which are being proposed to tackle “fraud”. An issue that is seemingly so out of control that the fraud rate for disability benefits is only 0.2%; the government’s latest plans are essentially a digital sledgehammer to crack the tiniest nut. The Data Protection and Information Bill, currently moving through the House of Lords, would give the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) unprecedented powers to monitor the financial activity of benefit claimants without their knowledge or consent. While this surprise attack on financial privacy has drawn condemnation from many sectors, its effects will be felt particularly sharply by disabled people, who have long borne the brunt of the Department’s hostility.?
Medium · 1d Seven lessons seven months after October 7 - Amiel Handelsman - Medium By Amiel Handelsman
www.bbc.com Moss 'speed bumps' on Kinder Scout will curb flooding and restore peatland The National Trust is planting hundreds of thousands of sphagnum moss barriers to slow down water.
www.local.gov.uk LGA writes to Rt Hon Michael Gove MP on Oflog concerns Following The Times article on 30 April on council performance, using data from the Office for Local Government (Oflog), LGA Chair Cllr Shaun Davies has written to Secretary of State for the Department for Levelling Up, Communities and Local Government to express concerns about what this has demonstrated to councils about the role of Oflog. The letter is co-signed by LGA Senior Vice Chairman Cllr Kevin Bentley and LGA Vice Chairs Cllr Nesil Caliskan, Cllr Joe Harris and Cllr Marianne Overton.