Accelerated Growth Across Connected Small World Networks

Evolution & Growth

It's now mid March 2017, and some noticeable changes are taking place in our small working groups in The Ecology of Systems Thinking - #EoST - on Facebook ...

These fall into four categories: 1) Mutual support in small teams exploring possibilities

2) Connecting people

3) Connecting ideas

4) Opportunities for learning

How have these changes come about?

One reason is the wider group ethos in #EoST typically embraces both the need to be consistent and persistent. We might also call these systemic and systematic, but we know the former expressions have broader mass appeal.

Another is the raised group interaction levels and individual willingness to contribute.

Group Member Contribution & Support

One of our group, Michael Josefowicz, has adopted the term NEME, standing for Notice, Engage, Mull, Exchange. We have discussed this working on five levels, the lowest of which is Generative Conversation, we could even say a Nano Neme. A comment is Noticed, the reader Engages with that comment, some Mulling takes place, and an Exchange or response takes place. At all stages there is a Go-NoGo option. We'll come back to Nemes a little later, and likely in another blog, but the wider #EoST is crammed to overflowing with such Exchanges. There are echoes in a Neme of a business originated process that has been understood a long time, but that can have a newer lens placed on it. This new lens can be called CoDesign, CoProduce, CoPublish and CoReward, which overall we can call one instance of CoCreate. This lens has been my abiding focus and contribution to #EoST group evolution.

The third member of our immediate group, Dasaratha Rama, for sure exhibits Nemetic & Creative behaviour, but with a key difference to my own approach. She is far more self contained, far more empowered to be independent in all four CoCreative stages. She is both prolific and rapid in her ability to respond to external stimuli, displaying great bravery in repeatedly publishing #WorkInProgress. And she also displays with great clarity that elusive element of a self contained Complex Adaptive System, the ability to change independently of environment. She is clearly and very independently both Creative and Self Learning.

I recognise a key difference here with myself, in that I function much better in CoCreative settings. There are many people in either category, but perhaps the majority of us need a team environment and thrive better when immersed in one. This inflection between team performance and self organisation and growth is a puzzle highly interesting to corporates at the moment, and one that a sister Facebook group - Teal for Startups - has explored and analysed in some detail. Teal thinking is based on a heritage of thinking dating back at least to Peter Senge, looking to build Learning Organisations, and more recently Frederic Laloux and the movement towards Reinventing Organisations.

Our fourth immediate group member, Bob Burkhart, is a self confessed acronym addict, but as a former member of the US forces, a whirlwind force to be reckoned with. He's full of different approaches, a great Knowledge Curator and, as we might expect, off the scale for being systematic and persistent.

Acronyms are known for the challenges they present, yet our group has persisted with discussion because we know that Bob's intent is pure, and our Trust Levels in our immediate group are extremely deep. We all know there are wicked problems in the world to solve, and we are all 100% committed to finding ways to tackle them. Learning any new language is a challenge for anyone, but there is also a corporate understanding that embracing team diversity is critical to growth, and that homogenous teams filled with identikit folk can lead to rank and highly dangerous bubbles, with the Dot.Com and Sub-Prime Mortgage global crises being the most recent examples.

Connecting People

Outside of our small group of high frequency Exchangers, others are Exchanging thoughts on an as and when basis. Typically, Michael Josefowicz is involved in many of these conversations, building on his smart but simple Nemetic Exchange.

Of note are the following folk, active in #EoST, and with interesting profiles. In general, we might say, they are connected more loosely by those same over arching ideas. Specifically, there is an implicit or explicit agreement the world is full of wicked problems, and such folk are typically solution practitioners in diverse ways. David Braden, for example, wants folk to look at ways to adopt and promote sustainable biodiversity in their local ecosystems. Anne-Marie Lamonde has looked for some years at "so called" Alternate Schooling, meaning moving away from the state preferred sausage machine approach of trying to fit every student in a one size fits all system, at the same time, in the same way.

Doug Breitbart & Fabian Szulanski are together looking to find ways to motivate and mobilise folk to do more than just like particular projects, but actually get involved in them and participate actively. So too, separately, are Christopher Chase, Steve Brant and Shelley Ostroff. Alexander Laszlo and Nora Bateson are respected and distinguished thinkers on global problems, and Gene Bellinger is the founding father of Ecology of Systems Thinking, with a huge wealth of accessible online material relating to Systems Thinking. Jessie Henshaw wants folk to pay more attention to those parts of science relating to nature where there is yet little or no systems thinking, or indeed actual science in place to explore or explain many natural phenomena. One element of what Jessie does can be described as biomimicry. Neil Davidson has also, despite prevailing headwinds, put together a highly effective library of key systemic perspectives that can be actioned with some ease. Gerald Midgely is a noted and sustained writer on Systems Thinking and theory, and Professor of Systems Thinking at Hull University.

Floris Koot has developed a rapid response approach to humanitarian project management that we all know as Swarm Management. What we can notice typically in such discussions is the synapse like connectivity that takes place, when common concepts are found between participants that forge a stronger bond between them. That connection could be the beginnings of identifying common ground for possible future collaboration. What is also noticeable is the total disregard for country of origin. Participants above come from or are based in Argentina, Netherlands, Israel, Canada, Japan, Australia, USA & UK.

Another colleague, Anneloes Smitsman is based in Mauritius.

It is perhaps no coincidence that Mark Zuckerberg talked of us learning to connect better in his 2017 broadcast in January / February.

Connecting Ideas

What is rather harder to picture is where ideas connect.

Many folk in #EoST recognise that midwifing and fostering collaborative ideas takes a safe environment where folk feel encouraged to comment whatever their juniority, and where such individual contributions are also nurtured and given opportunity to grow wings and fly on their own.

It is perhaps typical to attach ideas to people, as identified above, such that when an idea surfaces again in a new place, it is possible to refer the new person with this idea to someone who actually takes a very specific interest in that idea.

There are difficulties here, typically, in that people can certainly be seen as Complex Adaptive Systems and, where growth rates are high, more especially so. Such rapid adaptivity and depth of subject matter can truly mean high levels of complexity when viewed by other people. This means that specialities and expertise cannot always be easily discerned or even understood, and often need either careful listening or better sign posting.

Outside of #EoST, there are folk who have both depth and breadth, and are skilled ate distilling those skills for wider audiences. Noam Chomsky, for example, is one of several higher profile thinkers that community members would turn to for affirmation of views, and is something of a talisman for the kinds of detailed thinking community members often take part in.

Of course, Mr Chomsky is not so available for generative conversation, but who knows, maybe one day ...

Facebook as a cMOOC

In turn, we can consider another #EoST discussion, how suitable is Facebook to be a cMOOC, a (Connective) Massive Open Online Course?

One of the intended features of a cMOOC is that we have the freedom to study what we want, when we want, and where we want. Although for many MOOCs, the what we study part is often packaged quite tightly, removing an Element of Freedom of Choice, EFC, and often needs tutors to be available at fixed times, diluting another EFC. cMOOC elements can also be quite hard to find, often buried deep in the websites of educators. Searching for “Systems Thinking” within the UK Open University does not yield a direct link, and nor did a phone call direct to the sales team. Can we in fact see aspects of Facebook that provide better options for some of these cMOOC design features? cMOOCs, after all, are currently known to have disappointing take up rates. With generative asynch conversations in a supportive nurturing environment, folk can attach themselves, in-STREAM - Science, Tech, Relationships, Engineering, Arts, Maths - to conversations as and when they want. Taking a Nemetic approach, they can read content and ask questions as and when they have the capacity to do so.

One of the serious beauties of the simplest level of Nemetics, the Nano Neme or Generative Conversation, is the observance of #NoToDoList. Learning typically takes place naturally, within each Exchange, because some Mulling has taken place prior. This in itself is a simple beauty in what our group calls asynchronous exchange. There is that time to think before and while responding,

Each response is based simply on a person's capacity to respond at a very precise moment in time. The very low levels involved in the exchange therefore provide a much more granular level than current cMOOCs.

Conversations are typically #AgendaFree, often question based, adding again to the freedom for folk to Engage or not as they choose. This is in total contrast to the majority of educators who require course registration numbers to "prove the establishment worth"; this certainly has no direct benefit to students, and does not relate to student feedback on actual course engagement levels, which is often less enthusiastic.

This lack of pre-set agenda and higher individuality of course is a feature close to Anne-Marie Lamonde's heart. So called "alternate" education focuses very clearly on the individual learner-led needs of each individual child, and not the system-led needs of the factory based education systems favoured by commercial corporates. The asynch dip in and out approach supports a freedom Michael has identified as #NoToDoList, either as set by folk for themselves or by an educational establishment. This all means a casual browser can very much set their own agenda, and direct and lead their own learning, which would be a huge aspect of what Alternate Educators would want to provide. The ability of Facebook to be accessed where and when folk want is of course part of its popularity, and very well aligned with full cMOOC design aspects. However, FB also has limitations, which we need to tackle. The What to study aspect currently needs more work. The vast array of information and knowledge out there can be much better Curated, and better Signposted. At the moment, in #EoST, there is a total dependency on accessing a person who can respond to requests for either subject specific matter, or can signpost related matter that can be studied independently. Content overlap is an obvious inefficiency, and quality of sign posting is inconsistent and not given enough consideration. For better Curation, we need to turn to Pinterest, which allows easy, in-STREAM visual categorisation and storage of materials for up to 500 categories. This level of storage can work for most folk given they are flexible enough with their category boundaries. If need be, folk can collaborate on Pinterest with others who could store adjacent material.

Of course Facebook would need fail safe and continuity options, but this detail would be consolidated in time.

For us to learn in a FB group, there currently need to be sufficient generative conversations taking place, so that we can select those we want to follow, and ask questions as and when we need to. Instead, if curated material were available, and we work on a set of sign posting standards, then the dependence on individuals would be substantially reduced, and folk would be better able to self study. It could well be the case that a well known "mother cMOOC" could be an easy hub or jumping off point for many, who might then locate to other more specific cMOOCs, or break out into Facebook Messenger - FBM - groups for more specific discussion around Special Interest Groups - SIGs.

For now, our small group of intrepid explorers returns again to that collective asset we call human ingenuity.