Sustainability through global systems education [Robert Flood, ISSS 1998 Plenary Session, July 22/98]

These notes are a rough transcription, prepared as each individual presenter and/or commentator spoke at the ISSS 1998 conference. Gaps and errors have likely occurred. For more accurate citations, please consult the original presenters. These notes have been contributed to the ISSS by David Ing, of the IBM Advanced Business Institute (sabi@systemicbusiness.org).

Chair: Kjell Samuelson

• The origin of the term "sustainability"
• Within the U.N. system
• Sustainability of what?
• Even the buzzword "democracy"
• What is plurality, e.g. 50% of majority?
• Polluting the terminology.

Bob Flood

• Has a problem with four words in the title.
• Sustainability doesn't mean anything in literature -- delete.
• Global means control -- delete.
• Systems in a world of systems -- delete.
• Education -- Monday morning, resigning from Hull -- no longer educationalist.

Three paradoxes, if systemic thinking has its way

• We will not manage over things, we will manage within the unmanageable
• We will not organize the totality, we will organize within the unorganizable
• We will not simply know things, we will know about the unknowable.

• Human mind is unable to cope -- it's unknowable.
• Thus, it's only possible through abstraction -- systemic ideas -- to know a little bit about our lives in the world.
• Localness -- things and issues immediately involved in.
• Time -- not very far into the future.

• Then we must recognize limitations of strategic planning.
• Challenge thinking globally, that with intention that they can get to some future point.
• Every strategic planner is like fictional script writing: it might happen, but it's incredibly unlikely.

• With reductionism and scientific measure, there's a search for deterministic laws
• Both in natural and social world.
• Would then like to control. -- origins of enlightenment thinking.
• Led to progress -- which is dubious as pollution, conflicts, etc.
• Tragedy of the enlightenment, pursuit has failed.

• Need to understand feedback dynamics.
• Had ideas about "laws" in the natural or social world.
• Loops driven by laws, but then deterministic feedback systems
• Alternatively probabilistic feedback systems.

• How come we can't predict and control the natural and social world?
• Why can't we predict the long term? We know the dynamics.
• Why can't we get harmony in organizations?

• New order created spontaneously.
• There's an element of order within it: can't predict weather daily, but pattern over a year.
• Argument from chaos theory: the details of self-organization are unknowable to the human mind.
• example: Amazonian butterfly which takes off, flapping wings, creating an air disturbance as a new order, which interacts with a new order in the local environment, which interacts with a larger order, so that there's a tornado in Texas.
• To understand, would have to know about butterfly, which we couldn't know.
• If the butterfly flew the other way, could have a hurricane in Hong Kong.
• Move away from natural to social sciences.

• Perhaps we still have some laws in social behaviour, but different from natural sciences.
• Think about social rules and practices -- which we agree upon, either wittingly or unwittingly.
• These social rules and practices are different from natural sciences -- reputations are irrelevant.
• Social rules and practices can change over time: they can exist in people's minds, which they change by some process.
• e.g. university issue, which then produces a coalition -- so that the social relations have evolved.
• An adaptive feedback system.
• These changes aren't directed from a central authority, they're a spontaneous self-organization of people coming together on issues.
• Doesn't say that social rules and practices aren't enduring, but they do adapt.
• Could be like an oil tanker, takes time to stop due to momentum.

• Cites Henry Mintzberg
• Complexity is a great source of uncertainty.

• All we can do is learn at the edge of the incomprehensible.
• Can learn about issues and dynamics of space and time.
• Think about few time units ahead, but it's not long range planning.
• Resistance of complexity:
• Moving forward into time or know more about the future is like folding paper in half, then half: can fold 7 times before the resistance of the paper become too great.
• Need to come to terms with living between mystery and mastery.
• Mystery, as inherently unknowable.
• Certain mastery over the moment, not control, but perhaps some influence.

• If we are in a space-time bubble as individuals or groups, then we need to recognize that we're bounded in what we know.

1. Interrelatedness
• If not careful, systems thinking is a tautology: everything is related to everything else.
• Complexity theory helps: we're limited to this bubble of experience that we're living within.
• If we try to create larger bubbles, we get lost in the labyrinth.
• Ever-expanding idea can be coped with by accepting boundary judgements.
2. If we are going to bound, who is to judge what view is most acceptable?
• Churchman underlined the central principles of systems thinking: purpose, measurement systems.
• Some people are in, some people are out: central issue is ethicality.
• Don't have an ethical system, but need to be ethically alert.

• Who are the clients or beneficiaries?
• What are the implications in terms of the bounds?

• Not a physical area.
• If we accept a bounded action area (for now), then there may be some utility to review the issues and dilemmas in the management system.
• Think in terms of opening four areas on action area.
1. structure: effectiveness to achieve goals.
2. process: issues with efficiency and reliability, within the bounds
3. systems of meaning: in harmony, in conflict, polarization of views or societal confusion?
4. systems of knowledge power: fairness, who has a say, what prevents people from having a say, what are the axes (not just class, but could be gender, sexuality, management hierarchy)
• Inter-relatedness when looking through the four windows.
• Four windows are just a pedagogical device: not just four or five windows, but does this way yield insight?
• Add concept of prismatic thought
• Beyond efficiency, ...
• what image can we create?
• Bursts of powerful stories which inform us about the action area.

Scenario-building: choosing and implementing improvement strategies.

• Add systemic appreciation
• Traditionally about forecasting the future, planning, making contingencies, risk analysis.
• Alastair MacIntyre in the Virtue
• Scenarios become more and more useless and eventually useless
• Mintzberg say the same thing.
• MacIntyre misses the point, in the learning organization.
• Use in mental models (Senge)

• Not more informed about the future, but about the sorts of events that occur.
• Fairness, etc.
• Challenging mental models, getting meanings that endure -- not just ends that we can achieve.
• From the means, we get learning about learning and group relationships, which endure more than the decisions we make.
• Means more important than ends in the complex world today.
• Facilitates local decision-making.
• Senge Fifth Discipline means not just for shared vision, but also personal vision, managing unmanageable, etc. ...

Ackoff's Interactive Planning, Checkland Soft Systems Methodology, Jackson/Flood Systemic Intervention

• Three distinct phases.
• Interactive planning:
1. look at future,
2. ideal,
3. then think about closing gap.
• SSM:
1. appreciation of real-world context
2. systemic models (ideal) CATWOE
3. debate to engender change in direction.
• TSI:
1. creativity,
2. choice
3. , implementation

1. The future.
2. The ideal we work towards.
3. How we might change direction.

• Alert to ethicality.

• Managing the unmanageable, not battling.
• Organization the unorganizable, not struggling.
• And key: Knowing that we don't know, knowing the unknowable.