[FRIAM] Abduction

Fri Jan 4 10:57:58 EST 2019

I find the whole Agile thing ludicrous.   People that like it border on OCD.
What I have seen is something else:  The people that experience freedom from management develop deeper intuition about the problem domain and simply work on something more important.    This is completely unacceptable to management, and they panic, re-imposing their stupid processes.

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Date: Friday, January 4, 2019 at 8:52 AM
To: "friam at redfish.com" <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

Perhaps a good example of failure might help.

When Kent Beck first proposed Extreme Programming, his vision was akin to a heterarchic community that included clients/users and every variety of developer - Whole Team. The teams were to be self-organizing and self managing. Teams had coaches who were expressly forbidding to be managers / lead programmers / "bosses" in any sense — they were supposed to sources of meta-information about the team's activities, facilitators of coordination arising from team interactions, and a hard barrier between the team and "management."

In exchange for 'freedom from management' individuals and teams promised continual improvement (knowledge and both hard and soft skills).

Everything fell apart and "Agile" failed (technically is still failing every day) because developers did not keep their continual improvement promise; and managers reimposed their control via end runs that mandated Scrum and Lean as integral elements.

davew

On Fri, Jan 4, 2019, at 8:38 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

Like the air traffic control example.   Need more situations in which respect of peers and a shared ethic is more important than what a manager thinks.   Effectively manipulating (e.g. sucking-up) to a manager is a different skill as is detecting when manipulation is being attempted.   The very presence of a manager tends to undermine the development of a group ethic in my experience.  On the other hand, some people just can’t function without a mommy or daddy around.

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Date: Friday, January 4, 2019 at 8:20 AM
To: "friam at redfish.com" <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

Yeah, the vocabulary is difficult as too many terms are borrowed from old contexts and forced into service in the new.

For two weeks a year, Oshkosh Wisconsin is the world's business airport (takeoffs and landings). There is no positive control like all other airports, i.e. the controllers in the tower do not track and direct traffic. Instead, everyone communicates on an open channel, stating their location and intent. Everyone else  listens and adjusts their own flying accordingly. Local, to a specific airspace, coordinators 'emerge' and temporarily offer meta-comments on the same frequency in order to identify and resolve potential conflicts that might not be immediately noted among the pilots in that airspace. At other times volunteers in the tower offer meta- or meta-meta comments as well. In all cases, except imminent collision or similar, communication consists only of information - no orders, commands, control.

A business wirearchy is supposed to operate in a similar fashion. Companies attempting to do this (mostly in Europe) can be found at 10,000 employee level of scale, though most are 100-700 employees.

davew

On Fri, Jan 4, 2019, at 7:08 AM, David West wrote:

Yeah, the vocabulary is difficult as too many terms are borrowed from old contexts and forced into service in the new.

For two weeks a year, Oshkosh Wisconsin is the world's business airport (takeoffs and landings). There is no positive control like all other airports, i.e. the controllers in the tower do not track and direct traffic. Instead, everyone communicates on an open channel, stating their location and intent. Everyone else  listens and adjusts their own flying accordingly. Local, to a specific airspace, coordinators 'emerge' and temporarily offer meta-comments on the same frequency in order to identify and resolve potential conflicts that might not be immediately noted among the pilots in that airspace. At other times volunteers in the tower offer meta- or meta-meta comments as well. In all cases, except imminent collision or similar, communication consists only of information - no orders, commands, control.

A business wirearchy is supposed to operate in a similar fashion. Companies attempting to do this (mostly in Europe) can be found at 10,000 employee level of scale, though most are 100-700 employees.

davew

On Thu, Jan 3, 2019, at 4:46 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

"There has been a growing interest in business management with regard organizational structures that can be rapidly reorganized in response to change and the demand for innovation. The term most often encountered in this regard is "wirearchy" — essentially a large dynamic network where connections (e.g. client -server, leader-follower, decision maker-decision implementer) among nodes shift and different nodes are more or less connected vis-a-vis other nodes over time. An interesting corollary of this kind of organization is that the majority of the "system intelligence" is shifted to the edge-node mandating empowered employees."

client-server, leader-follower, and decision maker-decision implementer are hierarchical control words.   Otherwise there can be frustration situations where different bosses give contradictory guidance to the same employee.  There cannot be insubordination in this kind of structure.

Marcus

________________________________

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm>
Sent: Thursday, January 3, 2019 3:40:42 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

Nick,

Before the conversation forks towards duality, a minor comment about heterarchy in a human organizational context.

Hunter-gatherer tribes were organized as heterarchies: egalitarian with no formal, persistent organization. Instead organization, including leadership, ranking, and roles was situational. A structure emerged in response to environmental stimuli: e.g. 1) a bumper crop of pinon, then A was in charge, men assumed portions of "women's work" and women organized, usually by age and agility, into teams that maximized ability to harvest; or 2) encroaching tribe bent on stealing pinon, B is in charge, men grab their arrows and spears, women form second line of defense with younger women surrounding older ones.

There has been a growing interest in business management with regard organizational structures that can be rapidly reorganized in response to change and the demand for innovation. The term most often encountered in this regard is "wirearchy" — essentially a large dynamic network where connections (e.g. client -server, leader-follower, decision maker-decision implementer) among nodes shift and different nodes are more or less connected vis-a-vis other nodes over time. An interesting corollary of this kind of organization is that the majority of the "system intelligence" is shifted to the edge-node mandating empowered employees.

davew

On Thu, Jan 3, 2019, at 2:14 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> I just gave you an example. But it's weird because nobody ever responds
> to my mentions of eyeball saccade.  You also didn't respond to my scalar
> multiplied by a matrix analogy (an analogy because I was talking about
> comprehensions, which matrices are not, technically).  So, rather than
> give you more examples, I'll treat you like an atheist treats
> Christians.  What sort of example would make sense to you?
>
> I have no idea why you used the word "duality".  The ways of organizing
> things (heter- vs. hier-) would only produce a duality if the different
> ways of organizing were *functionally* equivalent.  My attempt to change
> language from "level" to either "layer" or "order" is an implicit
> assertion that heterarchies are functionally *different* from
> hierarchies.  (To be more specific, hierarchical systems are less
> expressive.)  So, a duality might be achievable between 2 differently
> arranged heterarchies, but not between a hier- and a heter-.
>
> By choosing 2 things of (we assume) the exact same type like Siamese
> twins, you provide a set that probably does not require a heterarchy to
> organize.  Fraternal twins would be a better choice because while they
> are both of the same kinship, their *genes* differ significantly.  Genes
> are of a lower/quicker order than kinship.  But typical understanding of
> kinship operates over BOTH the high level (who's your daddy) and low
> level (what color eyes does your daddy have).  While you *can* construct
> a hierarchy to handle that situation.  There may be some situations
> (e.g. recessive genes, step-parents, etc.) that the hierarchy can't
> express but the heterarchy can.
>
> Note that "order" doesn't technically require heterarchy, either,
> really.  Technically, an ordering like we have in 1st to 2nd order logic
> is still a hierarchy, just with mixed operators.  You'd only *need* a
> heterarchy when there are external (to a given hierarchy) objects/
> relations that need to be accounted for.  But I suggest the social
> kinship, biological kinship, and genotype system does approach that
> need, where even if you can formulate the social as a hierarchy and the
> biological as a hierarchy, the mixing of the two different hierarchies
> requires a heterarchy.
>
> I hope this is not a conversation stopper.  That's not my intent.  But
> based on my failures, here, I'm clearly very bad at this.
>
>
> On 1/3/19 12:38 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> > Ok.   Good.  I like this.  Stick with me here.
> >
> >
> >
> > Keeping your language as citizen-y as possible, please talk to me about "heterarchy".  Being of great age, I learned the song, I'm my own GrandPa <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYlJH81dSiw>  in my youth.  I assume that’s an example of heterarchy.  But I bet you have better examples.  But perhaps even more important, where does the concept stand in your approach to things?  I stipulate that every duality asserted is like Siamese twins separated.  A lot of blood is inevitably spilled.  But no thought can possibly be achieved without that sort of blood-letting.  I think I am going to argue that to the extent that the idea of heterarchy might give one a better way to separate the babies it should be entertained;  but if it is a way of stopping the conversation how best the babies might be separated, then it should not.
>
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
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