Weblog of Allison Pinto, Ph.D. at the Louis de la Parte Florida Mental Health Institute — A space to share ideas regarding some of the hot topics emerging in children’s mental health

Hi Folks,

Another interesting brownbag yesterday. Here are a few of the questions that were generated and explored:

–The notions Bruce laid out in his article are a creative way of describing the transmission of ideas. Could mark-up be used to model a qualitative language of sorts that would help us better understand sensemaking processes in organizations and systems?
–Regarding McKelvey’s article: Is transcendental hindsight important in organizations and systems, as well as transcendental foresight?
–Agar’s article addresses various dimensions of living narratives. Which combinations of these various dimensions are most important in which conversations in which contexts?
–Do different types of conversations exist at different levels in an organization or system?
–How does the communication and transmission of emotion relate to sensemaking processes?
–When are in-person, whole group sensemaking sessions needed, versus ongoing processes that facilitate sensemaking (such as can be provided through a wiki)?
–How do sensemaking processes among people/groups in an organization or system lead to state changes in the system?
–How is the managerial emphasis on numbers / productivity compromising sensemaking processes?
–What would a qualitative digital dashboard look like, or is that a contradiction in terms?
–How do we notice sensemaking processes occurring (or not) in the work we are doing with/among policymakers, service providing agencies, formal providers, families and individuals?
–So what?

Of course, the most interesting part of the brownbag was the riffing in response to these questions, but it’s Friday after 5:00 and I gotta get outa here, so I’ll leave you to speculate about that part

Two readings/resources were suggested for next week, to further the discussion of ways to make sense of organizational/systems change processes:

1. Suddaby, R. (2006). From the Editors: What Grounded Theory is Not. Academy of Management Journal, 49(4), 633 – 642.

2. “The Art of Complex Problem Solving” interactive webpages by Marshall Clemens which can be accessed at http://www.idiagram.com/CP/cpprocess.html

I’m off to Roanoke for a few days, but look forward to seeing you all next Thursday.

Take care til then,

Allison

Hi Brownbaggers,

We had an interesting discussion during today’s brownbag that touched on:

–Ways to get research re: complex systems funded
–Ways to share the information we are stumbling upon and gathering related to complexity
–Ways to identify a particular complex adaptive system to explore together as a means of applying what we’re learning

We decided to devote NEXT week’s brownbag to discussion of these articles:

“Telling it like you think it might be: Narrative, linguistic anthropology, and complex organization” by Mike Agar in Emergence: Complexity & Organization, which can be accessed at: http://www.ethknoworks.com/files/Eco_article.pdf

“Scholarly journals as web services: automated scholarship, memes and cyberactive articles” by Bruce Neubauer in Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, which can be accessed at http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=767628&jmp=abstract&coll=ACM&dl=ACM&CFID=1588875&CFTOKEN=96544800#abstract

“The Hive” by Marshall Poe in the Atlantic Monthly, which can be accessed at http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200609/wikipedia

“Transcendental Foresight: Using Complexity Science to Foster Distributed Seeing” by Bill McKelvey, which can be accessed at:

http://www.billmckelvey.org/docs/TRANSCENDENTAL%20ORGANIZATIONAL%20FORESIGHT–GLASGOW–11-15-2002.pdf

Note that these are the articles that were distributed a few weeks ago, with one addition: the article by Bill McKelvey on transcendental foresight. McKelvey makes a case for the importance of transcendental foresight by quoting Prusak (1996):

“The only thing that gives an organization a competitive edge—the only thing that is sustainable—is what it knows, how it uses what it knows, and how fast it can know something new!”

He explores processes of sense-making in organizations by asking and answering two questions: “Who is doing the looking?” and “What are they looking at?” He introduces the concepts of the sub-drivers and supra-drivers of transcendental foresight. Here is a quote from the article that offers a brief description, to whet your appetite:

“I answer the question, Who’s Looking? by focusing on the microevolutionary processes comprising the corporate brain. Especially, I study how to speed up the functioning of the corporate brain and how to sharpen its ‘seeing’ ability by using phase transitions to initiate self-organizing activity aimed at collective, foresight-related search behaviors. These are the sub-drivers of transcendental foresight.

Key to this process are the adaptive tensions set up to motivate self-organization. This, then gets at the Looking at What? question. These are the supra-drivers. Here the emphasis turns to the study of longer-run, extant trends at the level above a firm-in-an-industry perspective of most extant strategic analyses—specifically analyses above Porter’s “industry drivers” (1980, 1985) and efficiency curve perspectives. Analyses of where a firm stands with respect to these broader adaptive tensions provides information that can be used to both motivate and steer phase transitions, coevolutionary events, and self-organizing behaviors. Bottom line? Supra-drivers and sub-drivers coevolve to improve organizational foresight.”

This is one of the most dog-eared articles in my personal stash of complexity lit…seems like it’s got all sorts of implications for the work we do. I am really looking forward to discussing it with you all…

Also, GARY, next week would you be willing to share with the group what you’ve been working on in developing a wiki for the group? Bruce is going to follow up with a “peanut butter wiki” too, to help us all understand what exactly a wiki is all about…

OK, that’s it for now, hope to see you next Thursday at noon, &

Take care in the meantime,

Allison

Hi Brownbaggers,

We had an interesting discussion during today’s brownbag that touched on:

–Ways to get research re: complex systems funded
–Ways to share the information we are stumbling upon and gathering related to complexity
–Ways to identify a particular complex adaptive system to explore together as a means of applying what we’re learning

We decided to devote NEXT week’s brownbag to discussion of these articles:

“Telling it like you think it might be: Narrative, linguistic anthropology, and complex organization,” by Mike Agar in Emergence: Complexity & Organization, which can be accessed at: http://www.ethknoworks.com/files/Eco_article.pdf

“Scholarly journals as web services: automated scholarship, memes and cyberactive articles” by Bruce Neubauer in Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, which can be accessed at http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=767628&jmp=abstract&coll=ACM&dl=ACM&CFID=1588875&CFTOKEN=96544800#abstract

“The Hive” by Marshall Poe in the Atlantic Monthly, which can be accessed at http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200609/wikipedia

“Transcendental Foresight: Using Complexity Science to Foster Distributed Seeing” by Bill McKelvey, which can be accessed at Permalink Comments