About AccidentalReality
What I’m (Mostly) on About Here #
Some things have to be the way they are or we couldn’t exist to observe them.
Beyond these cosmological constraints the best answer for why the world is as it is at the present moment is path dependency. History unfolded as it did, and here we all are.
We might prefer an alternative. How can we affect change? It depends on whether the outcome we would prefer emerges from a simple, complicated, complex, or chaotic sytem. The Cynefin Framework helps identify the type of system we’re hoping to change and the approach that works best for each.
The nature of how the world is (and will be tomorrow) depends on the actions of individuals, but some things out of the reach of any individual requires people to work in concert with others. Those actions take place in the context of Institutions:
“stable, valued, recurring patterns of behavior”.
These institutions shape the capabilities we have, the way we value experiences, and the way we understand the boundaries of behaviors that will potentially impact our continued autonomy (that is, what might get us locked up, beat up, or even killed).
Many of our preferred outcomes require influencing complex systems. Institutions themselves are Complex Adaptive Systems, in which participants and stakeholders interact to further their individual and collective interests; each with their own intentions, perceptions, and interpretations; all influencing and being influenced by others.
Public policy attempts to guide these institutions, formal and informal.
The three major themes of this site are:
- A method to reason about Policy. Relevant because our current approach fails.
- A Design Method that facilitates reasoning about Complex Adaptive Systems. Relevant because applying “common sense” cause and effect thinking to such complex domains fails.
- Related thoughts on Organizations. Relevant because improving organizational effectiveness and efficiency requires applying these same methods.
Of course it’s a blog, so not everything will slot into one of these themes. Mgt reserves the right…