Risk management of oppositions and conflicting operations

Both diagramming of effects and measurement modeling are different from causal models in that they do not require temporal asymmetry between cause and effect. Systems thinking can be used for risk management of oppositions and conflicting operations. Alternatively, and Open Space event can provide a grounded plan where stakeholders have participated in creating the plan, which increases likelihood of follow-through on plans.

When using systems thinking for oppositions, we can use the first three steps as described in systems thinking to make an organizational map. With the list of benefits and dangers per intervention possibility, a quick focus and determination becomes possible.

The created map can help finding existing stakeholder agreements, creating more explicit agreements, testing agreements, re-doing agreements if required, implementing changes, support diagramming of effects to discover more of what's happening in the landscape, and move that visionary landscape into dreaming for doing some scenario planning forward to get to a healthy “anticipating state”, after which we can move forward in more agile and nimble ways.

What if its not as simple as managing risks of an opposition?
For example, what if we experience tuggings like “I/we must find ways to manage risk in daily operations"?

To properly monitor operational risk, we consider the entire scope of the community activity, including every transaction. Intent of this strategy is to minimize the required amount of energy spent and maximize impact.

In these instances, we can adapt the systems thinking choreography easily to fit by:

  1. Making a more detailed Weinberg organizational chart with more dimensions and developing representative data for each operational risk by conceptualising and selecting attributes for measuring actual and goal-states.
  2. In this case we require more detailed manipulation and composition of measured attributes to create measurement models with Mathematica or MatLab. With ratio scaling we can synthesize measured attributes in target attributes.
  3. We gather data as described before and with values available for the measured attributes, the measurement model can be used to compute the values of the target measurable attribute(s) to arrive at a description of the actual state.
  4. Cognitive map making: Identify potential interventions by selecting abstract attributes that are the focus of measurement models as target attributes for effects modelling. Group the attributes and specify hypotheses expressing values of attributes as functions of each other, and more. Visualize dynamics, for example with MatLab or Mathematica.
  5. Facilitation: Bring the stakeholders up to a level of operational safety and secure product development. The actual words are not important. For each side establish the need for the other's attention:
    • For operational safety: "In a world that is changing, your firm is physically changing, and you need to develop operational risk management if you are to survive your firm."
    • For product development: "How long will you continue to develop if you don't manage your operational risks properly?"
  6. Mapping from reality to benefit space with stakeholders for agreement.
    Facilitation: Use each side to motivate the need for an integrated ability to respond: now that you know how to monitor operational risks you can minimize effort and more safely maximize your impact.
  7. Creating an explicit agreement in a signing ritual and celebrate this success, and the rest of course!

Core breathing pattern thought forms

We have an opposition or conflict on our hands.

  • Consider thought-form in right hand and assimilate center.
  • Consider thought-form in left hand and assimilate center, sliding focus in flow.
  • Assimilate using 6th and 2nd chakra, both balanced from 4th, to draw into each: vision/insight and business.
  • Next balance 3rd and 5th: will and communication and choice.
  • And then 1st and 7th for grounding with physical plane activity and making a mind link.

For more on chakra's, see Nynke's Notes on Chakra's.

Facilitation of operational conflict

In my experience, facilitating my own deeper tugging often occurs between issues of safety, and my desire for creative development, the two main directions for (continued) survival on an individual and collective level. We constantly need to develop, even more now that the world is changing so fast. And we also need to stay safe as we develop.

In such situations we can use this type of sculpt choreography using a core breathing pattern for thought forms:

1. Play an imaginary Satir parts party to identify the two main parties in the felt incongruence

2. Develop a full sensory representation (images, sounds and field) for each.

3. Bring the parts up to a level of safety and development. The actual words are not important. For each side establish the need for the other's attention:

For safety: "In a world that is changing, you are physically changing, you need to develop safety if you are to stay safe."

For development: "How long will you continue to develop if you don't stay safe?"

 

Facilitation of operational oppositions

This type of sculpting intends to bring directions to a level of sameness and then to bring them back together. If successful, it doesn't matter which direction we take. All roads lead to where we wish to go and when I come back in my body I will know and remember that.

A possible choreography using a core breathing pattern for thought forms is the following:

1. Play an internal parts party to identify the two main parties in a felt incongruence.

2. Develop a full sensory representation (images, sounds and field) for each and place each on a hand.

3. Identify the positive intention of each.

4. For each direction (hand), develop an appreciation of the intention of the part and of the benefit of integration. This can be quite fun!

5. Establish an agreement to integrate

6. Bring together and integrate

7. Test the integration. Re-do if required.

8. Bring back into the body

9. Re-entering

When testing the integration, on occasion, tugging feelings may still be there, even after re-doing integration a couple of times. I have learned to not ignore such tugging. We do not have a simple opposition. We may have a conflict on our hands.

Systems thinking: How Diagramming Of Effects works?

A Diagram of Effects is a tool for reasoning about non-linear systems. The main difference with system roadmaps is that the emphasis is on the detection and further investigation of feedback loops. A "diagram of effects" makes it possible to discover cause and effect relations that are separated by time, and not immediately obvious. With these (re) cognitions we can find and communicate counter-intuitive, effective interventions.

This description of how Diagramming of Effects works was adapted from Appendix A of the first book in Quality Software management series of Jerry Weinberg, for which Jerry graciously gave his permission, partly because of the story used: “I always give my permission for fairy tales”.

The Only Might is Right theme is from The Once and Future King written by T. H. White

Only Might is Right

"Look over there." "The Wart looked and at first saw nothing. Then he saw a small translucent shape hanging motionless near the surface. It was just outside the shadow of a water lily and was evidently enjoying the sun. It was a baby pike, absolutely rigid and probably asleep and it looked like a pipe stem or a seahorse stretched out flat. It would be a brigand when it grew up.
"I am taking you to see one of those," said the tench, "the Emperor of these purlieus. As a doctor I have immunity, and I daresay he will respect you as my companion as well - but you had better keep your tail bent in case he is feeling tyrannical."
"Is he the King of the Moat?"
"He is. Old Jack they call him, and some call him Black Peter, but for the most part they do not mention him by name at all. They just call him Mr. P. You will see what it is to be a king."
The Wart began to hang behind his conductor a little, and perhaps it was well that he did, for they were almost on top of their destination before he noticed it. When he did see the old despot he started back in horror, for Mr. P. was four feet long, his weight incalculable. The great body, shadowy and almost invisible among the stems, ended in a face which had been ravaged by all the passions of an absolute Monarch -by cruelty, sorrow, age, pride, selfishness, loneliness and thoughts too strong for individual brains.

There he hung or hovered, his vast ironic mouth permanently drawn downward in a kind of melancholy, his lean clean-shaven chops giving him an American expression, like that of Uncle Sam. He was remorseless, disillusioned, logical, predatory, fierce, pitiless -but his great jewel of an eye was that of a stricken deer, large, fearful, sensitive and full of grief. He made no movement, but looked upon them with his bitter eye.
The Wart thought to himself that he did not care for Mr.P.
"Lord," said Merlyn, not paying attention to his nervousness, "I have brought a young professor who would learn to profess." "To profess what?" asked the King of the Moat slowly, hardly opening his jaws and speaking through his nose. "Power," said the tench. "Let him speak for himself." "Please," said the Wart, "I don't know what I ought to ask."
"There is nothing," said the monarch, "except the power which you pretend to seek: power to grind and power to digest, power to seek and power to find, power to await and power to claim, all power and pitilessness springing from the nape of the neck."
"Thank you."
"Love is a trick played on us by the forces of evolution. Pleasure is the bait laid down by the same. There is only power. Power is of the individual mind, but the mind's power is not enough. Power of the body decides everything in the end, and only Might is right"

A diagram of effects consists primarily of nodes connected by arrows:

  1. Each node stands for a measurable quantity, like Grind and Digest, Seek and Find or Await and Claim. The nodes having a “cloud” form serves as a reminder that nodes indicate measurements, not things or processes as in flowcharts, data flow diagrams, and the like.
  2. The cloud nodes can represent either actual measurements or conceptual measurements –things that could be measured at present because they may be too expensive to measure or not worth the trouble, or just not measured yet. The important thing is that they can be measured.
  3. To indicate an actual measurement currently being made, use a regular, elliptical cloud. Most of the time, however, effects diagrams are used for conceptual –rather than mathematical– analysis, so most of the clouds will be appropriately rough.
  4. An arrow from node A to node B indicates that quantity A has an effect on quantity B. We may know or deduce the effect that leads us to draw the arrow in one of three ways:
    • From a mathematical formula for describing the effect
    • Deduced from observations, for instance, when people are observed to get nervous and lose their effectiveness when under pressure from management
    • Inferred from past experiences, for instance noticing the change in our bodies demand for food when time is spent on making love or new meanings.
  5. The general direction of the effect of quantity A on quantity B may be indicated by the presence or absence of the large grey dot on the arrow between them:
    • No dot means that as A moves in one direction, B moves in the same direction like when spending time on Seek and Find, Wait and Claim, Grind and Digest, one’s body will grow by a proportionate amount.
    • A dot on the arrow means that as A moves in one direction, B moves in the opposite direction like when spending time on Seek and Find, Wait and Claim, Grind and Digest, one is not spending that time on Making Love.
    • A mathematical formula as in Change Model Math for describing a transformation.
    • Deduced from observations, for instance, when people are observed to get nervous and lose their effectiveness when under pressure from management inferred from past experience, for instance noticing the change in our bodies demand for food when time is spent on making love or new meanings.
  6. A square on an effects line indicates that human intervention is determining the direction of the effect:
    • A white square means that human intervention is making the affected measurement move in the same direction as the movement of the cause (just as a plain arrow indicates a natural same direction).
    • A grey square means that human intervention is making the affected measurement move in the opposite direction as the movement of the cause (just as a grey dot indicates a natural opposite direction).
    • A half-white/half grey square means that human intervention can make the affected measurement move in the same or the opposite direction as the movement of the cause, depending on the intervention. In our case Mr.P can choose to investigate other causes by trying other behaviour.

"Now I think it is time that you should go away, young master, for I find this conversation uninteresting and exhausting. I think you ought to go away really almost at once, in case my disillusioned mouth should suddenly determine to introduce you to my great gills, which have teeth in them also. Yes, I really think you might be wise to go away this moment. Indeed, I think you ought to put your back into it. And so, a long farewell to all my greatness."

The Wart had found himself almost hypnotized by the big words, and hardly noticed that the tight mouth was coming closer and closer to him. It came imperceptibly, as the lecture distracted his attention, and suddenly it was looming within an inch of his nose.

On the last sentence it opened, horrible and vast, the skin stretching ravenously from bone to bone and tooth to tooth.

Inside there seemed to be nothing but teeth, sharp teeth like thorns in rows and ridges everywhere, like the nails in laborours' boots, and it was only at the last second that he was able to regain his own will, to pull himself together, to recollect his instructions and to escape. All those teeth clashed behind him at the tip of his tail, as he gave the heartiest jack-knife he had ever given. In a second he was on dry land once again, standing beside Merlyn on the piping drawbridge, panting in his stuffy clothes.

Systems thinking: How to make an organisational map?

  • Step 1: Make an organisational chart
  • Step 2: Develop representative data for risks
  • Step 3: Cognitive map making

Step 1: Make an organisational chart

Loosen up that brain tissue by adding human and cultural dimensions.

Build an organisational map together with a star, or from the perspective of a star, like a customer. A star is one of the workshop participants acting as "the main character".

Position the star on a piece of paper, locate and position others who are significant according to their relationships with each other and the star. Ask which colours are to be used when. Name everybody on the map (aliases and pseudonyms allowed). Add symbols and little drawings for significant things mentioned, three adjectives for each person (at least one negative and one positive) and key phrases that seem to float in the air for this organisation or role. Check (with star) for completeness and ask for and add a title up top.

Step 2: Develop representative data for risks

Develop representative data for identified risks by conceptualising and selecting attributes for measuring actual and goal-states. These attributes come in three categories:

  • Attributes hypothesized to cause changes in actual states moving them toward or away from business goal states
  • Attributes describing possible unintended side effects of actions activating causal attributes
  • Other resulting attributes important for description

Some are measurable attributes, but many of these attributes will be interpretations, not defined by, but computable from measurables.

With the developed set of attributes we can develop diagrams of effects, also known as causal loop diagrams. We gather data or perform direct assessments to measure attributes that can be derived from measured data or that have no data. These are gathered from documents, surveys, or direct observation to arrive at a description of the actual state.

Step 3: Cognitive map making

Identify potential interventions by selecting abstract attributes that are the focus of diagramming as target attributes for effects modelling. Group these into:

  • Exogenous attributes, being at cause of while not being caused by any other attributes in the diagram
  • Mutually Endogenous attributes, having effects on others and not being affected by attributes they have an effect on
  • Endogenous attributes, affected by other attributes and only affecting other attributes without being affected by those same attributes

And brainstorm hypotheses expressing values of attributes as functions of each other, and more, in value stream maps, and translate results to benefits.