Replying to LO27022 --
Dear Organlearners,
Artur Silva <artsilva@mail.eunet.pt> writes:
>First, let me acknowledge that I got the idea of
>"good enough" research methods (in management
>and organizational studies) from Bruno Bettelheim's
>book "A good enough parent" (that borrowed it from
>D.W. Winnicott's concept of "good enough mother").
Greetings dear Artur,
Before I go any further, let me congratulate you on your exceptional
article. I have enjoyed it very much. I will respond to your article by
merely connecting to it in terms of the 7Es (seven essentialities of
creativity). Please do not consider my remarks as criticism. They are
merely intended to enrich your painting.
I have read you article several times because in my first reading I got
the gut feeling that you meant "complex enough", but articulated it as
"good enough". I wanted to make sure of my gut feeling. Now I want to ask
you pertinently, did you not actually had "complex enough" in mind?
>But a "good enough" method also contradicts the
>majority of "research" papers and thesis produced
>by the academia, that are mostly derived from the
>"positivist epistemology" I have criticized in previous
>posts. The majority of those papers are "quantitative",
>but some of them are qualitative but, in many cases,
>continue to accept the principles of the referred
>epistemology, as I will try to prove in a minute.
I do not want to over simplify (logical) positivism with my next comment,
but I want to focus on its central feature and thus why it could take
academy only so far and not further. Also, I do not intend any judging of
actual persons in my critical examining of this philosophy.
In positivism there is an over emphasis on the essentiality sureness to
the detriment of the other six (liveness, wholeness, fruitfulness,
spareness, otherness, openness). Obviously, the articulation of these 7Es
was not known to the positivists. I can expect at most only a tacit
knowing of the 7Es among the positivists. The two essentialities which I
found to be most seriously impaired in positivism, were wholeness and
openness.
Because of the lack of wholeness and openness, the methods favoured by the
positivists were not "complex enough". In other words, these positivistic
methods did not match up to the LRC (Law of Requisite Complexity).
>All the history of "gurulogy", introduced by Peters, is
>based on exploiting manager's fears and saying that
>they can be solved with recipes. Those fears result from
>the complex times we are living in, and from the fact that
>to manage imply to take decisions with insufficient data,
>which seams to imply a kind of artistry where no one can
>be sure of being successful hence a manager will feel more
>"sure" if he can use the last recipes to "engineer"
>management work, and some will feel even more
>comfortable using some sort of magic and ritual.
I want to commend you on putting "sure" in quotation marks. There is
nothing wrong when any person go for "increasing sureness"=positivism.
Likewise a person may want to go for "increasing wholeness"=holism.
But serious problems in creatvity and knowledge ensue when too much focus
is put on merely one of the 7Es. The reason is that is that the 7Es are so
tightly woven into each other. Consequently, the more a person wants to
increase in sureness, the more the person will have to increase in the
other six too. I think that this is what is implied by your "kind of
artistry" which managers need.
The complexity of any system is reflected in its organisation. We can use
the concept entropy to express the degree of organisation (order and
chaos, strutures and processes, etc) in a singular manner. In simple
systems this entropy can actually be calculated based on measured data.
But when the system becomes too complex, the best we can do is to apply
what we have learned about entropy from simple systems, extend it by
speculation and then try to falsify it for complex systems.
The problem with expressing the complexity of a system's organisation with
entropy, is that entropy is a singular concept. It does not allow an
unfolding of itself because it express content, not form. That is where
the power of the 7Es comes in. They allow us to explore and express the
complexity in seven different facets of form. They help us to spot
deficiencies in "form of data"=information.
For example, consider liveness ("becoming-being"). Here the manager will
not not only seek for "year to year" data (from picture to picture), but
also for data expressing continuous processes (depicting the movie).
Whenever many processes become linked into one chain, the overall process
is as fast as the slowest link in the chain. It is the task of the manager
to spot these slow links and encourage the people involved to improve on
them.
>In some case the guru's recipes are presented as
>based on previous experiences; in some others they
>are presented as a completely new "creation" of the
>authors, based only on their own imagination. But the
>title or the advertisements will say clearly "cook with
>these recipes and you will become a great cooker"
>(I mean, a great manager or consultant).
I have mixed feelings on what you wrote here. On the one hand I wish to
applaud you for telling it so straight forward. Using without any
creativity a "recipe" for some creative activity becomes more than often a
recipe for failure. A "creative recipe" for a creative activity has to be
used creatively self. It needs to be modified as the circumstances
require. To do this, practice and an intuitive awareness to the 7Es are
required.
On the other hand, those who supply "creative recipes" have to improve on
their "creative recipes" so as to stay authentic to their own creativity.
The more complex a subject becomes, the more important it becomes to have
"creative recipes" with which to manage that subject. So what are these
"creative recipes" other than potential oxymorons?
"Creative recipes" are suggestive rather than prescriptive in their
guidance. They do not guarantee success, but indicate the minimum
complexity to attend to for success rather than failure. They have to be
modified creatively while applying them using information obtained from
sensitive feedback loops. They make the harmony/diction/stance in their
application their central feature.
Consequently the name "creative recipe" is for me a misnomer. A recipe
involves an automatic application of a specified formula. Perhaps the name
"creative organiser" will tell more what I have in mind. So please
substitute "creative organiser" for "creative recipe" in all my comments
above.
>Should any scientist in physics, chemistry, biology,
>etc. behave in such a way he would be completely
>discredited in a few years. In the management and
>organizational disciplines he or she will, on the contrary,
>became more and more accepted as being always at
>the edge of innovation.
Yet, dear Arthur, physics, chemistry, biology, etc. often advance with
leaps forward when someone with sufficient creativity in them puts forward
a speculation which on first encountering seems to be that of the
crackpot. After some discrediting, sometimes for many years, some of these
crackpots became acknowledged as paradigm shifters.
Nevertheless, I have had a solid training in chemistry, mathematics and
physics at university. After 5 years and a MSc, the lack of creativity in
that training made me almost hate universities. I began with a research
career in soil science. Within six months I learned with a shock that
soils are too complex to be managed by the traditional disciplines of
chemistry, mathematics and physics.
After four years of soil science I realised my calling -- to become a
teacher. Again, within six months, I learned with a shock that a class of
thirty pupils is orders more complex than even a soil. Fortunately, soils
weaned me from seeking simple solutions for the complex problems which a
class of pupils have. These pupils learned me one thing -- to help them
solving their complex problems I will have to improve my own creativity
very, very much.
In the beginning I was very much aware that theories of learning will work
for several classes until suddenly a class arrives in which that theory
has to be thrown out of the window if I want to avoid a catastrophe. I was
mystified because it was so unlike chemistry and physics and even complex
soils. It was then that I saw light in front of a very dark tunnel: TO
LEARN IS TO CREATE.
I became acutely aware that while teaching my mind had to work on two
vastly different levels of complexity. On the low level of complexity I
had to work with the concepts of chemistry, physics and mathematics just
as my pupils also had to do. But I had to work on a much higher level of
complexity with these pupils as humans who become endlessly more complex.
The theories, methods and diction of science which worked on the level of
chemistry and physics were in most cases far too simplistic to work for
humans.
>I am not claiming that I have some "good
>enough method" readily made to present
>to you as a prescription. And I don't even
>believe in prescriptions :-)
Me too. Yet I will dare to formulate one prescription ;-)
Do not try to manage a complex system with a simplistic philosophy and
methodology.
>The following are some points I would suggest in
>relation with "good enough methods" in management,
>organizational and social studies.
Your points are fine. I would like to add some too, but my reply has
become too lengthy. However, I have to mention one thing. I have learned
far more of a particular complex system by making comparative studies
between that system and others of different kinds than a critical analysis
of that particular system standing on its own. It something which I find
to some extend in the works of Ackoff, Deming, Flood and Jackson, but I
would like to see this comparative studies pursued much stronger.
Books on the management of organisations will become increasingly complex
as they come "closer to the truth". Hence it will become increasingly
difficult to form a learned opinion on any such a book standing on its
own. But by making a comparative study between different complex books of
the same kind, it is possible to form a learned opinion. (Yes, text books
in chemistry, geology, biology and medicine have become so complex that
comparative studies have to be made to select the one most valuable.)
Nevertheless, it requires far greater input from the person who wishes to
form such a learned opinion.
>I think that as managers, scholars or consultants
>we are all responsible for the credibility of the
>"organizational disciplines". They will be as good
>or as bad as we, as practitioners, will allow them
>to be.
Wise words. But led me add immediately that when trying to manage the
complexity of organisations creatively, the binary logic of good vs bad
becomes obsolete for me. There is rather a fractal path of good to better
to best (as the ideal) to follow. And this fractal path becomes more
complex as we proceed along it. What we must be very careful of, is that
the increasing complexity do not intimidate us into rigidity and
eventually ablation (gradual withering)
I have much respect for the science of organisational management. I
stumbled upon it after having discovered the 7Es as well as the importance
of the ESC (Elementary Sustainers of Creativity) such as problem-solving
and the dialogue. So I went into our university library from bottom to top
(several huge floors) searching through all the books for anything on
creativity, wholeness and the other six 7Es, problem-solving and the other
four ESCs.
I have found, for example, more sensitivity to the complexity of problem
solving as well as creativity in the managerial science than in most other
branches of science. Hence my admiration for thinkers in this science grew
immensely. It is almost as if they were (forgive my metaphor) pushing the
"second wave of philosophy". The "fist wave" began with Plato and lasted
for more than two millenia up to Heidegger.
However, I have to agree with you that there are some who "sell a treasure
map". There are also a few who "sell a complete toolbox" in which each
present "tool" in the box is a past "treasure map" which did not always
led to riches. They do the credibility of managerial science serious harm.
But they succeed with their selling because, as you have written, they are
"exploiting manager's fears ". Fear of what? Fear of not matching the
complexity of the organisation with a requisite complexity in management.
It took me about 21 years, since I became first intuitively aware of it in
soils, to grow in my tacit knowing before I was able to articulate it as
the Law of Requisite Complexity (LRC). My best teachers for the LRC were,
believe it or not, the pupils at school and later students at university
who I had to teach. Just as the fear of managers for complexity can be
exploited, the fear of teachers and lecturers can also be exploited. The
same happens even to coaches of sport teams, especially on the
international level.
Whoever has to lead an organisation (business, education, sport, etc.) has
to learn how to organise within complexity. Anybody who misuse complexity
to force intervention in a complex system for selfish gains is tinkering
with an explosive device. Curiously, when some politicians do it, few
learn from the tragedies which follow. I think it is because democracy,
despite all the hype, is not a LO.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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