Real Time Organizational Modeling

[John Hellier]

Is anyone working on Real Time Organizational Modeling where the model continually evolves
based on changes in the organization. All members of the organization contribute to the changes even
down to the creation of an email, how the email contents affect the organization and how the
recipients respond to the email.  What I am looking for is the encoding of an organization such that as
someone creates an email, an observer can watch this happening in the model and see the effect.
Maybe the email has little or no impact or maybe it has a growing ripple effect.

This model should have a view of the entire organization including tracking all actions performed.  I realize that
trying to capture everything is a bit daunting but if possible it could yield incredible insight into how organizations
work. I generally feel that most decisions made in organizations are made with such limited information that it is
amazing that most organizations don't fail. Or is that they are a lot less brittle than one might imagine.

I know that there is quite a bit of work done in more bit size pieces. I'm mainly interested in the much larger task
of taking a company of 40K and tracking every action and interaction. And then by extension, actions connected
outside of the organization. I know, huge, maybe impossible. Is there a way to adapt social networking
concepts to an organization to help model it?

Any ideas?

Thanks

John Hellier

[Phil Henshaw-2]

John, I'm not sure what your background is, but I've been surprised by
what high confidence people here put in modeling, and how little
discussion of modeling strategies there is.  I doubt there's any useful
modeling method for organizations, since what animates them are the
currents of human ideas, not rules.   What distinguishes between an
email addressing a critical issue that simply goes dead and engages no
one, and an email addressing trivial matters that becomes everyone's
reference for a while, is completely unknown.


Phil Henshaw                       ????.?? ? `?.????
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
680 Ft. Washington Ave
NY NY 10040                      
tel: [phone]                
e-mail: pfh at synapse9.com          
explorations: www.synapse9.com    

> -----Original Message-----
> From: friam-bounces at redfish.com
> [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of John Hellier
> Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2007 7:58 PM
> To: friam at redfish.com
> Subject: [FRIAM] Real Time Organizational Modeling
>
>
> Is anyone working on Real Time Organizational Modeling where
> the model continually evolves based on changes in the
> organization. All members of the organization contribute to
> the changes even down to the creation of an email, how the
> email contents affect the organization and how the recipients
> respond to the email.  What I am looking for is the encoding
> of an organization such that as someone creates an email, an
> observer can watch this happening in the model and see the effect.
> Maybe the email has little or no impact or maybe it has a
> growing ripple effect.
>
> This model should have a view of the entire organization
> including tracking all actions performed.  I realize that
> trying to capture everything is a bit daunting but if
> possible it could yield incredible insight into how
> organizations work. I generally feel that most decisions made
> in organizations are made with such limited information that
> it is amazing that most organizations don't fail. Or is that
> they are a lot less brittle than one might imagine.
>
> I know that there is quite a bit of work done in more bit
> size pieces. I'm mainly interested in the much larger task of
> taking a company of 40K and tracking every action and
> interaction. And then by extension, actions connected outside
> of the organization. I know, huge, maybe impossible. Is there
> a way to adapt social networking
> concepts to an organization to help model it?
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Thanks
>
> John Hellier
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>
>

[Owen Densmore]

On Jan 21, 2007, at 1:08 PM, Phil Henshaw wrote:
> John, I'm not sure what your background is, but I've been surprised by
> what high confidence people here put in modeling, and how little
> discussion of modeling strategies there is.

Phil, we all realize you are disappointed in FRIAM for its lack of  
understanding of your chosen area.  But there is no need for snide  
remarks such as this.  John fully realizes who he is speaking to and  
has realistic expectations.

> I doubt there's any useful
> modeling method for organizations, since what animates them are the
> currents of human ideas, not rules.

Nonsense.  Organizations have been modeled at least since MIT's Jay  
Forrester, and later, John Sterman, introduced their System  
Dynamics.  I've always been surprised at your not using System  
Dynamic for studies of growth.  It's eminently suited to flows,  
feedback, high interaction rates and so on.

> What distinguishes between an
> email addressing a critical issue that simply goes dead and engages no
> one, and an email addressing trivial matters that becomes everyone's
> reference for a while, is completely unknown.

Gosh, I'm sorry we are such a lousy list and focused on such trivial  
topics.

If this forum has been unresponsive to your needs, perhaps you should  
search elsewhere.

     -- Owen

Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net


On Jan 21, 2007, at 1:08 PM, Phil Henshaw wrote:

> John, I'm not sure what your background is, but I've been surprised by
> what high confidence people here put in modeling, and how little
> discussion of modeling strategies there is.  I doubt there's any  
> useful
> modeling method for organizations, since what animates them are the
> currents of human ideas, not rules.   What distinguishes between an
> email addressing a critical issue that simply goes dead and engages no
> one, and an email addressing trivial matters that becomes everyone's
> reference for a while, is completely unknown.
>
>
> Phil Henshaw                       ????.?? ? `?.????
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 680 Ft. Washington Ave
> NY NY 10040
> tel: [phone]
> e-mail: pfh at synapse9.com
> explorations: www.synapse9.com
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: friam-bounces at redfish.com
>> [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of John Hellier
>> Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2007 7:58 PM
>> To: friam at redfish.com
>> Subject: [FRIAM] Real Time Organizational Modeling
>>
>>
>> Is anyone working on Real Time Organizational Modeling where
>> the model continually evolves based on changes in the
>> organization. All members of the organization contribute to
>> the changes even down to the creation of an email, how the
>> email contents affect the organization and how the recipients
>> respond to the email.  What I am looking for is the encoding
>> of an organization such that as someone creates an email, an
>> observer can watch this happening in the model and see the effect.
>> Maybe the email has little or no impact or maybe it has a
>> growing ripple effect.
>>
>> This model should have a view of the entire organization
>> including tracking all actions performed.  I realize that
>> trying to capture everything is a bit daunting but if
>> possible it could yield incredible insight into how
>> organizations work. I generally feel that most decisions made
>> in organizations are made with such limited information that
>> it is amazing that most organizations don't fail. Or is that
>> they are a lot less brittle than one might imagine.
>>
>> I know that there is quite a bit of work done in more bit
>> size pieces. I'm mainly interested in the much larger task of
>> taking a company of 40K and tracking every action and
>> interaction. And then by extension, actions connected outside
>> of the organization. I know, huge, maybe impossible. Is there
>> a way to adapt social networking
>> concepts to an organization to help model it?
>>
>> Any ideas?
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> John Hellier

[Owen Densmore]

On Jan 20, 2007, at 5:58 PM, John Hellier wrote:
> Is anyone working on Real Time Organizational Modeling where the  
> model continually evolves based on changes in the organization. All  
> members of the organization contribute to the changes even down to  
> the creation of an email, how the email contents affect the  
> organization and how the recipients respond to the email.

Well, this sounds almost like TranSims in its completeness and  
depth!  Doug might have a suggestion how to approach something quite  
this detailed and ambitious.  Sounds like LOTS of fun too!

One problem in this approach is that it is susceptive to the  
Butterfly effect .. extreme dependency on initial conditions.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
This is not a huge problem, but does mean that parameter scans,  
design of experiments, and the like are needed to make sure your  
predictions are stable enough for your purpose.  Possibly computing a  
Lyapunov exponent would be a useful tool, but I confess to never  
doing so with my models, blush!
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyapunov_exponent

> What I am looking for is the encoding of an organization such that  
> as someone creates an email, an observer can watch this happening  
> in the model and see the effect. Maybe the email has little or no  
> impact or maybe it has a growing ripple effect.

I like the word "encoding" here.  We've generally built behavior via  
algorithms, with a certain amount of stochasticity, but have not, in  
my mind, been quite formal enough.

Carl: do you think policy modeling, and category theory in general,  
could handle encoding an organization?

> This model should have a view of the entire organization including  
> tracking all actions performed. I realize that trying to capture  
> everything is a bit daunting but if possible it could yield  
> incredible insight into how organizations work.

I'm curious: what is prompting this?  Is it a possible project you  
may be working on?  I ask because that might let you do *some*  
narrowing.

> I generally feel that most decisions made in organizations are made  
> with such limited information that it is amazing that most  
> organizations don't fail. Or is that they are a lot less brittle  
> than one might imagine.

No doubt about that!

That said, one successful narrowing I know of is Steve's  
visualization of the pharmaceutical industry.  Rather than look at  
the entire organization, the model looked at projects and their life  
cycle.  Its a very interesting viz and maybe you could drop by the  
office for a show & tell.

A second stunt Steve pulled off was actually a multi-organizational  
simulation of the entire British criminal justice system, including  
the police, courts and more.  Not sure if this would apply in your case.

> I know that there is quite a bit of work done in more bit size  
> pieces. I'm mainly interested in the much larger task of taking a  
> company of 40K and tracking every action and interaction. And then  
> by extension, actions connected outside of the organization. I  
> know, huge, maybe impossible. Is there a way to adapt social  
> networking concepts to an organization to help model it?
>
> Any ideas?

I'd propose a WedTech meeting .. the lunch chats we have at Redfish  
on Wednesdays.  They often are pretty unformed and brown baggy.  It'd  
give you a way to talk through the modeling effort, and get good  
feedback from at least those that have tried such a thing.

I'd sure love to think about this a bit more.  For example, one  
approach might be to accept the bit sized pieces, but then have them  
interact.  That would make the problem more approachable by  
decomposition.

> Thanks
>
> John Hellier


     -- Owen

Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net

[Douglas Roberts-2]

Owen,

In fact, there is a component of TRANSIMS that is somewhat similar to what
is described below.  If you recall the "simulated annealing" step of a
TRANSIMS analysis, a certain percent of unsatisfied traveler demand is
iteratively rerouted until either all the travel demand for a given urban
region can be realistically satisfied, or it is determined that the travel
demand is unrealistic.  However, the design of this component was carefully
developed such that the individual agents are only in possession of local
knowledge of the system, not global knowledge.

The analyst, or course, can see the overall effects on the system of the
indiviuals' trip replanning, but the agents in the simulation only see their
local effects.

--Doug

--
Doug Roberts, RTI International
droberts at rti.org
doug at parrot-farm.net
505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell

On 1/21/07, Owen Densmore <owen at backspaces.net> wrote:

>
> On Jan 20, 2007, at 5:58 PM, John Hellier wrote:
> > Is anyone working on Real Time Organizational Modeling where the
> > model continually evolves based on changes in the organization. All
> > members of the organization contribute to the changes even down to
> > the creation of an email, how the email contents affect the
> > organization and how the recipients respond to the email.
>
> Well, this sounds almost like TranSims in its completeness and
> depth!  Doug might have a suggestion how to approach something quite
> this detailed and ambitious.  Sounds like LOTS of fun too!
>
> One problem in this approach is that it is susceptive to the
> Butterfly effect .. extreme dependency on initial conditions.
>    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
> This is not a huge problem, but does mean that parameter scans,
> design of experiments, and the like are needed to make sure your
> predictions are stable enough for your purpose.  Possibly computing a
> Lyapunov exponent would be a useful tool, but I confess to never
> doing so with my models, blush!
>    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyapunov_exponent
>
> > What I am looking for is the encoding of an organization such that
> > as someone creates an email, an observer can watch this happening
> > in the model and see the effect. Maybe the email has little or no
> > impact or maybe it has a growing ripple effect.
>
> I like the word "encoding" here.  We've generally built behavior via
> algorithms, with a certain amount of stochasticity, but have not, in
> my mind, been quite formal enough.
>
> Carl: do you think policy modeling, and category theory in general,
> could handle encoding an organization?
>
> > This model should have a view of the entire organization including
> > tracking all actions performed. I realize that trying to capture
> > everything is a bit daunting but if possible it could yield
> > incredible insight into how organizations work.
>
> I'm curious: what is prompting this?  Is it a possible project you
> may be working on?  I ask because that might let you do *some*
> narrowing.
>
> > I generally feel that most decisions made in organizations are made
> > with such limited information that it is amazing that most
> > organizations don't fail. Or is that they are a lot less brittle
> > than one might imagine.
>
> No doubt about that!
>
> That said, one successful narrowing I know of is Steve's
> visualization of the pharmaceutical industry.  Rather than look at
> the entire organization, the model looked at projects and their life
> cycle.  Its a very interesting viz and maybe you could drop by the
> office for a show & tell.
>
> A second stunt Steve pulled off was actually a multi-organizational
> simulation of the entire British criminal justice system, including
> the police, courts and more.  Not sure if this would apply in your case.
>
> > I know that there is quite a bit of work done in more bit size
> > pieces. I'm mainly interested in the much larger task of taking a
> > company of 40K and tracking every action and interaction. And then
> > by extension, actions connected outside of the organization. I
> > know, huge, maybe impossible. Is there a way to adapt social
> > networking concepts to an organization to help model it?
> >
> > Any ideas?
>
> I'd propose a WedTech meeting .. the lunch chats we have at Redfish
> on Wednesdays.  They often are pretty unformed and brown baggy.  It'd
> give you a way to talk through the modeling effort, and get good
> feedback from at least those that have tried such a thing.
>
> I'd sure love to think about this a bit more.  For example, one
> approach might be to accept the bit sized pieces, but then have them
> interact.  That would make the problem more approachable by
> decomposition.
>
> > Thanks
> >
> > John Hellier
>
>
>      -- Owen
>
> Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>

--
Doug Roberts, RTI International
droberts at rti.org
doug at parrot-farm.net
505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell
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[Douglas Roberts-2]

Phil,

I've been wondering for some time if you have ever actually designed and
implemented an agent based model of any kind, for complexity analysis or
not.  I suspect the answer is "no".

--Doug

--
Doug Roberts, RTI International
droberts at rti.org
doug at parrot-farm.net
505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell

On 1/21/07, Phil Henshaw <sy at synapse9.com> wrote:

>
> John, I'm not sure what your background is, but I've been surprised by
> what high confidence people here put in modeling, and how little
> discussion of modeling strategies there is.  I doubt there's any useful
> modeling method for organizations, since what animates them are the
> currents of human ideas, not rules.   What distinguishes between an
> email addressing a critical issue that simply goes dead and engages no
> one, and an email addressing trivial matters that becomes everyone's
> reference for a while, is completely unknown.
>
>
> Phil Henshaw                       ????.?? ? `?.????
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 680 Ft. Washington Ave
> NY NY 10040
> tel: [phone]
> e-mail: pfh at synapse9.com
> explorations: www.synapse9.com
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: friam-bounces at redfish.com
> > [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of John Hellier
> > Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2007 7:58 PM
> > To: friam at redfish.com
> > Subject: [FRIAM] Real Time Organizational Modeling
> >
> >
> > Is anyone working on Real Time Organizational Modeling where
> > the model continually evolves based on changes in the
> > organization. All members of the organization contribute to
> > the changes even down to the creation of an email, how the
> > email contents affect the organization and how the recipients
> > respond to the email.  What I am looking for is the encoding
> > of an organization such that as someone creates an email, an
> > observer can watch this happening in the model and see the effect.
> > Maybe the email has little or no impact or maybe it has a
> > growing ripple effect.
> >
> > This model should have a view of the entire organization
> > including tracking all actions performed.  I realize that
> > trying to capture everything is a bit daunting but if
> > possible it could yield incredible insight into how
> > organizations work. I generally feel that most decisions made
> > in organizations are made with such limited information that
> > it is amazing that most organizations don't fail. Or is that
> > they are a lot less brittle than one might imagine.
> >
> > I know that there is quite a bit of work done in more bit
> > size pieces. I'm mainly interested in the much larger task of
> > taking a company of 40K and tracking every action and
> > interaction. And then by extension, actions connected outside
> > of the organization. I know, huge, maybe impossible. Is there
> > a way to adapt social networking
> > concepts to an organization to help model it?
> >
> > Any ideas?
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > John Hellier
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ============================================================
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
> >
> >
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>

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[Steve Smith]

Doug -


Just checking in after our brief conversation at De Colores when you
intimated that RTI (or equivalent) might have some work.

I'm working on Viz for NISAC... trying to come up with an integrated
strategy (and reference implementation) for 2D (Java app w/OpenMap or
GeoTools) thick client, plus GeoTools thin client
(HTTP/HTML/JavaScript) plust 3D thin client (Google Earth/KML)
interface to the multitude of models... I have other irons in the fire
as well, but those  are the ones most relevant to your work.

What is the prognosis for extra-LANL work via your friends and
associates?

- Steve

[Douglas Roberts-2]

Hi, Steve.

Thanks for jogging my memory -- I'll mention you to my colleagues this week
and let you know what opportunities might exist at RTI for a viz guy.

Cheers,

--Doug

--
Doug Roberts, RTI International
droberts at rti.org
doug at parrot-farm.net
505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell

On 1/21/07, steve smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:

>
> Doug -
>
>
> Just checking in after our brief conversation at De Colores when you
> intimated that RTI (or equivalent) might have some work.
>
> I'm working on Viz for NISAC... trying to come up with an integrated
> strategy (and reference implementation) for 2D (Java app w/OpenMap or
> GeoTools) thick client, plus GeoTools thin client
> (HTTP/HTML/JavaScript) plust 3D thin client (Google Earth/KML)
> interface to the multitude of models... I have other irons in the fire
> as well, but those  are the ones most relevant to your work.
>
> What is the prognosis for extra-LANL work via your friends and
> associates?
>
> - Steve
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>

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[John Hellier]

I am interested in this because of a clear
problem my group has in communicating.
This is manifested in an incredible lack of
understanding of what everyone else is doing,
even within a small sub-group.

I work in an office of ~100 scientists and
engineers. The composition of the group is
broad in functionality and would make an
interesting test case for trying to capture
the dynamics of a larger group of scientists
and engineers.

The project is informal and not quite funded.
So it is more a pursuit on the side for me.
But I have been thinking about it for some
time while working at a variety of organizations,
all having the same problem.

It may be naive of me but I was thinking of
approaching this from the top-down with very high
level actors that evolve over time as the
model grows. The butterfly effect you speak of
may not come into play since my initial
parameters are very general. Initially, the model
would describe communication channels between actors
without getting to specific about how to handle what
is being communicated. Over time the types of actions
would be fleshed out for each line of communication
and allowed to change over time. Not sure if
this makes sense or not.

Going forward I like to be able to create tools
that capture every action that people do. For
example, email should not be a stand alone
application. As a person is creating an email,
the content of the email should be linking to
a central repository of organizational knowledge.
Perhaps email as a tool is wrong for communicating
in an organization. It just happens to be what
we have and relatively expedient. A number of
the applications I have written there replace
communication channels that used to use email.
For example, weekly status reports or work orders.
Both of which were email activities but are
now formal apps with database backends. These
kinds of apps could be the start of tracking
activities.

By capturing all the actions of an organization,
you could start to encode it. But you would need
a host of new tools for how people communicate.

A WedTech meeting would be cool.

John Hellier



--- Owen Densmore <owen at backspaces.net> wrote:

> On Jan 20, 2007, at 5:58 PM, John Hellier wrote:
> > Is anyone working on Real Time Organizational
> Modeling where the  
> > model continually evolves based on changes in the
> organization. All  
> > members of the organization contribute to the
> changes even down to  
> > the creation of an email, how the email contents
> affect the  
> > organization and how the recipients respond to the
> email.
>
> Well, this sounds almost like TranSims in its
> completeness and  
> depth!  Doug might have a suggestion how to approach
> something quite  
> this detailed and ambitious.  Sounds like LOTS of
> fun too!
>
> One problem in this approach is that it is
> susceptive to the  
> Butterfly effect .. extreme dependency on initial
> conditions.
>    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
> This is not a huge problem, but does mean that
> parameter scans,  
> design of experiments, and the like are needed to
> make sure your  
> predictions are stable enough for your purpose.
> Possibly computing a  
> Lyapunov exponent would be a useful tool, but I
> confess to never  
> doing so with my models, blush!
>    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyapunov_exponent
>
> > What I am looking for is the encoding of an
> organization such that  
> > as someone creates an email, an observer can watch
> this happening  
> > in the model and see the effect. Maybe the email
> has little or no  
> > impact or maybe it has a growing ripple effect.
>
> I like the word "encoding" here.  We've generally
> built behavior via  
> algorithms, with a certain amount of stochasticity,
> but have not, in  
> my mind, been quite formal enough.
>
> Carl: do you think policy modeling, and category
> theory in general,  
> could handle encoding an organization?
>
> > This model should have a view of the entire
> organization including  
> > tracking all actions performed. I realize that
> trying to capture  
> > everything is a bit daunting but if possible it
> could yield  
> > incredible insight into how organizations work.
>
> I'm curious: what is prompting this?  Is it a
> possible project you  
> may be working on?  I ask because that might let you
> do *some*  
> narrowing.
>
> > I generally feel that most decisions made in
> organizations are made  
> > with such limited information that it is amazing
> that most  
> > organizations don't fail. Or is that they are a
> lot less brittle  
> > than one might imagine.
>
> No doubt about that!
>
> That said, one successful narrowing I know of is
> Steve's  
> visualization of the pharmaceutical industry.
> Rather than look at  
> the entire organization, the model looked at
> projects and their life  
> cycle.  Its a very interesting viz and maybe you
> could drop by the  
> office for a show & tell.
>
> A second stunt Steve pulled off was actually a
> multi-organizational  
> simulation of the entire British criminal justice
> system, including  
> the police, courts and more.  Not sure if this would
> apply in your case.
>
> > I know that there is quite a bit of work done in
> more bit size  
> > pieces. I'm mainly interested in the much larger
> task of taking a  
> > company of 40K and tracking every action and
> interaction. And then  
> > by extension, actions connected outside of the
> organization. I  
> > know, huge, maybe impossible. Is there a way to
> adapt social  
> > networking concepts to an organization to help
> model it?
> >
> > Any ideas?
>
> I'd propose a WedTech meeting .. the lunch chats we
> have at Redfish  
> on Wednesdays.  They often are pretty unformed and
> brown baggy.  It'd  
> give you a way to talk through the modeling effort,
> and get good  
> feedback from at least those that have tried such a
> thing.
>
> I'd sure love to think about this a bit more.  For
> example, one  
> approach might be to accept the bit sized pieces,
> but then have them  
> interact.  That would make the problem more
> approachable by  
> decomposition.
>
> > Thanks
> >
> > John Hellier
>
>
>      -- Owen
>
> Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
> http://www.friam.org
>

[Steve Smith]

FRIAM - folks -

Pardon my indiscrete faux-pas.

That last solicitation for work-leads was intended for Doug only...

No surprise to most of you, however, that LANL under Bechtel is no
better (and perhaps but not indisputably worse) than under UC
themselves.

The long-nights and short-days have kept me too busy with stoking a
woodstove whilst tuning an active solar system, and trying to get 10+
hours of hibernative sleep a night to participate properly in the  
FRIAM extravaganza represented here and at various coffee locations in
Santa Fe.  But I do enjoy the ebb and flow of ideas presented here.

I am looking for an alternative to my current dial-up service here in
San Ildefonso... resisting the Sattelite solution up to now.  Anyone
with better thoughts are welcome...  <=  28K does not entertain.  I'm
not convinced that my marginal visual siting of Santa Fe Baldy
constitutes meaningful access to the direct-beam wireless (microwave)
offered to folks in the Tesuque basin and other such areas.  But maybe.

  Does anyone know if any of the Satellite systems are not brokered
through Israeli satellites (no anti-semitism... I'm just kinda
anti-zionist)?

Carry on!
  -  Steve

[David Breecker]

Steve, I'm on HughesNet when I'm out in Abiquiu, formerly DirecWay, formerly
Fox Corp, which I'm fairly sure is on a U.S. bird given what Hughes' other
business operations are about.

I'm pretty satisfied with it, with the standard caveat that if you have a
choice (DSL, cable, or wireless) take it; if dialup is your only
alternative, go for the satellite.

Downloads are roughly T-1 speeds; uploads have no minimum guarantee, but I
find they're at dialup or better.  The latency gets to you (pageloads can
feel as slow as dialup if you're clicking through quickly), but you get used
to it, and you can stream audio or video, handle fat files and software
downloads, etc.

Give me a call if you'd like more info, or come by and try it,
db

dba | David Breecker Associates, Inc.
www.BreeckerAssociates.com
Abiquiu:     505-685-4891
Santa Fe:    505-690-2335


----- Original Message -----
From: "steve smith" <[hidden email]>
To: "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group" <friam at redfish.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 21, 2007 8:50 PM
Subject: [FRIAM] Ooops! was: NISAC ++

> FRIAM - folks -
>
> Pardon my indiscrete faux-pas.
>
> That last solicitation for work-leads was intended for Doug only...
>
> No surprise to most of you, however, that LANL under Bechtel is no
> better (and perhaps but not indisputably worse) than under UC
> themselves.
>
> The long-nights and short-days have kept me too busy with stoking a
> woodstove whilst tuning an active solar system, and trying to get 10+
> hours of hibernative sleep a night to participate properly in the
> FRIAM extravaganza represented here and at various coffee locations in
> Santa Fe.  But I do enjoy the ebb and flow of ideas presented here.
>
> I am looking for an alternative to my current dial-up service here in
> San Ildefonso... resisting the Sattelite solution up to now.  Anyone
> with better thoughts are welcome...  <=  28K does not entertain.  I'm
> not convinced that my marginal visual siting of Santa Fe Baldy
> constitutes meaningful access to the direct-beam wireless (microwave)
> offered to folks in the Tesuque basin and other such areas.  But maybe.
>
>  Does anyone know if any of the Satellite systems are not brokered
> through Israeli satellites (no anti-semitism... I'm just kinda
> anti-zionist)?
>
> Carry on!
>  -  Steve
>
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>
>

[Phil Henshaw-2]

Great! these are very legitimate methodology questions.  The reason I
let my interest in the first serious attempts at system dynamics
modeling to slide is because of their flaws.  

Individual events represent processes with continually changing
structure and all the models I know of, try to approximate that with
fixed structures.  It's very problematic.   I'm not sure that my work is
advanced enough to make a strong contribution to practical modeling
efforts, but sometimes it's helpful to have someone on the team who's
aware of previously unrecognized parts of the problem.

BTW in that post I was probably voicing some frustration with not just
FRIAM but also all the other really smart sophisticated people I've
talked with over the past years about this really cool thing I found.
The example of inexplicable organizational behavior I chose was meant to
be recognizable, but not to suggest that I think that the tone of
discussions here, on any subject, is trivial.


Phil Henshaw                       ????.?? ? `?.????
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
680 Ft. Washington Ave
NY NY 10040                      
tel: [phone]                
e-mail: pfh at synapse9.com          
explorations: www.synapse9.com    

> -----Original Message-----
> From: friam-bounces at redfish.com
> [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore
> Sent: Sunday, January 21, 2007 7:02 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Real Time Organizational Modeling
>
>
> On Jan 21, 2007, at 1:08 PM, Phil Henshaw wrote:
> > John, I'm not sure what your background is, but I've been
> surprised by
> > what high confidence people here put in modeling, and how little
> > discussion of modeling strategies there is.
>
> Phil, we all realize you are disappointed in FRIAM for its lack of  
> understanding of your chosen area.  But there is no need for snide  
> remarks such as this.  John fully realizes who he is speaking to and  
> has realistic expectations.
>
> > I doubt there's any useful
> > modeling method for organizations, since what animates them are the
> > currents of human ideas, not rules.
>
> Nonsense.  Organizations have been modeled at least since MIT's Jay  
> Forrester, and later, John Sterman, introduced their System  
> Dynamics.  I've always been surprised at your not using System  
> Dynamic for studies of growth.  It's eminently suited to flows,  
> feedback, high interaction rates and so on.
>
> > What distinguishes between an
> > email addressing a critical issue that simply goes dead and
> engages no
> > one, and an email addressing trivial matters that becomes
> everyone's
> > reference for a while, is completely unknown.
>
> Gosh, I'm sorry we are such a lousy list and focused on such trivial  
> topics.
>
> If this forum has been unresponsive to your needs, perhaps
> you should  
> search elsewhere.
>
>      -- Owen
>
> Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net
>
>
> On Jan 21, 2007, at 1:08 PM, Phil Henshaw wrote:
>
> > John, I'm not sure what your background is, but I've been
> surprised by
> > what high confidence people here put in modeling, and how little
> > discussion of modeling strategies there is.  I doubt there's any
> > useful
> > modeling method for organizations, since what animates them are the
> > currents of human ideas, not rules.   What distinguishes between an
> > email addressing a critical issue that simply goes dead and
> engages no
> > one, and an email addressing trivial matters that becomes everyone's
> > reference for a while, is completely unknown.
> >
> >
> > Phil Henshaw                       ????.?? ? `?.????
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> > 680 Ft. Washington Ave
> > NY NY 10040
> > tel: [phone]
> > e-mail: pfh at synapse9.com
> > explorations: www.synapse9.com
> >
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: friam-bounces at redfish.com
> [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On
> >> Behalf Of John Hellier
> >> Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2007 7:58 PM
> >> To: friam at redfish.com
> >> Subject: [FRIAM] Real Time Organizational Modeling
> >>
> >>
> >> Is anyone working on Real Time Organizational Modeling where the
> >> model continually evolves based on changes in the
> organization. All
> >> members of the organization contribute to the changes even down to
> >> the creation of an email, how the email contents affect the
> >> organization and how the recipients respond to the email.  
> What I am
> >> looking for is the encoding of an organization such that
> as someone
> >> creates an email, an observer can watch this happening in
> the model
> >> and see the effect. Maybe the email has little or no
> impact or maybe
> >> it has a growing ripple effect.
> >>
> >> This model should have a view of the entire organization including
> >> tracking all actions performed.  I realize that trying to capture
> >> everything is a bit daunting but if possible it could yield
> >> incredible insight into how organizations work. I
> generally feel that
> >> most decisions made in organizations are made with such limited
> >> information that it is amazing that most organizations
> don't fail. Or
> >> is that they are a lot less brittle than one might imagine.
> >>
> >> I know that there is quite a bit of work done in more bit size
> >> pieces. I'm mainly interested in the much larger task of taking a
> >> company of 40K and tracking every action and interaction.
> And then by
> >> extension, actions connected outside of the organization. I know,
> >> huge, maybe impossible. Is there a way to adapt social networking
> >> concepts to an organization to help model it?
> >>
> >> Any ideas?
> >>
> >> Thanks
> >>
> >> John Hellier
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>
>

[Michael Agar]

I think John's on the right trail with his opening and closing  
comments about "communication, which could start with notions of  
"tagging" and agent communication languages but then would have to  
dive into the literature on discourse in the workplace. In the many  
projects I've been involved with over the last year or so, the  
problem he describes is the normal situation and difficult to figure  
out how to resolve.

Maybe thinking of the problem in terms of the whole organization is  
in the way here.

The problem with ?the whole organization? is that there are a variety  
of mental models distributed within and linked to it, to some extent  
constrained by shared task demands, to some extent still variable  
within task depending on the variety of biographies brought in by  
individual participants. Then another problem--the tasks themselves  
change in response to changes in the organizational environment, and  
the changes impact differentially on various organizational units  
with different rhythms. A third problem--Making the model is an  
example of Arthur?s self referential ?logical hole? for economics--
Making the model changes the organization that it is a model of.

The more the organization resembles the ?Complex Organization?  
celebrated in the literature, the more difficult these problems will  
be. Maybe the notion of a model of THE organization harks back to the  
old hierarchical command and control steady state etc model that so  
many try to change, except of course in government and the university  
(: So models yes, but of issues that can be reduced and clarified,  
probably not of an actual entire organization.

All of this leaves John's original problem unsolved. It will involve  
communication, but also issues of interests, power, distrust,  
prejudice, and others that also need to be addressed.

Like he said, a WedTech discussion wouldn't be such a bad idea.


Mike Agar
www.ethknoworks.com



On Jan 21, 2007, at 8:41 PM, John Hellier wrote:

> I am interested in this because of a clear
> problem my group has in communicating.
> This is manifested in an incredible lack of
> understanding of what everyone else is doing,
> even within a small sub-group.
>
> I work in an office of ~100 scientists and
> engineers. The composition of the group is
> broad in functionality and would make an
> interesting test case for trying to capture
> the dynamics of a larger group of scientists
> and engineers.
>
> The project is informal and not quite funded.
> So it is more a pursuit on the side for me.
> But I have been thinking about it for some
> time while working at a variety of organizations,
> all having the same problem.
>
> It may be naive of me but I was thinking of
> approaching this from the top-down with very high
> level actors that evolve over time as the
> model grows. The butterfly effect you speak of
> may not come into play since my initial
> parameters are very general. Initially, the model
> would describe communication channels between actors
> without getting to specific about how to handle what
> is being communicated. Over time the types of actions
> would be fleshed out for each line of communication
> and allowed to change over time. Not sure if
> this makes sense or not.
>
> Going forward I like to be able to create tools
> that capture every action that people do. For
> example, email should not be a stand alone
> application. As a person is creating an email,
> the content of the email should be linking to
> a central repository of organizational knowledge.
> Perhaps email as a tool is wrong for communicating
> in an organization. It just happens to be what
> we have and relatively expedient. A number of
> the applications I have written there replace
> communication channels that used to use email.
> For example, weekly status reports or work orders.
> Both of which were email activities but are
> now formal apps with database backends. These
> kinds of apps could be the start of tracking
> activities.
>
> By capturing all the actions of an organization,
> you could start to encode it. But you would need
> a host of new tools for how people communicate.
>
> A WedTech meeting would be cool.
>
> John Hellier
>
>
>
> --- Owen Densmore <owen at backspaces.net> wrote:
>
>> On Jan 20, 2007, at 5:58 PM, John Hellier wrote:
>>> Is anyone working on Real Time Organizational
>> Modeling where the
>>> model continually evolves based on changes in the
>> organization. All
>>> members of the organization contribute to the
>> changes even down to
>>> the creation of an email, how the email contents
>> affect the
>>> organization and how the recipients respond to the
>> email.
>>
>> Well, this sounds almost like TranSims in its
>> completeness and
>> depth!  Doug might have a suggestion how to approach
>> something quite
>> this detailed and ambitious.  Sounds like LOTS of
>> fun too!
>>
>> One problem in this approach is that it is
>> susceptive to the
>> Butterfly effect .. extreme dependency on initial
>> conditions.
>>    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
>> This is not a huge problem, but does mean that
>> parameter scans,
>> design of experiments, and the like are needed to
>> make sure your
>> predictions are stable enough for your purpose.
>> Possibly computing a
>> Lyapunov exponent would be a useful tool, but I
>> confess to never
>> doing so with my models, blush!
>>    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyapunov_exponent
>>
>>> What I am looking for is the encoding of an
>> organization such that
>>> as someone creates an email, an observer can watch
>> this happening
>>> in the model and see the effect. Maybe the email
>> has little or no
>>> impact or maybe it has a growing ripple effect.
>>
>> I like the word "encoding" here.  We've generally
>> built behavior via
>> algorithms, with a certain amount of stochasticity,
>> but have not, in
>> my mind, been quite formal enough.
>>
>> Carl: do you think policy modeling, and category
>> theory in general,
>> could handle encoding an organization?
>>
>>> This model should have a view of the entire
>> organization including
>>> tracking all actions performed. I realize that
>> trying to capture
>>> everything is a bit daunting but if possible it
>> could yield
>>> incredible insight into how organizations work.
>>
>> I'm curious: what is prompting this?  Is it a
>> possible project you
>> may be working on?  I ask because that might let you
>> do *some*
>> narrowing.
>>
>>> I generally feel that most decisions made in
>> organizations are made
>>> with such limited information that it is amazing
>> that most
>>> organizations don't fail. Or is that they are a
>> lot less brittle
>>> than one might imagine.
>>
>> No doubt about that!
>>
>> That said, one successful narrowing I know of is
>> Steve's
>> visualization of the pharmaceutical industry.
>> Rather than look at
>> the entire organization, the model looked at
>> projects and their life
>> cycle.  Its a very interesting viz and maybe you
>> could drop by the
>> office for a show & tell.
>>
>> A second stunt Steve pulled off was actually a
>> multi-organizational
>> simulation of the entire British criminal justice
>> system, including
>> the police, courts and more.  Not sure if this would
>> apply in your case.
>>
>>> I know that there is quite a bit of work done in
>> more bit size
>>> pieces. I'm mainly interested in the much larger
>> task of taking a
>>> company of 40K and tracking every action and
>> interaction. And then
>>> by extension, actions connected outside of the
>> organization. I
>>> know, huge, maybe impossible. Is there a way to
>> adapt social
>>> networking concepts to an organization to help
>> model it?
>>>
>>> Any ideas?
>>
>> I'd propose a WedTech meeting .. the lunch chats we
>> have at Redfish
>> on Wednesdays.  They often are pretty unformed and
>> brown baggy.  It'd
>> give you a way to talk through the modeling effort,
>> and get good
>> feedback from at least those that have tried such a
>> thing.
>>
>> I'd sure love to think about this a bit more.  For
>> example, one
>> approach might be to accept the bit sized pieces,
>> but then have them
>> interact.  That would make the problem more
>> approachable by
>> decomposition.
>>
>>> Thanks
>>>
>>> John Hellier
>>
>>
>>      -- Owen
>>
>> Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
>> http://www.friam.org
>>
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org