Real Time Organizational Modeling

[Phil Henshaw-2]

Sometimes progress in solving intractable modeling problems only puts
off reckoning with the more fundamental aspects.  The following is a
draft post for my environmental design forum that seems directly
relevant.

To be realistic, there is a technique that can get you half way there
easily, but you won't like it.   It's to use the organization itself
as it's own model, complete with all it's hidden variables and
inventiveness, that no substitute model maker could ever imagine
putting in.  Then once the system itself is running (like... as
always) you start monitoring all the variables you can conceivably
acquire, and then watch them to learn what the 'model' is doing.  

The key is to have your monitoring system software flag the dynamic
indicators of emergent whole system behavior.  Then when you find
something happening you go see what's doing it.   Lots of things would
be as expected, but lots of them would also be a complete
revelation!   I don't think anyone before has monitored the dynamics
of living systems and flagged the major inflection points to see where
the internal feedbacks are switching.

Phil

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

--
Phil Henshaw                       ????.?? ? `?.????
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