The Real World Model
A couple of weeks ago, Yann LeCun posted his definition of a “world model” as used in AI on Twitter (@ylecun). The post had more than 400 K views, was…
Bifurcations in Evolution and Decision-Making
Bifurcation Diagrams A couple of decades ago, while learning about chaos and complexity, I started experimenting with my own bifurcation diagrams using huge spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel. As the base…
On Leadership and Management
One of Gene Bellinger’s systems thinking archetypes on his Mental Model Musings website is about the difference between Leadership and Management. He provides both a structural view and a dynamical…
The Wisdom of the Commons
This is a “Living” Post where I plan to discuss the “Commons” and present examples of this “flat” organizational model, a bottom-up, emergent centuries-old method of organizing communities in the…
Organizational Change in Time of Crisis?
In an interesting document, Managing complexity (and chaos) in times of crisis. A field guide for decision makers inspired by the Cynefin framework created by Dave Snowden and Alessandro Rancati…
The Power of “NO”
Warren Buffett says “This 1 Simple Habit Separates Successful People From Everyone Else”: “The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to…
Complexity & Points of View
Complexity theorists often quote the non-linearity of dynamical complex systems as a reason why we should not bother even try to predict their future states and just “go with the…
Ashby and Self-Organization
Ashby had a very peculiar relationship with self organizing systems. In his seminal paper “Principles of the self-organizing system” (pgs. 115-117) he writes this: The reason for such a statement…
Managing Complexity with Systems Engineering
Most contemporary writings about Complexity will, at some point or another let you know how “hard” systems engineering methods are not good enough for dealing with complex systems and how…
Untangling Complexity Theory
An excellent introductory article for anyone interested in Complexity Theory (CT) is An Introduction to Complexity Theory by Jun Park. Among other things, it provides an insight about its origins…