Learning log 9 - coevolution

For this learning log I focused on two articles: (1) “Coevolutionary ecological economics” by Giorgos Kallis and Richard B. Norgaard, and (2) “Innovation Versus Environmental Protection Presumptions” by David L. Hawk.

In the previous learning log we were talking about resilience, about how a system continues existing after a disturbance, by adapting and overcoming difficulties without losing its function. This learning log is, for me, an addition to the previous one. In the first article, the authors present issues on how different systems evolve together; therefore, it is a broader view on what the previous learning log was focusing on (the evolution of one system).

Here the authors present the feedback concept. They say that systems coevolve according to the feedbacks that they receive from other systems. In this case, in order to keep coevolution, they argue that diversity is a key issue. Allowing diversity includes “having respect” for differences, which needs the non-selfish behavior that is also shown in the first article.

This took me to a reflection about our society today, where differences are not well accepted. I mean real differences. One may say that we have cultural differences, and so on, however, we all live in the same market centered model, pursuing the similar goals, with the same values. Therefore it is just a slight variance, not a diversity of models and values.

 If there was a respect for different values, different views on development, there would not be such a thing as “Globalization”.  And now we see that our economic model is starting to fail in the entire world, as it is the same model all around the globe, we are all “fighting” for the same set of resources to reach the same goal, and as it is cited in the second article: “(...) with a resource available to all, the greediest herdsmen would gain—for a while. But mutual ruin was just around the corner. ( op cit Hardin op cit Lloyd)”

So, could we state that the unsustainability of society (in cultural, economic and ecological levels) is due to lack of respect and selfish behavior, which, as a result does not allow the existence or real diversity and therefore, coevolution and resilience of the systems?

Learning log 8 - resilience

Learning log 8

For this learning log I focused on two articles: (1) Resilience: The emergence of a perspective for

social–ecological systems analyses by Carl Folke, and (2) Organizing Smart Networks and Humans into

augmented Teams by Martijn Neef et. al. The firs one describes the concept of resilience while the second one presents a practical way and experiments on creating augmented team (interaction of humans systems with other, such as technological devices, to increase the efficiency and reach of a group). I will focus more on the first one, since it presented detailed explanations about resilience and adaptability concepts.

The main idea in the first article was to present that resilience is not about constancy, but about variability. That resilience is the capacity of a system to continue existing after a disturbance. But beside these basic ideas, what really called my attention is about finding “multi stable behavior”, the author said that to find it, you have to consider the relations between the analyzed system and the related ones through the lens of the speed in which they act. This speed issue in the system analysis determines how many information to collect (period of time). And by knowing from which point in time to start and where to stop, you can draw the boundaries of your analysis.

For example, to analyze changes in a society system, if our focus is on political organization, our boundaries could be set according to the duration of a government, or, if we are to analyze food production, we could use seasons or other weather related issue to help us setting an initial boundary. And then the boundary can be changed according to what we discover from a system and its relations. For example, if we are analyzing a social system according to the duration of a specific politician’s government, we may discover that the reasons or results of changes and adaption (to keep resilience) of this system have roots on previous governments, and so we may have to increase the boundary of our analysis, which could grow to, for example, the duration of some specific political ideology in power.

Another issue the author talks about is about how the actors of a system get adapted to new schemes and overcome disturbance, he states that an actor know what to change according to the feedbacks it gets from the other actors. And in order to be able to adapt, this actor must have the possibility to do so, therefore, there must not be a centralized controlling power, what takes us back to Elionor Ostrom speech in the Nobel Prize conference. I am referring back to this issue because I believe it is a very important issue that I will have to consider when doing my final report, where I want to analyze the current situation of the Millennium Villages in Mozambique through a systemic way, and see how the government influences in its future, what has to be changed and how the MV community can find a way to be resilient and sustainable while other systems may be action opposite to their goals.

Learning log 7 - Looking back to look forward.

For this learning log I read two articles: (1) “ Sustainability of Complex Societies” by J. A. Tainter and, “Confronting Economic Profit With Hierarchy Theory” by Allen et. al.

Basically, both are touching the issue of “return on effort” but in different levels. While the second is more in a theoretical and conceptual level (though with some practical examples to support it), the first one focuses on placing the issue in a practical level so to explain the idea that history is important to sustainability. As the second one was more about explanations it did not raise me many questions, while the other, which is more reflective, did raise questions, and is on these questions that I want to focus now.

They present the idea that all societies follow the same evolutional pattern, which has the diminishing return of effort track. He states that we have to look back in history and to the collapse of ancient societies in order to understand in which point in time our society is. And about the lowering return on effort, he puts it as a bad issue.

But as the basic problems are solved, it is likely that we will always search for more challenging issues, therefore more complex, thus demanding higher effort. For this reason, I believe that if we try to avoid solving issues which demands high effort and brings low return compared with the effort level, our society would became stuck in many issues, many small problems that whit time would become enormous.

He states that complexity and therefore low return on effort is what brings a society to collapse and, as I mentioned before, he presents that, buy looking back into history we can understand in which level of complexity we are. So it is a way to predict the collapse day?

As Rita Mae Brown said "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results." Therefore, if the same model have been used in al societies and they all collapse, oposite to what Tainter suggested, I think we should look back into history to see how we can create a new model of society which can cope with always more complex issues, at the same time that it is adaptive in order to keep evolution and avoid collapse.

sketch about a river

Once upon a time there was a river, a river called Real World, some liked to gently call it as ”Today”. It was a calm river, where everything happened slowly... And people lived comfortably floating on it, some with more comfort, other with less, but floating.... 

They were all looking forward, towards a mountain which stands at the end of that river. A small mountain called Tomorrow, beautifully standing under a sky called Dreams which reflected the river in a beautiful, almost unreal way.

However, the river was getting dirty, there was not enough fish for everyone anymore, but no one realized, because, there, everything happens smoothly, very slowly...

They only way to look sideways was if you had ideas. For that reason, one day, creative people who floated there could see how bad the river was becoming and started to fear that many of the population would never reach the mountain.

That was the moment when they saw an exit from the river! It looked shiny!  So they gently rowed their ways out...

This new river was actually a rapid; it presented all the solutions to heal the Real World River. 

The creative people became amazed and started to have more ideas! One after another! This rapid was sustained by ideas! The more ideas they had, the faster it became and more ideas could be generated! They decided to call this rapid as “self-sustainable idea rapid” but it was too long, so they gave a nickname: sustainability. The journey there was amazing! Many ideas, people building new ideas on top of each other’s, the river ran really fast and they traveled far far away on this delightful path!

They had many answers, every issue was dealt, every little problem from the Today River had now answers, they had many incredible concepts and they were eager to apply them on the Today River. For that reason, some of them decided to go back.

When they got there they found the same old sight: people quietly looking forward with empty eyes, the sky was getting blurry, but now in the place of the Tomorrow Mountain there was a big outdoor holding a paradise picture that they used to call “desired future”... it was all fake....

Nevertheless, the creative people wanted to put their ideas into practice to improve that river! And they got their hand on to start!

And until today they spend their whole days trying to explain and convince people about the existence of that rapid they found 30 years ago.... some still think they are insane...

Learning log 6 - Be adaptive

For this learnig log, I focused on two articles: (1) “A Brief Guide To Interactive Planning And Idealized Design” by Russell L. Ackoff (2001) and, “Peripheral Vision: Sensing and Acting on Weak Signals Making Meaning out of Apparent Noise: The Need for a New Managerial Framework” by Stephan H. Haeckel (2004)

Both are interesting readings about managerial and planning methods. However, the contrast between them is incredible.

Let me briefly summarize them. The older article, by Ackoff (2001), talks about three different ways of planning. The first one, a bottom-up approach, which he calls “Reactive Planning”, is focused upon problem solving. It identifies a problem and responds to it seeing an issue through its parts, regardless of the relation between them. The second one he defines as “Preactive planning”, which focus upon forecasting future scenarios and plan for this desired future. The third one, which he claims to be the best one, is the “Interactive planning”, where the focus is to “project the future” (Ackoff 2001), to project the desired scenario and do what is needed to reach it. He defines the parts and steps of this Interactive Planning, where “adaptability” is the key characteristic, as he said “ (in interactive planning) plans are treated as, at best, still photographs taken from a motion picture”.

However, in the more recent article, by Haeckel, the author talks about a change needed in the method of doing business. He states that companies should change from a “make-and-sell” approach, to a “sense-and-respond” method that, is his opinion, is a way to have an adaptive company.

The contrast between the articles is that the “sense and respond” approach described in the second is strongly aligned with the “reactive planning” attacked by Ackoff in his article.

That brings me again to a continuation of last week’s thoughts when I asked if a research method could ever be unbiased. Now the doubt is about the researcher work. There are many people working as researches, creating new “best solutions” that, as in this case, could be the “updated copy” of old ones. I believe that for each issue, there is not only one right answer, but many. However, if 98% of research results stay only amount the researches, what is the new best way of researching? Are we spending precious time on thinking, talking while we could be acting?

Learning log 5 - Reflection on Soft System Thinking

As Soft System Thinking evolved from Hard System Thinking - as seen in the video by Stevens & Sankaran - we first have to talking about Hard System Thinking in order to understand what Soft System Thinking is.

Hard System Thinking (HST) is related to task, to function-based activities. In in this approach you see an issue as a whole and then break it down into parts and manage it as necessary (Sankaran).  This method is mostly used in, for example, construction and defense industry, were the purpose of the company is one specific function that can be broken down into steps and processes.

On the other hand, Soft System Thinking (SST) is a method of inquiry which considers the human factor. It is used for inquiring on issues where people are involved. Opposite to HST, this method sees a whole issue through its different parts and the relations between these parts, therefore trying to realize how the parts and its relations effects on the whole. For that reason it is used to project-related activities (when talking about management) and on complex (human and societal) problems solving. The pillars of management on SST are: communication, human resource management and leadership, hence, the focus of SST in on relationship, rather than processes and procedures (HST method). (Stevend & Sankaran)

However, these readings raised me a question about the “world view” factor that Peter Checkland and John Poulter talk about: is it so that SST solutions can be democratic, but never impartial?

Let me explain what I mean: as SST tries to identify the different word views of the people and actors involved in an issue, and manage their word views to find a democratic, or “general”, world view which embraces all of them; this final, broad, word view will be the one from the researcher, it will be the way he saw the issue. As Checkland himself states “Since information is what you get when you attribute meaning to data (...) meaning attribution depends upon worldview”. But even if it is a group which is dealing with the system, we know that the first moments of a group work is spent on finding a “common language”, therefore, finding the shared point of view of that group, which, consequently, will be the one used to “attribute meaning” to the information found. For this reason I have the doubt: can an inquiry or research method, ever, be impartial?

Thanks!

Learning log 4 – reflection on systemic approach to a field trip to Mozambique – Millennium Villages case

This is the second reflection on System Thinking concerning the field trip to Mozambique (from 4.3.2012 to 16.3.2012), now focusing on the local level of the UN Millennium Village in Lionde (country side of Mozambique, about 300km from the capital Maputo).

I must say that the more I make reflections and researches in a Systemic approach, the more I get convinced that all the problems we have today (environmental, social and economic) exists due to a lack of this method of inquiry. They are results of “punctual solutions”, solutions that aims upon one specific factor without considering any other related system and their interactions.

The reason behind our field trip was to research more about the UN Millennium Village (MV) in Lionde, so to cope with the briefing presented by the local Ministry of Science and Technology which was: to develop a business model, packaging and advertisement for the products and activities held by the Village.

We spend 8 days living with local families and visiting the Village’s activities. These activities are divided on 5 pillars: Agriculture (Farming, Agro-processing and Fish farming), Education, Health, Water and Sanitation. From which we chose to focus on Agriculture, more specifically on the issues of Farming and Agro-processing.

I’ll try to explain here the systemic problem which damages the success of these initiatives, it may look a little bit confusing to explain an interconnected and related set of reasons in a linear text, but let’s try...

I’ll use as example the agro-processing group.

From the research we found three levels of problems where changes have to be made.

The first level is “motivation”: 92% of the people involved in the MV initiatives are women, this happens because the majority of mans migrated to South Africa to find jobs and short term financial results; so, if the MV initiatives can’t provide a daily income, they have to find other means to feed their families. And even for the women involved, they can’t get a daily income, for that reason, if they are involved in an initiative, is for passion. That is the main reason why many women drop out from the initiatives; for example, the agro-processing group started with 30 people, then reduced to 12 and when we were following their activities, there was only 3 or 5 people working.

But then, how to produce so to have a reliable income? Produce more?

It could be a solution, but then we get to the second level: infrastructure

When they produce, for example, cassava biscuits: They get Cassava from local farms, peal the cassava, cut it, use a machine to grain it and then, after that, all the other processes are hand-made: drying, crushing and sieving. In this method, they can produce only 3kg of cassava flour per day; what is way too little to compete even in the local market. End even further, almost all the flour they produce they use to make biscuits; therefore there is no flour left to be sold.

Now, about biscuits: They can produce around 70 biscuits per day (if everybody is doing the biscuits). However, they have only one mug to pour the ingredients, only one pan to mix them, only one oven with only one baking tray to use.

Small details would make a big change, such as one more mug, for example; they would not need to wash the mug every time they have to deal with a different ingredient. But even further, their behavior while cooking is just like a group of friends in a home kitchen: while one is mixing the ingredients with a mixer, another is holding the pan and other is seating and talking.

Therefore this second level has many different sub-levels, where one is “behavior”. There must be a behavioral change, if they want to compete in the local markets (and grow to even bigger ones) they have to have a “step-by-step” process, just like a production line. I don’t think they have to stop acting as friends and taking, they just need to have specific tasks for each one to complete.

If those two levels work and all the changes are made and adopted to their reality, then they can reach the third, the higher level, which is the demanded “business model”. This document will describe the nature of all activities in Farming and Agro-processing; its procedures, products, production capacity, and so on. And then, when they are established as a “company” they can start working on branding, packaging and advertisement.

In a nutshell, this is the result of our research there: we identified that just a business model would not work there because it has related systems that must be working accordingly to support it and to make it sustainable. And now we will work on the detailed description of each change in all the levels; hopeful to have a good impact of those people lives!