| | | Newsletter: September, 2022, Vol 1:9 | | |
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| | | In this Edition : Message from the President. Conference News. News from the Board of Directors. Programme of Online Mini-Symposia. SIG Focus: SIEL. Meet our new ISSS Members: Jennifer Wells. Organisation in Focus: SCiO & SEBoK. News from the Book Club. Recent Members' Publications.
Upcoming Systems Conferences. Systems Science Events in September. Employment Opportunities. To contribute to any of these, please see the details at the end of this newsletter.
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Message from the President Dear Reader, September is the beginning of spring in the Southern Hemisphere, which is an accurate reflection of my personal experience in the ISSS – one of renewal and reflection. As most of you experience fall currently, you are sensitive to the changing colours in nature and how the cycle of nature enhances our intuitive experience (Anschauung) of our lived world. Our strategy for the year is to actively work towards the objectives of the society in developing a unified systems discipline and to provide an opportunity for the systems community to interact. In terms of developing the discipline, my aim is not to develop a single unifying theory but rather to promote synergy and a framework for overall understanding of traditional and recent systems ideas. We are able to use all our media in support of this aim – this includes our web page, 2023 conference, mini-symposia, bulletin, and social media. Currently, we are reflecting on each of these media to improve their value in reaching our overall objective. We started an initiative to examine the web page in support of the objective, focussing on making our rich content...
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| | | ...more accessible and catering to different audiences. More information on the mini symposia and conference follow in separate sections of the newsletter below. In the first month of my presidency, I developed renewed appreciation for my fellow board members and want to thank them for many hours of discussion. We often experience true systemic emergence where a discussion enabled creative thoughts far beyond the contribution of any of the participants. This packed newsletter is evidence of the commitment of our members. Many important decisions were taken to guide our activities for this presidential period and my wish is that the systems community benefits from our work this year. Roelien | | |
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| | | Conference News International Society for the Systems Sciences, 67th Annual Conference. | | |
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| | | | ISSS2023: Save the Date! For the first time the Annual Meeting of the ISSS will be hosted in Africa!! The Kruger National Park is an area of 2 million hectares where wild life has freedom to roam the bushveld of Southern Africa. More information on this world-famous conservation area is available at: https://www.sanparks.org/parks/kruger/. The ISSS is providing a unique annual meeting experience in June 2023. The main conference takes place from June 19 -23 preceded by a doctoral workshop and writing retreat for all from June, 16 -19. Attendees will experience the bush and culture of the park by going on game drives, traditional music, and the famous traditional South African braai. The theme of the conference is: Systems Practice for professions. The conference will provide an opportunity for networking and scholarship for systems practitioners and academics in the midst of a complex social and natural ecosystem. You are also invited to join us for three days of deep work before the start of the main conference. The PhD workshop will provide PhD students will opportunities to interact with each other and experienced academics in the field. In order to make it more affordable, different accommodation and meal options will be available to select from during the registration process. Details will be available after the ISSS Board of Directors approved the budget in the coming weeks. Come and experience Africa! | | |
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| | | News from the ISSS Board of Directors | | |
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| | | Dr Olaf Brugman is our VP Conferences for the upcoming conference in the Kruger National Park in South Africa, themed Professional Practice for Professions. Dr Olaf Brugman is an active member of the ISSS, taking part in the mini-symposia regularly. He was a speaker at the ISSS conference in Vienna, in 2017. He is working in the financial industry in Europe, focusing on sustainability and systemic change. His special interest in the initiatives to develop systems practice and the development of a unifying framework will be beneficial in the program development of the meeting in terms of the selected theme. |
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| | | He is well known in the wider systems community for his systems-related articles on various popular platforms.
He understands the challenges of developing countries. For example, his work as president of the Roundtable for Responsible Soy (RTRS), a global member-based multistakeholder organization uniting business, civil society and research organizations. For RTRS, he also initiated and led a systems practice-based strategy program. Second, he has extensive experience in capacity-building on sustainable development in member-based co-operative banking systems in Brazil. In 2015, USAID named him an expert in best practices and standards on international land governance, promoting environmental justice, respecting international rights regarding access to food and land in his private sector work. These experiences are transferable to the South African environment. It is advantageous for the VP conferences to have a global perspective to promote the South African conference in terms of awareness of challenges experienced by international visitors.
He is an executive director at Rabobank, a Netherlands-based global co-operative financial institution focused on food and agriculture, fulfilling the role of global head of sustainability policy, risk and dialogue. He holds an MA in public administration from Twente University (1990, NL) and a PhD in policy sciences from Nijmegen Business School (Radboud University Nijmegen, NL). He is married and lives in The Hague, the Netherlands. | | |
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| | | Programme of Online Mini-Symposia Towards a unifying framework
Last year, the mini-symposia focussed on the application of systems science in making sense of the global problematique. The collection of videos of these valuable insights is available on ISSS.org.
During these general discussions, the need for a better understanding of the different systems traditions was often evident. Each participant was an expert in a particular systems’ perspective, and we are at risk of sacrificing that what is most valuable in our discipline: sincere appreciation of the different perspectives. This is necessary to achieve our objective of developing a unified framework for the systems discipline.
You are invited to join us on a journey to rediscover and appreciate the richness of our discipline. Grouped in monthly themes, we will explore traditional and emerging systems perspectives, together with a reflection on their interrelatedness. Every fourth week, the session will be dedicated to intuitive reflection on connections between the perspectives discussed during the month. I hope to create a rich library of material to be used by everyone entering the discipline or wishing to widen their own systems perspective.
Based on our experience over the past year, we have decided not to repeat the session each week, but rather to alternate, monthly, between the two time slots previously used. This means that in September, there will be weekly sessions at 7 AM Pacific Daylight Time without any repeat, and in October the sessions will be on Wednesdays at 7am in the Australian Eastern Standard Time (Sydney) without repeat. November will be on Saturdays, followed by December on Wednesdays, and so on. Sessions will be announced in the Calendar on ISSS.org and will be posted on the website shortly after they have been held.
The first session, on 3rd. September, will be open to both members and non-members. It will provide more information on this year’s sessions, and will clarify our terms of reference. The rest of the month will be used to explore different perspectives on the basic concepts of the systems discipline.
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| | | | 2022 Conference Workshop on AIC (Appreciation, Influence, and Control) Bill Smith and Michele Friend facilitated three AIC (appreciation, influence, and control) workshops during our last Conference. Since its origin in 1980, in the design of World Bank development projects, AIC has been evolving from an organizing process into a systems philosophy, based on the preeminence of purpose creating five or more dimensions of power relationships. When Peter Tuddenham invited Bill to attend the 2019 Corvallis conference they presented AIC on a single Poster Page as an advance in Systems Literacy.
Bill found ISSS and Peter’s innovation of weekly video sessions an ideal, almost PhD-like, environment in which to pursue three evolutionary issues that remained from his life’s work.
1. How to ensure the full systemic use of the power produced by purpose? This included the use of power created by the unconscious, hidden, or dark side of purpose.
2. How to ensure that power is balanced as purpose moves systemically between at least 5 dimensions of organization?
3. How to obtain a systematic (scientific) ordering of all the functions (elements) that enable us to design, manage, and evaluate the whole system of systems necessary to address the greatest issues of our times. | | |
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| | | | Alexander Laszlo’s SIG, LESI pointed in the direction of these evolutionary needs so Bill was excited by the opportunity to take over its leadership. The SIG, now called SIEL for Systems Integration, Engagement and Leadership, is working with: - Gary Smith and his group, who helped to discover, define and describe nine types of ideal systems and explore their application, including to our SIGS.
- Robert Johannsson’s SIG, which is improving our sense of wholeness and oneness in each of the nine types of system.
- Marty Jacob’s SIG, which is using the system types to improve meetings and other forms of engagement.
SIEL’s, biggest surprise, has been the discovery of a stem-system. The stem system is a central fractal found at the heart of the design of each of the nine ideal system types. They have the quality of treating every type of purpose and every type of power equally. So Bill hopes they will provide an unexpected and early pathway to research into all three evolutionary needs mentioned above.
When SEIL focused on what contribution we would make to the Conference, Michele suggested that without a very clear understanding of the three basic AIC powers it would be very difficult for members to either understand or take part in any potential research. She felt that only experience focused on that goal would be useful at this time.
This was agreed and the three workshops focused on the three AIC phases of the natural systems organizing process, and how to curate the role of designers, facilitators, stakeholders, and participants in each.
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| | | | This workshop emphasizes the practical understanding of power on which the AIC natural systems approach to organizing is based. It introduces appreciative power as a very misunderstood and underused form of power. It was the key to the design of projects aimed at poverty. It gave the poorest most mistreated people in the world a form of real, practical hope.
Appreciative power uses imagination to address the highest possible level of purpose, ideals, in the longest possible time frame, in the widest possible space, with limitless resources. It is this infinite set of relationships between possibilities and realities that gives the appreciative field its 5D+ properties.
The workshop deals with this widest possible bandwidth by having a facilitator create two complementary questions relevant to the participants and their situation and then creating norms for answering them in ways that foster the generation of appreciative power.
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| | | | This workshop focuses on the “part-ness” of the whole, the ability of the “parts” to operate with part of their purpose for part of the time in part of the whole situation. The facilitator helps the “part-icipants” lower their purposes from ideals for all time to their values for this cycle of time in this “part-icular” set of circumstances. This cyclical process creates the wave of influence that collapses into the particles (colors) that give the field its 4D properties.
This phase reveals how every “part-icipant” has their own different orderings of purpose and power. It uses color as part of a mapping process to help understand and deal with these differences. Discussion of differences keeps the process open encouraging both support and opposition. It leaves closure on differences for the control phase.
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| | | | The Control phase begins the whole process again in a much smaller, tighter space. It reduces purpose from ideals and values to goals. The participants in this phase are those that are responsible for goals. Goals are purposes that can be achieved in specific time and space constraints with specific resources. It is this specificity of time, space, and resources that gives the control phase its 3D properties.
The facilitator helps the generation of a control field by creating norms that ensure a resolution of the tension between action and reflection.
The process then recycles from 3D specificity of control to the relative 4D processes of influence and then back to the ultimate 5D process of appreciation, beyond influence or control. This appreciation gives ultimate meaning to the whole. | | |
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| | | Welcome to our New ISSS Members We sent an email to all members who joined in 2022 and the following new members participated in a fun question answer survey. We welcome you to the society. All new members who received the invite to participate are welcome to submit their detail. We will feature every month a few new members. Members select questions from a long list to tell us about themselves. To join the ISSS simply go to ISSS.org/Register/ | | |
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| | | How did your interest in systems develop?
Wilderness trips, a focus on sustainability, and mystical experiences, all showed me our world's systems and complexity. Are you interested in a specific field of systems thinking - which one?
I have specialized in complex thought and sustainability. I was particularly influenced by Joanna Macy, Edgar Morin, Donnella Meadows and Tim Allen. I did a book called Complexity and Sustainability, Routledge, 2014. I’ve also long been involved in... |
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| | | ...climate justice. And I’m working on a book on what we mean when we talk about 'systems change.' For most of my life I’ve been involved in what sociologists call ‘real utopias.' I study theory and examples of these (in real life and fiction) and analyze them as sites where systems are more in sync between humans, economies, and ecologies. I use the arts and humanities extensively in my job and in my personal life.
Generally, I hope people work to overcome the extant modernist errors in much systems work. For instance, the problematic gap between quantitative science and qualitative humanities modes of thinking and comprehending complex systems. In which industry do you work and in which role?
I work at a small university. California Institute of Integral Studies, in San Francisco, CA. And I’ve been living in Paris France working at the Sorbonne.
If you could share a meal with 4 individuals living or dead, who would they be?
I’d invite seven: Sappho, Lenin, Mark Twain, Dorothy Parker, Lucy Parsons, Romain Gary, and Ursula Le Guin.
What was the last book you read?
Ulysses, by James Joyce.
What’s the most unusual thing you have ever eaten?
In Oaxaca, Mexico, we went to a traditional indigenous restaurant and I ate a plate of “chapulines": roasted grasshoppers. With lots of hot sauce. What risks are worth taking?
What it takes to stop ecocide and extinction. In the last 50 years we broke 66% of planetary boundaries and killed 70% of the Earth’s wildlife. | | |
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