This presentation shows how our understanding of self-organisation and organisational reality is influenced by the history of management when framed in the context of sciences of certainty. I then show how the organisational reality could be understood taken the perspective of sciences of uncertainty. This work is influenced and inspired by the works of Ralph Stacey and many personal observations when training and coaching organisations the empirical process control. This topic was presented during the Agile By Example conference held in Warsaw on October 4-5, 2012 and later during Self-Organisation workshop at ASC Eindhoven (Agile & Software Craftsmanship) on October 18, 2012.

1. Marcin Czenko
Self-Organisation
And its influence on the organisational reality.

2. Presented at:

3. Presented at:
ASC Eindhoven 18 October 2012

4. "A (good) picture is worth a thousand
words" (emphasis added), but it is still nice to
know what these words are. If you really want
to understand what I wanted to tell in this
presentation, please refer to my blog for a
more complete “picture” (blog entry coming
soon).

5. Experience without theory is blind,
but theory without experience is
mere intellectual play.
Immanuel Kant

6. The message:
our understanding of self-organisation is
deformed by strong attachment to the
culture of certainty backed by ill-stated
theories of management.

7. As a consequence:
• what we do in our organisations with respect to
individuals and teams is not necessarily what we think
we do;
• to better understand what is really happening in our
organisations we need to challenge the soundness of
the scientific foundations of management;
• there is a benefit in acknowledging uncertainty and
instead of trying to control uncontrollable, learning
how to live with it.

8. Popular context: Agile Teams
• Cross-functional
• Self-organising
• Co-located

9. Arrow of time ?
• Can we understand the present by looking
to the past ?
• I am afraid not. But knowing etymology of
some popular terms may help us improve
understanding of what we are actually
saying. As Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein
once said: The limits of my language are the
limits of my world.

10. I will therefore:
• Re-cap the most significant management
approaches driven by the so-called
sciences of certainty.
• Show what the so-called sciences of
uncertainty have to offer and why we
should take advantage of it.

11. What is self-organisation ?

12. Is self-organisation only applicable to
humans ?

13. What makes self-organisation of
humans different any other form of
self-organisation ?

14. Isn’t self-organisation an anarchy or isn’t
it just the same as empowerment ?

15. Doesn’t emergence mean that things
are happening by chance ?

16. PART I
Sciences of certainty.

17. Three causalities

18. F
a = –––
m
Efficient causality (Newton): cause
and effect relations of a predictive,
linear nature easy to express in linear
mathematical formula or as ‘if-then’
rules.

19. Efficient causality

20. Formative causality (Kant): the
cause of a form is the process of
formation itself in which mature version
of the phenomenon is already present
at the beginning and is unfolded through
formative process of maturing.

21. Formative causality

22. Rationalist Causality (Kant): the
body is separated from the reason in a
way that the body is subject to the fixed
laws of nature but the mind is governed
by laws of reason. The reason makes
people free.

23. Rationalist Causality

24. Efficient causality
Formative causality Rationalist Causality

25. The Brain
Pinky (Manager)
(Developer)

26. Organisations as seen
by the sciences of
certainty.

27. Reductionism
Phenomena can be explained completely in
terms of other more fundamental phenomena:
• the whole could be understood by
understanding its parts,
• interaction between parts unimportant.

28. Reductionism

29. Systems Thinking
The organisation is understood not as parts
adding to a whole, but as system in which the
interactions between its parts are of primary
importance.
• General Systems Theory
• Cybernetics
• System Dynamics

30. Systems Thinking

31. Reductionism Systems Thinking
Second World War

32. Human motivation
• Elton Mayo (1880-1949) and continued by behavioural
scientists between 1940-1960.
• Values and goals of the group should be aligned with the
goals of individual, empowered, members.
• Efficiency proportional to trust and confidence in each
other in a supportive and harmonious
atmosphere.
• The leadership has to be accepted by the group.
• Captured in motivational rules maintained by the
manager.

33. Managerial Capitalism
Reductionists or Systems Thinking approach
combined with Human Motivation form the
essence of the so-called Managerial
Capitalism.

34. Efficient Capital
Markets
The price of an asset reflects all relevant
information that is available about the
intrinsic value of the asset.

35. Since the late1980s...

36. September 15, 2008
Collapse of investment capitalism.

37. Why ?

38. People
People are not rule-followers. They have their
own goals and objectives and they choose their
own actions.

39. Angelo Mozilo George W. Bush
Phil Gramm Stan O'Neal
Alan Greenspan Wen Jiabao
Chris Cox David Lereah
American Consumers John Devaney
Hank Paulson Bernie Madoff
Joe Cassano Lew Ranieri
Ian McCarthy Burton Jablin
Frank Raines Fred Goodwin
Kathleen Corbet Sandy Weill
Dick Fuld David Oddsson
Marion and Herb Sandler Jimmy Cayne
Bill Clinton
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1877351,00.html#ixzz29eHliSiV

41. The systemic approach is not
applicable to humans.

42. Where can we then search for a valid
explanation of self-organisation and
emergence ?
In the Sciences of Uncertainty.

43. PART II
Sciences of uncertainty.

44. We (humans) all have brains !

45. Individual, team, and organisation from
the perspective of the sciences of
uncertainty.

46. Individual

47. Darkness Principle

48. Darkness Principle
Each element in the system is ignorant of the behaviour
of the system as a whole [...] If each element ‘knew’
what was happening to the system as a whole, all of the
complexity would have to be present in that element.
K.A. Richardson

49. "A (good) picture is worth a thousand
words" (emphasis added), but it is still nice to
know what these words are. If you really want
to understand what I wanted to tell in this
presentation, please refer to my blog for a
more complete “picture” (blog entry coming
soon).

50. Individual’s View
Individual

51. Interactions

52. Complex Adaptive Systems

53. Brain

54. Connections
Neurones

55. Local
Interactions
Individuals
*this is weak analogy - there are no
boundaries, there is no system, but
there are individuals and there
are interactions.

56. *) local interactions
do not respect
organisational
boundaries.

57. Conflict

58. Novelty requires diversity. Diversity
will only bring unexpected when
differences are respected and
conflicts are allowed.
If people follow simple rules nothing
novel and creative will emerge from
their self-organisation.

59. Diversity
• Men, women ?
• Values ? Opinions ?
• Culture ?

60. Geert Hofstede
• widely known Dutch
researcher of culture,
• during 1978-83, he conducted
detailed interviews with
hundreds of IBM employees
in 53 countries.
• developed five dimensions of
culture.

61. Geert Hofstede’s
Cultural Dimensions
• Power-distance
• Collectivism vs. individualism
• Femininity vs. masculinity
• Uncertainty avoidance
• Long- vs. short-term orientation

62. Diversity and Values.
How to increase probability of a successful team ?

63. *too high level of diversity will not
stop interactions, but may reduce
their use in achieving our goals.
When the differences are radical,
collaboration may be impeded.

64. Our values form disjoint sets.

65. *Making sure that everyone shares
the same set of values might be very
hard to achieve. It may actually lower
the diversity in some cases.

66. *Again, set-theoretic representation.

67. *This seems to be more realistic.

68. *This set-theoretic semantics would
indicate there is no single value
accepted by everyone. This is not the
intended semantics of the picture
presented on the previous slide.

69. *This set-theoretic representation
gives a more precise semantics.
There is a fundamental common
ground for collaboration, but enough
diversity to preserve conflict.

70. *Diverse, but well-founded team has
a better perception of the reality
then any individual member.

71. *Making someone managing such a
team is like obscuring its bright view.

72. Summary

73. What is self-organisation ?
Self-organisation simply means
interactions between parts.

74. But...wasn’t self-organisation already
present in the formative causality ?
Yes, but in this self-organisation what
emerges is the developmental pattern
of the whole, which is already
enfolded in the system design. Thus,
this self-organisation does not lead to
novel forms, neither does it bring
creativity.

75. The systemic approach is not
applicable to humans.
Self-organisation framed in
formative causality is not
appropriate model for human
interaction.

76. What makes self-organisation of
humans different any other form of
self-organisation ?
What emerges from self-organisation
of non-humans is rarely novel or
creative. This is because people have
soul, free-will, and are different.

77. Isn’t self-organisation an anarchy or isn’t
it just the same as empowerment ?
No. None of those. See also the
power law.

78. Doesn’t emergence mean that things
are happening by chance ?
No. The opposite is true.
Emergence is the result of many local
interactions. It really depends on
what we are doing and what we are
not doing.

79. Our job is to reassess our
management practices in the
context of uncertainty sciences.
Even though we do not know the outcomes of
our actions we may now at least start thinking
about the dynamics of local interactions.
We are in charge but no-longer in
control !*
*) Ralph Stacey

80. 1997
Transformative Causality (Prigogine,
Илья́ Рома́нович Приго́жин): local
interactions (self-organisation) between
diverse agents forms population-wide
patterns (emergence) while at the same
time being formed by those patterns.

81. Ralph Stacey

82. ?

83. Some of the pictures were used in this
presentation without asking for permission.
These pictures are:
• Pinky and the Brain:
http://4iphonewallpapers.com/pinky-and-the-brain-iphone-4-wallpaper.html
• Tom and Jerry:
http://www.wallpapersfordesk.com/tom-and-jerry-wallpapers-2011.html/tom-and-jerry-wallpapers-2011-5
• Immanuel Kant:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant
• Three Little Pigs:
http://www.kidsgen.com/fables_and_fairytales/three_little_pigs.htm
• Isaac Newton
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/universe/scientists/isaac_newton

84. Some of the pictures were used in this
presentation without asking for permission.
These pictures are:
• A hammer:
http://www.nvtc.ee/e-oppe/Marina/tools/materials.html
• Growing Potato:
http://www.potato2008.org/en/kids/grow.html
• Brain:
http://www.how-to-draw-funny-cartoons.com/cartoon-brain.html
• Duck of Descartes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism
• Lehman Brothers Bonds:
http://www.distressed-debt-investing.com/2010/08/advanced-distressed-debt-lesson-double.html

85. Some of the pictures were used in this
presentation without asking for permission.
These pictures are:
• Lord Vader:
http://weinterrupt.com/2011/04/little-girl-happily-submits-to-the-dark-side/
• Neurone:
http://adrianbowyer.blogspot.nl/2010/12/hardwired.html
• Илья́ Рома́нович Приго́жин:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Prigogine
• Book covers:
http://www.amazon.co.uk
• Ralph Stacey:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Douglas_Stacey