I am a
strange
loop

Dr Doug Belshaw, Dynamic Skillset
strange-loop.dynamicskillset.com

We human beings are macroscopic structures in a universe whose laws reside at a microscopic level. As survival-seeking beings, we are driven to seek efficient explanations that make reference only to entities at our own level. We therefore draw conceptual boundaries around entities that we easily perceive, and in so doing we carve out what seems to us to be reality.”

Douglas R. Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop
Cover of I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter
Basic Books, 2007

Loops are everywhere

Climate

Traffic

Social media

Organisations

We mostly notice them when they go wrong.

You are a system too

Body temperature over a day: a hot spell pushes it up and sweating brings it back to 37°C; a cold swim pulls it down and shivering brings it back. A hot day: you sweat A cold swim: you shiver 37°C

Two kinds of loop

Balancing loop: more body heat brings more sweating, more sweating brings more heat loss, more heat loss brings less body heat. + + − B Body heat Sweating Heat loss
Balancing. The loop pulls things back towards a set point. Count the minus signs: an odd number makes a loop balancing.
Reinforcing loop: contractions increase pressure, pressure increases oxytocin, oxytocin increases contractions. + + + R Contractions Pressure Oxytocin
Reinforcing. Change feeds more change until something outside the loop stops it. Labour works like this.

The purpose of a system is what it does”

Stafford Beer, cybernetician, 1926–2002

Stafford Beer in 1990, white-bearded, reading a sheet of paper

Photo: Universitätsarchiv St.Gallen (HSG), 1990, CC BY-SA 4.0

Then it gets complicated

Viable systems contain viable systems, all the way down.

Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model, first set out in Brain of the Firm (1972).

Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model: an environment containing local environments and a future; three operations, each with its own management; a metasystem of Systems 3, 4 and 5; coordination, audit and algedonic alarm channels. ENVIRONMENT Future threats, chances Local A Local B Local C METASYSTEM 5Policy 4Intelligence 3Control Mgmt Op A Mgmt Op B Mgmt Op C 1 EACH OPERATION WITH ITS MANAGEMENT 3* AUDIT 2 COORDINATION ALGEDONIC ALARM
Douglas Adams, smiling, leaning towards the camera
Photo: Michael Hughes, CC BY-SA 2.0

We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works”

Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

So I made some smaller tools

Each one does one job, and you can use it in a normal meeting.

Sightlines

Maps a messy situation with you, one question at a time, and draws it as you go.

Watershed

A five-minute check on how part of your organisation is working as a system.

OrgLens

You describe your organisation and it writes you a report in plain English.

Sightlines

Where does your system begin and end? Hofstadter’s boundaries, drawn on purpose.

Open ↗
Sightlines start page, with its three tools

Watershed

Twelve plain statements, then the patterns your answers point to.

Open ↗
Watershed front page: a five-minute systems check for mission-driven organisations

OrgLens

  1. You describe your organisation in your own words. No theory needed.
  2. It looks three ways: what keeps happening, how things are set up, and who wants what.
  3. You get a short report in plain English. Every quote is checked against what people said.

Runs on my laptop for now. framagit.org/dajbelshaw/orglens

An example report, for a made-up food bank network
Work in progressTested on made-up organisations
OrgLens example report for Calder Valley Food Network, a made-up organisation, opening with In a nutshell

Everything else I’ve built

Free, open source, and no accounts.

dynamicskillset.com/tools
The Dynamic Skillset tools page: Tools I've built

I am a
strange
loop

Dr Doug Belshaw, Dynamic Skillsethello@dynamicskillset.com

A strange loop climbs through levels and ends up back where it started. Like this talk.

strange-loop.dynamicskillset.com

Slides CC BY 4.0, code AGPL-3.0. Images credited where shown.