The Myth of Best Practice

The Yearning for Best Practice “We need you to tell us what the ‘best practice’ is here,” is a request very familiar to many business and management consultants, or “we chose this consulting firm because they have worked with many similar companies and they will bring in ‘best practices’ in the industry.” The term “Best […]

Basic Notions – Disturbance or Perturbation

Basic Notions – Disturbance or Perturbation Adding to the complexity of the example depicted above, should forces change their directions or magnitudes in a way that the total sum is not zero, the system will experience disturbance (or perturbation) and moves out of its original equilibrium state. In our example, let’s assume the addition of […]

Basic Notions – Variety and the Law of Requisite Variety

Basic Notions – Variety and the Law of Requisite Variety To control—or manage[1]— anything, there is a need for something to measure it with; so as to control complexity, we need a measure to understand the size of a given complex situation. In Cybernetics, Ashby[2] introduces the concept of variety: “The number of possible distinct […]

The Viable System Model – Part 1

​The Foundation of the Model To design a Viable Organization why re-inventing the wheel when we have access to the most viable system of all: Human Beings? Humans have successfully evolved and adapted to their ever changing environments and have presented a considerable degree of viability. We can learn a great deal by studying this system to see […]