Complexity LO10357

jpomo@gate.net ("jpomo@gate.net")
Mon, 7 Oct 1996 10:55:20 +0000

Replying to LO10348 --

Michael McMaster wrote -
>
> Curt asks:
>snip
> > and how do we take a system as a whole and approach
> > change that way?
> Rol responds (in selected part):
> >Learn how my work can multiply or leverage the power of others.
>
> And Curt responds with "what's been bugging me since" I started
> exploring complex adaptive systems theory is that boundedness,
> strange attractors and unpredictability suggest that "I may be able
> to learn how my work has leveraged the power of others but not that
> power in the future."
>
> The dilemna in these systems is worse than that. You can know how it
> leverages the power of others close to you but cannot know how it
> leverages - or defeats - the power of the wholes system.
> BUT
> The system can optimise for itself for both current and future.

I would suggest that we can know whether it will leverage or defeat the
power of others and the system as a whole. We know enough about humans to
be able to predict the direction of the effect, as Rol has clearly
demonstrated, but never the size of it. One can only estimate its size
after having an effect, as well as verify the direction, good or bad. Then
one can change one's own work, as Rol says, to further multiply the power
of others. The effect on the system is always positive IF the effect on
the person is truly positive. By this I mean to exclude such actions which
may grant someone power over someone else for the sake of power, this not
being a "positive" effect since power corrupts and absolute power
corrupts absolutely.

Comments?

Regards, Joan

Joan Pomo The Finest Tools for Managing People
Simonton Associates Based on the book
jpomo@gate.net "How to Unleash the Power of People"
URL: http://pages.prodigy.com/DMHD39A (use caps indicated)

-- 

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