Staffordian Syntegration

Owner	Statement	Comment
Shann Turnbull	Introduce world governance by imprinting the DNA of self-governance into the constitutions of social institutions to introduce supplementation of regulation.	In this way Staffords' work would establish "The Science of Governance". It would show how world governance requires the establishment of recursive nested almost self-governing "viable" systems so that no "whole" higher system of the holarchy would regulate the details of anything that could be better undertaken by a lower level institution to implement what Stafford described as "Ashby's Law". That is, regulation cannot directly regulate complexity without supplementation to provide requisite variety to control complexity.
Nick Consoletti	A balance between face to face communication, and the movements with the virtual community, is essential.	Perhaps, for the amelioration of humanity, it is worthwhile to proceeed with a collaboration of the team syntegrity probes by stafford beer and colleagues with the work of buckminster fuller institute as recently exhibited with their earthscope coordination with the atlas of the american association for the advancement of science: see http://www.bfi.org/.
Ern Reynolds	Preserve Stafford's thought by putting it forward as a movement, to be labeled Ashby-Beerian.	Stafford named Ross Ashby to be "the Isaac Newton of our science."
Ern Reynolds	Stafford's admirers owe it to him and the world to coherently consistently construct an agreed summmary of his teachings.	Name it "The Ultimate Budweiser" [the King of Beer's].
Ern Reynolds	Without Stafford cybernetics consists of an undisciplined scavenger hunt through linguistics, neuroanatomy, business planning, information architecture, and cosmologic beliefs.	Beer makes cybernetics cohere and be deployable.
Ern Reynolds	Stafford's recursive nesting at four logical levels distinguishes the strategic (theoretical + descriptive) from the tactical (prescriptive + applied).	In "Beyond Dispute" Stafford went to eleven plies or logical levels from the subatomic to the cosmos, but four levels usually gets the complete job done.
Ern Reynolds	For any model Stafford's adherents build, we must specify and maintain awareness of our location inside the nested recursion.	Theoretical (The WHY = Wisdom) Descriptive (The WHAT = knowledge) Prescriptive (The HOW & WHEN = information) Applied (The WHO & WHERE = data)
Ern Reynolds	Stafford's unstated hinges: Theoretical/Descriptive is Hume's Rationality Requirements; Descriptive/Prescriptive is Humes Law negated; Prescriptive/Applied is Kant's Law.	Stafford merits promotion as an underappreciated philosopher. An action can violate reason only by being based on a factual error or by picking means insufficent to ends. One can derive "ought" from "is" outside the realm of morals. "Ought" implies "can".
Ern Reynolds	The Syntegrity Model deserves more explication as a three-dimensional deployment of the Viable System Model.	The "juice" of the VSM gets overlooked in the consensus building process of Syntegration.
Ern Reynolds	Syntegrity & VSM amount to a more widely applicable civilianized version of classic military command & control doctrine.	The mapping is not only isomorphic but homomorphic.
Ern Reynolds	Stafford's flowing lyrical diagrams meritan annotated collection published separately on their own.	His earlier diagrams not in his own hand and with typeset labels lack artistic merit.
Ern Reynolds	Stafford's lifetime written output lacks but deserves a character-readable repository on a single CD-ROM.	We can't readily propagate what we can't send as an e-mail attachement.
Ern Reynolds	Stafford's lifetime written output has a "Table of Contents" but lacks a Master Topical Index or Keyword Index.	If we can't search it character by character it is too remote to retrieve.
Ern Reynolds	Analytic reduction suggests constructing a generous listing of topics Stafford raised, and his pithy citable quotations about each.	To avoid being a mere list, also use holistic synthesis and diagramming.
Ern Reynolds	Holistic synthesis suggests placing each of Stafford's identified topics into map(s) or diagram(s).	Stafford would be horified if topical listings from reductive analysis barred the visual conduit offered by holistic synthesis.
Ern Reynolds	Stafford's legacy most often expressed in managerial terms can be better perpetuated in more overtly political terms.	This notion should be provisionally denominated The Ashyb-Beerian Movement.
Ern Reynolds	We should provide a client an Ashby-Beerian Model of an American political campaign for 8 million people.	Specifics prove abstractions.
gregyarrow@sympatico.ca	"Beer for Kids" - write a series of colourful and fun books to introduce elementary students to basic principles of cybernetics. INtersperse with vignettes from Stafford's life, e.g. art poetry, experiences.	No Comment
gregyarrow@sympatico.ca	"The Team Syntegration Institute of Peace" - solicit endowment funding to establish a 'virtual institute' to promote team syntegration as a tool for conflict resolution. Also utilizing other concepts, e.g. Designing Freedom.	no comment
gregyarrow@sympatico.ca	"VSM Cyber Tools" - develop a toolbox of VSM software applications for business ranging from SME's to conglomerates. Subsidized version for NGO's and community organizations.	No Comment
Graeme Britton	"I am my own best customer"	This is a quote from a personal statement made by Stafford to me. The fact is Stafford's work has not been widely accepted and if he had not been in a position to implement his ideas, then many of them would not have been tested. We need to know why this is so in order to promote his work.
Graeme Britton	Establish a friends of Stafford Beer network based on the viable system model.	The network will achieve two purposes. It will provide the infrastructure for friends to interact and promote Stafford's work and it will serve as an exemplification of his work.
Tony Gill - Phrontis Limited	Form an international professional society that can further the work of Stafford: management cybernetics; team syntegrity; and the viable system model.	To further any discipline there needs to exist arenas and fora to enable critical conversations and debates amongst peers and neophytes to take place. I see this taking the form of a Society that has an annual conference with published proceedings, an electronic list server open to all for immediate communication, a peer reviewed journal and in time a series of local chapters should emerge as the society grows. This is vital to ensure that Stafford's ideas can develop as thinking advances and also to reduce the chances of the ideas becoming corrupted or misapplied. It is also important to capture current best practice. A good model to follow is the System Dynamics Society.
Alfredo Moscardini	How can new advances in systems thinking be incorporated into Stafford's work	Since 1970 there have been advances in non-linear dynamics, self eviolving systems and intelligent control ( neural networks, genetic algorithms ). I think that these could be considered as possible enhancements to the VSM
Maurice Yolles	How can we deal with the potential future of paradigmatic conflicts among supporters of Stafford's work?	It is highly likely that different views of Stafford work will emerge, and different interpretations will also develop. It may even be the case that new advances in his ideas will develop. This paradigmatic divergence cannot be stopped, and could be the source for conflict among advocates of Stafford's work. There is an argument that this possibility should be monitored and evaluated to ensure that, as Kuhn suggests, bloody paradigmatic conflict does not arise.
Keith V. Trickey - Liverpool	To test the quality of the inheritence we should attempt to ignore the legacy so kindly provided	It is claimed the proof of the pudding is in the eating - however if we are so busy eating pudding (or was it dumplings) we may risk overlooking the creativity that formulated the pudding in the first place and neglect the a vital element in the legacy
Keith V. Trickey - Liverpool	I sense the legacy and blessings that came to me from Stafford, you sense your legacy from Stafford, what happens when they are (as they will be) different? How can we know what the common legacy is?	The difference between the personal and the agreed public knowledge / wisdom
Martin Pfiffner	How can we show Staffords craftings, paintings (incl. the Requiem), poems, and all other materials as part of the wholeness of his work to whom?	No comment
Martin Pfiffner	It was important to Stafford not to be misquoted - what is to be done about that?	No Comment
Martin Pfiffner	Is there a way to finish Staffords last book (think before you think) in his sense? And should it be finished?	No Comment
Martin Pfiffner	How can we learn from successful applications of Staffords work (i.e. the VSM and iconographic modelling)around the world.	To get managers interested in managerial cybernetics, one has to show them what can be achieved with it. We need results to communicate.
Martin Pfiffner	What are your expectations on the CII (Cwarel Ifas Institute)? And how can you support them?	No Comment
Martin Pfiffner	Nina and Wayne's documentary film about Stafford and their aims: How do we ensure to make it (and the concept) a success?	No Comment
Martin Pfiffner	The Stafford Beer Archive: Who and how can we sort out all materials (also the boxes)and bring them into a form so that people worldwide can access and study them - without loosing information?	One has to know Staffords work very well to be able to see connections between materials and to judge what belongs to what - and there is also material distributed worldwide.
Martin Pfiffner	Teach Cybernetics to Children (4 to 8 years): Who and how and when?	They are our future. Make sure, they think differently than we do!
Nick Green	How can we apply the VSM to liberate the world from the unaccountable?	Lack of accountability is the single biggest political and commercial problem facing civilisation. How can we make VSM applicable to the Nations of the World liberating Development and Ethically Regulating both tribal and liberal regimes, Globalising Business and the world's poor, shareholders and pensioners?
vanilla beer	Stafford said we should say 'thank god, at last!' for anything that changed the staus quo. How can we make a personal change that alters our own life?	I should like to make and contemplate a ritual knife, which is then used to cut away an emotional prop...
Alan Pearson	Teach (and use) the VSM without reductionism (e.g., no one-word labels on the subsystems unless Satfford made them).	No Comment
Alan Pearson	Inspect the problem carefully before designing a solution (if you only have a hammer, every problem must be a nail).	No Comment
Alan Pearson	Always consult the original (there really was a Mr. Boole).	No Comment
Alan Pearson	Make sure you understand Stafford before you try to improve on him.	No Comment
Alan Pearson	Models are tools -- the quality of their application depends on the scope and skill of the worker (if you've only got a mallet and a chisel, send for Michelangelo).	No Comment
Alan Pearson	Protect Stafford's cybernetic artefacts, however flimsy.	No Comment
Alan Pearson	Build Stafford's cybernetic machines and display and demonstrate them.	No Comment
Alan Pearson	Academia's short memory, ignorance, and lack of vision (not imagination) lobotomizes management science.	No Comment
Alan Pearson	A thousand little brains (however big their egos) do not add up to one big brain.	No Comment
Alan Pearson	Publish Wizard Prang.	No Comment
Jose Perez Rios	Probably we are not making full use of the amplifiers available to adequately spread the Stafford´s legacy. A starting point could be first identify them and next activate them.	No Comment
Jerry Meek	Establish the circumstances where management cybernetics are critical	Similar to Alan P's comment re hammer; it seems to me that whenever you gather two cyberneticians together we/they bemoan the fact that (a) cyb's are powerful and (b) no one uses them (explicitly); this despite Staffords many extraordinary gifts and communication skills. Darwin has usefully commented on evolutionary pressure and Parker Follet on law of the situation, so maybe, just maybe, the level of complexity and uncertainty needs to breach a boundary before formal cybernetics is essential. At that point people will listen (a useful precursor to learning) and act accordingly. This SI is therefore concerned with offering a heuristic for non-cybs to recognise the boundaries where common sense, accounting, economics etc. fail to offer formalised frameworks for effective decsion making.
Denis Adams	Do we need to appreciate that methodologies have to be developed and evolved for each situation within an appropriate 'helping' process; and that cybernetics may/not be an explicit element in specific cases.	Given our individual limitations on skills and experience, does this mean that we need to work in networks of networks to achieve critical mass.
Denis Adams	Can we gather and share information about Stafford's Socratic Symposium experience.	Anecdotal evidence supports the experience of my own limited involvement in one event. This approach seems to support the idea that empowering people to think through their own issues avoids difficulties and limitations that are inherent in other 'helping' processes.
Denis Adams	Is it more important to educate oneself and others to 'see'; rather than to teach the products of Stafford's 'seeing'	Stafford has said 'I taught myself how to see'. He seemed to have escaped from the compartmentalism of education at an early age.
Denis Adams	Should more emphasis be given to publicing the simpler concepts and tools such as iconographic models and indices for algedonics.	Gaining an entry is the first step and producing some useful news quickly increases the chances of establishing credibility. Simple tools applied to existing data can often show that the actual situation is not what the client believed it to be.
Denis Adams	Do we need a means of navigating Stafford’s whole work. Can the constraints of copyright be overcome?	Many of Stafford’s publications required some knowledge of his previous work to avoid misunderstanding. Insights are numerous and are often not referenced in the index.
Denis Adams	Do we need a systemic mapping of Stafford’s entire work?	During his first visit to the Collection in JMU he spotted items that, linked with others, revealed dramatic new meaning that was not apparent at first sight. Can we get any of this back?
Denis Adams	Do we need an expanded indexing of Stafford’s work.	I often discover vital statements (some seem to be made as an aside) deep in a paragraph, where no relevant key word appears in the index. Accepting the subjectivity of the reader, the current indexes seem to lack requisite variety.
Denis Adams	Is there scope for re/publishing elements of Stafford’s work.	Manual on homeostatic loops, for example, with principles, methods of designing, and real application examples with answers to the question ‘So What?’.
Denis Adams	Should we exploit a ‘popular’ channel such as regular column or cartoon illustrating cybernetic concepts in the context of the top news story of the time.	Allenna found a large number of stories describing actions that violated Ashby’s law of requisitie variety in a single edition of a UK newspaper.
Denis Adams	In addition to maintaining the integrity of Stafford’s own work (Collection) , we could form the Stafford Beer Connection (Roger Harnden’s term) for collating the relevant works of others.	We need to keep the Collection and the Connection distinct to avoid confusing the interpretation of Stafford’s with that of other’s.
Denis Adams	We need to have a process for challenging and correcting misquotes of Stafford’s work.	One refereed published paper contains a multitude of inaccurate statements about Stafford and his works. He didn’t mind others making erroneous statements in their own name but he did mind having them wrongly attributed to him.
Denis Adams	Whatever we might think, the clamour is for more evidence of applications and results, including Wiley. Should we have a specific archive of ‘application’ case material, warts and all?	Most clients need reassurance on a number of things before they will proceed. Evidence of previous results is a common one.
Denis Adams	The main drive for establishing a management science must come from practitioners rather than academia, although we need both.	The transcript of Stafford’s interview on the history of OR sets out starkly his prophesy about the future of OR (1960s?) if it was to become an academic subject taught in universities. George Box has lamented about the decline in statistical practice being due to universities going down a theoretical route rather than retaining a scientific route. Stafford said that this is exactly what’s happened with OR/MS.
Denis Adams	A society with a journal sounds a great idea as long as it keeps the ultimate beneficiary in mind; rather than drifting into another space for just theoretical machinations and marginal tweaks.	Gene Woolsey transformed Interfaces during his first term as editor. The articles became readable and relevant to those who wanted to help people improve things. He did this by insisting on a set of criteria that was designed to promote this kind of material. It worked.
Denis Adams	Development of more support tools.	Stafford was delighted with the Viability self-assessment tool (Harnden et al) produced at JMU. He thought that his models were crying out for more such tools to be developed and couldn’t understand why we hadn’t produced them!
Denis Adams	How can this Infoset and absent friends maintain collaboration after the Scarborough event.	Bakri’s PhD suggested that it would very difficult to fully benefit from a syntegration (sustainable activity) without a continuing meta-system in place.
Denis Adams	How would we scope, size and source the resources needed to implement any plans.	The JMU librarian quotes research that shows that if easy access (via digitisation?) is not available, a special collection of materials will fall into disuse. UK library funds are available for this type of activity. This may be one of many systems one that we want to develop.
Denis Adams	Do we need a Fieldbook of case material?	There must be a growing archive of student/learner applications (undergrad and MBA etc.) from Swansea and JMU and elsewhere, as well as professional practitioner case material.
db, delft version 3	P R A N G !!! Beer for Prangsters & Assorted Wizards	A black bottle approach to variety matching. Label is the control panel on the web-site. Or a clue to a Prang Web-site is an Attractor. Bottle labels can be used over any other beer. For the 13th Node, of course.
David Beatty	What difference that makes a difference do I intend to make in my life this year that I'd would be proud to share with Stafford?	In formation is what changes us. Let's build a peer coaching team to support each other in moving forward as part of a living legacy to someone we all loved, and who loved us. Since most statements can be reasonably debated and negated, and since I hope the conversations will be unreasonable as well as reasonable, and since this is an electronic protocol,and since worthy intentions elicit their shadow- side in due process, I propose this qualifies as a S.I.-- Statement of Interrogation, Spiral of Importance, Submission of Indulgence, etc.
Angela Espinosa	How can we further develop an approach to learning, knowledge and wisdom by summarising the experiences each one of us got at these levels from Stafford and the many thoughts, theoretical and practical tools we have learned from him?	The ideas of complexity management in social organisations go far beyond Stafford's VSM and Team Sintegrity. Combined with his innovation in the way of designing and presenting them all together with his later artistic and philosophical contributions, seem to offer us a wide lanscape to explore and further develop his learning paths at the educational level.
Angela Espinosa	How can we further develop an approach to learning, knowledge and wisdom by summarising the experiences each one of us got at these levels from Stafford and the many thoughts, theoretical and practical tools we have learned from him?	The ideas of complexity management in social organisations go far beyond Stafford's VSM and Team Sintegrity. Combined with his innovation in the way of designing and presenting them all together with his later artistic and philosophical contributions, seem to offer us a wide lanscape to explore and further develop his learning paths at the educational level.
Markus Schwaninger	WE are Stafford's legacy!	No Comment
Ian Perry	If we are Stafford's legacy - then what has he left for us to do?	Nice one Markus!
Patrick Hoverstadt	We're in a ghetto, inside a ghetto, inside a ghetto, we should stop building walls and build doorways instead.	No Comment
Ian Perry	The 'walls' we build may not made of very solid material, but, the 'doorways' we intend to make in those walls are often filled with impenetrable language.	Leading on from Patrick's SI (above). Why do so many people use complex language to try and 'explain' complex situations. All that happens is that the 'explanation' is even more complex that the original situation, and hence nothing is gained.
Janet M. Malcolm	Efforts to disseminate Stafford's legacy/gifts should be aimed at the population most likely to benefit from it.	I think that Stafford would not have wanted his legacy to be simply preserved in a library or museum - to be examined or admired, but would have wanted it to be used.
rod thomas	One aspect of the legacy of Stafford Beer is that Ross Ashby's centenary year will probably pass relatively unremarked.	i believe 2003 is ashby's centenary year.
Janet M. Malcolm	Stafford's legacy needs a Rosetta stone, so that it can be couched in terms ordinary folk can understand and use.	I think that Stafford's ideas are very broadly applicable, but those who might benefit most by using them find many of them couched in language that is difficult to understand.
rod thomas	".. by the time that society is ready to adopt a different paradigm, the potency of the new idea may have been dissapated by... entropy" Beer, 1990.	With reference to earlier SI's - Im not sure Stafford had a paradigm in the way that most people use that word - for instance he seemed to be fond of all sorts of philosophers that arent normally viewed as natural bed fellows. On the other hand, there may well have been a great synthesis somewhere - but if there was im confident that few people would understand it. I certainly wouldnt claim to. Hence whilst a 100 brains might not make one big brain, the only thing that can be done is to offset the entropy until a big brain arrives (otherwise they might spend a lifetime walking down the same path). The best way to do that is to keep the books in print - and the only way to do that is to make sure that they are sold to students in large numbers. And the only way to do that is to subvert the present university curriculum in every conceivable way.
Joe Truss	Let us seek first to understand Stafford's various teachings through his writing and his direct students. Form a serious study group with on-line threaded discussions and the occasional Socratic symposium for deeper dialogue amongst participants.	No Comment
Joe Truss	Publish 'Chronicles of Wizard Prang' as an illustrated, web-based serial. The first chapter is downloadable for free, then charge a subscription for each following chapter.	Vanilla Beer started a series of drawings to illustrate the book - how far did she get?
Joe Truss	Practice what Stafford preached. Don't co-opt potential revolutionary energy. Let us create a manifesto for peaceful revolution and the post-capitalist viable society.	VSM is the model. Syntegration is the self-organising system.
Joe Truss	Read the f---ing books! Stafford wrote it all down and then forgot bits of it. We need a permanent site where continuing, in-depth discussion and analysis of the books can take place from anyplace. His writing is one of the most important aspects of his legacy. That's why he spent so much time and effort writing.	No Comment
Joe Truss	The architecture of Stafford's thinking / knowing can be defined in the set of 5 regular polyhedra and the cubeoctahedron (also called the vector equilibrium by Bucky Fuller). This set is all that is needed to provide a structurally logical and simpler way of describing all his work.	See : "The coherent architecture of Team syntegrity - from small to mega forms" J.Truss, A. Leonard and C. Cullen
Joe truss	Let us collaboratively write a biography of Stafford. We could start with a web-based collection of personal stories placed on a chronological time line.	No Comment
Allenna	"The purpose of a system is what it does"	No Comment
Allenna	"The purpose of a system is what it does" Stafford Beer	No Comment
Allenna	Stafford did not believe that a scientist needed to choose between silence on issues of public importance and the delivery of a religious dogma. Ethics is possible without cant.	And also without Kant
Allenna	The epistemology of public debate is in trouble. How do we improve things?	No Comment
Joe Truss	We want to establish a permanent meta-site on Stafford which would link all known available resources, plus provide ways for collecting digitised images of artefacts and photos, etc.	No Comment
Allenna	Combat stupidity and dumbing down in management and politics.	No Comment
Allenna	The balance between the neurophysiological capacity of the individual and the possibility of greater collective wisdom through multiple perspectives is difficult to accomplish and sometimes to recognize.	No Comment
Allenna	Humane treatment of employees, customers, suppliers, etc. is not incompatible with organizational viability.	No Comment
Allenna	What's next after VSM and Syntegration?	No Comment
Allenna Leonard	"It is not necessary to look inside a black box to understand the function it performs" Stafford Beer	No Comment
Allenna Leonard	Where are there the greatest gaps with respect to applying requisite variety measures to problems?	No Comment
Allenna Leonard	From the first Syntegration in Manchester: What are the states we wish to avoid?	No Comment
Allenna Leonard	Risk is an aspect of society that needs the treatment of management cybernetics.	No Comment

"Virtual" Statements of Importance

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