Marc Pierson's Use of VSM

Q: Why bother with the VSM?

A: It is the simplest and most useful model for problem solving that I have ever found.

If the structure is a non-viable one, working with the details cannot rescue the organization or organism. I think that this was Donnella Meadow's main message in her paper, Leverage Points, Places to Intervene in Systems Web .

Learning (research?) by doing (empirical)? That is my interest in VSM. The fact that the Viable System Model it is grounded in theory is a big plus because it should increase the likelihood of success. Theory should be, on the whole, better than blind trial and error--if the theory is more or less correct. The foundational theory of the VSM is Ashby's Law (more than a theory?) and early understandings of the mammalian nervous system (in need of updating).

The features of the VSM that are missing or inadequately managed in other organizational models are:

1. Nesting Recursion. Fully accounting for the nesting relationships which so poorly understood. This is not hierarchical command and control. Whoever can illustrate the Russian Doll-ish relationship so it is usable in day-to-day thought and action will have benefited the world greatly. It still seem too subtle to me. Somehow the nature of the emergent relationships must be deeply understood. The life giving synergy in the give and take between interacting parts and their whole is elusive. Beyond structural recursions, there is a self-same structure at each level of recursion. That is the big deal. Having a single way of seeing any organization at every level is powerful.

3. The profound integration of a specific kind of communication channel. Homeostatic Communication Mechanism. Bi-directional, aware of limits or goals or both. Actions that amplify some messages and filter others in such a way that the relationship stays within balance. (My guess is that this is the driver of everything that is alive. The VSM itself emerges from the homeostat. My guess is that one initial robust social homeostat would create whole cultures.)

2. Innovation vs. Incremental Improvement. Generative inventive creative relationship with the environment and the long term future. This is easily missed in the VSM model and in business. The near term and pressing can blind and cripple this function. I use Ackoff's Idealized Design for this exploration of innovative possibilities.

4. Related to nested recursion, is the structural acknowledgement that being a part is not necessarily an exclusive arrangement. Ostrom's group refer to Polycentricity which points toward this multisystem multi level kind of mixing and matching that is culturally unfamiliar to Westerners so used to strict tree hierarchies--restrictive categories. One can and generally is part (often playing different roles) of several entities. This does not get discussed very much. In a networked world, as opposed to a strict hierarchy, we all must be better understood these possibilities and realities. People make these shifts easily, but we are less fluid in the organizational domain. Christopher Alexander's paper, A City is Not a Tree, lays out these distinctions well.

When using the VSM with non-experts, I try to stay away from using unusual names for the parts and relationships in the always already present viable system model. I discover the words that the particular group already uses to indicate the functions of the model and then draw and label the model. Nothing off-putting has happened. They now have a useful model of what they already know a lot about. Put a large version on the wall so they can make notes on it.