Below is the:

- project table of contents

- summary sheet

- a provocation.  (AKA deBono's "po"  http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCT_08.htm)

 

Questions: 

1.  Do you have different chapter titles to recommend for the Applications Section?  Each chapter will review the development of complex practice in a "practice area."   We considered law but removed it, and we might remove politics.  Health care was initially omitted but clearly belongs.   Each author will modify his title.  

(In several cases there are brackets instead of a named author.  We have candidates for these chapters, but they have not yet confirmed.  If anybody wants to join the inner circle, get published, and have some fun, now is the time to speak up.) 

 

2.  The small table at the end is the nub of the argument.  Complex practice is suited to turbulence.  Other kind of practice that are frequently thought to be good are misguided under these circumstances.  Can you come up with additional types or more specific examples of "misguided" practice (respected for one reason or another, but poorly suited to turbulence)?  Can you suggest additional characteristics of a complex practice that would be suited to turbulence?

 

Thanks for your help.  I will recirculate comments with comments from the team.   

 

Kent

============

 

Complex Practice in Time

    -- An open politics project, to conclude May 2009

 

Project Summary. 2

PROCESS SECTION.. 3

KERNEL SECTION.. 7

K1. The Challenge. 7

K2.  Complex Practice. 11

K3.  Misguided Practice. 13

K4.  Transition to Complex Practice. 16

APPLICATIONS SECTION.. 19

A1 Expanding Global Fields: New Sources of Leadership – Kim Forss. 19

A2  Energy:   – David Hawk. 20

A3  Environment:   – Thomas Cuddy. 21

A4  Security & Intelligence:   – Kent Myers. 21

A5  Business & Economics:   -- [  ] 22

A6  Engineering:  --  [  ] 23

A7  Health Care:  --  [X, Jim Ziegenfuss, Geoff Hoare] 23

A8  Politics:  --  [  ] 24

A9  Religion:  -- [Kent Myers] 24

A10 Youth: Education through service – Jim Ziegenfuss. 24

A11  Small & Local Institutions:  – [  ] 25

A12  Development in the Emerging Fractured Global Order-[   ] 25

SCENARIO SECTION.. 28

STUDIES SECTION.. 31

S1.  Biographical Sketches of Complex Practitioners. 31

S2  More on the "Open Politics" Process. 35

S3  Census of Emerging Ethos: Content Analysis of C-Span. 35

REFERENCE SECTION.. 37

R1. Annotated Bibliography. 37

R2. Biographies of Participants and Advisers. 39

 

Project Summary

 

Global civilization is unsustainable.  Technical solutions are available, but they are not being applied with the speed or vigor required.  

It is evident that the culture is inhibiting an effective response; we are ill-equipped to negotiate the turbulent environment before us. A change in practice is required, beyond a change in opinions and attitudes.  Making such a change depends on individual and social learning of unprecedented magnitude.

A community of systems thinkers has been aware of threat to global sustainability for many years.  We have conducted professional work that has given us opportunities to learn about the social and technical aspects of the global threat.  We have instilled a similar orientation in others we work with.  Through this experience, we can claim to have made a contribution to the necessary cultural transition.  Yet our efforts in systems thinking and large-scale adaptation have not achieved what some had hoped. 

The global crisis is now upon us, and the cultural resources to work our way past it are not in place.  We have been slow learners, and we have been ineffective educators, leaders, and practitioners.

Our objective in this project is to foster new professional practices, ones that successfully negotiate complexity.  The greatest test of these practices will be facilitation of global sustainability in time. 

The handbook before you selects professional areas of practice where turbulence is confronted, shows where appropriate change in practice is occurring, and recommends how new practices might be accelerated.  The settings we have selected have considerable leverage for shifting institutions, and these institutions in turn have considerable leverage in shifting wider culture.  With your help, these efforts will lead to action of a level and type needed to respond to the global crisis.

 

 

Misguided practices	Countervailing characteristics of complex practice
Technical-rational practice	Appreciative, culture-enhancing
Focused practice	Boundary-spanning, potential-seeking
Principled practice	Situational, evolving
Interested practice	Multivalent, accommodating, tolerant