Vanderbuilt
VCBH Innovation Center
2002 |
What?
Why? How to Make One |
| MG Taylor navCenters
are neutral environments designed to facilitate and
augment human collaboration and the production of knowledge
work the result of which is personal and organizational transformation. |
| The
increasing rate of the rate of change, the growth of
complexity and the scale and scope of human activities,
globally, has started a dynamic that threatens to overwhelm
the very society that created it. This dynamic is impacting
not only large institutions; it is equally challenging
to enterprises of all sizes, even individuals. It is
unnecessarily destroying the plant and animal population
of the planet. Beyond these negative circumstances,
which are largely the unintended consequenses of the
industrial era successes, there are a number of opportunities
within reach of humanity - on all levels of social organization
- that if successfully met can propel us into a new
area of possibilities, wealth and success. |
|
| Actions
taken by individuals and organizations in response to
this increasing change and complexity, themselves, increase
the rate of change, the resulting complexity and the
scale of human impact. We have created a giant positive
feedback loop; a dynamic feeding on itself. This is
likely to be either net out as an “increasing
return” benefit or an ever accelerating negative
decline; dynamic situations like this rarely stay in
the middle. At some point, the system will achieve a
new level; our task is to encourage the creation of
a positive one. |
| Our
society finds itself confronting a complex array
of
systemic problems. My metaphor of a systemic problem
is a river running through 3 states, 10 counties
and
32 cities. Who is responsible? Who pollutes, it cleans
it up, employs it, manages it? The answer is no ONE.
All the important, challenging and presently dangerous
problems are systemic; the majority of our responses
are incremental; this results in more problems; we
are
creating a huge economy-driven problem generating machine
not a stable society. Often, when confronted with “problems,”
we think we are facing, as example, a simple issue
of economics, a political enemy or a shift in weather;
more often than not, these are the symptom of a system
level disorder that no parts level “fix”
will solve, only make worse. |
|
| To
be improved, a
system has to be approached on its own level; as
a system. This is a requisite variety issue. The
variety of the response has to mach that of the challenge;
otherwise, unintended consequences abound. To create
variety equal to a large-scale complex system problem
requires many resources and participants in the solution
process who will “speak” with many voices
from many vantage points in many languages representing
many paradigms. Standard meeting, work and governance
practices cannot deal with this circumstance. With too
limited a tool-kit, people and organizations inevitably
try to scale down the problem to fit the “solution-set”
made possible by available processes and assumed resources.
Instead, they must muster an Appropriate Response
by scaling and facilitating necessary resources (accomplished
by growing their ValueWeb)
to fit the nature of the problem. |
| We
created MG Taylor to address
this dilemma. Our
answer is the architecture of our System
and Method. Presently, the best know expressions
of this IP are DesignShops, NavCenters, ValueWebs and
PatchWorks Designs. “Structure wins;” our
approach is structural; it addresses the underlying
nature of the issues in focus and brings key
elements of the system itself to act upon itself. Only
if the system is acting upon itself can there be requisite
variety; V=V. Our System and Method is the trim-tap
that moves the rudder that steers the ship. Structure
in this context, includes the structure of paradigms,
the assumptions of ideas, and the architecture of languages;
the social/political/economic/organizational aspects
of enterprises; the physical environments in which people
work, the embedded biases of their technology and the
often hidden tautological consequences of entrained
work processes. |
| There
are strict rules by which a new work architecture can
be created and successfully employed as an OS in a complex
organizational environment. Complex systems have to
be free to emerge; to “escape to a higher level.”
Direct intervention into a system is generally disastrous.
We call this free space the Zone
of Emergence; the Zone has to be bounded
by time, place, circumstance, information and intention;
it has to be supported by a rigorous design
process that promotes Group Genius; this process
has to function with minimal intrinsic structural bias
of the outcome. Those conducting the process have to
be true Transition Managers. These elements,
properly employed, make up an Appropriate Response. |
|
| |
| The
Zone of Emergence is framed by multiple levels of recursion
and cycles of iteration; this environment is a rule-based
system individually designed and configured for each
specific exercise. |
|
| The
ENGINE that supports Taylor processes and environments
is the 10
Step Process; practicing this process makes mind-like
links between ValueWeb nodes and creates strong MEMORY
in the system. |
|
| DesignShops,
NavCenters, Valuewebs and PatchWorks designs are not
the Taylor System and Method they are expressions
of it. DesignShops (typically an event three to four
days long, 10 to 12 hours each day, with 50 to 150
participants, Sponsors and Knowledgeworkers active in a fully functioning
NavCenter or RDS) is the MINIMUM scale and
scope that can represent and employ a complete application
of the
System and Method. A NavCenter, and the relevant embedded
processes, is the physical PLACE of the System
and Method (augmented with RemotePresence and RemoteCollaboration
systems). A robust, self-sustaining ValueWeb is a far
fuller expression of the System and Method. ValueWebs
require the PatchWorks architecture process in order
to operate. PatchWorks
is the equivalent of the designShop on larger scales
(levels) of recursion. The 10 Step process is essential
on all levels of recursion of the System if the necessary
processes are to be sustained. |
|
| Today,
enterprises be they governments, businesses or non-profits
are always trying to fix themselves to their eternal
frustration. They should, instead, focus on the development
and augmentation of their ValueWeb. It is the ValueWeb
that creates and distributes value not the individual
entities (except to the extent that they are ValueWebs,
themselves). A NavCenter may be “owned”
by a discrete organization but must focus on that organization’s
ValueWeb in order to truly succeed. |
| This
is both a resource issue and a factor of perspective.
A ValueWeb is the immediate local ecology of any enterprise.
It is both the environment of an enterprise and its
source of resources. It is the ENTERPRISE,
in the broadest sense, and the market. Creating
a healthy sustainable ValueWeb is the first task; becoming
a “fit” member is the second. The NavCenter
is the neutral ground and facilitates the system integration
function of an organization’s ValueWeb. As it
reaches maturity and grows, a Web will have many centers
and integration places as the system integration function
become distributed. This aspect of its architecture
changes as the enterprise moves through natural life
cycles. |
|
| ValueWebs
move through a life cycle as will the many entities
that make them up. These will all be at different stages
except at extreme times such a total start-up condition
exists or the web is under massive external or internal
threat as a whole. The NavCenter node (or nodes) has
to be able to facilitate this colophony of stages, as
well as, deal with its own stage condition. Just as
a ValueWeb’s NavCenter can facilitate this aspect
of its Web, a cross Web ValueWeb of NavCenters
is essential for keeping the individual NavCenters healthy.
This is why we emphasize this
aspect of NavCenter creation and ongoing use. It
takes a NavCenter to make a NavCenter and a ValueWeb
of Centers to sustain one. |
| NavCenters
are not created in the abstract nor in a vacuum; the
are BUILT one day at a time by doing work.
They are exercised into existence; they are
the consequence of practice. |
|
| NavCenters
are a new way of working. This way
(dogu) is based on design as the major epistemology
of the process. In this System and method, problems
are not given - conditions are - problems are
created as the first cycle of the creative process the
solved (dissolved, actually) engineered and implemented
in progressive iterations of work. |
| As
NavCenters facilitate their client’s creative
process they are being educated (to lead out) to their
own development. As this process unfolds, the individualized
aspects that make up each Center’s unique character
evolve organically as a natural result of this
activity. We have a saying: “there is no out there.”
Because NavCenters are at the core of an organization
and it’s ValueWeb, in facilitating the solution
of the enterprise’s problems, the NavCenter is
solving it’s own. |
|
Matt
Taylor
Palo Alto
August 28, 2002
SolutionBox
voice of this document:
INSIGHT • POLICY • PROGRAM
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posted:
August 28, 2002
revised:
November 18, 2002
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(note:
this document is about 60% finished)
Matt
Taylor 650 814 1192
me@matttaylor.com
Copyright©
Matt Taylor 2002
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