DALL-E
Closing the Loop
(1800 words, an 8 minute read)
In part 1 of this series, I laid out a set of clear social fracture lines that can be expected to rupture and lead to system collapse. Spiritual deals with unresolved traumas. Cultural shows where people's sense of purpose and values differ to a great degree—lastly, the political realm points to why the societal governance systems can't self-correct.
This analysis led to Part 2, where I opined an application of a cybernetics systems model could begin to identify the parts of society that could be observed for signs of impending fragility.
Context 2025 – The United States of Anxiety
As I write this on January 20, 2025, my home country is perched on the verge of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, symptoms of impending collapse—preconditions for the acceptance of oligarchic authoritarian governance. The purpose of this closing article is to offer a pathway of hope—a roadmap for action that can stay and even reverse this trend.
The idea here is that all social action involves interaction between the environment, the mechanics of change/adjustment, and the allocation of resources to facilitate change—fuel for the fire, if you will.
That gives us the theory (Part 1) and specification of structural factors (Part 2), and now we need to spell out the variables in a way that can be measured reliably. That would give us a 'dashboard' to monitor for signs of the avalanche. In conclusion, I will venture into what went wrong with the global healthcare system in 2020-2022 and how fragility could have been corrected. My hope is that this cybernetic process can now be applied to current events.
Mission Economy
Mariana Mazzucato, in Mission Economy, has laid out a stunning economic analysis of why our socio-economic post-industrial society can not seem to move from being reactive to one that is proactive and capable of mounting "moonshot" level programs. Even if you are not an economist, I highly recommend a detailed reading. I'm offering a very condensed synopsis here. One of her key insights, and I quote:
"In Chapter 4, we looked at fundamental attributes and principles that laid the foundation of the government's ability to lead a mission to the moon. Following on from those, five capabilities are, I believe, central to modern bureaucracies’ ability to manage complex and ‘wicked problems.”
1. Leadership and Engagement. Continuous engagement and a co-creating role with the market (polity).
2. Coordination. Coherent policy MIXES of instruments and funding. Working across silos.
3. Administration. Emphasis on diversity of approaches, ideas, and talents.
4. Risk-taking and Experimentation. Embrace uncertainty and learn through trial and error.
5. Dynamic Evaluation. Ongoing reflective evaluation based on complex objective data.
Stepping back a bit, ask yourself where in our current healthcare system(s) do these principles apply? And where would these system attributes be located in the viable systems model (VSM)?
Adaptive Organizational Analysis
When I read her conclusions about the capabilities required for a 'moonshot,' I thought, 'Yep, but let's take it one step further. ' Remember, Stafford Beer's ultimate vision was a management control facility that monitored the real-time information flows among and between the levels of his viable systems model.
A short side note here: Beer was close to implementing an operational model for Chile in 1972. A mock-up of the "Cybersyn" led off Part 2 of this series. Unfortunately, the assassination of Salvatore Allende ended the experiment, and Beer fled for his life. Another story for another time.
Years ago (1993), I designed and built a quantitative organizational analysis system based on the characteristics—read attributes in Mazzucato's terms—of the information flow between the VSM's 'systems.' The model has been built, tested, refined, and used in my organizational development practice since 1992. The final model has six factors.
Details of Factors and Underlying Assumptions
Direction: This scale reflects an organization's mission, vision, and purpose and its ability to infuse them throughout the organization. The underlying assumption is that the more clearly defined and understood this direction, the higher the company's chance of success in orchestrating change.
Customer Service: This scale reflects an organization's connection to its customers. The underlying assumption is that the more closely a firm is connected to understanding the needs of and is emotionally attached to its customers, the easier it is to spot emerging trends, correct process deficiencies, and change strategy to meet customers' evolving needs.
Information Systems: This scale reflects an organization's ability to use advanced information and communications technology. The underlying assumption is that investing in, relying upon, and using continuously advancing telecommunication and computer technology facilitates a firm's ability to change quickly and uniformly.
Personnel: This scale directly reflects an organization's social capital. There is a direct correlation between a firm's social capital and its ability to innovate and become sustainable over time. The underlying assumption is that the more social capital you have (and the greater your investment in creating even more), the more able you are to innovate continuously, change, and become sustainable over the long term.
Planning: This scale reflects an organization's ability to anticipate change and respond to environmental or external pressures. The underlying assumption is that a higher degree of sensitivity to and connection with external events, trends, and forces enables a firm to change organizationally ahead of its competitors, who aren't as well attuned.
Facilities: This scale measures an organization's ability to plan for, utilize, and continuously modify its use of a portfolio of physical facilities to support the work activities of its talent pool. The underlying assumption is that a wider variety and greater design flexibility will be required to support the future workforce compared to today's standard practices.
This six-factor Organizational Analysis System is designed to provide decision-makers with a reliable, quantifiable assessment of an organization’s potential for successfully transitioning to a new way of functioning at a higher level than its current capability.
In other words, how antifragile is the organization? How capable is it of dealing with 'wicked' problems? A national-level database with normed data, including means and standard deviations for each factor, exists. Further, validation research showed that, in 95% of cases, organizations that score more than one standard deviation below national norms on three or more of the five core factors fail to successfully transition to a new work state.
This process then shows you which subsystems need improvement and attention to mitigate the potential for breakdown, failure, and collapse. Although it is far beyond the scope of this posting, directly applying the OAS to today's organizational environment would make for an interesting Gedanken experiment.
Mapping the Viable System
Mazzucato's analysis can be overlaid with the OAS, which adds two new dimensions. Information Technology measures the fidelity of the data flows between the VSM systems. Lastly, Facilities that I see as place branding has come to the fore with a concrete movement to a hybrid workPLACE model, including the current post-pandemic rage of 'return to office' (RTO).
Note that there is no exact one-to-one mapping of factors between the two models. Risk-taking is actually the algedonic subsystem in the VSM top-level System—Five Policy. It measures how much risk will be tolerated, or in Beer's words, 'unpleasantness or pain.'
Integrated Perspective
Now that we have an integrative systems measurement map, what went wrong with the US healthcare system in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic? The information technologies linkages are attenuated starting with Systems 1 (i.e., clinics, hospitals, teaching universities, and physicians' offices). That is, the signals between them were dampened or didn't exist at all. Direct care delivery systems were not coordinated. Further, the physical facilities themselves were inadequate. For example, the shortage of rural facilities. A Systems 2 failure.
Moving up a level to System 3 (Control), we have seen a breakdown in allocating resources to meet dynamic changes. For example, early on in the pandemic, the shortage and misallocation of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Later on, the same failure of internal audit processes pointed to supply chain problems with newly arrived vaccines.
The critical failure comes at the systems Four Level. The required management task here is to look outside the existing system and to the future. In the future world, we call this a lack of strategic foresight and the development of sets of alternative scenarios—failure to anticipate by leadership.
The function of System Five is to maintain overall homeostasis across all elements. Some would call this a lack of unified purpose or sustainability. It is fragility writ large, with subsystems running out of control and beyond their various design limits. Think of it as running out of Intensive Care beds, oxygen, and the most critically trained staff.
All elements of organizational health failed.
Inadequate direction because of a lack of strategic foresight
Insufficient personnel to meet pandemic needs
Breakdown in customer service or in Mazzucaco’s language, no dynamic evaluation.
Deficient planning and coordination across service delivery units
Truncated signal processing and
Sub-optimal facilities
Corrective Actions Mandated
First of all, put a systemic organizational analysis system in place that generates reliable quantitative data (e.g., Cybersyn) so that public health leadership can ‘feedforward’ corrective action signals based on an ongoing strategic foresight process. This control system should have three primary functioning capabilities:
Data/Intelligence between elements (Systems Ones)
Early Warning indicators are built into a 'dashboard' with trend analysis
Unified policy decisions at System Five Level
Wrap Up: What Goes Around, Comes Around
As I said at the beginning of this missive, the purpose of this closing article is to offer a pathway of hope. What we learned from the analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic can be applied to our contemporary political economy. What needs attention and action?
Inadequate direction because of lack of strategic foresight. Where do we want our society to be in 2050? What would be the key metrics? Profit or life-affirming well-being?
Insufficient personnel to meet future needs. The future won't be 'engineered' but by spiritual, cultural, and political leaders.
There was a breakdown in customer service, or in Mazzucaco's language, no dynamic evaluation. A retrospective analysis of the 2024 elections indicates that what traditional leaders were offering wasn’t what people wanted or needed.
Deficient planning and coordination across service delivery units. For example, where do the program outcomes across labor, agriculture, and housing intersect?
Truncated signal processing. Filtering of disinformation and unbiased fact-checking in social media.
Sub-optimal facilities. Decentralized and regional contact points that leverage technology. Think of electronic voting (with security, of course) and Zoom meetings with elected representatives.
So, there's a roadmap forward. The key question now is who is going to pick up this charge and act on it.
Will the circle be unbroken?