Emergence: Difference between revisions

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Bureaucrats, Interface administrators, Administrators

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 So, “wetness” is a property of water, but not of a molecule of H<sub>2</sub>0. “Consciousness” is a property of a brain, but not the neural activity that ''comprises'' it.<ref>This [[paradox]] has derailed the philosophy of mind for hundred of years.</ref> “[[Bureaucracy]]” is an emergent property of a [[financial services]] organisation, not the individual communications within that organisation that make up the organisation. Well, not many of them, anyway.
-Nonetheless in each case the emergent property is a function not of the system as a whole, where it presents, but of its individual components, ''where it does not''.
+Nonetheless in each case the emergent property is a function not of the system as a whole, where it presents, but of its individual components, ''where it does not''. So changing an emergent property is tricky.
-So ''changing'' an emergent property is tricky. You must influence the individual interactions so that a different property emerges, even though each of those interactions, of itself, is not obviously deficient.
+“Culture” is an emergent property, too: generated by, but not subsisting in, the individual interactions comprising the organisation’s heartbeat.
-Which is why top-down attempts to change culture are so frequently fail. You cannot command [[cnut|a tide to retreat]],<ref>Only a Cnut would do that.</ref> or water not to be wet. We all know of institutions who, with optimistic spirit, have instituted “bureaucracy hotlines” where staff could, in essence, denounce bureaucracy whenever they encountered it, or “see it, say it, fix it” programmes. These do not work. Oh, you can see it, for sure; saying it takes a bit more spleen, or disregard for one’s onward trajectory; fixing it falls foul of the [[pragmatist’s prayer]]. For every ''particular'' there is ''always'' some kind of [[special pleading]] that some other [[stakeholder]] can wheel out to justify the status quo, usually by reference to someone or something elsewhere in the hierarchy, or some hypothetical risk, [[precedent]] or [[policy|scar tissue]] sedimented so deeply into the fossil record of the organisation that excavation is impossible. In any case, these things are beyond any individual’s ability to fix, or even ''influence''. All the levers they can control recommend the same course: ''do what we have always done''.
+Understanding emergence is a clue to why cultural change in an organisation is so hard, and why top-down attempts to change culture so frequently fail.
+You cannot command [[cnut|a tide to retreat]],<ref>Only a Cnut would do that.</ref> or water not to be wet. We all know of institutions who, with optimistic spirit, have instituted “bureaucracy hotlines” where staff could, in essence, denounce bureaucracy whenever they encountered it, or “see it, say it, fix it” programmes. These do not work. Oh, you can see it, for sure; saying it takes a bit more spleen, or disregard for one’s onward trajectory; fixing it falls foul of the [[pragmatist’s prayer]]. For every ''particular'' there is ''always'' some kind of [[special pleading]] that some other [[stakeholder]] can wheel out to justify the status quo, usually by reference to someone or something elsewhere in the hierarchy, or some hypothetical risk, [[precedent]] or [[policy|scar tissue]] sedimented so deeply into the fossil record of the organisation that excavation is impossible. In any case, these things are beyond any individual’s ability to fix, or even ''influence''. All the levers they can control recommend the same course: ''do what we have always done''.
 However tempting it may seem to an administrator, you cannot change the wider system, except by changing each of the individual interactions from which the property emerges. ''You can’t tell a cup of water to stop being wet''. You must change the conditions in which water molecules interact and which makes them combine to create wetness: make it colder, or hotter, or mix other molecules with H<sub>2</sub>0.
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 *[[Reductionism]]
 *[[Möbius loop]] — one of the [[JC]]’s [[hermeneutics|hermeneutic]]ally sealed private jokes for one. Oh! There’s another one!
-{{newsletter|5/2/2021}}
+{{newsletter|14/2/2021}}
+{{Ref}}