Beyond Dispute: The Invention of Team SyntegrityOver the last forty years, Stafford Beer has published a steady stream of books and papers in which he has applied cybernetic science to organizational problems. In all of these he has explained underlying principles and developed new theories and recorded a great variety of practical applications. He has now invented and demonstrated Team Syntegrity. Syntegrity is a powerful invention in the organization of normative, directional, and strategic planning, and other creative decision processes. The underlying model is a regular icosahedron (20 sides). This has 30 edges, each of which represents a person. An internal network of interactions is created by a set of protocols. A group organized like this is an ultimate statement of participatory democracy, since each role is indistinguishable from any other. There is no hierarchy, no top, no bottom, no sideways. Beer illustrates how continued dynamic interaction between persons causes ideas and resolutions to hum around the sphere, which reverberates into a kind of group consciousness. Mathematical analysis of the structure shows how the process is determined by the even spread of synergy. The aim of the book is to provide managers and their advisors with a new planning method that captures the native genius of the organization in a non-political and non-hierarchical way. The book includes an enquiry into Beer?s concept of recursive consciousness, based on this model, that is relevant to both neurocybernetics and the social systems sciences. |
Contents
Chapter Two On Protocols | 19 |
Chapter Three PathFinding Experiments | 35 |
Chapter Four The Academic Milieu | 49 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
12 topics activity Adjacent algedonode algorithm allocation already Amanda Brown ASIS Beer Black brain Buckminster Fuller called chakra Chapter colours connected consider CSIS cybernetic Dark Blue defined diagram discussion edges eigenvalue embedment enneagram equation example experience facilitators Figure five four Freesman FSIS goal Gold Golden Rectangles graph Green heterarchy heuristic Hexadic Reduction homeostasis homeostat icosahedral icosahedron ideas identity individual infoset members infosettic consciousness interaction involved iteration Light Blue mathematical matrix means neuron operations Orange organization organizational Outcome Resolve participants pentagon person planning players Plenary Session polar opposite Problem Jostle procedure protocol Purple question recursive result reverberation s/he Silver space Stafford Beer Statements of Importance structure struts team meetings team members Team Syntegrity TEAM TOPIC tensegrity tensile three-dimensional Topic Auction Toronto ultrastable vertex vertices Viable System Model voting whole World Service Authority Yellow