Blog
The Tao of Leadership
By Greg Fisher Last week I had the honour of being involved in a set of meetings in Beijing, which represented the inaugural meeting of the Hanwang Forum, of which I am a member. There are many very supportive things I would say about this Forum but in this article I would like to focus on how this Forum came to be, which was due to the leadership of a Taoist master. I want to relay my experiences here because we Westerners have a lot to learn from the Chinese philosophy of Taoism, which curiously has a great deal of overlap with...
read moreWhat Could Complexity Theory Ever Do For Us?
By Orit Gal & Greg Fisher Over the past few years, the spillover of complexity theory from the natural into the social realms has intensified, instigating a whole range of new theories and insights about the manner in which complex human systems emerge, behave, and transform. But, with a few honourable exceptions, complexity theory has struggled to make the leap from the academic community into the real world. Could policy makers use ideas emanating from complexity theories, to design and implement better policies? Or, to paraphrase...
read moreComplex Care
By Greg Fisher I was recently given two papers to read on the nature of “Multiple Exclusion Homelessness”, which is about people with multiple care needs e.g. housing, drug addiction, unemployment, etc. The papers covered (i) Tackling homelessness and exclusion: Understanding complex lives i.e. need and (ii) Implications for Workforce Development and Interprofessional Practice i.e. the attempted satisfaction of need. In this article I’d like to consider this subject from a “complexity perspective”. The reports painted a picture...
read moreAccountability in an Uncertain World
By Greg Fisher What does accountability look like in a world that is uncertain and in which innovation is not only prevalent but also essential? In this blog I would like to argue that how we currently “do” accountability stifles innovation. This is an important issue given how rapidly the world is now changing with the on-going diffusion of information and communications technology. I conclude by calling for a serious re-think about what accountability looks like in organisational life, notably for those organisations operating in...
read moreValues, the Economy, and the Financial System
By Greg Fisher Recently I have spent a lot of time thinking about the relationship between human values and economics & finance. Specifically, this has been in two related areas: the types of corporate legal forms that exist (see Paul’s blog on this); and the “Social Investment market”. In this blog I would like to begin to flesh out a way of thinking about these issues: at the core is an emphasis on human values in an economic and financial system that has a number of collective action challenges. In particular, I believe that...
read moreCorporate structure, Darwinism and random selection
By Paul Ormerod The corporate world exhibits a wide variety of structures. Co-operatives and partnerships have been around for a long time and have some well known examples. The Co-op, for example, was founded in Rochdale as long ago as 1844 and now is represented worldwide. Goldman Sachs was a partnership for most of its existence. There are more exotic forms of the corporate beast, such as companies limited by guarantee, industrial and provident societies, friendly societies and, recently made possible by legislation in the UK,...
read moreComplexity in Reality
by Ann Griffiths Ann is currently Head of Policy at Ealing Council, where she leads on strategic partnerships and multi-agency efficiency projects, corporate policy, and innovation. She is writing in a personal capacity. During questions at the 21st Century Policy Development event hosted by Synthesis and the RSA, an observer noted that what I had to talk about probably wasn’t really complexity. In its scientific sense, I’m inclined to agree – but for the purposes of making an impact on public policy, I’m not sure it...
read more21st Century Policy Development
By Bridget Rosewell I spoke last week at a fascinating day on how policy development needs to be rethought, organised by Synthesis of which I am an Associate. The day made clear that both the techniques now available to us (computer modelling, simulation techniques) and our understanding of the elements of our problems (dynamics, feedbacks, behaviours, networks) suggest that we are making as big a policy shift as when big government first became fashionable in the twentieth century. Then people believed, from the Webbs to Gordon Brown,...
read moreA step in the right direction
By Greg Fisher On Thursday we co-hosted an event with the RSA called “21st Century Policy Development” (21CPD). This blog is a sort of follow-up to that event, arising out of a number of the questions asked during Q&A. What I want to do is to illustrate quite how intractable social systems and the biosphere (and in fact the whole universe) are; and to contextualise what value I believe networks and complex systems add to our understanding (and, by implication, our ability to make good decisions). There were some questions at 21CPD...
read moreNetworks, smart government and the Overton window
By David Blake A fundamental feature of 21st century society is the way in which networks shape and determine outcomes. This implies a radical shift in the conduct of public policy. It does not mean ‘no government’. But it means ‘smart government’. But the complex systems community needs to recognise what a huge change is required to make that possible. Governments have certain advantages not available to the other actors in society. They have a monopoly of the use of legal force. They can within certain limits set the rules by...
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