My Recent Tweets (10/17/2019):

My recent tweets ranging from Cybernetics to John Boyd/OODA Loop to Kaizen.

Chaos is more like a wave that you have to ride, than a ladder you have to climb. Dynamic model than a static model. Littlefinger got it wrong. 🤔 #Cybernetics pic.twitter.com/1UMD7pMCC1

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) October 17, 2019

Delayed information is a strong variety attenuator.

But, the strongest of all variety attenuators is sheer ignorance. #VSM #Cybernetics

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) October 16, 2019

1/2 The most important thing to remind ourselves is that we are reacting to “a” model of the phenomenon, not the actual phenomenon itself. Our minds create the model following Ashby’s law, filtering out “unwanted” details and amplifying certain details. #Cybernetics

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) October 15, 2019

1/2 Stafford Beer’s Designing Freedom is an excellent resource to understand his main ideas. It was written more for general understanding. Interestingly, the language reflect a “hard systems” view. Examples on the following tweet. #VSM #Cybernetics

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) October 13, 2019

1/2 “In order to maintain viability, the total system must have a central regulatory model… we cannot dodge the truth that it will constrain variety in the parts. The precise form of variety attenuation is a matter for local decision.” #VSM #Cybernetics

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) October 11, 2019

1/2 Espejo- “if you are going to devolve power, then workers, managers, and administrators must understand how to close the loops locally. They must understand how to produce feedback locally.” #VSM #Cybernetics

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) October 11, 2019

1/5 One of the fascinating things about VSM for me is the idea of autonomy. As Espejo puts it – Autonomy was the essence of the model. What we struggled with was, how do you recognize autonomous systems within autonomous systems? #VSM #Cybernetics

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) October 10, 2019

1/2 Any model/abstraction follows Ashby’s law. The model does not exactly match the phenomenon. The unwanted variety is attenuated and selected variety is amplified. I#cybernetics #Ashby #requisitevariety

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) October 9, 2019

1/2 Deskilling an operation must not mean that we are dehumanizing. It should be about improving the quality of work life for the operator. The operator should be a central part of any improvement activity. #lean #Ackoff #kaizen

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) October 6, 2019

Effective research is not disciplinary, interdisciplinary, or multidisciplinary; it is transdisciplinary. – Ackoff #systemsthinking

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) October 6, 2019

Leave a little bit of room for mistakes in all that you do. #SaturdayThoughts

Always keep on learning.

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) October 5, 2019

Pursuit of kaizen is primarily a pursuit of effectiveness. #kaizen #lean

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) October 5, 2019

A good heuristic- ‘Effectiveness comes first’.
The first step towards kaizen is about effectiveness, not efficiency. Eliminate, followed by combine, rearrange and simplify. #lean #kaizen pic.twitter.com/1yByc1EInO

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) October 5, 2019

1/2 We should construct the box around the problem rather than force fitting the problem into a preformed box. The box should add to the wholeness of our understanding of the problem.
Thoughts from reading Christopher Alexander. #patternlanguage #patterns

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) October 4, 2019

‘The most important question is the one that has not yet been asked.’

My heuristic inspired by Popper’s falsification principle. #ThorsDayThoughts

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) October 3, 2019

The process of making improvements should be continuously improved and made easier to do. #FridayThoughts

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) September 20, 2019

“You cannot use a system’s own workings to determine if a system is consistent or not.” Boyd on Gödel.

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) September 18, 2019

1/2Boyd utilized Gödel’s theorems for his OODA loop along with 2nd law of Thermodynamics and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.
“One cannot determine the character and nature of a system within itself. Moreover, attempts to do will lead to confusion and disorder.” #OODA #Boyd

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) September 18, 2019

 

My Recent Tweets (7/28/2019):

I will be posting soon. Meanwhile, here are selected tweets (cybernetics, purpose of a system, complexity etc.):

Asking questions is more important than getting answers. Stay curious. #FridayThoughts

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) July 19, 2019

 

1/3 Good complexity is having requisite variety. Bad complexity is having nonessential variety, and lots of it. This may seem to contradict Foerster’s ethical imperative – “Act always so as to increase the number of choices.” #cybernetics

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) July 25, 2019

1/2 One of my favorite examples of culture and context provide meaning is the proverb – a rolling stone gathers no moss. The modern meaning in the West is be active to avoid stagnation. When this got translated to Japanese, the meaning became the opposite. #epistemology

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) July 22, 2019

If Theory is to ontology, then practice is to epistemology.

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) July 20, 2019

Another take on Godel’s incompleteness theorems: “One can only say with a given language what the language permits.” (Maturana’s quote originally not in relation to Godel) #Godel #cybernetics

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) July 20, 2019

Most change management ideas are worded around deterministic phrases. Take Lewis’s model for example (unfreeze-change-refreeze). Mechanistic phrases. We are still holding onto the Newtonian clockwork paradigm. Any change management ideas are heuristics or frameworks at best.

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) July 20, 2019

You know you are self-taught when your revision control for your programs are “new”, “new new”, “really new”, “really really new”…. 🙃

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) July 20, 2019

A “system” must be viewed in terms of its components and the larger “systems” it is part of. This is ontological. It must be understood in terms of the interactions that exist both internally and externally. This is epistemological. Ontology precedes epistemology. #cybernetics

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) July 19, 2019

When you realize that even a fundamental theoretical concept such as probability has more than one distinct interpretation/worldview, it should make you wonder about all the “systems” around you. What is an alternate view of your “system”? #systemsthinking #2ndOrderCybernetics

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) July 17, 2019

1/6 I had an interesting discussion with @SystemsNinja on an organization’s purpose. Here are my thoughts so far on this. #posiwid #cybernetics #systemsthinking #ackoff

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) July 15, 2019

You cannot improve a system all at once. You can only improve a process that in turn makes the system better through its interactions with other processes. The challenge lies in knowing which process to improve(TOC). This applies for the ordered domain. #complexity

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) July 14, 2019

Be weary of the man who has not made any mistake. It just means that he is good at deflecting blame.

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) July 14, 2019

Are we always better at solving other people’s problems? #TuesdayThoughts

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) July 9, 2019

In a complex system, when you push, you get pushed back harder by the system. You cannot make a system go faster. You can only create conditions where it is attractive for a system to behave in a certain manner.

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) July 11, 2019

Structurally open, operationally closed! A Study of “Organizational Closure” and Autopoiesis. #cybernetics #autopoiesis https://t.co/OgfbUrLAbx

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) July 23, 2019

Autopoiesis provides clarity when one thinks about purpose and autonomy of a system. It also explains why the mechanistic ideas of Management is lacking in managing complexity. Structurally open & Operationally closed. #complexity #cybernetics #systems https://t.co/OgfbUrLAbx

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) July 24, 2019

Always keep on learning…

My recent tweets…

I will be posting soon… Meanwhile, here are some of my recent tweets that may be of interest to you.

Learning about second order Cybernetics made me realize that all systems are mental constructions. Your “system” maybe different from my “system”. Thus, your problem conception may differ from mine. Whose problem are you solving? #SaturdayThoughts

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) March 16, 2019

Entropy is associated with disorder simply because there are a LOT more ways to be disordered. It is more likely to be in one of “million” states of disorder than one of a few states of order. #ThursdayThoughts

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) March 14, 2019

“I am sure that you can agree…” is a bad tool to use in a debate. I am sure you can agree to that. 😊 #wednesdaythoughts

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) March 13, 2019

Design the program to be better for the least skilled/experienced user to make the program overall better for everyone. A good Ux heuristic, also applicable in life. #uxdesign #wednesdaythoughts

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) March 6, 2019

“Virtually all design is conducted in a state of relative ignorance of the full behaviour of the system being designed.” – Henry Petroski #complexity

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) March 1, 2019

“Probability is normalized counting.” Wonderful insight from Richard McElreath #probability #bayesian

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) February 28, 2019

Art has no meaning in a perfect world. The meaning of art lies in the fact that it emulates life. Art has to “lack perfection” in order to make sense. #SaturdayThoughts #wabisabi

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) February 24, 2019

When you’re looking for confirmation of your hypothesis, you are using a low entropy model. When you seek to refute your hypothesis, you are using a high entropy model. High entropy models (max ent) are much closer to truth. You’re not putting all the🥚 in one basket. #complexity

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) January 29, 2019

“Either – or” dichotomy is often a sign of a poorly constructed (mental) model for understanding complexity. This is similar to the “win-lose” zero-sum game mentality. #complexity

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) February 12, 2019

A stable system is “organizationally closed”. (Von Forester) This concept is different than the thermodynamic closed system concept. #complexity_notes

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) February 15, 2019

Sustaining is a homeostatic function. Thriving is not a homeostatic function, but a combination of explore/exploit functions. Sustaining focuses on existing feedback loops. Thriving requires changing the existing feedback loops and creating new ones. #complexity

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) January 5, 2019

A multidisciplinary problem needs a multidisciplinary solution. In complexity, all problems are multidisciplinary. Variety is your friend. #complexity

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) January 3, 2019

Don’t push for simplicity when you are stable. Similarly, don’t push for complexity when you are unstable. #complexity

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) December 16, 2018

My postulate is that the information entropy of a constructed system is less than the sum of individual components’ information entropies. The negative factor comes from the interactions of the components(agents). #complexity #entropy

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) December 29, 2018

Wise words from Howson and Urbach about misuse of Confidence Intervals. The observation that a parameter is not a random variable in the frequentist paradigm is profound. It’s one of those things that you think you know but don’t realize. #research #Statistics #bayesian pic.twitter.com/LrYg6JD1ZW

— Harish Jose (@harish_josev) November 25, 2018

Always keep on learning…