Heretics, High Priests, And Hagiolatry: A Pervert's Guide to Methodology

WILL EVANS \\ @semanticwill \\ #LASCOT15 \\ Edinburgh, Scotland

Twitter: #LASCOT15 Slideshare: http://buff.ly/1Q72pRP

The Problem (Spaces)

§  Organizational Debt §  Scale Agile Everywhere! §  Bi-Modal Asshattery §  Sprinkle me some DevOps §  But Deming said…(and other name-dropping) §  It’s about Culture (whatever the *fuck that is) §  Local Optima

Žižek on Perversion

“Perversion, at its most fundamental, resides in the formal structure of how the subject relates to truth and speech. The pervert claims direct access to some figure of the big Other (from God or history or a signer of the Agile Manifesto), so that, dispelling all the ambiguity of language, he is able to act directly as the instrument of the big Other's will.”

Key Take-Aways

§  Start with the context. §  Whole system(s), not local optima. §  Both value streams and value chains are important. §  Adapt processes & methods based on situational

awareness inside of culture. §  Methods are methods, not religions. §  Consume uncertainty with small experiments to create

more information. §  Change starts small through practice modulated by

habitus with respect to culture.

Ontological Design

Ontological Design is the design of ways of being - not just the purposeful creation of mental scafolding, but rather facilitating the evolution of human capability within social systems. Social systems focussed on catalyzing, facilitating, and enabling situated and embodied human cognition and action.

Definition of Design

The intentional creation of purposeful systems. – Jabe Bloom

Assumption 1

We all exist (beingness) with(in) system(s).

Assumption 2

We are all responsible for the design, development, and maintence of systems that ideally* create value.

Assumption 3

We are in this to create. Specifically we are in this to create value – that is to create things the solve problems for customers for which they are willing to exchange some value.

Assumption 4

Agile (and) Lean(x), affords better ways of creating new things of value. Because: •  Tight feedback loops •  Small batches to ship value •  Customer interactions •  Experimentation •  Incremental and iterative

Boundaries

THERE was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared. An adult could look right over it, and even a child could climb it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it degenerated into mere geometry, a line, an idea of boundary. But the idea was real. It was important. For seven generations there had been nothing in the world more important than that wall. Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side of it you were on. -Ursula Le Guin The Dispossessed

ORGANIZATIONAL DEBT

As organizations grow, scale, and mature, they develop structures, policies, rules, norms, and taboos most appropriate for their maturity and the exploitation of existing value streams. To become more resilient and capable of strategic play, exploration, and evolution, they will need to ‘refactor the code’ of the organization? Organizational debt becomes a context-free constraint on survivability.

ORGANIZATIONAL DEBT

But what is Culture?

“A pattern of shared basic assumptions learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration (…) A product of joint learning.” – Edgar Schein Organizations are socio-technical systems in which the modalityof external adaptation and the solutioning of internal integration problems are interdependent, co-evolving, and complex.

Culture as Webs

“Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun. I take culture to be those webs.” – Clifford Geertz

Webs of Signification

Sensemaking Semantics

Meaning exists in the interactions between things, not in the things themselves. -Alicia Juarrero

Sensemaking Systems

“A system is not a sum of behaviors of its parts; it's a product of their interactions” - Russel Ackoff

Foucault on Power

STRUCTURING STRUCTURES

Power is created and recreated culturally and symbolically, and re-legitimizes itself through the interactions between agents and structure.

Forms of Power

4 Forms of Power •  Positional •  Structural •  Situational •  Dispositional

Bourdieu’s Habitus

The relation to ‘what is possible’ is ultimately a relation to power.” -Pierre Bourdieu

PRACTICE

PRACTICE

Practice (or habit) isn't a matter of cultural conformity to structures of power - there is an interaction between agency and structure - it is adaptive (or some some cases maladaptive) but also strategic, reactive and active, as well as modulated by cultural signifiers whilst temporally influenced by them.

Fields

A field is a network, structure or set of relationships in which people express and reproduce their dispositionality, where they engage in practice, and where they compete for the distribution of different kinds of capital.

FOUR CAPITAL(S)

Habitus is constituted through the exchange of 4 kinds of capital between agents in a field modulated by habitus:

•  Financial capital •  Social capital •  Cultural capital •  Symbolic capital

FOUR CAPITAL(S)

IDENTITY MANAGEMENT

Addressing the Problem

“Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

Mapping the Domain

Wardley, Simon, “An introduction to Wardley (Value Chain) Mapping”

Evolution


Three Horizons View

Methods to Context


Mapping the Domain


Dispositions to Domain

Wardley, Simon, “On Pioneers, Settlers, Town Planners and Theft.”

Situational Dynamics


Habitus Dynamics


Tribal Dynamics

HERETICS

Heretics are agents with(in) a system, characterized by a practical evaluation and mastery of the terrain to see new opportunities to create new knowledge outside the ortho(doxa).

HIGH PRIESTS

High Priests are agents acting within a system whose dispositionality allows them to evolve new knowledge from heretics into the system, integrating it with the power structure, extracting the value, enforcing behavioral norms, and maintaining the system of power flows through the gospel.

HAGIOLOTRY

Hagiolotry is simply the making of saints. Sometimes High Priests can become saints, but more often than not it’s the heretics that become saints after execution.

Saints act as powerful attractors within a social system, and can reify unstated, tacit, or taboo stories to bind actions.

CONTEXTUAL AWARENESS

What are requisite variety of dispositions and practices for pioneers (heretics*), as well as the processes and methods deployed are different than in other domains? * Remember that heretics have a history of getting burned at the stake.


What are the requisite variety of dispositions and practices for pioneers (heretics*), as well as the processes and methods deployed are different than in other domains? It’s about the movement between domains, and the interactions between teams and across domains where novelty can turn into capability.


What are the requisite variety of dispositions and practices for pioneers (heretics*), as well as the processes and methods deployed are different than in other domains? It’s about the movement between domains, and the interactions between teams and across domains where novelty can turn into capability. Expertise (High Priests*) is important and valuable, but can also become a trap.


What are the requisite variety of dispositions and practices for pioneers (heretics*), as well as the processes and methods deployed are different than in other domains. It’s about the movement between domains, and the interactions between teams and across domains where novelty can turn into capability. Expertise (High Priests*) is important and valuable, but can also become a trap. Be pragmatic in your approach to the application of methods and practices. Thought leaders aren’t saints that should be followed blindly.

Final Thoughts

§  Start with the context. §  Whole system(s), not local optima. §  Both value streams and value chains are important. §  Adapt processes & methods based on situational

awareness inside of culture. §  Methods are methods, not religions. §  Consume uncertainty with small experiments to create

more information. §  Change starts small through practice modulated by

habitus with respect to culture.

REFERENCES

Bourdieu, P. (1980). The Logic of Practice. Stanford, Stanford University Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London, Routledge. Bourdieu, P. (1986). ‘The Forms of Capital’. Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Capital. J. G. Richardson. New York, Greenwood Press: 241-58.

Foucault, M. (1991). Discipline and Punish: the birth of a prison. London, Penguin.

Foucault, Michel. "The Subject and Power." In Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, edited by H. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow, pp. 208-226. 2nd ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983.

Gaventa, J. (2003). Power after Lukes: a review of the literature, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies.

Geertz, Clifford (1977), The Interpretation of Culture, Basic Books Classics

Juarrero, Alicia (2002). Dynamics in Action, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusettes

Moncrieffe, J. (2006). “The Power of Stigma: Encounters with ‘Street Children’ and ‘Restavecs’ in Haiti.” IDS Bulletin 37(6): 31-46.

VeneKlasen, L. and V. Miller (2002). A New Weave of Power, People and Politics: The Action Guide for Advocacy and Citizen Participation. Oklahoma City, World Neighbors.



COLOPHON

This talk was designed based on conversations and work done with Jabe Bloom during the summer and fall of 2015. The blue activator colour C70 M15 Y0 K0 is inspired by the Lean Agile Scotland logo. All typefaces are from Heoffler & Jones.

§  Header Text is in Vitesse Black §  Body Text is in Quarto Medium §  Labels are in Quarto Medium Italic

WILL EVANS \\ @semanticwill \\ #LASCOT15 \\ Edinburgh, Scotland

Heretics, High Priests, And Hagiolatry: A Pervert's Guide to Methodology

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Transcript of Heretics, High Priests, And Hagiolatry: A Pervert's Guide to Methodology