DevOps in a Nutshell. Treating Machines like machines and people like people.

Treating Machines like People and People like Machines

Before DevOps we treated machines like people – there was really no other way. They needed to be installed manually (pre Jumpstart and FAI, old people), it took about 9 months and when you’d finished you had an almost living thing that you gave a name. Installs were often path dependent. It mattered what order you installed things, and it was quite hard to get and keep multiple machines exactly in sync. The tools to work differently simply didn’t exist the way they do now.

There is also an old people management technique, called Scientific Management or Taylorism, after Frederick Taylor. Taylor invented and popularised scientific management at The Ford Motor Company. Taylorism took craftsmen & women (especially during WW2) and timed, measured, divided and controlled what they did until they were doing repetitive tasks on a production line, separated from the craft of what they were making.

Taylorism was popular with factory owners, much less popular with workers. Without it, we simply would not have the world of cars and technology we have today. Taylor also raised wages, so that Ford employees could afford Ford cars. It’s not all bad.

Scientific management treats people like machines.

Pre DevOps we had machines treated like people, by people treated like machines.

Now we have an abundance of approaches to treat people and computers differently.

We have automation, orchestration and monitoring tools for treating computers like machines, and the tools keep getting better.

Our approach to people is less mature. We still can often use the machine based metaphors and ideas. No one would have thought it unusual if I’d called the approaches to working with people ‘tools’. The machine metaphor goes deep.

If not machines then what?

It’s worth saying that it’s possible you may feel that people should be treated like machines. This is how Frederick Taylor saw the world and is dominant thinking in many areas.

Often I’ve found that those who feel people should be treated like machines usually mean other people. There is a difference between the thinkers and the doers.

If we think that other people should not be treated like machines, what are the alternatives? We could treat people like roads or books or gases. But I’ve not really thought these through…

Gareth Morgan wrote the seminal book Images of Organisation that contains a set of metaphors that cover most ways of treating people in our Organisations. Fortunately, he’s thought about the metaphors so I don’t have to.

Gareth Morgan’s Organisational Metaphors

Picture by Venkatesh Rao, ribbonfarm.com

Gareth Morgan’s Images of Organisation has eight metaphors; Machine, Organism, Brain, Culture, Political System, Psychic Prison, Change and Flux and Instrument of Domination.

All the metaphors can be true at the same time. Often people favour a dominant metaphor in their understanding of their organisation. This dominant metaphor may be colouring their thoughts and reaction and shaping the ideas they have. When I say their thoughts I mean our thoughts. Mine and yours.

The organisation that your DevOps team is part of will be working in ways they cannot see if they only think with one metaphor. Using a variety of lenses increases our understanding.

The metaphors shown in the diagram above are

Organisations as Machines
- with a known input they should produce identical output
- ‘well oiled’
- People as machines are interchangeable cogs, once trained or certified
- It’s about Input, process, output
- We reduce variation (6 sigma)
- A leads to B leads to C, always
Organisations as Brains
- Who knows what
- Information spreads through learning
- Constant learning through feedback, and learning to learn
- Management cybernetics
Organisations as Organisms
- Adapting to the variety of a changing environment
- Evolving from organisational DNA
- Changing with a survival strategy
- Looking for best fit with the environment
Organisations as Cultures
- The way we do things here
- What we value Systems
- Behavioural Norms and Patterns of Behaviour
- Dominant cultures and sub-cultures
Organisations as Political Systems
- Influence
- What’s in it for me?
- Centres of Power
- It’s not what you know, it’s who you know
Organisations as Psychic Prisons
- Cognitive Biases
- How else could I behave
- We couldn’t do that here
Organisations as Flux and Change
- Constant change
- Less about boundaries
- We’re connected and part of our environment
- A system can’t change independently of its environment.
Organisations as Instruments of Domination
- Prisons or Boarding School
- Physical Punishment
- Prison Industrial Complex

When using the DevOps first way to think about the whole system, the metaphors can help uncover and explain things that are happening. Viewing situation through the metaphorical lenses is revealing.

Conclusion

“In a Nutshell” not a great way to think about this topic. It suggests that “here is everything you need”, a complete explanation. When we’re working with people we need to be open to ideas and change.

I’ll use another post to discuss situations and responses through the lenses above.

Clean Scoping and Seeing Systems

Overview

In the post ‘Listen carefully, it’s the System talking I wrote about Barry Oshry’s Seeing Systems model. This describes the conditions we are in when working with other people, and how we can choose to behave in the relationship. I called these choices balcony or basement behaviours. Barry has an excellent book too.

I recently heard Caitlin Walker describe her method of Clean Scoping at the Metaphorum 2017 conference. This is an approach to understand or scope potential work to see if a Clean Language approach is suitable and is likely to work. The rest of this post discusses how I see these two approaches adding value to each other. I recommend Caitlin’s book ‘From Contempt to Curiosity‘ for more details.

Seeing Systems

In the Seeing Systems model, if we are trying to build a relationship with someone in the CUSTOMER condition, we’d like balcony customers, rather than basement customers. As someone responsible for the overall delivery of whatever a customer needs, we can choose to act as balcony TOPS. A quick overview is:

Balcony TOP’s want to create a systems that can meet the challenges that they face. They empower people in the system to use their unique knowledge to improve the outcomes.

Balcony CUSTOMER’s engage in the details of what they need, provide feedback on the delivery progress, suitability and timing. Reading a bit more into Barry’s work I feel balcony CUSTOMER’s also see the power they have in using and developing the solution. They are not just asking for the answer provided to them.

Clean Scoping

Clean Scoping is part of Caitlin Walkers Clean Language and Systemic Modelling ™ approach, that i feel is a practical way of seeing if the necessary balcony conditions exist. In Caitlins case Clean Scoping is used to decide if she wants to work with the client or not. If we can’t choose our customers then we may try to influence them to behave in a BALCONY way.

Using the two models together allows us to understand what we are trying to do, and have a practical guide to having the conversations.

Caitlin is explicitly trying to create a system that is able to solve the problems it is trying to face. This is done by ensuring she is working at a sufficiently high level in the organisation to make sure the changes stick, ensuring that balcony customer behaviour exists, and transferring the skills to the customer so they are self sufficient.

Customer Behaviour

At my work organisation there is a group interested in how to develop and encourage balcony CUSTOMER behaviour from CUSTOMERs we work with. Catilin looks for this behaviour in potential clients at a high level in the organisation before agreeing to work. Described in her book, ‘From Contempt to Curiosity‘ Caitlin looks to encourage this behaviour – called Quadrant 3 behaviour – at different hierarchical levels of the organisation once there’s buy in. At my work we don’t get to choose our customers.

Using Clean Scoping questions, the organisational behaviour we want to have happen are balcony TOP, Balcony BOTTOM, balcony CUSTOMER.

Clean Scoping Questions

The help achieve this organisational behaviour, Clean Scoping questions would be:

And what do we see and hear when <balcony behaviour>?
When do you naturally get the <balcony behaviour> you’re hoping to get more of?
What is happening at the moment?
What is working well?
What is not working well?
What needs to happen, so what you would like to have happen is automatic?
What would need to be true for people to naturally behave like this?
What is happening at the moment?
- Often Uncomfortable patterns are happening. This is often the difference between what we ask of others and what we do ourselves.
- For example when we behave as a basement TOP with heirarchy, and expect others to behave as balconies. Behaviours are coupled.
- Acknowledge what is true is true
  - Worldviews and perspectives are important here, and metaphor models can help
- What would need to be be true for people to naturally behave like this? – People working to their strengths and acknowledging others strengths and contribution.

Biased and basement Behaviour

Behaviour from biases ensure that the patterns from the past continue. These are often confirmation biases that form part of the coupled relations in the Seeing Systems model. The blind reflex response is precisely why the relationships are here, and not in a better place. If we expect or behave with basement behaviour from another, we’ll get it in return – especially if there is organisational hierarchy.

Why and how

This post has covered some of the how questions for the why questions in the previous “It’s the system talking” post. There is a bit more to this…

Listen carefully, it’s the System talking.

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I’ve been interested in conversations, relationships and working together. How can we relate better at work and home. How is our behaviour affected by those around us, hierarchy, and our willingness to do emotional work – managing feelings and expressions to help a situation progress.

We often react to people instinctively, pairing our response to their behaviour. Sometimes we choose to break a pattern of conversation, either with empathy for the other persons condition at the time, or to sabotage ourselves and the situation.

Barry Oshry has developed an incredibly useful model to discuss these situations, allowing us to see beyond the people, and to see the system talking. Of course all models are wrong , but some are useful (quote from George Box), and we’ve found Barry’s Seeing Systems model provides brilliant insights. There is a great introduction written by Barry, called Total Power Systems. Ignore the red cover and the words “total” and “power”. It’s not like that.

I worked with colleagues to develop and run workshops, asking ” could you work better with colleagues who had taken this workshop” and ” could you work better with colleagues who have not taken this workshop”. Responses are 100% positive for working better with others who have done the workshop. It seems to resonate.

Barry Oshry’s Seeing Systems Model

Barry’s Model has four conditions that we find ourselves in, in conversations and relationships

The conditions change regularly
They affect how we behave
They affect how others relate to us
The conditions are not roles, and do not imply hierarchy
But hierarchy is an ever preset overlay

None of the conditions is better or worse. They just are. And they are

Top – often overburdened and held accountable
- Can create a system that thrives, where members are knowledgeable about the system and can use their full potential working in the system
- When we are TOPS we often sabotage the situation by keeping responsibility to ourselves, away from others including BOTTOMS who can help
Bottom – Hard done to
- Are uniquely placed to see the problems that occur, and to identify and help correct issues
- When we are BOTTOMS we sabotage the situation when we see problems we hold tops responsible. We don’t feedback suggestions. End of Story.
Middle – stretched or torn
- Able to function as the organisations web, connecting parts and co-coordinating
- We sabotage ourselves as MIDDLES by connecting primarily with one side or the other to the detriment the relationship
Customer – usually righteously screwed
- Are in the best position to evaluate the delivery process and quality
- We sabotage ourselves as CUSTOMERS when we hold delivery system solely responsible for delivery. We take no responsibility.

Each condition has two types of behaviour, we’ve called these balcony and basement. Balcony behaviours are positive, appropriate and “Using Yours Powers For Good”. Whereas, basement is the stuff we don’t like in others: disruptive, argumentative, disengaged.

We move between the conditions often in conversations, and employ balcony or basement responses, usually re-actively without thinking. I’ll give examples later.

We do not act alone

The way we choose to communicate affects how people communicate with us. Hierarchy at work affects this, but we are not our role. Our unthinking reaction – called the “dance of the blind reflex” by Barry, is reinforced by hierarchy.

Anyone who is responsible in a situation is a TOP in interactions
Anyone tasked with doing something is a BOTTOM in interactions
Negotiating between TOPs and BOTTOMS we are MIDDLES
Anyone getting something done for them is in the CUSTOMER condition

We can move between roles in the course of a conversation, meeting or day, often when walking down the corridor between conversations. The model helps us to have empathy for others in their condition. We can choose how to respond. It won’t always be easy or appropriate to respond with balcony response when we choose.

Example Situations

A tidy room.

As a parent you’d like your young child’s room tidying. You’re got hierarchy here. You can approach the conversation a number of ways.

You can tidy the room yourself. Your child is a CUSTOMER. If engaged to be a BALCONY CUSTOMER they could help, and tell you where everything goes, so all the toys are in the right place. You’re kind of both happy, but as a parent you’ve created yourself a job. If they’re not engaged, parental hierarchy may mean they don’t give you feedback, they could just wait until you’re finished, and then constantly ask where things are. If they can’t find anything, it’s your fault. Forever.

At worst, basement TOP behaviour, with hierarchy may have induced BASEMENT customer. At best it created work.

You can ask your child to tidy the room, giving instructions and guidance as the room gets tidier. You’re CUSTOMER/TOP, child is BOTTOM. They ask where things should go, and you’re there to tell them. You tell them what to keep, what to throw away and everything. They may learn after a few times to tidy the way you like it, assuming there is not too much new stuff. If anything changes they expect you to tell then what to do. Years later they may still expect to be told how to tidy their room.

By giving detailed instructions you’ve not created an autonomous system for keeping the room clean. You’ve helped create a dependent basement BOTTOM behaviour.

As CUSTOMER/TOP you could create a system for keeping the room clean. You could encourage your child to be a BALCONY BOTTOM, by letting them tell you how the room works. What gets used the most, what they don’t like, and letting them work out how to tidy it all up, what to throw away etc. You’d need to check together that everything looks OK, and check whats thrown out, but this feedback builds a better system, for example they learn they can’t throw out Christmas presents from Dad, no matter how uncool they are.

Example Holiday Advice from a Travel Agent

You want to go on holiday. Booking through an all inclusive agent you’re the CUSTOMER. You could walk in and just say “Here’s £1000. We want a family holiday where we’re all happy. Over to you. It better be good, or I’ll give you a terrible online review.” This sounds like basement CUSTOMER behaviour.

Or you could have a list of what your family like, for travel options, activities, temperature, food. You could work with the travel agent to get what you want. This may take more time, but you’ll probably get a better holiday.

From the travel agents perspective, they could behave as a basement TOP, and hold onto responsibility, or build a system that gets people the best holidays.

The travel agent may specialise in holidays for the over 50’s. When a group of young adults come in to book a wild holiday they could hold onto responsibility, and start figuring putting something together from scratch that they’re not familiar with. After all, they’re TOP and responsible. Or they could refer the group next door to the Student Travel Center. If the Student Travel Center refers groups of over 50’s back, then they’ve just created a system to get people the best holidays.

Interestingly, once on holiday, the agent is often a MIDDLE. Customers may complain about the standard of the food and accommodation. Hotels may complain about the lager louts that the travel agency send to the hotel, and the Travel agent is torn between the needs of both. Basement behaviour of reflexively siding with one or the other may not be good long term business sense. Balcony behaviour is a balance.

Example of Chief X Officer, working at boardroom level

A CxO is not always a TOP, despite being far up a companies hierarchical structure. For example the part of the organisation the CxO heads will provide service to the rest of the organisation. In meetings with the rest of the organisation, there could be two strategies.

When in meetings responsible for the delivery of their part of the organisation, a CxO would be BOTTOM. They need to deliver, and there is a choice of BALCONY or BASEMENT BOTTOM behaviour, that would have a different strategic outcome.

They can just do as they are told, and hold the next level up to be responsible for the outcome. This behaviour may be induced to be reflexive.

Or they may accept they are in the best place to recognise, diagnose, and get the resources to tackle the issues and work to rectify them using the knowledge and insights they have. If they are allowed. This behaviour is coupled with those in the TOP condition.

The CxO would soon leave the BOTTOM condition when making things happen, but may regularly be MIDDLE or CUSTOMER as well as TOP.

Example of calls to IT Service Desk

IT service desks staff receive calls from CUSTOMERS who often need things fixing. In the initial discussion they are TOPS responsible to the CUSTOMER. They can encourage BALCONY customer behavior where the CUSTOMER helps get their problem fixed, by providing information, feeding back on progress and being involved in the solution where required.

The service desk staff, in the TOP condition can hold responsibility for fixing the issue to themselves, when they need to involve others in the resolution. Involving others may involve moving into the MIDDLE condition to talk to others to get the problematic situation fixed, and be between the CUSTOMER, and the new BOTTOM.

The situation gets interesting if it turns out a 3rd party is involved. After being involved in a complicated problem, isn’t it just great when you can give the lot to someone else and say ‘you just fix this’. We’re in the basement CUSTOMER role here holding the 3rd party to be responsible, end of story. We’d act as MIDDLES between the Service Desk customer and the 3rd party. This is understandable, but maybe not helpful for getting the real customers problems fixed.

Silo Working

The above Service Desk shows an extreme example of Silo working – When we pass things between organisation silos we’re in the CUSTOMER condition, and it’s easy to fall into the basement. It’s often expected to behave as a basement CUSTOMER and hold the delivery system totally responsible. Helping them is not a good use of our limited time.

However we’ve all worked closely with others, times when we’ve temporarily removed barriers and worked together, as balcony CUSTOMERS, working with balcony TOPS, MIDDLES and BOTTOMS. It’s how we get important things done.

This is the goal of Barry Oshrys lifetime work, to help people understand how they relate to each other, and how their reactions can be conscious choices to work in a way that has the potential to induce positive behaviour in the people they are working with.

When we talk to other we should listen carefully, it’s often the system talking.

What can this help us with? When we hear “culture must come from the top”, we can understand “top” to mean hierarchy. ANY of the conditions that people at the hierarchical top of an organisation find themselves in, will be the basis of induced behaviour – effectively setting culture.

In this sense culture does come from the top. HOWEVER, if we apply Barry’s model to itself we find that if someone in the TOP condition and top in the hierarchy sets a direction, and “has the answer” then they may induce the basement BOTTOM behaviour of “I’ll just do what you say – and you’re responsible for the results.”

Any cultural change ideas, applied from the top/TOP down in a basement way are not likely to produce the desired change.

This induced behaviour has echos in the Theory X / Theory Y management styles. Barry Oshry’s work shows how we may induce Theory X behaviour reflexively when we may be wanting to develop relationships and create systems that utilise the resources and intelligence of the people in the system.

IT From Common Resource to Strategic Partner

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This blog post is about IT in large organisations, including public organisations like councils and businesses where new Tech competitors are changing the environment of business. The environment is changing, or more accurately, being changed by the strategies of competitors.

Organisations are looking for a digital strategy to combat this threat, moving digital to the heart of what they do. IT for it’s part is keen to become a Strategic Partner to the business. So what is stopping it?

Where did IT departments come from?

It’s worth looking at how IT departments may have been created. They traditionally exist as a cost on the balance sheet, providing common resource to other areas of the business, often underpinning other parts that are necessary, but may not directly exchange value with the environment, like accounting, marketing or HR. The may also run internal and external websites, but they are unlikely to be the core value propositions.

If not managed, common resources can suffer from the “tragedy of the commons”. The popular example is common grazing land is so overburdened by people wanting to graze their animals that loses it’s initial value. People are assumed to want to maximise the number of animals on the common land.

Common IT Resources

Many people in IT departments will recognise this, with many unrelated customers in the business wanting their work to be prioritised by the limited IT resource. Like in the tragedy they want to get value from the resource. There is now no such thing as an IT project – they are business projects central to strategy. But with a common IT resource each may be another cow on the metaphorical field.

The big issue is ‘Who would strategically partner with an unmanaged commons?”. It’s a very risky proposition.

From an Unmanaged Commons to Strategic Partner

Managed commons can and do exist. Elinor Ostrom studied working, managed commons, and found that there are 8 organising principals common to functional commons. Applying these to IT could provide the step towards being seen as a potential Strategic Partner.

Eleonor’s rules applied to IT may look like

Define clear group boundaries
- This is perhaps the easy part, but it’s vital to understand where the boundaries are, so you can understand and manage the work and relationships across them
Match rules governing use of common goods to local needs and conditions.
- Your rules will differ from other commons, best practices won’t work. You need to look at what is required by the people who use the resources.
Ensure that those affected by the rules can participate in modifying the rules.
- For natural commons like an inland fishery the fish don’t get a say. For IT departments there is likely to be internal work that needs be done, for example upgrades, patching and audit requirements. So the IT department itself, alongside Project Managers, Service Managers, Marketing and Finance should discuss the rules for using the common resoure.
- Users of IT resources need a way of getting work done
- They need a way of getting progress reports out
- They need a way of getting ad-hoc questions answered by subject matter experts.
Make sure the rule-making rights of community members are respected by outside authorities.
- We need to sell the idea that IT will work better for everyone as a managed common resource
- We should have rule for getting urgent business requirements discussed and done appropriately – so that there is not a requirement for the use of higher authority to get work done
Develop a system, carried out by community members, for monitoring members’ behaviour.
- Monitoring should be done by users of the commons. It is in their interests that the rules they helped create are followed.
Use graduated sanctions for rule violators
- Starting small, and agree. What sort of sanctions would you like to see?
Provide accessible, low-cost means for dispute resolution.
- Anticipate things may go wrong, and we know how issues will be resolved quickly and easily
Build responsibility for governing the common resource in nested tiers from the lowest level up to the entire interconnected system.
- Create systems within systems, with each level being viable. The Viable Systems Model would be ideal for creating, or diagnosing this organisational structure.

There are many other areas of organisations, or entire organisations that are Common Pool Resources. Strategically some may aim to be well managed commons, others may need to use this framework to be seen as a potential strategic partner by other areas of the organisation or environment.

Systems Thinkers need a Posse

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Andre the Giant has a posse. Public Enemy have the S1Ws. Radicals throughout history had a crew, an entourage, a crew. The Misfit Economy by Alexa Clay and Kyra Maya Phillips details types of people who did things differently, from pirates to gangsters and hackers. And they all had a posse.

It’s hard to stand on your own, against the grain. People carry hammers to knock in any nails that dare to stick up. Sometime this is just a put down, a career blip. Maybe what you say means you can’t walk the streets without watching your back.

Clay and Phillips don’t mention systems thinkers in their book, but they are out there, from a voice in a dysfunctional organisation, to revealing the structural racism inherent in a dysfunctional society.

Some run towards the danger, up for a fight. Others see the danger and wait or give up. Seeing systems can be a hard, lonely place full of compromise and disillusionment. We need friendly people to talk to, who have been there, who can see the patterns that may be too close for us to focus on.

For a group who are arguably all about they way things connect, the systems community are a fractured bunch. Academia values novel research. Just connecting other people works doesn’t carry much weight. What should be a strong backbone of theory is a silo factory. Consultancy is as bad. There are people who attack others work as a way of promoting their own. Of course they need to pay the rent. The problem is structural as much as human.

We need a community, for support when it goes wrong, to build ideas, to talk, laugh and develop. Ideas are free, but alone I’m useless. I need to talk, how else do I know what I think? And sharing means more ideas, not spending my time defending what I have. We need safe spaces to think, grow and change. Safe from attack and ridicule, and safe from being used as a step to make someone feel taller.

What would a systems thinking community value, and how would our current interactions compare to an ideal that we can all theorize about, but we sometimes work to destroy.

Are we too fractured to have an identity?

Why are people replacing robots?

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Mercedes-Benz is replacing some of the robots in their factories with people.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/26/mercedes-benz-robots-people-assembly-lines

3127953038 There had to be some passionate conversations between factory managers, and executives at Mercedes-Benz with this one. Replacing some robots with people has caused all sort of problems. If the factories are quite new, and were built for automation they probably don’t have many toilets near the factory floor. Or a large car park, or canteen. Robots don’t drive to work, and need to eat. Factory managers will take personal and professional pride in running efficient operations and automation has made cars affordable, reliable and available.

What is going on when the factories start employing people to replace robots? Wearing an efficiency hat this doesn’t make sense. Robotic factories have been the only future imaginable for years. What has changed? Does the factory rulebook need to be rewritten?

Increasing pace of change and complexity

From the Guardian article:

The robots cannot handle the pace of change and the complexity of the key customisation options available for the company’s S-Class saloon at the 101-year-old Sindelfingen plant, which produces 400, 000 vehicles a year from 1,500 tons of steel a day.

We need to be flexible. The variety is too much to take on for the machines. They can’t work with all the different options and keep pace with changes.”

Robots can’t currently mange the complexity of the customisation options. People are currently able to outperform robots at tasks requiring variety, at least until the robot manufacturers catch up.

Managing Variety 1: Making something you can sell

To find where this variety has come from, we can start in sales. Mercedes is in business to sell cars to customers. To do the sales folk need to offer what the customer environment wants, a…

… dizzying number of options for the cars – from heated or cooled cup holders, various wheels, carbon-fibre trims and decals, and even four types of caps for tire valves –

There may be customer demand for these, or marketing could have created the demand. Either way, with a lean, efficient production line, the sales folk are selling something the robotic factories can’t make.

Variety 2: Selling something you can make

Mercedes need to reduce the variety their customers demand to a level their factories can cope with. Balancing this equation is essential. Of course the ultimate offer would be a custom Mercedes for each customer, but this is not possible for the cost of a Mercedes.

To do this marketing and production have to work together to design and market cars that they can make in their factories. Mercedes-Benz are a luxury brand, so cost efficiency is not the sole purpose of the factory.

Marketing has to create and manage demand for the sort of customisation that their factories, restructured with people and robots, can produce. People can cope with the operational variety that robots, or people behaving like robots can’t.

Using robots, machines or computers increases efficiency, but reduces the ability of the system, in this case a factory, to cope with variety in an fast changing environment.

At every level we must ensure that the variety equations balance. If a car dealer can’t supply what the customer is asking for, they will buy elsewhere. If the factory can’t make what the car dealer is selling then the business won’t last long.

Why we need Models, and why it’s hard to change them.

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It’s 460BC. Your job is a map maker, and your maps show the world to be flat. You’ve a lockup garage of flat earth maps to sell. But you also like astronomy, and understanding the planets.
- Is a model of a flat earth of any use? Is it good? It was good enough for me to get to work, and to drive a cart to London.
- But it’s not good enough for astronomy, you need another model.
You hear of the model of the earth as a sphere. Hmm, this fits simple astronomy, but does it make your lockup full of flat earth maps worthless? Which model do you believe? How hard is it to change your mind to a new more complicated model?
- Is the model good enough? It’s great when thinking on a global scale – like where is Australia relative to where you are.
- But maybe it’s a bit complicated for driving to London. A flat earth map will be fine for that.

From the international space station, is the model of the earth as a sphere good enough?
- Maybe not. Gravity may be affected by the shape of the earth, and the movement of planets may need more complicated models. But perhaps you don’t need a model of the earth that shows the Himalayas.
Is that enough models?
What if you are cycling to London? A flat earth map won’t show you the hills, but a spherical model with enough detail is far too much information. You like to avoid hills, so you need another model.

Using the examples above, I think we can learn:

We need models. A model is a synonym for an understanding
Multiple models of the same thing exist at the same time
New models should compliment existing ones
We should use the simplest model we can, but no simpler
We need awareness of other models
Believing in one true model is an Anti-Pattern
If you have an interest in a model being true (like a business selling flat earth maps) it could be hard to learn a new model. The greatest resistance against a new, different model may be those who currently benefit from an existing model.
All models are wrong, but some are useful. Is the only up-to date model of the earth the earth itself?

This cartoon shows Calvin explaining his simple model to his toy tiger.

This model of how to make toast is sufficient unless:

Calvin starts to sell toast in his yard and
- He may be asked to contribute towards the electricity bill
  - “There is electricity and you have to pay for it?!”
- He may have to buy his own bread
  - “Can’t I reuse the bread I just put in somehow?!”
- There is a drought and the price of bread rises
  - “So I’m losing money on everything I sell?!”

Systems Thinkers love models. It’s how we understand the world, and different perspectives and contexts.

We can also see that if you insist on using a simple model, for example one that will fit on a napkin, or can be explained to a 6 year old, then you can only use it in simple situations. More complicated systems need bigger models.

Systems thinking in one cartoon

Anti-Patents. Paying people to stop having bad ideas.

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I believe we create a lot of our own problems. Take the patent system. Someone has a great idea, and the culture is ‘develop that, patent it, live off the proceeds. Never work again!’. Brilliant. Encourage people capable of great ideas into putting effort into protecting them, when we could encourage them to have more ideas.

Here is an idea. How about we look at all the bad ideas out there, and pay those responsible to just stop thinking. That should create some space.

Make 10 Louder

Systems Thinking

DevOps in a Nutshell. Treating Machines like machines and people like people.

Treating Machines like People and People like Machines

If not machines then what?