Kevin Hamilton has an interesting post over at complexfields.org here. He argues that complex interdisciplinary initiatives say the right things, they are reflexive, but they are often insufficiently thoughtful or reflective to really get the job done:
A chief characteristic of these texts is that they say little through speaking the obvious. They mirror back to the institution its own ideals, and present only the best parts. A cynic would describe these folks as deploying the right words at the right time to win approval and funding. A cyberneticist might instead describe these texts in terms of an organism’s late stages of development, when sufficient complexity produces self-consciousness and auto-expertise.
In other words, through deploying the right words at the right time, these efforts demonstrate great intelligence about what words are needed. Like the proverbial “good-test-taker” who might not be the best student in class, these efforts are smart, but they lack in wisdom. They are reflexive, without being sufficiently reflective.
Reflexivity is an asset, an intelligence, a necessary part of consciousness. But this reflexivity, this self-accounting, will then lead to some application. Perhaps the humble critic disagrees with this end or application, where the cynic doubts even the agent’s reflexive skills. (”I know you better than you know yourself.”)
An interdisciplinary initiative in engineering education transformation might be expected to take umbrage at this post, but iFoundry was largely designed in reaction to conditions in engineering education that can now be understood to mirror Hamilton’s complaint.
The first sin of complex interdisciplinary initiatives is to describe some desired, largely utopian outcome, usually in a step one-two-three plan, without deep reflection upon the conceptual and organizational reasons why the system has evolved to its current place.
Thereafter, the utopian planners seek funding and some kind of topdown authority to implement the plan, usually in isolation from the rest of the system, achieving some sort of result that can appear to be “progress” in a limited sense.
Finally, the utopians wonder why their “progress” does not transfer, scale, or sustain itself when it is not immediately taken up by the their colleagues, the organization, or, for that matter, the larger world.
The cybernetic metaphor of Hamilton’s post essentially gets it right. 30 years, into the modern renaissance of evolutionary computation has taught us how complex systems evolve and change, and such knowledge is extraordinarily helpful for the proper design of complex interdisciplinary initiatives. Without core understanding of the conceptual roadblocks to change, organizational roadblocks to change, and an understanding of the evolution of complex systems, interdisciplinary initiatives often turn into the mere “reflexive” mouthing of the right words with almost no lasting change or effect.
It is too soon to know whether iFoundry will succeed or suffer the fate of other complex pilot programs, and there are many failure modes in complex systems work, but if iFoundry should not succeed as fully as desired it won’t be for lack of hard core reflection on the nature of the problem or organizational or conceptual change processes involved.
