Beyond dispute : the invention of team syntegrity
Over the last forty years, Stafford Beer has published a steady stream of books and papers in which he has applied cybernetic science to organizational problems. In all of these he has explained underlying principles and developed new theories and recorded a great variety of practical applications. He has now invented and demonstrated Team Syntegrity. Syntegrity is a powerful invention in the organization of normative, directional, and strategic planning, and other creative decision processes. The underlying model is a regular icosahedron (20 sides). This has 30 edges, each of which represents a person. An internal network of interactions is created by a set of protocols. A group organized like this is an ultimate statement of participatory democracy, since each role is indistinguishable from any other. There is no hierarchy, no top, no bottom, no sideways. Beer illustrates how continued dynamic interaction between persons causes ideas and resolutions to hum around the sphere, which reverberates into a kind of group consciousness. Mathematical analysis of the structure shows how the process is determined by the even spread of synergy. The aim of the book is to provide managers and their advisors with a new planning method that captures the native genius of the organization in a non-political and non-hierarchical way. The book includes an enquiry into Beers concept of recursive consciousness, based on this model, that is relevant to both neurocybernetics and the social systems sciences
xi, 367 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
9780471944515, 0471944513
29751468
Pt. 1. The story of an organizational idea
Ch. 1. A long gestation
Ch. 2. On protocols
Ch. 3. Path-finding experiments
Ch. 4. The academic milieu
Ch. 5. The corporate scene
Ch. 6. In the community
Pt. 2. Enhancing procedures
Ch. 7. Protocols revisited
Ch. 8. Vexed questions of allocation
Ch. 9. Developmental planning
Ch. 10. Governance or government?
Pt. 3. The form of the model
Ch. 11. The structure of icosahedral space
Ch. 12. The dynamics of icosahedral space
Ch. 13. Self-reference in icosahedral space
Pt. 4. Epilogue
Ch. 14. The concept of recursive consciousness
Pt. 5. Collaborators' surplus
Surplus 1. Reverberating networks : modelling information propagation in syntegration by spectral analysis / Assad Jalali
Surplus 2. From prototype to protocol : design for doing / Joe Truss
Surplus 3. Pliny the Later : elective selection / Josephine Hancock
Surplus 4. You drive for show but you putt for dough : a facilitator's perspective / Alan Pearson
Surplus 5. One man's signal is another man's noise : another facilitator's perspective / David Beatty
Surplus 6. About face : a turn for better planning / Joe Truss
Surplus 7. The very model of a modern system-general : how the viable system model actually works / Allenna Leonard