7/10/2016

1

Thinking About Constraints

Tony Joyce @tonyjoyce

Premise

Dave Snowden ‏@snowded Jun 21 Helsinki, Finland tweeted

“We need to stop talking about governance and start talking about constraint management”

https://twitter.com/snowded/status/745169981776629760

My (almost sent) reply

Is governance akin to “best” practice? And what other practices do we need to

talk about?

7/10/2016

2

Constraint Management

Algorithm

Gut Feel (instinct)

Governance

From Wikipedia 2016

A complexity assessment

The Practices

Emergent practice

Constraint Management

Active engagement to overcome propensities,

reinterpretation of history

Good practice

Algorithm

Encoding of knowns, local coherence,

propensity to techno fetishism

Novel practice

Gut Feel (instinct)

Emergence from people + context, no predisposition, only retrospective

coherence

Best Practice

Governance

Within known contexts,

predisposed to status quo, stability

& avoidance

7/10/2016

3

Cynthia Kurtz’s Tetrahedron Models (relational energies)

Taylorism & hierarchical

management

Taylorism & hierarchical

management

Anthro-centric systems

Constraint Management

Algorithmic

Instinctive (naïve

experts) Governance

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Syste

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ssed

Syste

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Amplify relations

Suppress relations

rituals designed to modulate decisions

rules designed to modulate behaviors

“We know more than

we can say” (Snowden)

“We know more than

we can say” (Snowden)

Dis

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Inte

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