Operations of Organizations and Our Communities With Special Guest and Systems Thinker, Christian Lemp Part 2 by TARTLE published on 2021-09-24T07:00:45Z If the first part of their discussion explored the parallels between social systems and AI technology, this second half provides insight on how Christian’s work draws inspiration from an unlikely source: the natural world and the animal kingdom. From there, he touches briefly upon the responsibility of modern tech professionals to be aware of the social implications of their work, providing words of encouragement to listeners of the podcast within the industry. Drawing Inspiration From the Natural World: Ants leave trail pheromones to food that they find and then return to the colony. This leaves a road for other ants to find, which leads to the collective outcome of being able to feed everyone in the community. Similarly, honey bees coordinate with other bees to maintain their hive and protect the queen. These are examples of biological systems that are naturally capable of self-regulating— so where’s our capacity to solve that on a larger scale, in business and societies? Here, Christian discussed the possibility of our efforts being limited because we approach problem solving with a two-dimensional mindset—when in reality, we should be looking at the scenario in three dimensions. For example, one may be able to see, hear, and touch a forest, but they won’t be able to see what happens underneath the soil. There is a call for us to “move away from the two dimensional, polarizing world that sticks us in buckets and says, this thing is this or that, but there can't be a flexibility or the nuances of an entity in between that can actually move throughout dimensions.” But is it possible to run multinational corporations and governments as efficiently as beehives without taking away an individual’s creative capacity, while ensuring that the system remains flexible enough to meet challenges brought about by outside forces? Former Approaches to Systems of Organizations: Modern organizations find themselves adapting to a strange new status quo: one where management must deal with remote employees and asynchronous work. It’s a symptom of decentralization in a structure, where control and command has become less concentrated on hierarchy. Therefore, the ability to make collective decisions while operating asynchronously is an indication that the business has a strong internal culture that naturally reinforces good decision-making despite the time differences and differences in flows of information. Prior to this, most organizations preferred to take an authoritarian approach to systems management. This is where the leader is responsible for planning out the entire route from start to finish and people are expected to follow. It works in instances where the leader has a clear vision and knows what needs to be done to achieve it across multiple levels. However, not a lot of people enjoy working in an environment where they are only ever expected to be followers of someone else’s vision. There is little to no room to foster genuine creativity on a micro level/on the ground. Organizations also try to implement the consensus approach, where everyone communes to find a solution that pleases everyone. While it’s a more democratic method, the process is slow and the end goal remains restrictive for the people on the ground. Is it Time to Relax Our Approach?: Could a more relaxed approach to implementing a system be in order? Christian muses over a world where companies focused on establishing a strong organizational culture. This would encourage everyone who was hired, who understood and was aligned with the company’s vision and mission, to naturally work towards a solution in both a collective and individual sense. This alternative gives more flexibility to individuals and small teams when a new challenge arises. While people still need to attend meetings and management will continue to make room for mistakes, this approach gives people the opportunity to proactively...