On Jan 21, 2007, at 1:08 PM, Phil Henshaw wrote:
> John, I'm not sure what your background is, but I've been surprised by
> what high confidence people here put in modeling, and how little
> discussion of modeling strategies there is.

Phil, we all realize you are disappointed in FRIAM for its lack of  
understanding of your chosen area.  But there is no need for snide  
remarks such as this.  John fully realizes who he is speaking to and  
has realistic expectations.

> I doubt there's any useful
> modeling method for organizations, since what animates them are the
> currents of human ideas, not rules.

Nonsense.  Organizations have been modeled at least since MIT's Jay  
Forrester, and later, John Sterman, introduced their System  
Dynamics.  I've always been surprised at your not using System  
Dynamic for studies of growth.  It's eminently suited to flows,  
feedback, high interaction rates and so on.

> What distinguishes between an
> email addressing a critical issue that simply goes dead and engages no
> one, and an email addressing trivial matters that becomes everyone's
> reference for a while, is completely unknown.

Gosh, I'm sorry we are such a lousy list and focused on such trivial  
topics.

If this forum has been unresponsive to your needs, perhaps you should  
search elsewhere.

     -- Owen

Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net


On Jan 21, 2007, at 1:08 PM, Phil Henshaw wrote:

> John, I'm not sure what your background is, but I've been surprised by
> what high confidence people here put in modeling, and how little
> discussion of modeling strategies there is.  I doubt there's any  
> useful
> modeling method for organizations, since what animates them are the
> currents of human ideas, not rules.   What distinguishes between an
> email addressing a critical issue that simply goes dead and engages no
> one, and an email addressing trivial matters that becomes everyone's
> reference for a while, is completely unknown.
>
>
> Phil Henshaw                       ¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 680 Ft. Washington Ave
> NY NY 10040
> tel: 212-795-4844
> e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> explorations: www.synapse9.com
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of John Hellier
>> Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2007 7:58 PM
>> To: friam@redfish.com
>> Subject: [FRIAM] Real Time Organizational Modeling
>>
>>
>> Is anyone working on Real Time Organizational Modeling where
>> the model continually evolves based on changes in the
>> organization. All members of the organization contribute to
>> the changes even down to the creation of an email, how the
>> email contents affect the organization and how the recipients
>> respond to the email.  What I am looking for is the encoding
>> of an organization such that as someone creates an email, an
>> observer can watch this happening in the model and see the effect.
>> Maybe the email has little or no impact or maybe it has a
>> growing ripple effect.
>>
>> This model should have a view of the entire organization
>> including tracking all actions performed.  I realize that
>> trying to capture everything is a bit daunting but if
>> possible it could yield incredible insight into how
>> organizations work. I generally feel that most decisions made
>> in organizations are made with such limited information that
>> it is amazing that most organizations don't fail. Or is that
>> they are a lot less brittle than one might imagine.
>>
>> I know that there is quite a bit of work done in more bit
>> size pieces. I'm mainly interested in the much larger task of
>> taking a company of 40K and tracking every action and
>> interaction. And then by extension, actions connected outside
>> of the organization. I know, huge, maybe impossible. Is there
>> a way to adapt social networking
>> concepts to an organization to help model it?
>>
>> Any ideas?
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> John Hellier


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