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Parallelisms : Sociology - System dynamics - Quantum fields -
Self-similarity - Knowledge management - HRM - Psychology -
Serependity - Uncertainty management - Coaching - Interface design - Users
experience - Marketing - Tribal mapping
Sociology
As the maps suggested so much strategies and action plans - mainly
in the field of human relationship socialization - we applied
deployments based on field trial-and-error tests.
From there we progressively
build sets of best practices including ratios of relative
importance and effectiveness. Without entering in the details, we
mention that our archetype for such a set would be best summarized
by the method based on the "the sociology of translation" - or ANT
(Actor-Network Theory) - proposed by M. Callon and B.
Latour.
Noticeable is that out of
finding an efficient operational schema in 10 points - see "Sociologie
de la traduction" at Wikipedia (in French) or the 10
points summary given as an example at the
page 2.3 - we also observed
at handling maps that
we were currently and equivalently giving active roles to objects and actors
with no need to specify whether it was actually an object or a
person and
that we were dealing with interconnections that were
simultaneously material and conceptual with also no need to
specify.
Sequences like "problematisation,
interessement, enrolment and mobilization of allied" - which
summarize the sociology of innovation as described by M. Callon
and B. Latour (Wikipedia
ANT) - became
a natural way to "move" in a problem or a project upon the map guidance.
We found also that the
translation was a central concern and that our maps were a visual
and tangible locus on which translations could be grounded -when
the map was not the translation itself.
Organizational Engineering -
Serependity - Uncertainty management - Coaching
A unitary action on a map has
been very simply defined a suite of three components: the
Coordinates [q] - with [qi] for the initial map state
and [qf] for the final one -, the Actions [p] and the
Time-Periods [t].
The engineering of an action
plan was only assembling a suite of actions in order to start from
one map state and achieve an other one with a given period of
time.
For actions that inferred
procedures that are known to conduct at given results with a fair
degree of certainty - i.e. like standard administrative procedures
or a suite of machining interventions - nothing particular was
noted at the exception of an easy detection from unitary travel on
the map.
Those procedures sets
conducted to usual project management schemas - i.e. Gant chart or
Pert diagrams - or at operational quality control procedures like
those derived from classical mechanics or automation control under
a large diversity of idioms- i.e. like the Deming cycle PDCA for
Plan-Do-Check-Act or the DMAIC for six sigma
Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control).
More interesting was the
results obtained for the actions of which the results are not a
priori known before the action is completed - i.e. a client
uncertain order decision - or of which the results depend upon a
heuristic conjunction of a collection of factors - i.e. an
innovation resulting from the conjunction of non related
competences and domains.
We replace the unitary set of
action by the Coordinates, the Actions and the Actors meaning by
this that the result of an actions program of this sort was
depending mainly upon decisions and actions results of human being
- say that they were fundamentally unknown before being completed.
By assembling program in this
fashion, for uncertain travel from a given [qi]
to a desired [qf], we became able to frame and assess
which method could be best appropriate at a given path out the
large amount best method available today (i.e.: we assessed and
tested programs inspired by methods like
P&G Connect and
Develop, The Blue Oceans research
of no competition from Kim and Mauborgne,
World
Cafe sessions, The tipping point from M.
Gladwell, the new product
adoption from
Geoffrey Moore,
Story
Telling by Dave Snowden, clusters unstable dynamics management
like described by Michael Porter, Scenario making, Serious games,
Innovation theatre like by John Kao,
creative structural dynamics by
Robert Fritz, Systemic
thinking and organizational
learning like inspired by "The Fifth Discipline" from Peter
Senge).
Because framed defined paths
decided from a map,
all those methods quitted the domain of vague and general
strategic hypes and became an identified and assessable means to
reach a given and defined target.
In each cases that we
assessed, because of the known initial and targeted stage, we have been
able to produce action programs with measurable and sense making performance index and
risk assessment.
Noticeable is that most of the
above methods and programs aimed at solving issues liaised with
serependity and that we managed to gain predictive insights of the
achievable results - in the sense ROI (Return On Investment) or
payback periods - and that we ended up at organizing defined
programs and achieved the foreseen results even though the "shape"
of the resolutions were not known in advance.
We think that it was
probably one of the highest interest of our maps that they enable
to organize action program for sets of actions for which the
results are
only depending on non tangible factors apprehendable only by
actions of human
being.
IT Programming
The engineering
schema - that we referred in the previous paragraph - ended up
naturally very alike a mimic of the Object Oriented Languages that
have been established to facilitate flexibility, ubiquity and
component reuse.
Compatibility of the
engineering schema has been evaluated even in better compliance
with Multiagent Programming and associated practices - i.e. SOA
(Service Oriented Architecture).
System dynamics - Quantum
fields
When we enlarged visions at
embedding both BtoB (Business to Business) and BtoC (Business to
Consumer) market at wide geographical scales, we saw that closed
cycles and interconnected flux could be detected.
Reinforcing ones like
described in system dynamics but also fluxes that coupled in
opposition non commutative actions in a sense that
reminded "again" quantum mechanics: it is easy to observe in
economy that goods and services fluxes are counterbalanced by
financial fluxes and that a system will not be triggered in the
same manner if goods are paid at ordering or after reception.
Several oppositions have been
recognized at the result of components having simultaneously
several locations or "natures" on a map - i.e. a worker is also a
consumer so that the conjunction of his claim for wages and his
attitude as consumer may trigger at being a mix of constructive
and destructive trends for his own job or better said, the
resulting flux that generates his job looks mostly like a
statistical collective function embedding both trends.
The statistical aspects is
introduced because eventually any combination of those trends
might be recorded within a given population.
Again, similar statistical
descriptions do exist in quantum mechanics as the formalization
quantum fields.
Both in quantum mechanics and in economy, it is known that several opposite field components may co-exist more or less "in peace" according to their
relative ratio or degree of balance-unbalance - say like the Yin
Yang is reputed to do. It is also known that threshold levels for
particular ratios may in both
domains - quantum mechanics and economy
- tremendously affect the system stability and infer significant
system evolutions - i.e. one may
refer to "the law of the few" with
M. Gladwell in "The tipping
point".
Even thought the analysis of
M. Gladwell is a very pertinent and an extremely suggestive
analysis, we are not convinced that one can understand his work as
"only a very few identifiable factors are responsible for
generating disruptive global shifts" - M. Gladwell is very
pertinently mentioning the influence of the environment which in
turn might embodies quite a lot of factors.
We observed that like for most
of the significant changes that we know in the history or economy,
one can afterwards relate a shift or a success to one or a few
causes. As we tried to infer shifts of this nature - say self
initiating and self growing - on different groups samples, we
collected information about the correlations between the upstream
and the downstream for both success and failure cases.
Clearly, only one or a few
factors - say actions types - are very weak at creating a success
within a networked group, at the exception of being the
"collector" - sometime the thief - of a larger set of action and
environmental conditions - say that at draining a swimming pool,
one sees more the vortex at the exhaust than the rest of the water
that creates it.
This in turn makes our actual
conclusions to underline that a plan would a priori require a
relatively large set of somewhat interconnected actions for having
a chance to succeed while at the success point, only a few ones
might be identified as a focal point - note: to our understanding,
the work developed by M. Callon and B. Latour - see the top of
this frame - is in fair agreement with the above.
In principle, those
conclusions does not cause any problem but in practice still many
organization are only minded on direct and identifiable
causes-effects relationships - in particular for people rewards
and wages evaluation - so that the implementation of a system
where causes are distributed and non identifiable may still be
impossible.
Out of the above, let's
mention that the parallelism with quantum fields was at this stage
a rather weak parallelism. It would have not been retained if no other parallelisms would have been
previously recognized with quantum and if the parallelism would not have received a second illustration when we later described the
time-cycles (page 4.4) and the anticipative aspect (page 4.6)
associated with uncertainties (page
4.7). Those pages allow to
extend the parallelism a further in a more reliable manner and to provide a better
illustration of it.
Self-similarity - Knowledge
management - HRM
At drawing many cases, we
confirmed a suspected potential of self-similarity (say the
ability to exhibit a similar pattern at various scale). We
observed that the same kind of map was able to describe the
economy of a country, of a region, an organization or an
enterprise, a department of an enterprise and finally that it
could also embed the job description of a worker (examples page).
We checked also that we could
generate knowledge maps that incorporated both the oriental
meaning - say the capacity at doing - and the occidental
meaning - say the acquired explicit awareness and education.
The capacity at doing was
simply pictured by the external actors we are used to effectively
supply and deal with, while the generic identifiable competences
were set at the central zone of the map.
We checked that we could so
picture the knowledge of an individual person and of groups like
a department and an organization.
It has been anticipated that
one should be able to find a relationships between all those views
and sub views of an organization i.e. to eventually manage (HR) or
survey that individual knowledge and attitudes are coherent with
each others and with the group as a whole.
Such a complete analysis has
not been performed at that time. Only noticeable is that self
similarity patterns have been recognized in the sense that at
different scale quasi similar map assemblies were self reproducing
- like if a group and subgroups were reproducing the profile of
some individuals.
Coaching -
Psychology - Sociology of translation - Neurophenomenology
- "Translation Extension"
- After we reached the scale of individual persons when we translated job descriptions
by individual work environments, we exercised at a few tentative
in the domain of coaching and in psychology.
We took a few works - six only
- done in those two domains and we looked if we could design
corresponding maps and at what kind of help we could pretend out
of them.
Those works defined with a
higher understanding the actual usage that a map can infer. Say
first that the word "map" should better be replaced by "space".
Clearly what we obtained were
general spaces in which many cases could be developed, while the
ones that we based our designs on were only a few particular
patterns among all the possible - in turn the word map is better
adapted to describe a given pattern while our design are better
named as a space.
Those exercises showed us that
our design would also be applicable in human related issues (refer
to the following
examples
page) but noticeable has been the observation the following de
facto limitation: however the fact that our maps received frequent
interests and usages in industrial and commercial domains, the
coaches and psychologists who provided with the work to translate
did not show any interest in the results - say like "we do need it"
or "what is it for ?".
We think that the above tests
and results can are well illustrated by an example drawn
from a current day life reality.
The adjacent image is a
functional organic space that apply to a current family house
design.
It represents simply in an
abstract space specialized function that we like our house to
fulfill.
It has not always been the
case, but we currently dedicate a special room at each function.
However this dedication, over
a year period, we can observe that any action has been finally
performed at some extend in nearly any room - i.e. it is often the
case when one have children.
Obviously thousands of house
designs may be encapsulated in this maps - say it is why we named
better a space like a "space of home designs".
This space can be useful to
help specifying if we like to ease occasional distribution of each
functions or if we like at the reverse enhance their concentration
in restricted locations. The design of a house will obviously be
impaired by this kind of choice.
So there is an interest in
designing a functional organic space, but we can admit that an
architect with a minimum experience knows those things and he will
not necessarily need to take his map each time he draw a new house.
At the reverse, a normal
person is not currently investigating building more that one or a
few houses in his life. Even if he knows also all those drawn
aspects, we saw that drawing a space may greatly help him "not to
forget" points that he consider as important - often
implicitly.
The space works like a contextualization that makes emerging an
existing knowledge which may remain silent if not wake up this
contextualization.
In reference to the figure, he
may in example ask for decreasing or enhancing the working
environment potential, he may simplify the space or investigate
additional aspects like access and storage for supplies,
functionality for teaching, education or sport practices, and so
on.
The architect owns the
knowledge and practice to investigate all those aspects and he still
does not really need the space drawing for more complex cases but
a plain person not having the architect experience will receive
help at investigating aspects that he may have not considered.
In fact this space is like a
place where the experience of that architect can be easily
translated to someone not having the same practical and
specialized experience - say a real parallelism with the sociology
of translation as expressed by M. Callon and B. Latour.
Our diagnostic for the tests
with the coaches and psychologists has been exactly aligned with
the example of the architect: they told us that they already knew what the
space drawings exhibited so that they would not need the drawing
but they did not consider that the translation - and often the
recognition - of their knowledge is greatly eased for the non
specialist.
Clearly in those case we did
not act at having an expertise in their domain but at translating
the informal space of they worked in into a visual representation
making sense for a non expert.
Fundamentally, our space maps
looked like communication and translation tools that were able to
illustrate the field of relationships between components of a
tangible reality - i.e. production facilities and actors in a
market or an economy - but they were also able to translate into
tangible visualizations subject that are purely informal and
existing only in a human brain - i.e. like in the case of the
coaches and psychologists.
Basically our space maps
recall for processes that are not explicit and that happen in the
brain of a human being.
(note: interesting is to
observe that the above abstract of representation of a house could
serve at other purpose if we don't say that it represent a house.
In example, it could very be appropriate to represent a human
being).
- "Two groups with
regards to usages and interests" -
For the sake of being comprehensive, we need to mention that the
interests and usages suggested by our maps have not been observed
to be equivalent received by the person at which we exhibited
results and companion methods.
The observed reactions always sharply
distributed in only in two well defined stereotypes: one that we
called a "frank YES" - say people seeing in a minute the meaning
of the map and its practical sense in their day life operations
i.e. like picking the phone to instruct an urgent action suggested
by the map - and a "frank NO" - say people having no reaction at
all, not seeing any meaning or usage of it, even after additional
explanations with example were given i.e. an initial "frank NO"
remained a "frank NO".
In the sample we tested - which has been largely above a thousand
of people - we have not been able to detect any cause or
correlation that may explain or tell how people would distribute
with one group or the other. We only own some working assumptions
but no indication that one or another would validate.
Very noticeable also is that the people of the
"frank YES" group were "liking" the maps but we have not seen any
of them drawing a map by themselves or extending the usage at
other cases. Extensions appeared only when we came ourselves with
it. We tackle this last
case more pro-actively by making a web site exhibiting the basic
steps for an entry practice and many examples in a diversity of
domain, and we submitted the site at a sample above 300 people.
People distributed again in "frank NO" and "frank
YES" - say like 100 NO, 100 YES and 100 for which we have not been
able to observe their reactions.
Still for the "frank YES", not more than two
people have shown vague signs of personal design tentative while
more than 50 expressed in real interest and understanding in the
exhibited designs and methods.
We took next a very restricted sample of people
who accepted to make the effort at designing a map space of an
existing case within their organization - i.e. typically drawing
what their organization or department was doing to compare
explanations of their functions supported by the space map with
the explanations that they were currently serving up to now at
external people when required.
We performed 5 tests which aimed at achieving
the level that an external person knowing nothing about their job
would be able to render an understanding of it by only looking at
the map with no additional explanation - know that for one of the
test, the current explanations before the test were above 30
minutes (like typically when your ask an IT business owner to
explain what his company does).
No one tester was having a technological
restrain at utilizing the template available on our website and
they all started a first display by their own. They have been next
hands-on personally monitored to correct and adapt their display
at gaining sense. The 5 tests succeeded at achieving the targeted
level. If the IT
technical tool was not at all not a restrain, we observed that a
lot of aspects that are implicit in design - i.e. proportions,
color mix, homogeneity, alignments, symmetry - were for the most
questioned by the testers - in the real sense of "why this on not
this ?". The hands-on
monitoring was easily able to solve those aspects by modifying
itself the display to exhibit an adapted component, shape or
disposal but this way of doing showed an inefficient power at
teaching as the point was still poorly handled or re-questioned
when re-emerging. We
observed that a solution was to find explicitly a rational
justification or a said rational motivation that was linking any
design action with a perceived and accepted brain understanding.
The elaboration of the present five sections
resulted from this experimental testing.
Interface design - Users experience - Marketing
In the "frank NO" group, noticeable is the fact that we frequently
met people who are professionally involved in the production of
analysis, action program and support material for marketing
purpose as well as professional designers of various domains i.e.
like marketing, branding and software application user's
interfaces. Of course
this has been an unexpected observation for us as on one hand our
experiential practice essentially emerged from marketing and on
the other hand because one could expect an expert in drawing
having some acquaintances with a visual method.
Very lately we discovered that our maps space
were a real "user experience" in the same sense exactly that the
software industry gave at the visual interfaces of software
applications: say that our maps are exactly like a software
interface but for a given practical case encountered in life and
that if each component of the map would be an actionable function,
you would be able to pilot the case only from this space map.
Since we gained an extended experience with the
coaches and psychologists - see above - we think that the case of
marketing people and designers is very similar. Their job mostly
consists at exchanging information with their clients about the
targeted final clients or consumers and at translating those
information's - that equates user's experiences - in visual format
like posters, animated spots or particular branded conditioning.
They own the ability to do so, hence they
personally don't require for an other means. It is our observation
that it is frequently not the same view point for their clients:
they very often have great difficulty to express they knowledge of
the consumers - at least in a sense that will make the response of
the designer quickly converge to a visual that fits the consumers
wishes. It is also our
experience that in operational teams where there is someone
mastering a drawing capability enough to draw story boards or
visual sceneries at a non professional but say a minimum fair
level, the information about the targeted population flows quite
more quickly and accurately.
Such a minimum drawing capability is not
currently available and we anticipate that our space mapping might
be an efficient tool quite more accessible to larger majority than
artistic-like design.
Tests in that view are expected shortly.
Tribal mapping We suspect
that similar mapping methods and usages raised in early stages of
civilizations - i.e. probably before writing - in the format of
battle field maps drawn on sandy grounds. Alike
rediscoveries of such practices have also been reported by
Eva Schiffer and more
specifically
by J. Owen and A.
Willoughby. Eva Schiffer has been initially
relating a field usage of "influence network mapping" while the
two later authors emphasize - and commercialize - the potential of
"tribal mapping methods" at "creating clarity,
focus and alignment". |
