The 21st Century Organization is a complex hybrid (human and non-human) organism that enacts multiple hybrid objects through the 5 generative processes, striving toward synergy as the organism advances into the near adjacent future through the multiple teleological streams of their tensegral relationships

Object-Oriented

In order to be able to see the change that is catapulting us into the ever-advancing future, the 21st Century Organization must operate from a concept-aware view.

Meta-Design Process

In order to see through the complexifications of a large organization operating in a global theatre at numerous scales and across multiple fields of expertise and domains of experience, the 21^st Century Leader must employ some sophisticated epistemic tools to  act from a vantage point that can resolve the complexity into larger wholes without compromising the dynamic processes that generate them. Our first-order orientation, therefore, is to design around the principles of generative processes, while our second-order orientation is themeta-design of a generative design process.

A generative process is one that creates order, pattern, structures or objects through its own internal dynamic operations, without recourse to external factors, although generative processes can be linked through various kinds of process dynamics and scalar relations. The order, pattern, structure, or objects that a generative process creates, can “stand in for” the underlying process. Therefore we can refer to a hurricane as “Hugo”, instead of having to formulate the infinite variety of forces that account for its appearance. Similarly, a generative design process involves the intentional creation of order, pattern, structure, or objects that can “stand in for” all the dynamical operations of an organization. The highest level pattern, structure, or object we can name is the organization itself—so when considered in this way, we can easily “see” that theorganization stands in for all its underlying generative processes.

Our design process entails determining which of the 5 generative processes under lays each level of order, pattern, structure, or object, we can identify at different scales and domains. Furthermore, we can identify object-domains according to the form, membership, relational aspect, agency, and a teleological dimension related to the way that object-domain “strives toward” tensegrity. These object-domains provide us with a systematic way of developing “rules” for constructing “objects” that can “stand in for” all the relevant dynamics of the underlying generative processes. Our meta-design project is to design a process that is generative of second-order “objects” that enfold all the relevant information of the underlying first-order dynamics which are themselves enfolded in the organizational object

Our meta-design process is a kind of reverse-engineering of how the human mind reifies processes into “ontically real” structures, or things. We do this intentionally, in the way that object-oriented software designers intentionally work with constructed “objects” that stand in for packets of programming code. Alfred North Whitehead famously warned of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness – the tendency for the human mind to mistake the abstractions of thought for actual entities in the world. Therefore, our meta-design process must remain completely intentional and aware of the design choices we make in constructing our object-domains and their members. It is therefore critical in our process to assure that actual entities inform constructed objects rather than the other way around. Now for sure, when constructed objects obtain the attention and imagination of people, they also inform actual entities, like people—and the feedback loop will most certainly change first-order dynamics, which in turn may change the object-domains. In any event,  the feedback loop must be such that the lower, actual order informs the constructed one at the meta-design level, not the other way around.

To capture the orienting principles of a generative meta-design process, we add three process principles to the first ten foundational principle of meta-design listed in Wikipedia:

Auspicious

focuses on the affirmative, optimistic, serendipitous

 

Indescribable

seeks to make the unthinkable possible

 

Self-steering

adapts by re-inventing its own working language

 

Fractal

making complex systems navigable through pattern-familiarity

 

Holistic

delivers complex, comprehensive and self-aware outcomes

 

Synergistic

cultivates and harnesses team complementarities

 

Opportunity-making

uncovers unexpected potentials for other systems

 

Integrated innovations

creates whole systems by interdependent parts

 

Paradigm-shifting

seeks to make human culture more ecological

 

Generative

creates order, pattern, structure, objects from the underlying processural dynamics of the system

 

Responsible

remains responsible to the design intentions that allow second-order   objects to “stand in for” process dynamics

 

Responsive

allows first-order dynamics to inform second-order objects.

 

Recursive

enables first-order changes to revise design intentions embedded in second-order objects

 

Liberating

designs structures that are liberating to the human condition

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Comments:

Do you have practical experience for enabling generative learning in organizations?

Inquiry — Next Steps

The Object-Oriented Approach is a proprietary methodology shared only with those who intend to engage in the practice. 

 

The next level of conversation is about your orientation in your existing practice and how the fractal8 approach can enhance your existing expertise for enabling organizations to become increasingly effective and efficient and at the same time, have as a primary concern, the health of the whole.

 

Although our approach has the potential to bring significant health to your existing practice, this effect will be mostly the resultant of your engagement with a generative orientation.

 

If you would be willing to share the following with us, this would be helpful for engaging in dialogue that is in it self generative. Thank you for your interest and willingness to inquire about:

 

The 21st Century Organization as a complex hybrid (human and non-human) organism that enacts multiple hybrid objects through the 5 generative processes, striving toward synergy as the organism advances into the near adjacent future through the multiple teleological streams of their tensegral relationships.

What is your familiarity with the 5 processes?

Which of the following three processes are you mostly using in your practice?

What type of organization are you most familiar with?