Some people talk of an ’innovation butterfly’, of swarm intelligence, and the benefits of ‘flocking’. Basic models of flocking behaviour are controlled by three simple rules:
- Separation – avoid crowding neighbours (short range repulsion)
- Alignment – steer towards average heading of neighbours
- Cohesion – steer towards average position of neighbours (long range attraction)
With these three simple rules, the flock moves in an extremely realistic way, creating complex motion and interaction that would be extremely hard to create otherwise. ‘Flocking’ is an emergent property – the observer is able to act ‘as if’ flocking is indeed the case. Jeffrey Goldstein in the School of Business at Adelphi University provides a current definition of emergence in the journal Emergence (Goldstein 1999). Goldstein initially defined emergence as: “the arising of novel and coherent structures, patterns and properties during the process of self-organization in complex systems”.Goldstein’s definition can be further elaborated to describe the qualities of this definition in more detail:
The common characteristics are:
- radical novelty (features not previously observed in systems);
- coherence or correlation (meaning integrated wholes that maintain themselves over some period of time);
- A global or macro “level” (i.e. there is some property of “wholeness”);
- it is the product of a dynamical process (it evolves); and (
it is “ostensive” (it can be perceived). For good measure, Goldstein throws in supervenience — downward causation. (Corning 2002)
This puts me in mind of the aesthetic of ‘personalised services’ – by contrast with the aesthetic of ‘one-size-fits-all’. Some of the thinking of Philip Boxer (originator of asymmetric leadership) applies helpfully here. He stresses
- Context of use – local context – collapsing of a system into local context
- Self care – for example, the patient’s particicaption in their own care
- Horizontal governance – something equalising….experienced by vertical management as ‘nuisance’ – connected with frustration …..and with meeting need in the particular context of use
- Faustian pact – where someone working horizontally makes a bargain with the vertical hierarchy
If one thinks of the experience of health care, it is as if (when personalised) the care ‘flocks’ round the patient.
Slingshot