Viability, Behaviour and The Viable System Model
This blog will have most resonance for those familiar with the VSM and cybernetics.
This blog is a reflection on two recent experiences. The first was a keynote to WOSC 2024 (World Organisation for Systems and Cybernetics) which showed how the work of Stafford Beer was rooted in his humanity, the second a masterclass for students who noted that while my introduction to the cybernetics of organisation (left) had a strong, organic feel, later diagrams (right) were quite technocratic.
Intelligent Organisation and a Simplified Viable System Model
All of our management of organisations is conducted through mental models, observed abstractions from “reality” (whatever we deem that to be). We observe an organisation, interpret events through the lens of our prior knowledge (most commonly a bureaucratic formulation) and intervene accordingly to enable output, change or improvement. All of our models are incomplete, reflecting the characteristics of the observed situation that we, the modellers, deem to be important. George Box (1976) suggested that “all models are wrong, some are useful” while Stafford Beer (1985) wrote that “a model is neither right nor wrong but more or less useful.” Beers Viable System Model (VSM) is possibly both the most “useful” of contemporary organisational models but also the most misunderstood.
The idea of viability of and for organisations is gaining ground yet something that limits the potential contribution of the VSM is its common interpretation as “a more complicated bureaucracy” (Robb, 1993, in conversation). It is seen by many as a technocratic, control oriented, model, an alternative hierarchy. That common interpretation is insufficiently rich and it seems to me users often assume characteristics of the model based on its diagrammatic representation (which does look a lot like an alternative organisation chart) rather than its philosophy and underpinning thinking. We need the philosophy, the underpinning science and the diagrams to comprehend the whole. Employed as a model for exercising control the VSM will fail, at least in providing the benefit of which it is capable, but that failure will arise not in the model itself but in inadequacy in the users understanding of it.
To be control centric in considering and applying the VSM is to both miss the humanity of Beer himself and, more fundamentally, to misunderstand the core tenets of his work in management science. Those tenets are concerned with the effective distribution of control; embedding freedom in organisational systems such that the necessary autonomy liberates and enables individuals and the organisation rather than limiting and controlling them. The clues to this thinking are most clearly laid out in “Designing Freedom” (1974) and reflect earlier work (especially in experimental mechatronics by Walter, Ashby, Beer and others with rudimentary robots and learning machines in the 1950s). These works highlighted how structural latency in decision making, imposed on organisational systems by centralised control, generates dysfunction through delay and indecisive decision oscillations, in effect creating mildly psychotic robots.
Bureaucracy (Weber 1924), the underpinning of conventional hierarchy, rests on an assumption of its own completeness. It suggests that a question of organisation can be both asked and finitely answered although Fayol (1916) described the need for a continuous rebalancing between the centre and the parts, a necessity which generates tension – who is “in charge? The need to manage the tension between local and central action, a tension that thwarts the finite bureaucratic answer and embeds freedom, leads to the evolution of what is sometimes called “loose-tight” control. Loose-tight control requires that certain (strategic) decisions are held close to the centre while most (operational) decisions belong to the local operation. That relies on a clear grasp of the boundaries to freedom – which, as Hayek (2006) suggested requires “coercion with the consent of the coerced”. Loose-tight control recognises the necessity of information based hierarchy, of decisions arising through and located by organisational process not the exercise of positional power, i.e. it depends on the way the organisational actors behave.
The VSM is rooted in Ashby’s idea of ultrastability and his consideration of cybernetics as treating “not things but ways of behaving” (Ashby, 1952) and in the application of cybernetic principles, not least of which is the idea of “as much autonomy as is consistent with cohesion of the system.” (Beer, 1985). The central point to all of this is that the VSM may be better interpreted as a behavioural rather than structural model of organisation, behaviour being defined as the language, posture, attitudes and beliefs that we bring to our communications and particularly the actions and interactions that arise from them. Each actor is engaging in “being” the organisation through the filter of their mental model. This interpretation speaks to the “neuro” element of the VSM as a neuro-cybernetic interpretation of organisation being all about information and communication.
Looking at the VSM as a behavioural model suggests that we should consider “viability” as an emergent property of the effective interactions of the people that enact the system under consideration, a synthesis. Taking this approach we can then think of the defined structural elements of the VSM as being a way of describing and talking about the essential dimensions of an organisational conversation; the information flows become enablers of decisions necessary for fulfilment of purpose.
For those unfamiliar with the Viable System Model, it consists, diagramatically, of a set of system elements in dynamic interaction with the relationships between those elements structured in a particular manner and the relationships existing to enable the communication of information. Communication enables decisions, decisions enable survival-worthiness, that is viability. Those system elements are:
System 1: the mechanism for doing whatever the organisation does to fulfil its avowed purpose;
System 2: a mechanism for coordination, enabling the allocation of resources without the need for reference to a higher authority;
System 3: the mechanisms of regulation, resource allocation and lawfulness that enable and constrain System 1;
System 3*: the mechanism for auditing System 1 (and thereby reducing the need for over-bearing control);
System 4: the mechanism for investigating possible alternative futures;
System 5: the mechanism for arbitrating between the competing wants of System 3 and 4 by reference to the sense of identity or purpose.
In the language of the VSM meta-system (systems 3, 4 and 5 the governance structure of the System 1 elements) and reflecting Dudley’s (2000) Trialogue, is the steering (cybernetic or gubernatorial) conversation between:
the ‘how’ of today
System Three which is guiding the present organisation and is concerned with the efficient delivery or current intentions;
the ‘what’ of tomorrow
System Four which is exploring possible alternative futures;
the ‘why’ of identity
System Five which arbitrates between the current how and the future what by reference to espoused purpose or identity;
The synthesised outcome of the conversation gives legitimacy to System One (the purpose of the system is what it does) while the principle of autonomy gives guidance to System Two (co-ordination and the promotion of local autonomy) and System Three Star that seeks to verify that what is said and what is done are consistent with each other.
All of that, expressed structurally, can equally be described behaviourally. People (who it will be recalled are “The Heart of the Enterprise”) have conversations in which they present the perspectives of the system elements which they represent, elements 1, 2, 3 etc. Each brings to the conversation knowledge, skills, behaviours and attitudes which are informed and guided (but not constrained) by their understanding of their role in the organisation.
Thus viability, the capacity of the organisation to co-adapt with its environment is embedded in the behaviours of the individuals who give it life and the VSM becomes a useful device for describing the relationships not an alternative bureaucracy. It considers who “engages” with who rather than who “reports” to who! The content of the organisational conversations are guided by the key elements of the model and loop us back to needing to elaborate and nuance our mental models of what “organisation” means and our interpretation of “the system”. In this, significantly more adaptive, behavioural interpretation we can perhaps consider that viability rests on effective communication – both asking the “right” questions but also asking them of the “right” people with “rightness” defined by the role in the system that any individual is fulfilling at any given time.
“It’s Tuesday, I must be Kate” (Intelligent Organisation, Beckford, Routledge 2020).
References:
WOSC Keynote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YVRymZUZwE
The Intelligent Organisation (2nd Ed), 2020, John Beckford, Routledge UK
“All models are wrong, some are useful” George Box, Journal of the American Statistical Association, 1976
Diagnosing the System for Organisations, 1985. Stafford Beer, Wiley UK
Designing Freedom, 1974, Stafford Beer, Wiley UK
The Structure of Organisations, 1924, Max Weber (in D.S Pugh, Ed., Organisation Theory, 3rd Edition, Penguin, 1990)
General Principles of Management, 1916, Henry Fayol (in D.S Pugh, Ed., Organisation Theory, 3rd Edition, Penguin, 1990)
The Constitution of Liberty, 2006, F.A. Hayek, Routledge Classics, London
Design for a Brain, 1952, W.R. Ashby, Chapman Hall, London
Quality Management or Management Quality, 2000, Peter Dudley, PhD Thesis, University of Hull, UK