Orgcomplexity Blog is coming to an end. Thank you.

Why?

It turns out that the past two years of blogging turned into my book!

If you have picked up the book, thank you so much. If not, what are you waiting for (wink)?

There are celebrities that announce a ‘retirement’ only to return to slog through yet another unnecessary sequel. As with all things in scholarship, there is evolution. I am not leaving systems! I am not leaving policy!

I am leaving behind the early and late nights of blogging.The blogging was only one element for working out my ideas. I have an undying respect for bloggers. We are a hearty stock!

I began to blog less and less. My followers often inquired about the decrease in frequency of the posts.

I still have journal articles to write. I am trying to work out my next book idea.

I am thankful that the support of this blog. Feedback has been overwhelming positive and affirming.

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First, my book was the best intellectual pursuit that I suffered through with a grin on my face.

This blog reaffirmed my vision and my place within the intellectual policy and systems communities.

Perhaps more importantly, I found out that I could be comfortably open to scruitny.

I realized that I had someone of worth to say and dared to throw my weirdness out there.

Whether blogging was the best way to reach others is up for debate.

But my posts will live on. And many of you have purchased my book.

I am not disappearing. What will end are notices in your already cramped inbox from my Orgcomplexity Blog.

Keep me relevant. I am taking a huge chance by ending this blog.

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Please follow me on Twitter (Mbattlefisher) since 140 characters may be easier on your eyes and the brain.

Keep me relevant with some follows:

michele.battle-fisher@ronininstitute.org
Academia.edu webpage: https://wright.academia.edu/MicheleBattleFisher
LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mbattlefisher
Amazon Author Page: amazon.com/author/michelebattlefisher

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I am open to working on scholarship with like-minded policy and systems researchers.

Some of you have contacted me to work on other projects, That time can be now if you like.

I have some cool things on the horizon that I hope will continue to help me grow as a policy thought leader.

I hope that my readers of this blog have explored systems science for all that it has to offer.

This blog was self-realizing for me. I am grateful beyond words. I am not done…quite yet.

I am not deleting the blog. I am leaving it on as an archive.

Thrive,

Michele Battle-Fisher

Happy New Year to all! 2 year anniversary of Orgcomplexity…

I literally rang in the new year of 2013 with the birth of this blog. Since that humble start, I am so grateful for all of you that have faithfully followed my work. I have been fortunate enough to have some great contributors that had something really cool to say about systems thinking and policy stuff. My book became a reality November 2014. The book had a great start and continues to find new people interested in my approach to public policy from a systems perspective. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

MILESTONE on December 18, 2014 – Number 1 on two Amazon sales charts

While Amazon is not the only place to pick up my book, it is a great barometer to keep that of how my book is doing. So on December 18, 2014 (nearly one month after its release), my book was simultaneously Number 1 on the Medical Ethics and Public Health Hot New Releases charts (Administration and Policy). I have to thank my followers on this blog for the support of my work.Dec 18, 2014 No 1 Hot New Release Medical Ethics Dec 18, 2014 Number 1 Public Health Hot New Release

MBF

The revolutionary power of network thought- a Scientific American Blog to share (not mine)

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2014/12/12/how-networks-are-revolutionizing-scientific-and-maybe-human-thought/

from the SA blog- “Network thinking lets us scientifically understand the world around us as one of connections that shape observed phenomena, rather than as one where the intrinsic properties of people, genes, or particles determine outcomes. Like previous scientific revolutions, the network revolution also has the promise of reshaping our basic commonsense expectations of the world around us, and may allow us to recognize that we are not a basically individualistic, asocial, and quarrelsome creature that comes in bounded linguistic, ethnic, racial, or religious types, but a social species linked to one another by far-reaching network ties.”

My short take:
This piece takes some elementary ideas from network analysis and packages them for the the less than convinced linear thinkers. Again, we system thinkers are again pleading for openness to this paradigm. Maybe such blogs (and even my book, http://www.springer.com/public+health/book/978-3-319-12202-1) can break through the complacency. The revolution lies in accepting our relational reality and approaching its discernment in systemic fashion. Period.

MBF

Sunbelt XXXV Call for Abstracts

Deadline: 31 March 2015

The Sunbelt XXXV organising committee is soliciting abstracts for paper presentations at the upcoming 2015 conference 23 – 28 June in Brighton, UK. Submission opens on 28 Nov 2014 and closes on 31 March 2015 at 17:00 GMT.

We invite abstract submissions for posters (90 minute poster session) and oral presentations (20 minute talk) on topics relevant to social network analysis, including theory, methods, and applications of social network analysis. Please limit your abstracts to 500 words. If an abstract is being submitted as part of an organised session, please select the appropriate organised session name in the session field submission form.

Paper and poster presentations will begin on Wednesday (24 June) and end on Sunday (28 June). Presenting authors of accepted submissions must be INSNA members and register for and present their work at the meeting. This stipulation applies to both oral and poster presentations. Each person may present only one paper at the conference.

To submit an abstract, visit the conference website at http://insna.org/sunbelt2015.

Elisa Bellotti, Bruce Cronin, Martin Everett
Sunbelt XXXV Organising Committee


Flipping the Right Policy Switches on Climate Change Policy the Greyson Way

Flipping the Right Policy Switches on Climate Change Policy
Social policies are, more often than not, framed with the traditionalist rationalization of human intentionality. Be that as it may, policy tenders the protocols that are then acted up-on publically to bring social impact. Of course, a well-intended climate policy must take into account on courses of collective action as well as funding priorities and constraints. While some level of desired social and health satisfaction may be experienced in the short term by shifting policy priorities, it is also probable that no tangible value is achieved toward to the overarching desire to elicit system wide impact. Did you hear that the two largest suppliers of pollutants, China and the United States, ‘pledged’ to actionably reduce limit greenhouse emissions over a media-friendly handshake (http://tinyurl.com/ld7mz8y)? Commentators are calling these ambitious goals for the EU. But Directorate-General for Climate Action (“DG CLIMA”) long recognized that climate policy both within the EU is a large part of the solution. The wisdom of the DG CLIMA offers the requirement that with 2020 policy goals, it is ‘adaptation measures (that) will reduce the European Union’s vulnerability to the impacts of climate change.’ (http://ec.europa.eu/clima/about-us/mission/index_en.htm). This is an inescapable reason for governing bodies of all levels to open their ears and eyes to this reality that change really means adaptation! And the EU appears to be leading the way, perhaps unnoticed by constituents outside of the EU.
John Sterman, a pioneer in systems thinking, corrected our thinking about effects in a system. We often frame the resulting social effects of a policy as ‘side effects’. This is incorrect thinking. What governing bodies often try to combat are so-called ‘side effects’. There are main intended effects which are the ones that policymakers want to happen. What policymakers often uncover are unintended effects, not side effects, which signal faulty understanding of the climate system.
Climate change and ecological sustainability is hot right now. No pun is intended. Global governance to reverse the historic ‘dangerous anthropogenic (manmade) interference’ makes for good news with often with short media shelf-lives. This is a fancy way of saying that human action is tied to the state of the ecosystem. The language of the Kyoto Protocol provisions is less social media friendly. The long term effects of carbon emissions continue long after the media debate switches to another policy development. Human actions have left an injurious pox on the Earth’s ecosystem. Consumers do have an effect on climate change. But we need data to measure these consumer effects. The IGBP Climate-Change Index ‘highlights the general trend by bringing together key climate-change indicators: atmospheric carbon dioxide, temperature, and sea level and sea ice.’ (http://tinyurl.com/c8bhsbg). James Greyson, founder of the BlindSpot think tank in the UK, wrote that ‘people are not inherently destructive’ (http://tinyurl.com/k6v5ur3).The balance between personal consumption of resources with the need for climate health highlights the very quandary of policy success. It is hard to give up something of worth when the effect of that may seem inconsequential in the big scheme of things. People may just side with the illusion that their personal actions somehow are not connected to the collective ill effects on the Earth’s ecosystem. People will at all costs minimize personal burden and disengage spiritual discomfort while still contributing to Styrofoam to landfills.
Failure is picking up a socially expected square peg after the innovative oval one fails to fit a conventional hole. If you really “need” the oval to work (and the world is not yet with the program), check out the board again. If there is no oval hole, darn it and chuck that board. Find a reamer and create your own or perhaps ask for a refund with no return shipping. Failure is the incessant attempt to satisfy others by hiding that socially acceptable square peg behind your back and asking for a few more days (in dog years) to work it out. Whittling that square peg with that dull pocket knife into a misshapen imposter of an oval peg serves no god. That imposter peg is not flush to the side of the hole. It is surrounded by slight flashes of open space. That open space created around the non-flush peg should extract with a slight tug. Trust me, that tug will be less taxing than the linear process that got that wrong peg there in the first place. Policy has little tolerance for misshapen pegs that bring with them unintended effects. Use a policy that works until it does not or admit that it never worked at all. Then make it work without the errors gumming up the machinery. What works may not be the most apparent or popular choice.
Climate policy holds a special role that should not be understated. A policy has the power to guide and mold the direction of societal movements or evade an unfortunate setback. The policy is rather worthless, even harmful, if it merely placates to critics that policymakers are doing something. James Greyson expertly forewarned that ‘less bad is not good enough’. Every point of attack in a policy does not yield the same bang for the policy’s buck. The best way to assure policy effectiveness is to change mindsets or paradigms around climate change. Climate policy cannot be business as usual. Policy as conceived today is not reversing the ecological losses plaguing the ecosystem. But this is a large load to carry for the vast diversity of workforce that is involved in only one of many spokes in the regulation system.

Finally, my book is available in paperback and gaining traction

Check out your favorite vendor. Thanks for your support. #orgcomplexity @mbattlefisher

On day of release, my book premiered as one of the top hot new releases on Amazon in Medicine & Health Sciences / subcategory Administration & Policy in both the Ethics category (top 2) and Public Health category (top 5). It is staying pretty consistent for now.

Now I can get back to blogging…Wanna blog? Let me know. I would love to have some more on board to become bloggers.

MBF

For your consideration- Chapter 2 from my book is freely available here

Chapter 2 from my book found posted here as a pdf and on the Springer International website

Chapter 2 of my Systems Thinking and Policy Book

MBF