Management Cybernetics in Practice
Many managers fail to realise that they are actually using methods derived from cybernetics in everyday business activity. The idea of control loops and feedback are well known but many fail to realise that they originate from a cybernetic standpoint.
Stafford Beer is known as the father of management cybernetics, focusing on the application of the natural laws of cybernetics in organisations, enterprises and institutes. One of the most unique features of his work is that he did not try to simplify reality in any way. William Ross Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety essentially reinforces the fact that complex situations can only be appreciated or managed with at least the same degree of complexity. The influences of this theory can be clearly seen in Beer’s work. By viewing reality “from a level that is high enough to allow all the factors that operate in complex systems to be separated out and presented in a form in which they are clearly recognizable and comprehensible to anyone who is curious” (Cwarel Isaf Institute, 2002), his models automatically encompass the right way to approach complexity.
Another distinguishing feature of Stafford Beer’s work is that he endeavours to make all processes that occur within systems closed. This is achieved by viewing processes as being circular, i.e. recursive. Viewed from this perspective, processes are ongoing, individual entities because when they end, they are taken back to the beginning. For managers this helps processes to become more visible and clearly defined – thus enabling them to be dealt with more efficiently.
Although Beer’s models are relatively few in number, they provide managers with interesting insights into the ways in which they can tackle complexity. As a result, their organisations (and they themselves) may become more able to react effectively and appropriately when faced with complexity. This in turn makes for a more stable, sustainable and flexible business. The following list compiles Stafford Beer’s most influential models:
- Team Syntegrity
- The Viable System Model
Read more about this topic: Management Cybernetics
Famous quotes containing the words management and/or practice:
“The care of a house, the conduct of a home, the management of children, the instruction and government of servants, are as deserving of scientific treatment and scientific professors and lectureships as are the care of farms, the management of manure and crops, and the raising and care of stock.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“Those who make a practice of comparing human actions are never so perplexed as when they try to see them as a whole and in the same light; for they commonly contradict each other so strangely that it seems impossible that they have come from the same shop.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)