Childrens' Party story

The children's Party Story is told by Dave Snowden on YouTube Children's Party Story

Hearing this story is better than reading the transcript.

The Transcript

Let's imagine if you can that you've got to organize a party for a bunch of eleven-year-old boys and you want to apply the three different types of system that apply in nature.

Organising a children's party in the chaotic domain

Well if you assume the party's chaotic the children are acting at random you might as well buy the drugs and alcohols for the children can go on a personal experience of self-discovery your house may don't burn down in the process but what does that matter? All property is theft and it was socially constructed in the first place. I have friends in California who've tried this I don't recommend it the recovery cost is high but it's a legitimate approach.

Organising a children's party in the ordered domain

The one will be more familiar with is the ordered systems approach here it's of critical importance to construct clearly articulated learning objectives in advance of the party itself the learning objective should of course be aligned with the mission statement for education in a society to which you belong ideally you should print the learning objectives off on motivational posters with pictures of eagles soaring over valleys and water dropping into ponds and place those around the room where you can hold the party you then produce a project plan for the party the project plan should have clear milestones throughout the party against which you can measure progress against ideal party outcome once you've done that you know the senior adult can start the party with the motivational video tape after all you don't want thechildren wasting time in play which isn't aligned with the learning objectives of the party itself and then they should use PowerPoint to demonstrate their personal commitment to the objectives of the party and to show the children how pocket money is linked to the achievement of the milestone targets.

Organising a children's party in the complex domain

Of course the third approach the complex the approach is even simpler here we draw a line in the sand known as a boundary in complexity theory and we turn to the children and say cross 30 little bastards and you die. One of the things you learn pretty fast as now they'll tis the value of flexible negotiable boundaries because rigid boundaries have a habit of becoming brittle and break in catastrophic ly we then use catalytic probes and I'm deliberately using the jargon of complexity theory now football a videotape a barbecue a computer game something which will stimulate a pattern of activity which is called an attractor and if it's a beneficial attractor we stabilize it we amplify it if it's a negative attractor we dampen it or destroy it very quickly so what we do is we manage the emergence of beneficial coherence within attractors within boundaries and in that simple phrase we see the promise of complexity theory for organizations and government alike...