Tag: FeedbackLoops

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On transforming time and system immunity

Malcolm Gladwell claimed in his book Outliers that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in something. 

How many days is that?

How many years?

It’s not quick to flip between these very common units of time. Unless we are very good at multiplying and dividing by 24 and 365 respectively. 

The answer is 416 and 2/3 days.

Which is equivalent to roughly 1.14 years.

Solid. No time for breaks.

But the point isn’t about how long this is or with Gladwell’s theory is true or not. My point is, isn’t it strange how awkward it is to convert between our common units of time.

This was sorted out for distance a long time ago. Metres, millimetres and kilometres are easy to switch between: just move the decimal point three spaces to the right or left. 

Why don’t we have this same simplicity for time?

I had been aware of the creation of a calendar based on 10-day weeks in post-Revolutionary France. This calendar was in use for about 6 years, and is in itself a fascinating story. 

But I hadn’t realised until this weekend that during a similar period there was a decimalisation of time. Under this model:

  • A day is broken into ten hours
  • Each hour has 100 minutes
  • Each minute has 100 seconds

With this system, the unitary conversions are easy. If someone were to say that something will take 10,000 hours, you can quickly step up and down through the different units.

  • 1000 days
  • 10,000 hours
  • 1,000,000 minutes
  • 100,000,000 seconds.

Very sensible for quick calculation. No calculators necessary!

But the new system was not popular. The wikipedia page on decimal time cites a paper presented by C.A Prieur at the French National Convention on why decimalisation of time is not a good idea. And the reasons given present a good example of ‘system immunity’ – why systems resist change.

Here are a few of the reasons listed:

  • Since time is not commercially regulated (unlike say, weights and measures), there is no enforcement and so the old system will remain in use. Using our Systems Bookcase model, here the operating rules don’t reinforce the new design. Equally there is no rule stopping the use of this new system — but nothing to help it punch through either.
  • The rural population does not need such an accurate measure of time, and so are unlikely to use the new system. This is an example of there being no reinforcing feedback loop in the system. Shifting to the new system does not confer any benefits to these users, so its uptake will not naturally emerge. 
  • Watches are people’s most expensive possessions – asking people to buy a new watch by decree is not likely to be popular, unless it is supported and comes with a benefit. This is an example of both capital investment and pride.

These are examples of where the purity of an abstract idea meets the realities of the present. 

But is it the present that is the problem, or is it the idea? Because it is only in practice that things work. 

Forcing an idea into a system that doesn’t want it will take energy. If that energy delivers a yield, then it can be overcome. But if there is no benefit, the system will snap back. 

As it stood, decimal time lasted 6 years before it was abandoned.

How many hours is that? That may take some time work out in my head.

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How connections slip through our fingers

I’ve been doing work this week with teams thinking about interconnection. More precisely, how connected we are to the places impacted by our design decisions. 

Take the component of a building and a product. Try to trace it back to its origins, and you will probably find that that part in itself is made of sub-components. Each of these sub-components with places from different places. The further we try to trace, the more our grip on the supply chain disappears. Like trying to carry water with your hands cupped together, the water just slips away the further we try to carry it.

Connection is important because it leads to understanding — we get deep feedback on the impacts on of our decisions, and how to make decisions that actually bring positive impacts. 

So what do we do? 

We can’t redesign global supply chains. But we can seek to shorten the distance in what we do. 
Work with supply chains that are shorter and more transparent 

Select materials whose origins we actually understand

Reduce the number of nodes in the system, thereby reducing complexity and increasing predictability. 

In regenerative design we want to make sure our deisgn choices are creating thriving. The shorter the distance between us and material, the simpler the supply chain, the better feedback we get and the better choices we can make.  

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Feedback = understanding

I’m grateful to my friend and Regenerative Design Lab colleague Ellie Osborne for this model. 

On the second day of our Cohort 5 Autumn Residential, we were sitting around the fire discussing interconnection in design. More explicitly, how connected do we feel to the places where we take materials from to build our buildings. 

A key factor in how regenerative systems stay in balance is through local feedback loops: knowing how much material is available and how much can be used without causing harm.

The feedback loop gives information about what is available. But perhaps a more human way to understand this feedback is to think of it as understanding. 

If a developer decides to build a new building in the city using material dug from just outside the suburbs, I am likely to have a much stronger view about this decision than if the material comes from a distant place I have never heard of.

I have an understanding of what it would mean to double the size of the open-pit mine if it were right here, compared to elsewhere. 

Now, mining, at small scale, can have a positive impact on habitats, and has been an important part of human construction for millennia. But that’s not the point. 

The point is, the closer the site, the stronger the feedback. The stronger the feedback, the stronger the understanding.

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Where we make but also where we take

This has become one of my catchphrases in regenerative design*. To think of design as being for ‘where we make but also where we take’. The role of the regenerative designer is to create a transition to an industry in which our designs create human and ecological thriving.

To make that possible we need to bring two separate things into our view at the same time. The place where we are doing the making, and the places that are we are drawing upon to do that making.

Because if our work makes the world better where we are making, but worse where we are taking, we are not creating thriving. We are just shifting it from one place to the other.

*It definitely is a catchphrase – I’ve already written a post this year with this exact same title.

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Overcoming the status quo

A system rests at equilibrium because that is its most likely position. Any spare energy is used up by processes — feedback loops — that keep returning the part of the system to this state.

This applies in organisations as much as in chemical systems.

We may make what feels like a significant change. A new initiative. A new process. A new product. But if the original feedback loops aren’t altered, then over time, friction will rub away what is distinct and we return to the status quo.

If we want to create a new equilibrium — a new status quo — then we need to:

  1. rewire the feeeback loops to reinforce this change rather than continuously undermine it
  2. Imbue the new initiative with enough energy to resist the friction it causes while the system around it rearranges itself.

If the change is good enough, it will generate enough energy of its own to keep going. That’s how most solutions succeed, be they organisational, or chemical.

Related tool > Ambition Loops

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Carrier Wave

In radio communications, a carrier wave is a signal that carries another signal. The carrier wave is the disturbance in the electromagnetic spectrum that travels out across the medium. Information to be transmitted is encoded by modifying the base wave’s amplitude (as in AM, amplitude modulation) or its frequency (as in FM, frequency modulation).

The carrier wave metaphor is a useful motif for thinking about what it is that transmits feedback around a system.

Through my phone I am connected to hundreds of contacts — but that doesn’t mean I am in communication with them. In contrast, with the much smaller group of people I work on projects with, there is regular transmission of information. In this smaller group, regular dialogue creates a carrier wave for feedback — how is everyone feeling? Are things going well? Where are the potential problems? Some of these signals are not explicit, but more subtle shifts in conversation — changes in tone, mood or bigger gaps in the signal.

Our reliance on others tunes us into the feedback available through our relationships. I can easily search online for live data feeds concerning the quality of water in rivers around the country, but I’m far more likely to pay attention to the river I swim in.

When thinking about levels of interconnectivity in systems, consider the reciprocity that exists in those relationships. It is not enough to build connections. Through the internet, engineers have never been more connected to communities and ecosystems — but what matters is having something that flows through the connection. A carrier wave for the feedback.

This post is an extract from the Motif Library in the Pattern Book for Regenerative Design. 

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Tools for telling the future

What began as a conversation this week on the blog about how designers predict the future has unlocked some deeper reflections on how we approach regenerative design.

Let’s rewind.

As designers, we are always concerned with the future. Our job is to imagine how things could be and shape the conditions to get there. To do this, we rely on two types of indicators:

  • Lag indicators — evidence of what has already happened. The results of past design decisions. 
  • Lead indicators — signals in the present that suggest how the future will unfold.

When conditions are stable, precedent (ie lag indicators) can be a reliable guide to the future. But in changing, complex systems, the past is no-longer such a reliable guide to the future.

In these situations, rather than predict the future directly, we can try to assess the capacity of the system we are working with to successfully respond to change.

Capacity to change — a key regenerative lens

In regenerative design we use the living world as a template for understanding how to create systems that thrive. Thriving ecosystems adapt continuously to shifting conditions. This capacity to change is a key characteristic of living systems — and is a guiding principle for engineers (and other humans) thinking about how to create thriving systems. 

In the Pattern Book for Regenerative Design, we go on to define four factors that indicate a system’s capacity to adapt:

  • Building blocks that can easily be recombined.
  • Coexistence of diverse variations to allow for different responses. 
  • Feedback loops that reinforce adaptations suited to current conditions.
  • Mechanisms for retaining and repeating what works.

From analysis to a design brief

These four factors are both analytical prompts and design levers.

When we encounter a new situation, we try to establish the extent to which each of these is present and use this as a measure of the system’s capacity to survive and potentially thrive through change.

And they can be used as design requirements, giving us factors that we can build into a design brief to create a brief for thriving. 

In a complex situation it is hard to predict the future — instead, regenerative designers seek to make things better by building in the capacity for people and ecosystems to respond together to changing situations in a way that creates thriving for the whole system.