A SYSTEM THAT WORKS: BUILDING A DECENTRALIZED GLOBAL

POLITICAL ECONOMY USING THE VIABLE SYSTEM MODEL

Jon Li
Institute for Public Science & Art
1075 Olive Drive #4, Davis CA USA, 530-753-0352, [email protected]

ABSTRACT
A political economy that enhances personal freedom requires effective but limited
regulation. The Viable System Model by Stafford Beer offers a way to analyze an
organization’s communication problems, maximize resource use, minimize waste, and
adapt to a changing environment by clarifying what to regulate. Jon Walker’s “VSM
Quick Guide” and Allenna Leonard’s “Personal VSM” ground the reader. VSM is
applied to a community of 65,000 people in Davis, California, USA, in a way that could
be used in other places around the world, to help identify strategies to better meet human
needs, enhance the local economy, reduce environmental damage, and encourage natural
healing processes. Given the recursive nature of the VSM, this method could be used at
every level from person to family/neighborhood/village/community/ district/ region/
state/nation/continent/planet, emphasizing the system in focus. “National Government:
disseminated regulation in real time, or ‘How to run a country’” by Stafford Beer
describes how to construct “quantified flow charts” to identify which statistics to measure
daily as regulation at a particular level of recursion.

REDEFINING THE SOCIAL CONTRACT

When someone says “bureaucracy,” you probably think – delay, confusion, even
obstruction.
What if we could eliminate MOST of the organizational confusion – just
disappear it – along with half the bureaucracy itself?
THAT is the claim of this paper: A 1950s British scientific discovery that
precipitates a complete revolution in social science as we know it. The basic idea is to
replace the organization chart with a layered mapping structure that allows people to
assign responsibility, clarify who has decision taking responsibility WHERE, and then
creates a way to daily report only information that matters at that point in time. By
looking at organizations as nested layers, or recursions, people can debate a particular
“system-in-focus,” especially about its decision making and enhancing its potential.
This method, called The Viable System Model (VSM) by its creator, Stafford
Beer, cuts through the need for most of the organizational obstacles that 20th century
Managerial mythological theology defines as reality. “Theory is the only reality
countenanced by our culture” is Stafford’s most significant criticism of the Western ethic
with a busted gut. In 1972, Stafford was the President of what has become the

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International Society for the Systems Sciences, and this paper builds directly on his
Presidential address (which is included in Platform for Change).
We have a mixed economy. The 20th century was about private businesses buying
almost whatever they wanted, with big government failing to regulate environmental
problems, and social problems becoming a consequence of too much regulation.
One of the fundamental characteristics of a period when a society is approaching a
revolutionary change in thinking, according to Thomas Kuhn, is the high degree of
conflict and disagreement about conventions, as is reflected now in the extreme partisan
conflict in U.S. national politics. This VSM analysis disappears most of the differences
between the Republicans and the Democrats. Things quickly change: to the defenders of
the obsolete status quo, and the people who recognize that change has already happened.
As Stafford Beer says in Platform for Change, “When the traffic on the roads
finally goes mad, disobeying all the regulations that no longer contain it, I shall be risking
my neck in there trying to measure things, trying to make a model of the new situation,
devising a cybernetic control system that just might work if the authorities dare to listen.”
This paper is an effort to help build the bridge to a healthy 21st century.

THE VIABLE SYSTEM MODEL

Jon Walker’s Quick Guide to VSM
URL: http://www.esrad.org.uk/resources/vsmg_3/screen.php?page=introduction
http://www.esrad.org.uk/resources/vsmg_3/screen.php?page=1qguide is the following 4
pages

STAFFORD BEER: ORGANIZATIONAL EVOLUTION

VSM is an example of a systems approach to looking at the world. In the local Davis
parlance, an ecological approach: to see a system with subsystems, in an actively
changing environment; static structures are temporary. Stafford’s ideas are as
revolutionary/evolutionary as Darwin’s.
Before Stafford Beer: Organizations thought of in terms of static organization charts with
hierarchical bureaucracies, many layers of administration, TOP down decision taking,
with built-in confusions of communication and control that lead to built-in conflicts.
Stafford Beer: All organizations that continue to exist have a part that does something in
the world, and a second part that looks at how the environment is changing and what the
organization should do in the future. The Viable System Model identifies the necessary
and sufficient information flow that an organization needs to adapt over time; the model
can be used to help an existing organization identify areas where communication is
breaking down, and design new communication structures to accomplish new goals; all
workers share access to manager’s reports, which are designed in a way that empowers

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all to participate in debate about what the numbers mean, what the policy options are, and
what direction the organization should point new efforts towards. It shifts the focus of
organizational power down from “the Boss” to the operations level, with the emphasis of
management shifted to being in service to operations.

DESIGNING FREEDOM
One mind-boggling idea in this paper is that it might be possible to come up with a new
metric – a measure – of a higher good than money.
What. Is it possible? The concept that Stafford offers (yes, it is integral to the VSM) is
Eudemony.
Huh? It is Greek, and was invented as a word by Aristotle. It means “well-being”. The
concept is that money is a constraint and Eudemony measures something positive.
Eudemony is one of the foundations of VSM, so it will take on more meaning as you
come to understand how the performance measures are defined so that you can identify
incipient instability and maximize the potential for a positive intervention before it is too
late.
Stafford gave a series of radio talks about these ideas on Canadian Broadcasting that was
published as a book, called Designing Freedom. One of his points is that western society
has become so overwhelmed with miniscule regulations that we have lost control of our
own freedom. And, we don’t seem to know what freedom means any more. That is why
the U.S. Tea Partiers can simultaneously demand to keep their rights while preventing
other rights to people they object to.

Looking at Davis through the Viable System Model, Jon Li, Davis Enterprise 2/7/10
Institutions that run our lives have notoriously poor information flow. We label
inefficient and unresponsive organizations "bureaucracy," implying incompetency is the
standard.
The Viable System Model offers a way to see through some of these organizational
complications. VSM was developed in the 1950s in a steel mill in Great Britain by
Stafford Beer. The model produces hundreds of recommendations about communications
improvements. Three months after it was implemented, the mill had a 30% improvement
in productivity. Its applications range from a honey bee hive to 75 percent of the social
economy of a nation (which took 12 layers of analysis). For the Davis community, there
might be 8 or 9 layers.
Basically, the Viable System Model creates a graphic distinction of how an organization
communicates and decides. The most obvious conclusion is that most organizations
focus on their day to day operations and tend to ignore the need to coordinate the
different sections of the organization, neglect communication about how their
environment is changing, and disregard how the future might be different than expected.

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The Viable System Model defines a viable system as an entity that has an ongoing impact
in a dynamic environment and maintains its identity as change happens in its
environment. (See the Viable System Model diagram.)
For the "System in Focus," identify several things it does in the world, each of which is
represented in the model by a circle. For each circle, the VSM requires 5 management
systems as necessary and sufficient for the circle to maintain its viability: System 1: the
day to day operations of the circle; System 2: the ongoing coordination of the circles;
System 3: the long range resource bargaining with the larger organization and between
the circles ("inside and now"); System 4: exploring the changing environment and
anticipating future potentialities ("outside and future"); System 5 is the visionary
mediation between 3 (the present) & 4 (the future).
The problem is that most organization's management behavior focuses on the 1-2-3
relationship and ignores the 3-4-5 communication. Too often, organizations focus on
getting better and better at what they do, and ignore the always-changing environment,
often until it is too late. This is called “collapsing the 3-4-5,” and it is the most common
reason why businesses fail – they don’t see the need to adapt to a changing environment.
The VSM analysis allows one to step outside the box limited to traditional thinking about
particular inter-relationships. One of the basic concepts of VSM is recursion: that viable
systems are nested in viable systems. What is dynamic at one level of analysis is static at
the next level up, and perhaps irrelevant at the next level down. So we can pick and
choose within the model what variables should be measured, managed and evaluated at
that particular level of organization.
Recursion applied: As you look at the diagram, the medium sized boxes are the Systems
ONE, THREE, FOUR and FIVE of the "System in Focus". (System TWO is the anti-
oscillatory triangle symbol.) Within the circle of the System ONE are two very small
circles and small System 1 boxes connected to the larger circle's System ONE box which
includes the small circles' 2-3-4-5s, all of which is the next recursion down. And, the
medium size boxes THREE-FOUR-FIVE that make up the upper right of the diagram are
enclosed in a large box, which is the System 1 for a larger recursion in the environment
of which this "System in Focus" is one of the circles.
Bottom Line on VSM:
-identify 8-12 sensitive indicator limits which are defined
-measure the key indicators daily
-if they go outside of an acceptable range, they are reported up to the next level
-maximize local autonomy
Davis Now
We are building the VSM for the Davis community. Since the UCD campus is such an
integral part of the community, we are doing a partial VSM analysis of the campus as
well.

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To find out more about the Viable System Model, the best introduction is Jon
Walker's Guide to the VSM which is available on the web, URL:
http://www.esrad.org.uk/resources/vsmg_3/screen.php?page=introduction
The goal of using the VSM process is to identify information bottlenecks and repair them
in a way that improves decision processes.
Jon Li is a long time Davis resident.

To Change Ourselves: a Personal VSM Application by Allenna Leonard

http://allennaleonard.com/PersVSM.html
Personal Viable Systems Model System 4
System 1 System 5
System 2 Other Stages and Ages
System 3 A Matter of Perspective
System 3* Conclusion
References
Introduction: The Personal VSM
If one wishes to change the world, one must first change oneself.
What follows is an example of a VSM of an individual’s life. It is a setting that everyone
can relate to and that is useful as a self-referential tool. One’s life is also an example that
provides illustrations of how some of the same activities may fulfill different functions in
different people’s lives, or in the same people’s lives at different times.
System One
System One activities are operations that do something that is rewarded by the
environment, usually products or services in the case of a business. On the individual
level, it could be paid work, but it could also be unpaid work, schooling, a hobby or care-
giving.
Our subject is a full-time student in a university. She is taking four classes, so each of
them is a System One activity at the next lower level of recursion. She has an athletic
scholarship, so playing her sport on the University team is also a System One activity. In
this, she differs from her roommate who plays sports on an intramural team to relax and
stay in shape. For her, her sport is not a System One activity although her part-time job is.
Her classmates may count as System One activities their volunteer work, student
government, care of a child, or network building in the context of their social life, if it is
pursued in a purposeful and organized manner. The test is ‘is the activity an exchange in
the environment that produces something that the environment recognizes and rewards?’
If so, it is a System One. It is connected to other System One activities and may conflict

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with them, or at least not take advantage of synergy if they are not viewed from a broader
perspective.
System Two
The first problem that arises is that the System One activities may get in one another’s
way, causing oscillations whereby the individual scrambles to deal with schedule
glitches, budget disruptions and problems with enabling infrastructure – computers and
other tools that help keep things in order.
System Two is a service to the System One activities to help them run smoothly. So, our
System Two tools are likely to include: our diaries or planners, our address books, our
checkbooks, filing systems, instruction manuals for our tools, training or certifications
that need to be renewed – even the alarm clocks and tickler files that tell us it is time to
move. And, of course, there are the System Two activities that go with being human: our
habits, eating, health and fitness, grooming, rest and relaxation.
Students, as part of the recursion ‘university’, adopt a number of System Two
conventions that relate to expected behavior in class, standards for papers and other
assignments and social relations. Forms of address, style manuals, requirements for using
university computer centers and dormitory rules are examples.
System Three
System Three makes inside and now executive decisions on the basis of the
circumstances of all the System One activities together. It looks for synergy and makes
adjustments to deal with priorities and shift resources to adapt to changing conditions.
The ‘resource bargain’ with the System One activities allocates time, money, space and
other resources among the student’s different classes and between classes and other
commitments. A field trip or big project in one class, for instance, might use study time
and perhaps class time normally allocated to the other classes. Or, the demands of a
tournament, a big push in a part time job or student government event could result in
shuffling schedules and perhaps scrambling to get everything done. Everyone does this
sort of trade-off anyway, with or without the benefit of a model, but having a model
makes what is included in the considerations more explicit.
Often System Three decisions are made on the run. Something more or less unexpected
happens and it is necessary to reallocate priorities and resources. This is not so different
from when a company shifts gears to comply with a larger than normal order or to
compensate for a breakdown. When there is time for consideration, synergies may be
pursued. Two different courses may have overlapping reading lists, allowing for a deeper
understanding of how they apply to both of them, or two courses may be scheduled
consecutively in nearby buildings, thus saving travel time.
System Three Star
System Three Star mops up excess variety that is not handled by regular arrangements.
Any sitting down and taking stock of particulars counts as a Three Star effort. Sitting
down with one’s budget is the obvious parallel to the financial audit of a company but
there can be others, such as measuring your computer capacity against current demands

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or looking at whether your transportation arrangements are satisfactory. Some external

evaluations such as one’s yearly physical examination or the university’s periodic review
of eligibility for maintaining scholarship status are also Three Star activities.
System Four
System Four for the university student may seem to be the whole effort as education for
one’s future life is almost by definition a System Four activity. However, while at
university, there are needs to focus on the short and medium term future, i.e. this week
and its demands, as compared to next semester.
System Four contains a model of itself and the connections it has to the relevant future
environment as well as a model of the VSM structure of which it is a part. The internal
conversations within System Four between different aspects of these two models can be
very enlightening. The student, operating in System Four, may select a possible
alternative from the environment, say, a new course for the next term. He or she would
first consider this potential course according to its System Five criteria for computability
with identity and overall goals. If there was no conflict, a System Three feasibility check
would be made and its relations with other courses and commitments considered. Lastly,
he or she would look at whether any changes would be needed in the System Two
support structure, such as additional software, to accommodate this new initiative.
System Five
System Five maintains identity and coherence whether we are a student, a member of a
community or member of an organization. All of us have different aspects of our identity
that we may stress at different times or in different contexts. These aspects may differ
when the same ‘identity’ finds itself in a different context. Although there is wide
variation, students almost inevitably broaden their contexts when they attend university,
whether they have traveled five miles or five thousand miles to attend. New ideas, people
with different outlooks and people from other countries are encountered and these
experiences become part of the student’s growth and emerging identity.
The other function of System Five is to balance present and future efforts and emphasis.
This aspect typically shifts during a university program. At the beginning, the emphasis is
mostly on the present; learning the new routines, figuring out the new expectations and
meeting day to day obligations. One day at a time is not an unusual orientation during the
first weeks. After one has settled in, it is possible to look around, perhaps even stop and
smell the roses, and think of next steps. As the student gets closer to the completion of the
program, more thought is given to the future.
System Five may consider different potential shifts in identity to explore ways of
changing ourselves so we may change the world. Our identities are made up of many
aspects. Indeed, ‘identity politics’ would seem to reduce each of us to our race or
ethnicity, our age, our gender, our religion, our class or our party affiliation. We are
certainly all these things, but we are also an unfragmented whole with the integrity of a
persistent personality with its combined influences of nature, nurture and choice.

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Other Stages and Ages

Although many who learn the VSM are students, there are many possibilities for
individual VSM workshops for others. One popular area of concern in North America is
‘work/life balance’. It was a major topic at a recent HR Conference I attended this fall.
Although it is a track that attracts many women juggling their work and families, it
applies to men with family responsibilities as well. Even at the domestic level of attention
one finds choices that involve Systems One through Five, such as the System Three
resource bargain of whether the time saved by using processed foods is worth the
increased risk of additives and the likelihood of decreased taste and higher cost. They are
performed in the System One here and now, supported by shopping and food storage
practices in System Two, evaluated according to their future implications and related to
one’s identity. Consumer choices and ad hoc adaptations to change made individually, do
‘change the world’ as we ‘vote with our feet’.
Another group of people who might find use for the personal VSM are the large number
of free-lancers, contract workers and others who must manage their ‘Me, Inc.’ according
to variables not faced by those with permanent employment. They have different types of
contracts and perhaps other claims on their time as their System One activities. They
must maintain their contact lists, billing and record-keeping arrangements and
technological infrastructure in System Two. Decisions and resource bargains are made in
System Three and evaluated in System Three Star. They anticipate the new knowledge
and practices they should be acquiring and take steps to direct their learning, attend
conferences and keep up with their fields in System Four. In System Five, they take the
long view and reflect on how everything fits together. And, perhaps most usefully, they
may consider themselves in the context of all the different Systems of which they are a
System One – their families, their colleagues, their communities, and so on. The
comparisons made between a personal VSM of oneself as a member of a family and as a
member of a work group or other affiliation can be very enlightening – illustrating
connections, relations and conversations that may be compatible or in conflict.
A Matter of Perspective
It has been mentioned earlier that the same activity may be, depending on the individual,
part of a different System. For example, for one person physical exercise is a System
One. That person may play on a team, or participate in an individual sport, as ‘semi-
professional’, such as the students on athletic scholarships in the United States college
teams or anyone for whom this hobby is seen as something done for a reward. Another
person may exercise or play a sport to maintain physical fitness so that they are equal to
the expected demands on their strength and energy, which is a System Two function. In a
System Four context, one may pursue exercise to prepare for a marathon or another test
of endurance. For another, sport and physicality are part of their identity – of who they
are. This is System Five.
Among people who meditate seriously, all five systems are addressed by different uses of
meditation. It may be an activity that one performs to benefit the larger environment –
System One. It may function as a System Two maintaining balance among different
aspects of one’s life. It may be the means used to address decisions about the here and
now and the resource bargains made among different System One’s – a System Three

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function. A meditative retreat may serve as a variety mop up in System Three Star. One
may meditate on the future, acting in a System Four capacity or may reflect on questions
of identity or the balance between present and future in System Five.

CONCLUSION
Beginning to learn to apply the VSM to an individual’s life and work is a very useful way
to come to grips with the model without the benefit of a common organizational context.
It is advantageous that an individual does not need much familiarity with the management
of organizations to proceed. And, of course, it is hoped that when similar dynamics are
met in the context of organizations and their relations, that the invariances will be
recognized.
For more from Allenna Leonard about how to apply VSM:
A Viable System Model: Consideration of Knowledge Management, Journal of
Knowledge Management Practice (1999)
The VSM Applied to Complex Organizations in Crisis, Address to the 2nd Cwarel Isaf
Institute Conference, Internet

Preliminary VSM maps for:

A variety of important parts of a community (in this case Davis California, USA), in each
particular system in focus, describing the environment, and the subsystems (referred to as
System 1s).

VSM: Davis Community as System in Focus:

Environment: UCD, Davis School District, Yolo County, Sacramento Area Council of
Governments (cities in adjacent counties are all members), Solano County and the
Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), League of Cities, State of California,
special districts such as air, transportation and mosquito abatement, Sacramento regional
economy, Central Valley ecology

The system 1s: residents (families, preschool, K-12, seniors; college students who are not
in any way related to the previous groups); businesses; City of Davis (parks, utilities -
water, sewer, drainage, administration - police, fire, finance)

System in Focus statement of purpose:

Davis is a residential community, adjacent to the University of California campus,
surrounded by agricultural land, good schools and parks, an environmental self-image, a

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small business sector, connected to the Sacramento-San Francisco corridor by freeway

and train, many commuters, and a bicycle for the city's logo.
Having the City of Davis as the system in focus does not seem right. I believe
parts of it should be one recursion down, and other parts of it are system 2 or system 3 in
the larger community, as near as I can tell.

VSM: UCD as the System in Focus:

Environment: every child in California, California taxpayers, 12.5% of the high school
graduates in the state, students at community colleges and state colleges, anyone on the
planet who might be impacted by discovery or policy developed by people associated
with this campus.
UC Office of the President (UCOP), Regents of the University of California, state
legislature, CA Department of Finance, CA Department of Food & Agriculture,
California Postsecondary Education Commission (which administers the state Master
Plan for Higher Education)
current UC students, faculty, researchers, faculty on other campuses
businesses with a research agenda, agricultural industry, US Department of
Agriculture, national and international agricultural economic networks - like IRRI, the
International Rice Research Institute which is headquartered in the Philippines and has
more associations with UCD than any other campus; US Department of Interior, Defense,
Transportation, HHS, the entire medical system
Putah Creek/Sacramento River watershed
City of Davis, Yolo County, Sacramento Area Council of Governments - all cities
and counties in the region
Davis Joint Unified School District, every school district in the Sacramento
region, every school district in Northern California, every school district in Southern
California.
Rest of the University of California, California State Colleges & Universities,
Community Colleges, private colleges in California, land grant colleges in the U.S.,
institutions of higher learning around the world.

System 1s;
agriculture, environmental science, engineering, veterinary medicine, human medicine
and nursing, law, letters and science, and, 60% of the student body: biological sciences.

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VSM: A family with four children in middle school

Environment
Close: citywide economy; high school (future); city parks & fields; Harper Jr High; South
Davis Safeway Shopping Center; Willowbank Neighborhood
Far: Sacramento region, San Francisco region, Boston, Rochester NY, Rome

The immediate environment is shared, and can be a useful analysis in a different

direction. House, animals, vehicles, City of Davis, resources for people with special
needs (in a way that "girl1" is a part of the family so much that she is a full-time reality
that is part of everyone's assumed shared environment - "we wouldn't even consider
going someplace that didn't accommodate girl1.")

System 2 & System 3 is Mom & Dad.

System 4 is: boy, girl1, girl2, girl3, classmates...
System 5 is Mom.

common subsystems: Academic; Nutrition; Exercise/Athletics; Social

The "girl1" sub-subsystems apply to each person; by using "girl1" as the standard, it is
clear that the others have just as many different kinds of challenges.

7th grade girl, quadriplegic

-Academic: verbal skills, thought skills, math skills, classroom achievement, individual
learning
- Nutrition: short term (immediate changes); long term behavior
- Exercise/Athletics: manual skill levels; performance standards, goals for 3-6 months
- Social: communication skills, relationships
7th grade girl, soccer: Academic; Nutrition; Exercise/Athletics; Social
7th grade girl, gymnastics: Academic; Nutrition; Exercise/Athletics; Social
9th grade boy, line backer, defensive team captain: Academic; Nutrition;
Exercise/Athletics; Social
mom
dad

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The point is, within each person’s subsystems are benchmarks, standards, and personal
best goals. I am a big fan of Management by Objectives: time limited goals that are
quantifiable; three months seems like a good medium or even long term goal point to
work towards.

Isolated Senior
How is this different than a younger person?
System 1s: income, housing, food & shopping, recreation, health care needs (exercise,
primary physician, care giver, ancillary health support staff, specific equipment,
pharmaceuticals), social support (connection to the Senior Center and other community
services), transportation (personal: walk, bike, car; public), resource management.

VSM: The Local Economy

The environment is defined in “Davis community as system in focus” above.
There are different ways of creating System 1s. The most obvious is geographic, with ten
obvious shopping/business communities of up to 10,000 people: from the west,
Stonegate, Marketplace, Anderson, University Mall, Downtown, Southwest, Popsicle,
Nugget, North Mace 80, South Nugget.
Another is by function, and there are other synergies to be found within these: retail,
professional, business support, export, agricultural, production. A large group of UCD
graduates flow into the professional world.

VSM: The daily newspaper

Environment: changing news in the world; potential subscribers; potential advertisers;
competition: (print) Aggie, Sacramento Bee, Woodland Daily Democrat; (electronic)
Vanguard, daviswiki, Craig’s List, sacbee.com
System 1s: News: sports (youth, high school, college, regional and national), city,
campus, county, features (columnists: Bob Dunning, Darrick Bang!, Marion Franck,
Debora DeAngelo, Rich Rifkin), editorial support; advertising; production; delivery
(home, rural, newsracks, online)

VSM: the Davis Food Co-op

Environment: international co-operative movement, National Co-op Grocers Association,
United Natural Foods distribution – Western region, Sacramento regional economy,
Davis economy, UCD
System 1s:

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DELI: meat: beef, pork, chicken, processed food;

bakery: baking, vendor product;
deli: hot food bar, cold food bar, grab and go, sushi,
services (coffee drinks, sandwiches, custom packaging)
DAIRY: fluid milk; cheese
GROCERY: bulk, beer, wine, dry grocery, frozen product
WELLNESS: supplements, books and cards, body care, general merchandise
PRODUCE: organic and conventional, live plants, olive bar

“Start a business” map

This map has a horseshoe on the left, and a circle on the right.
The horseshoe has the open end at the top, and the right side connects to the circle.

The beginning of the horseshoe is: you get a good idea to start a business. The right side
of the top of the horseshoe is you open your business. What are the steps to get around
the horseshoe?

The circle is the annual cycle of your successful, thriving business. Three quarters of the
way around the circle is the end of your fiscal year, and the end of the circle is when you
file your completed taxes, and you are well into your next fiscal year.

This Steps and Ladders board game of the Successful Business is negotiated annually
between city economic development staff, the Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown
Business Association.

Business ideas?
For starters, walk into a large drug type multipurpose store, and look at one shelf that you
could focus on so well that you could make a retail business out of it. Get to know
everything there is to know about how that product or service works, the retail public
face, and then all the jobs that go into putting the product together and to the final
consumer.
Examples? Somewhere in the population of 5,000, most places, or a nearby place
would have: art store, art studio, art gallery (Davis shines), crafts supply, athletic supply
store, automobile parts store, barber shop, bathroom and plumbing accessories store,

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beauty salon, used book store, bike and bike repair, bowling alley, building supply,
cafeteria, candy store, card and gift shop, catalogue and outlet store, stationary, party
goods, copy shop, carpet shop/rugs, convenience store, craft and hobby shop, discount
department store, drug store, dry cleaners, electrical supply store, exercise salon, eye care
and optical dispenser, fabric store, frame shop, athletic club, seamstress, factory outlet,
motorcycle, mopeds, import store, pool hall, restaurant, financial institution – branch,
floral shop, flea market, recycle center, furniture store, gasoline service station, home
improvement center, hosiery, household accessory, ice cream/goodies, ice skating,
jewelry, travel, kitchen cabinet store, kitchen supply, lawn and garden, lawnmower repair
and sales, linen shop, lock and key, luggage, maternity wear, muffler, music (records,
tapes, video), music instruments, nursery, nutrition or health, oil change, paint store,
office supplies, pet supply, photographic equipment, photographic studio, ranch and farm
supply, real estate, repair, grocery, shoes, specialty food, specialty clothing, boutiques,
sporting goods, tv sales and repair, theater, tire and automotive, toys, games, upholstery,
dental, computer, day care, campground, youth hostel, Laundromat, juice bar, hair saloon.

VSM was designed to improve a business. William Christopher, in Holistic

Management: “How can all company actions be coordinated and motivated to achieve
success in creating and keeping customers? VSM can help. To achieve the company’s
targeted goals requires excellence in all of Peter Drucker’s key performance areas:
creating and keeping customers, quality and productivity, innovation, organization
capability, physical and financial resources, public and environmental responsibility, and
profitability. Plus, excellence in using VSM communication channels internally for
managing operations, and externally for customer service, and for dealing with
constraints and threats, and discovering opportunities in environmental change. VSM
doesn’t so much change the company as change the way people think about the
company”.

How VSM might play out in Davis (part 2)

1. City Manager designs a process for council and staff management of a staff VSM
process, 7/10
2. The Davis City Council decides to implement the VSM, 7/10
3. City staff reads Jon Walker’s “Guide to VSM,” Allenna Leonard’s “Personal
VSM,” and Stafford Beer’s “How to Run a Country” (most of which is in this
paper)
4. Structured discussion within each city department about what VSM might look
like in their department, within preliminary City model initially presented by the
City Manager, 8/10
5. City Manager presents staff findings 9/10
6. Public reaction for three months

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 Building a Decentralized Global Political Economy

7. in January, Jon Walker and Angela Espinosa come to Davis for a week of public
workshops in the evenings and city staff workshops in the afternoons. Angela and
Jon arrive on a Monday, address the City Council on Tuesday for a half hour of
question and answer, lead a scheduled workshop for the Planning Commission on
Wednesday, and then focused public workshops at the Veteran’s Memorial Center
Multi-Purpose Room, Thursday evening, Saturday afternoon, and Monday
evening, with the material evolving with each workshop. On Tuesday, present the
results to the Davis City Council
8. which are recommendations for inquiry and potential reorganization of the city
government, and potential changes to the city’s economy.
9. These changes might well include a policy governance alternative to the current
state mandated general plan, a 3-5 page document of specific performance
standards to replace the hundreds of pages of city general plan regulations.
10. And, becoming a charter city with its own, limited governing document to replace
most state regulations.

Global Transformation: Other jurisdictions, at all levels of government up to and

including the United Nations need to shift into the 21st century. Replace useless
regulations with 8-12 key daily statistics, and eliminate the need for half the bureaucracy.
VSM can help you do it. This is from ISSS President-elect Allenna Leonard’s incoming
speech, “Advancing Viable Governance”:
“I would suggest that the Viable System Model could again be applied to monitor
and report on the management of critical variables in the social economy and the natural
environment. We might ask what measures would be analogous to temperature and
blood pressure in the human body that would provide requisite variety? Such a VSM
would not arrive full-blown, but it could be outlined and made widely available even at
an early stage of development. A Syntegration – in other words, a planning process that’s
designed to bring requisite variety to bear on a question – or other group process – could
set the stage.
“It might well be possible to put up qualitative if not quantitative flow charts to
identify indices to populate a basic Viable System Model for each community at several
levels of recursion. People or groups could be invited to fill in the blanks describing the
current state of affairs as they know them. Members of the public could contribute their
local knowledge, ask questions, identify anomalies – or simply add their perspectives.
“Since the VSM typically identifies around ten indices per recursion, the design
requires hard thinking but running it is easier. A key is to think in real time”.

Following the References, is the Appendix, where Stafford explains how it works
together.

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 Building a Decentralized Global Political Economy

For more about the decentralized global information network, see:

“decentralization: Exploring the Prospects for a Consumer-Oriented Economic System,”
in the 1980 proceedings of the Society for General Systems Research, San Francisco,
California, USA
“The Computerized Community: Can we Measure Optimal Community?,” 1995
proceedings of ISSS, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
“Evolving to Sustainability,” 2008 proceedings of ISSS, Madison, Wisconsin, USA
“Surviving the Economy,” 2009 proceedings of ISSS, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
“computa: global matrilineal information service,” 2011 proceedings of ISSS, UK

REFERENCES
Beer, Stafford (1972, 1994), Brain of the Firm, John Wiley, Chichester
Beer, Stafford (1974), Designing Freedom, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Toronto
Beer, Stafford (1975, 1994), Platform for Change, reader’s guide by Jon Li, John Wiley,
Chichester
Beer, Stafford (1979, 1994), The Heart of Enterprise, John Wiley, Chichester
Beer, Stafford (1985), Diagnosing the System: for Organizations, John Wiley, Chichester
Beer, Stafford (1989), “Disseminated Regulation in Real Time, or How to Run a
Country”, in The Viable System Model: Interpretations and Applications, edited by
Raul Espejo and Roger Harnden
Beer, Stafford (1994), Initiates an Audience into the World of Systems and Managerial
Cybernetics, Liverpool Business School, John Moores University, Liverpool, UK
Breed, Warren, (1971), The Self-Guiding Society, Free Press, NY, NY
Callenbach, Ernest (1975), Ecotopia, Banyan Tree, Berkeley
Chernow, Ron (2004), Alexander Hamilton, Penguin Press, London
Christopher, William (2007), Holistic Management: Managing What Matters for
Company Success,
John Wiley, Hoboken, New Jersey
Clark, Glen (2002), A Human Effort (A fifty part poem of history up to now), self-
published
Daly, Herman, Cobb, John Jr. (1994), For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy
toward Community, the Environment and a Sustainable Future, Beacon Press,
Boston

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De Grazia, Alfred (1973), Politics for Better or Worse, Scott, Foresman, Glenview,
Illinois
De Grazia, Alfred (1975), Eight Goods – Eight Bads: The American Contradictions,
Anchor Doubleday, Garden City, NY
Diamond, Jared (2005), Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Viking, NY
Ferguson, Niall (2003), Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the
Lessons for Global Power. New York: Basic Books
Ferguson, Niall (2004), Colossus: The Price of American Empire, Penguin Press, NY,
NY
Ferguson, Niall (2008), The Ascent of Money, Penguin Press, NY
Friedman, Milton, Schwartz, Anna (2008), The Great Contraction, 1929-1933, Princeton
University Press, Princeton, New Jersey
Friedman, Thomas (2008), Hot, Flat & Crowded, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, NY
Fromkin, David (1989), A Peace to End all Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and
the
Creation of the Modern Middle East, Avon, NY
Galbraith, John Kenneth (1977), The Age of Uncertainty: A History of Economic Ideas &
their Consequences, Houghton Mifflin, Boston
Hardin, Garrett (1968), “The Tragedy of the Commons”, in Science, vol 162, no 3859, pp
1243-1248
Hourani, Albert (1991), A History of the Arab Peoples, Warner, NY
Illich, Ivan (1973), Tools for Conviviality, Harper & Row, NY
Illich, Ivan (1974), Energy and Equity, Harper & Row, NY
Jacobs, Jane (1961), The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Random House, NY
Jacobs, Jane (1969), The Economy of Cities, Random House, NY
Jacobs, Jane (1984), Cities and the Wealth of Nations, Random House, NY
Jacobs, Jane (1992), Systems of Survival, Vintage, NY
Jacobs, Jane (2000), The Nature of Economies, Modern Library, NY
Kinsley, Michael J. (1997), Economic Renewal Guide: Collaborative Process for
Sustainable
Community Development, Rocky Mountain Institute, Snowmass Colorado
Kuhn, Thomas (1970), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago
Press, Chicago

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 Building a Decentralized Global Political Economy

Lakoff, George (2008), The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century
American Politics
with an 18th-Century Brain, Viking, NY, NY
Leonard, Allenna (1999), A Viable System Model: Consideration of Knowledge
Management,
Journal of Knowledge Management Practice
Leonard, Allenna, The VSM Applied to Complex Organizations in Crisis,
Address to the 2nd Cwarel Isaf Institute Conference, Internet
Lewis, Bernard (2002), What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern
Response,
Oxford Press, NY
Lewis, Bernard (2003), The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror, Modern
Library, NY
Magnuson, Joel, Mindful Economics: How the U.S. Economy Works, Why it Matters,
and How it Could Be Different, 2008, Seven Stories Press, NY, NY
Maslow, Abraham, (1970), Motivation and Personality, Harper & Row, NY
Maslow, Abraham, (1966), The Psychology of Science: A Reconnaissance, Henry
Regnery, Chicago
McDonough, William, Braungart, Michael, (2002), Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way
We Make Things, North Point Press, NY, NY
Meadows, Donella, Meadows, Dennis, Randers, Jorgen (1992), Beyond the Limits,
Chelsea Green Publishers, Mills Vermont
Medina, Eden (2006), Designing Freedom, Regulating a Nation: Socialist Cybernetics in
Allende’s Chile, Journal of Latin American Studies 38, 571-606, Cambridge
University Press
Mumford, Lewis (1934), Technics and Civilization, Harcourt, Brace, NY
Mumford, Lewis (1961), The City in History, Harcourt, Brace, NY
Obama, Barack, (1995), Dreams From My Father, Three Rivers Press, NY
Obama, Barack, (2006), Audacity of Hope, Three Rivers Press, NY
Odum, Howard, Odum, Elisabeth (2001), A Prosperous Way Down, U. of Colorado
Press, Boulder
Pollan, Michael (2006), The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals,
Penguin, NY

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 Building a Decentralized Global Political Economy

Pollan, Michael, Author’s Talk, Campus Community Book Project, Mondavi Center,
University of California – Davis, 11/29/06, transcribed by Jon Li
Register, Richard (2006), Ecocities: Building Cities in Balance with Nature, Berkeley
Hills, Berkeley
Rogan, Eugene, (2009), The Arabs: A History, Basic Books, NY, NY
Saviano, Roberto (2007), Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International
Empire of Naples’ Organized Crime System, Picador – Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
NY, NY
Snow, C.P. (1959), The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, Cambridge, NY
Taylor, Graeme (2008), Evolution's Edge: The Coming Collapse and Transformation of
Our World, New Society, BC, Canada
Walker, Jon (2006), Viable System Model Guide, on the Internet
Weisman, Alan (2007), The World Without Us, St. Martin’s, NY

Appendix: Stafford Beer’s How to Run a Country

Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model: looking at what is actually happening, identifying
key areas for action, and then trying to determine if the intervention had the intended
impact on the environment – not based on partisan rhetoric, but on pragmatic results.
Every living system has sub-systems which are surviving in a natural environment. The
subsystems must be coordinated and their resources balanced, and the system must be
able to adapt to a changing environment to be sustainable, over time.

The real world test of this idea was in 1972-3, in Chile. Stafford was recruited by the
economists in Salvador Allende’s administration to apply the Viable System Model to
what became 75% of the country’s economy. Each of the major sectors of the economy
was mapped, and their production flows monitored on a daily basis, with the information
given to the manager, supervising foremen, and workers, for review and discussion about
improvement. During the six week Chilean truck strike, with only 20% of the trucks
available, using real time information and just in time scheduling and coordinating,
essential resources were successfully distributed to meet basic needs throughout the
society. The Viable System Model is designed to identify reality, rather than confirm
theory.

Describing how it would look

The following is from “National Government: disseminated regulation in real time, or
‘How to run a country’” by Stafford Beer.

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 Building a Decentralized Global Political Economy

Introduction: The approach of managerial cybernetics to the regulation of large,

complicated, probabilistic systems is based on a number of assumptions which apply to
the organization of government, to the organization of enterprises that generate the
national income, and to the organization of the human communities that constitute the
nation itself. All of the systems have a powerful investment in their own identity. Each
seeks to define its identity, to maintain it, to flourish out of a commitment to itself and a
confidence in its selfhood. Each has an organization whose primary purpose is to
preserve identity – in a word, to survive. Survival, moreover, is not a concept of stasis.
Identity must change – and be gradually modified – as the world changes (it is called
adaptation); otherwise there will be no survival.
For example, a democratic government, in order to survive, must renew its political
mandate at the polls; a dictatorship must instead restrain the exuberance of the people.
Enterprises must make a profit, or they will not survive. Communities must find ways to
survive in balancing their books – between local and federal taxes, between remunerated
and voluntary effort, between recreation and rip-off.
Survival is a function of the total organization of any system that does survive, and
includes its capacity to learn, to adapt, to evolve. A system that does all these things is
called a viable system. The assumptions referred to at the start are the natural ‘laws’ of
any viable system.
The recursive structure of the Viable System Model: The first demonstration of the VSM
is that all viable systems contain viable systems, which are themselves of identical
cybernetic organization to the totality and which are largely autonomous. Thus in
government, Education for example contains primary, secondary and tertiary
components. In Enterprises, the holding company may have largely autonomous
operating divisions, and they in turn largely autonomous companies or plants. In the
largely autonomous provinces or states of the Nation, there are largely autonomous cities,
each having largely autonomous fire and police departments.
In VSM parlance, a drawing of a level of an organization shows the relationship between
one layer and the next layer down. ‘Down’ itself refers simply to organizational
containment: the VSM is not essentially hierarchical, it is essentially an interaction of
subsystems. It is for pictorial and not for logical reasons that the VSM draws only one
pair of recursions at a time. However, every component and every connection to be
found in the total picture stand at 45 degrees to the main axes, as will the connections
between each of the subsystems across the two recursions. It is this mathematical
property (called isomorphism) that entitles us to talk about ‘laws’ of the viable system.
Now if we were to enquire into these three major organizations by asking them for their
‘organization charts’, covering every level of recursion, we should find that we had
hundreds of charts, each as idiosyncratic as the ‘family tree’ of some noble lineage. Such
presentations are without coherence. Any one chart of any one large organization, if
reproduced entire, would cover the whole side of the multi-story edifice housing the
enterprise, and no one would be able to review its viability. But if all such charts are
mapped on to the standard model – the VSM – this becomes possible, severally, and also
in interlocking recursions.

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The practical approach: The mapping of actual organizations on to the VSM is a matter
both of cybernetic technique and of profound knowledge about the particular organization
under study. Thus any given investigatory team must meld together cyberneticians with
local people.
Consider now a practical example of what would happen. The constitutional regulatory
system of the Nation is Recursion One. This includes (Recursion Two) ministerial
government, communities, and the wealth-producing industries, public and private.
Select industries, which includes (Recursion Three) Water Supply, Energy, etc.
Recursion Four of Energy includes the viable systems of Oil, Gas, Electricity, etc. A
VSM team will need to map each of these industries on to the VSM, and in doing so to
visit each of the component companies or plants of each: that will be to map at Recursion
Five.
The level of complexity may sound alarming. It is not. In the first place, the multiplicity
of basic activities encountered across the country have to be managed in any case, and
have to be incorporated into the governmental perception of the national weal in any case.
The cybernetic approach is already making matters easier in two ways.
First, by using the same model, the same regulatory language, and the same information
technology across the board, it becomes easier to synthesize a view of what is really
happening throughout the nation. Second, because the recursions are richly
interconnected, inside each other, models of the higher-order recursion can rapidly be
integrated once the basic systems have been mapped. In managerial cybernetics, the
VSM is passing to-and-fro among the encapsulating recursions not merely numbers, but
Gestalten – whole and integrated patterns – of viability.
With conventional organization chart thinking, people ‘higher up’ take plenty of credit,
because they are ‘organizing’ things. Plenty of costly effort is put into massaging the
basic data so that this ‘organizing’ of things is manifestly justified. All of this glossy
activity creates the illusion that each level produces. Of course it does not. What it does,
if it is effective, is to generate a measure of added-value, deriving from the informational
energy of synoptic vision. Even then, things are fine only so long as the basic operations
do well; see what happens when they fail or fall short of expectation. The illusion is
proven to be such because only credit and not discredit is equally shared. The integration
of a set of recursions of VSMs will not underwrite the illusion. It creates the interlocking
model fast, as a corporate whole.
Now the output of the teams is twofold. In the first place, we expect a VSM-like version
of the organization at each level of recursion. And if that organization has weaknesses
(and which organization has not?) we expect that the modeling process will generate a
succinct list of them. Because the VSM sets out to give a necessary and sufficient
account of the laws of any viable system, it is a tool of intense diagnostic power. (Note:
if the VSM language is used loosely and merely descriptively, then of course its power is
lost.) So we expect some prescriptive suggestions too. After all, the management is itself
implicated in these studies – and so are the workforce representatives whose members
will doubtless bear the brunt of any substantive operational change.

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The second output from the teams’ work is a set of quantified flow charts (QFC). These
are iconic representations of the wealth-producing or results-generating parts of each
organization. The mapping of the organizations on to the VSM retains all the necessary
complexity of viability with all the possible simplicity of topological mathematics. The
QFC in turn offers necessary complexity in operational realities, depicted by a uniform,
iconic set of conventions. And the key conclusions of the QFC work are the agreements
that the whole team reaches as to which major flows and which potential bottlenecks
shall be monitored. There are usually about ten to twenty of them at each level of
recursion, although some may not be simple measurements but more elaborate ones. We
readily perceive relative size, relative slope, relative color, and relative movement,
whereas tabulations have to be disentangled from their level of arithmetical abstraction
into these forms. The cybernetic approach offers to do that for the brain in advance, by
automating the tabulations into iconics – or at least animations.
Evaluating Well-Being: [warning: this section introduces two new words to your
vocabulary.] To this point we have been considering how to structure (by VSM) and how
to measure (by QFC) the wealth-producing or result-producing components of the Nation
– which in VSM parlance is called System One. Systems Two and Three are concerned
entirely with the regulation of balancing a competing group of System Ones.
Let us turn to System Four, which handles the interaction of the whole viable system (that
is the Nation in this case) with the outside world. Of course, System One deals piecemeal
with its own set of environments, as a matter of local adaptation; but System Four acts for
the nation as a whole. For instance, the Minister of Education is part of System One,
whereas the Foreign Minister is part of System Four. But System Four is especially
concerned with an environment that includes the future of its own people. Each
component of System One is involved with the home milieu; but overall responsibility for
the people’s future is a regulatory function shared between the people themselves and the
government agencies that act for them.
The problem is how to measure people-satisfaction. What is the QFC for ‘well-being’,
which Aristotle called EUDEMONY.
The proposed solution is simple, if not simplistic. If people do not always know why
they are feeling happy or sad, they do know that they are so. Fact is, they are doing
computations on components and subjective categories with nonlinear metrics inside
themselves, and they do not have conscious access either to the internalized model or to
the weighting system or to the process. Let the respondent do the heavy scientific work
for us.
An algedonic measure (from algos=pain, hedos=pleasure) offers no analysis of the
eudemonic condition, but only measures it:
• Respondents are offered a task so straightforward that it is not threatening.
• They are very deliberately told that they will not be asked to explain their setting; the
setting itself is the end of the encounter.
• The measurement system is analogue, and therefore does not pose difficult
distinctions: it calls on a ‘right brain’, intuitive response.

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• Nonetheless, it generates a 100-point two-digit index on the reverse side.

• It uses vernacular language, rather than an artificial or academic one – as direct a
reading as can be gotten.
Respondents are shown a card with an orange circle in the middle, and they can adjust the
circle into a pie shape that is blue; the orange represents happy, and the blue shape
represents miserable, and the respondent adjusts the pie shape to reflect how they feel on
a happy/miserable continuum.
What is the use of this measure, if it is not susceptible to analysis? It is intended to:
• To discriminate between sex, age, region, education and social class – which are
accepted as objective demographic categories. If all the young people are happy, and
only the departing are miserable, we are doing well – unless it is a ‘seasonal effect’ of
ageing. We shall eventually find that out: possibly a major discovery. Or if twice as
many educated are miserable as compared with the less educated, what then?
• To observe trends and to correlate them with managerial options.
• To detect incipient instability in the sense of any population’s self-image of well-
being: a vital potential input, hitherto created, monitored, and reinforced by the media
rather than by the people themselves.
The quantified flow chart that the sum of the responses generates is broken down at the
next level of recursion by the demographic categories used.
Measurement in real time: It is a crucial question as to how frequently these
measurements (QFC) should be made. In the inherited system they are made on an
epochal basis: each month, quarter, year. It is central to the cybernetic thesis here
advanced that they ought to be measured continuously. Then the advocacy turns out to
say: measure daily. For although a day is itself an epoch, it is sufficiently small as to
generate time series that approximate a continuum. We are effectively in real time.
Critics often argue that government does not need such rapid information input, and if it
had such a thing it would over-react. The first complaint is basically a statement of
stereotype: ‘everyone knows’ that such instant input is not needed because no-one has it,
nor can they see how to get it – officially, bureaucratically, that is. On the other hand,
everyone knows (without quotation marks) that government is driven, as before a storm,
by instant information channeled through the mass media, and often generated by them.
This makes nonsense of authenticity. The official bureaucratic information system
spends its effort in trying to keep pace, to justify its masters, to excuse the mistakes that
may not even have been made. The situation is chaotic. The complaint as to likely over-
reaction is merely risible in this context. A properly designed cybernetic system does not
over-react, because it has properly calculated feedback functions that smooth
irregularities and impose delays that are systematically appropriate. The present instant-
response system, which has not been properly designed (nor designed at all), is as over-
reactive as could possibly be.

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What is the true case for real-time management? Consider the monthly epoch. Managers
are proud if they have last month’s figures by the second Tuesday of this month. It is far
too late to do anything about any of that, except to learn. We learn from our mistakes,
and resolve to avoid those particular errors in the future. We learn from our successes,
too. But nothing has actually changed. If, however, we operate today on yesterday’s
figures (approximating today’s, and close to real time), the situation is quite different. It
remains the case that we cannot change what happened yesterday. But what we can learn
concerns something: recognition of incipient instability.
If what happened yesterday, and is probably happening still now, is not so much a
triumph or a disaster but a rocking-of-the-boat, and if we can detect that at once, then we
may be able to restore the equilibrium. The disaster may never happen. The success may
be assured.
We can now turn to a concept of management that has the power to manage, that is to
say, it may do something now so that the future will be different from the future that
would otherwise have been. This is the definition of planning, which is not a matter of
toying with scenarios (a support function) but of taking decisions – so that the future may
be different. It is easy to see how this holds for the future that ought one day to be, which
is the topic of normative planning. It really holds too for the future that could be (if we
work hard) fairly soon, whose topic is strategic planning. But the future that will be
almost immediately, which is supposedly the subject of tactical planning, is foisted upon
us – because our information is so lagged. This ‘future’ has already happened by the time
that its likelihood is signaled, simply because the signal itself is still getting through the
works.
We may ‘return’ to the power to manage in the short-term: ‘return” is proposed because it
was once possible to observe activities under command, dislike the outcomes, and issue
new orders instantly. In this way, managers quelled incipient instabilities. The inability
to do this today is an artifact of our immensely cluttered, bureaucratic and inept systems –
computerized though they may be. Consider the absurdity of a government’s employing
an army of econometricians in order to forecast (from lagged data) where we already are.
It is what happens. And because the forecasts are often wrong, we decide our plans as
proceeding from an initial position that we never occupied in the first place.
The point of collecting all the data points daily from the QFCs, and channeling them into
a steady data stream, is to be instantly aware of a structured reality. The data stream has
to be revitalized within that data structure – provided by the logic of the VSMs and the
QFCs. That logic is stored in a computer, together with data reference points for every
indicator measured. These data points were established when the trans-disciplinary teams
agreed their original findings.

For each point identified and measured, the teams established a normative (should be)
and a strategic (could be) target. What the tactical result (will be) actually is arrives
virtually as it occurs.

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Comparisons of these actual results with the stored expectations at each level of planning
provides a set of three indices for each arriving data point. Each is expressed as a two-
digit number. The task now is to detect incipient instability in the data streams, and this
is the task of Cyberfilter, a computer software package. As to its criterion of instability, it
is not merely picking out exceptions to the norm, and not only measuring variances from
means, these being traditional accountancy practices. Cyberfilter has the criterion of
discovering instabilities that have importance to the manager, in terms of the possibilities
of corrective action before any damage is done.
Take one index, newly calculated, and set it into its own time series. The program uses a
technique to estimate four probabilities. How likely is it that this point is merely a chance
variation? How likely is it to be a transient bit of noise in the system? How likely is it to
be contributing to a change of slope? And how likely is it to represent a step function?
Chance variations or transients are of no importance to a manager, and s/he is not told
about them. But if a slope change or a step change seems likely, then this may signify
incipient instability. It goes straight to the manager’s desktop computer screen. Because
of the rules of local autonomy built into the VSM, no-one but the responsible manager
has access to this message. If the trend is not corrected within the agreed time, an
algedonic signal goes to the next recursion upward. After appropriate delay, it is passed
on to the next level, until matters are in order.
inConclusion: Information is Potential
The problem with the 20th Century Management Structure is that it has become so
complicated that it has become a product of its own uncontrollable oscillations. The
mindset of the dominant management thinking is that the solution to complexity is greater
regulation, which is increasing the likelihood of accelerated random complications. The
only improved situation would be to create a more sophisticated regulatory system with
fewer layers, as Viable System Model is specifically designed to facilitate.
Jon Li is usually seen around Davis on his bicycle on his way to a meeting.

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