[i]The ideal container is then an energetic multiplier that brings into play the full energy of human beings. All of them and every part of them. It creates complete alignment and hence the full energetic force becomes available[/i]

I use what I call an allignment of “core values” in looking to find the most relevant common denominators for a link. Is this what you have in mind here? I’m talking here about baseline things like ethics, dreams, aspirations, values, etc…as opposed to surface business connections like industry, sector or common markets and client bases.

Also, if the P53 facilitator is not a CEO, then what should they be? I realize CEO’s have the reputation of being what would be termed the provider in this model but frankly I believe good ones are balanced in these other areas as well. Where do you think the best P53 facilitator is slotted in terms of their relation to the group? Are they moderating the group in formal discussions or setting a conference agenda or merely working behind the scenes to keep the flow of communication going?

I found this discussion pretty intriguing, particuarly the emphasis on reach vs. impact in terms of numerical group size and the three representations of diversity. Japanese managerial structures allow for the flow of knowledge and shared risk & rewards both top down and bottom up, with middle management umpiring innovation to executive decision makers with grass roots ideas. Emergent enterprises are the true destination of the web 3.0 convergence strategies.

We are all social creatures, whether you agree that we are systemic by nature or not. I see a lot of room for the all important trust factor here within the context of every endeavor we are faced with, and perhaps the most important thing I took from this discussion was the need to avoid cheating people out of assuming risk for themselves…a tendency I fear my nurturing instinct employs when I’m not pioneering some new fangled idea from who knows where. Humans if anything, tend to stratify most of life itself into systems, education, religion, politics, law, economics, social, etc…we are late to the party in building a trust system however. And as the OP notes, we’d better move on it fast.

Our consciousness is unique – yes. But it is a product of culture and humans uniquely adapt or not by using culture. All others have to adapt or not in some physical form.

We have therefore less choice than we think. Actually choice for us as humans is constrained by our cultural pressures.

Smoking is not a simple smoke or not smoke choice. Obesity is not a simple eat more or less choice. All our choices are affected by cultural pressure of one sort or another.

We are affected immensely by our cultural environment. The research is quite clear now for childhood development. Our worldview and our ability to make good choices is largely set by 6 and is set by the cultural environment of primarily the parent/s and the immediate area.

Each of us has a predisposition that is innate and a tendency that is acquired in childhood. The Nature Nurture tension.

Our “reality” as humans is a “screen” of culture.

One of the most challenging “screens” we have to cope with now is that we have a strong preference for only “seeing” the Tangible. So we focus on the symptoms and not the causes. So heart disease is about cholesterol etc. Education is about schools.

But in nearly every case the intangibles – what I call the container- drive the tangibles.

At the core of most disease is our immune system – it can be strengthened or weakened by stress – stress for us as humans is not about facing immediate danger – as with all primates it is social. Where do I fit? How much control do I have compared to what is demanded of me? Am I rising or falling? Am I in control or helpless.

Sustained stress based on low control and high demand – drives a bath of cortisol that weakens the immune system. This is where most people are today in our post industrial society where most have mo control at all.

We have shifted our culture too far toward the “Provider” sector. This is all about winners and losers and less than 1% are winners right now.

My main point in these articles is to offer up the hard to see perspective that Human Culture – a product of our consciousness – is what drives us. That a healthy culture is a balanced system of the 3 main character types that are found innately in all humans. That there is an ideal ratio – I have not got to this yet but it looks like a 1 for Pioneer 2 for Provider and 3 for Nurturer.

If you think of where we are right now, intuitively we can feel that we have shifted too far to Provider – it’s all about winners and losers and transactions.

The results we can see all around us.

I think we are understanding systems the same in the sense that the way you talk about systems in nature, like suns, galaxies, etc – I think these are systems and therefore you can look at systems theory for very helpful explanations and insights.

Even the human body can be seen as a system, and thank goodness it is because it makes much of our medical knowledge possible, for example surgical procedures.

As systems, they are amenable to our thinking about systems, including, where appropriate, complex adaptive systems.

I am saying that human interaction, society and organisations are not systems. Because human interaction is involved. And therefore any form of systems thinking is inappropriate when thinking about the interation of human beings in any form of social endeavour.

Much of western thinking about management has imported systems thinking directly into the organisational realm, and this is inappropriate.When dealing with organisations, you are not dealing with a system. You are dealing with a complex set of human interactions in which the human participants have choice and consciousness. In a system, the parts do not have choice and consciousness. The root of an oak tree cannot decide “I don’t want to be a root any more, I think I’ll study how to be a leaf, let’s enroll in photosynthesis 101.”

Ergo, human society, organisations and interaction do not comprise systems. So forget any kind of systems thinking.

Every part of nature is nested in a “system”. An ecology that has an ideal shape and a life cycle. Not only living things but say Suns or even Galaxies.

All relationships in Nature have a few simple but immutable rules – gravity – gasses – light – the quantum world – all of these drive patterns all are systems operating in the context of other systems

This is what I mean – is this more clear now?

We ideally live best in an ecology that has a shape – pattern.

You spend some time describing analogies between complex adaptive systems and the human world, and social media. Such analogies appear attractive.

They are based on the assumption that the social world of humans is a system, and you are offering a different way of thinking about the system of humans.

I would like to suggest that in fact the human world is not a system, our societies are not systems and our organisations are not systems. In systems the parts work to form a whole and are related to each other in terms of their function for the whole.

However, humans have choice, will, consciousness, power relating and many other factors that the parts of systems, like acorns, do not have. In fact human society is not a system and the systems thinking tools do not work in the human world. What you are writing has seductive appeal but is based on assumptions that do not stack up.