Resilient Systems Design

4/4
Many fields encounter this same issue, costing time, money, lives and our trust in each other and sense of purpose. The need for understanding complex systems is as great as ever, but also the retention of compassion. Be more kind, my friends.

3/ immediate transparency and engagement with stakeholders; a systems-level analysis of the organisation and learning structures; and a culture of fairness and compassion.

2/ While this is an interesting lesson in emergence, the response and learning are also illustrative.
Rather than be defensive in these situations – “we’ll look into it” or “there’s nothing we can do due to x or y policy” – a more constructive response would include...

Surprisingly often, large organisations and their connected regulatory systems can cause harm despite every component acting correctly. Recently I reviewed the Takata Airbag scandal, and this was clear despite the accusatory stance of all parties. 1/

When interrelating breaks down, individuals represent others
in the system in less detail, contributions are shaped less by
anticipated responses, and the boundaries of the envisaged
system are drawn more narrowly, with the result that
subordination becomes meaningless. - Weick & Roberts, 1993

Following on from the last post, which models do people find best for studying behavior and environments, and identifying design features which will promote 'good' adaptations and reject poor options at a critical phase transition? Currently reading Marten Scheffer on this topic.

So some questions from this are (1) what influences the system to transform spontaneously vs deciding to shift to a new state, (2) how can that be supported quickly in environments such as the healthcare setting used, and (3) what are your thoughts on the models and descriptive frameworks used?

A big question in the physical sciences is how systems respond to internal and external stressors. The ideas of brittleness and elasticity, what invokes a transformation of that system? In sociotechnical systems, the 'rules' and boundaries become even murkier.

acelab.tamu.edu/wp-content/u...

From different fields, using different approaches, we all stand to learn much from each other. Mathematics, put rather simply, is the science of patterns, and the key to much work in complexity science is understanding these patterns.

doi.org/10.1518/0018...
doi.org/10.1038/natu...

"Traditionally, safety research and industrial safety management have focused on unwanted events and outcomes. In the growing field of resilience engineering, a proactive approach to safety management is pursued. Success and failure are seen as outcomes of the same underlying behavior." - Hollnagel

Emergence and non-emergence for system safety Emergence has been proposed as an important construct for research on the safety of sociotechnical systems. There is, however, some dissension about the fundamental nature of emergence. Furthermore...

There is beauty in understanding the components and interactions that make up the world. But out of those comes things which are much more interesting... something emergent. This discovery and discussion of emergence is crucial for the ongoing development of our field.

doi.org/10.1080/1463...

This page won't just be quotes. It's an ongoing conversation about complexity, what makes complex systems tick, and what we can do to design systems for safety and performance rather than putting the onus on end users to accommodate broken systems. Follow if that sounds good to you!

“Resilience is not just about bouncing back from setbacks. It’s about becoming stronger and better at adapting to a constantly changing environment.” - Kathleen Sutcliffe

“The beauty of a flower is not diminished by the fact that we know it is made of cells and molecules. It only adds.” - Richard Feynman