Multi-ontology sense making: a new simplicity in decision making

• Main Author: David Snowden
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT 2005-03-01
• Series: Journal of Innovation in Health Informatics
• Online Access: http://hijournal.bcs.org/index.php/jhi/article/view/578
• ISSN: 2058-4555; 2058-4563

Imagine organising a birthday party for a group of young children. Would you agree a set of learning objectives with their parents in advance of the party? Would those objectives be aligned with the mission statement for education in the society to which you belong? Would you create a project plan for the party with clear milestones associated with empirical measures of achievement? Would you start the party with a motivational video so that the children did not waste time in play not aligned with the learning objectives? Would you use PowerPoint to demonstrate to the children that their pocket money is linked to achievement of the empirical measures at each milestone? Would you conduct an after-action review at the end of the party, update your best practice database and revise standard operating procedures for party management? No! Instead, like most parents, you would create barriers to prevent certain types of behaviour, you would use attractors (party games, a football, a videotape) to encourage the formation of beneficial largely self-organising identities; you would disrupt negative patterns early, to prevent the party becoming chaotic, or necessitating the draconian imposition of authority. At the end of the party you would know whether it had been a success, but you could not have defined (in other than the most general terms) what that success would look like in advance.