It could be argued that tribes, communities of practice, organizations, and societies accrete symbolic systems that forge a common language over time to accomplish tasks usually related to the preservation, extension of power, and access to resources needed to continue to flourish and allow these networks within boundaries to feel a sense of agency and empowerment. Indeed, when one group or tribe within a larger ecosystem feels threatened or produces radical new ideas, the heretical rebels leverage common metaphors, symbols, and tactics to achieve strategic goals – at first rebelling against the existing power structure (writing manifestos, throwing molotov cocktail), supplanting the existing “high priests”. Eventually, though, they develop the same rituals that previous power structure utilized to maintain and extend their power base – the heretics eventually become the high priests of a new caste system and then anoint their own saints. We have seen this evolution in social systems and the accretion of ‘webs of signification’ in the context of IT in general and software design and development in particular. The anthropologist Clifford Geertz said that “man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs,” which can inform our understanding of tribes in a software enterprise setting. With each new principled-based movement within IT, from RUP to Agile, to Lean Software, to Lean UX and more recently DevOps and Lean Startup, the new tribe has the need to extend it’s power base beyond the context for which it was originally intended. Even if each tribe armed with their own methods and practices makes sense at a given time and place, this does not necessarily mean it’s appropriate or strategic from a systems, wholistic, enterprise, or societal perspective. This notion is important in making strategic decisions from an enterprise perspective in terms of which ideology to deploy, how to allocate resources, and how to ensure that across the portfolio of potential ‘bets’ the appropriate methods are deployed. This tension – between tribes that wish to enjoy greater agency by proselytizing their ideology and methods into other domains, and the needs of the organization, which seeks balance across multiple competing factions to actually achieve enterprise-wide goals, is the primary challenge faced by leaders. We’ll explore these notions, and seek to understand the various roles, practices, and methods that are either local-optima or more global in perspective, to seek to provide a framework for decision-making in uncertain and turbulent times. We’ll unpack the relationship between different horizons from probable to possible, and provide some heuristics for when things like Design Thinking or LeanUX are most appropriate, and when Agile, PMBOK, or ITIL frameworks might be the most authentic satisficing lens through which to make decisions.

1. On Context
Methods and Mindsets for Situational Awareness
WILLIAM EVANS
Copyright © 2016-2018 William Evans

2. The Problem
(Spaces)
§ Organizational Debt
§ Scale Agile Everywhere!
§ Bi-Modal Asshattery
§ Sprinkle me some DevOps
§ But Deming said…(and other name-dropping)
§ It’s about Culture (whatever the *fuck that is)
§ Local Optima
Copyright © 2016-2018 William Evans

3. “The bastard form of mass
culture is humiliated
repetition... always new books,
new programs, new films,
news items, but always the
same meaning.”
― Roland Barthes
SEMANTIC FOUNDRY ATELIERMADE WITH LOVE
SCALING AGILE

4. “Perversion, at its most fundamental,
resides in the formal structure of how
the subject relates to truth and speech.
The pervert claims direct access to some
figure of the big other ( from God or
history, Gartner or Forrester), so that,
dispelling all the ambiguity of language,
he is able to act directly as the
instrument of the big other's will.”
Žižek on
Perversion

5. § Start with the context.
§ Whole system(s), not local optima.
§ Both value streams and value chains are important.
§ Adapt processes & methods based on situational
awareness inside of culture.
§ Methods are methods, not religions.
§ Consume uncertainty with small experiments to
create more information.
§ Change starts small through practice modulated by
habitus with respect to culture.
Key Takeaways

6. Ontological Design is the design
of ways of being — not just
the purposeful creation of
mental scafolding, but rather
facilitating the evolution of
human capability within social
systems.
Social systems focused on
catalyzing, facilitating, and
enabling situated and embodied
human cognition and action.
Ontological Design
“To begin simply, ontological designing is a way of
characterising the relation between human
beings and lifeworlds.” - Anne-Marie Willis

7. “The intentional creation
of purposeful systems.”
— Jabe Bloom

8. ASSUMPTION 1
We all exist (beingness)
with(in) system(s).

9. ASSUMPTION 2
We are all responsible for
the design, development,
and maintenance of systems
that ideally* create value.

10. ASSUMPTION 3
We are in this to create.
Specifically we are in this
to create value – that is to
create things that solve
problems for customers
for which they are willing
to exchange some value.
SEMANTIC FOUNDRY ATELIERMADE WITH LOVE

11. ASSUMPTION 4
I believe Agile (and) Lean(x), affords better
ways of creating new things of value.
B E C A U S E :
• Tight feedback loops
• Small batches to ship value
• Customer interactions
• Experimentation
• Incremental and iterative

12. Boundaries
“There was a wall. It did not look important. It was
built of uncut rocks roughly mortared. An adult
could look right over it, and even a child could climb
it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a
gate it degenerated into mere geometry, a line, an idea
of boundary. But the idea was real. It was important.
For seven generations there had been nothing in the
world more important than that wall.
Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced. What
was inside it and what was outside it depended upon
which side of it you were on.”
— Ursula Le Guin, The Dispossessed
SEMANTIC FOUNDRY ATELIERMADE WITH LOVE

13. As organizations grow, scale, and mature, they develop
structures, policies, rules, norms, and taboos most
appropriate for their maturity and the exploitation of
existing value streams.
To become more resilient and capable of strategic play,
exploration, and evolution, they will need to ‘refactor the
code’ of the organization? Organizational debt becomes a
context-free constraint on survivability.
SEMANTIC FOUNDRY ATELIERMADE WITH LOVE
Organizational Debt

14. Organizational Debt

15. But What is Culture?
“A pattern of shared basic assumptions
learned by a group as it solved its problems of
external adaptation and internal integration
(…) A product of joint learning.”
– Edgar Schein
Organizations are socio-technical systems
in which the modalityof external
adaptation and the solutioning of internal
integration problems are interdependent,
co-evolving, and complex.

16. Culture as Webs
“Man is an animal
suspended in webs of
significance he himself has
spun. I take culture to be
those webs.”
– Clifford Geertz
SEMANTIC FOUNDRY ATELIERMADE WITH LOVE

17. Webs of Signification

18. Sensemaking
Semantics
“Meaning exists in the
interactions between things,
not in the things themselves.”
– Alicia Juarrero

19. Sensemaking Systems
“A system is not a sum of behaviors of its
parts; it’s a product of their interactions.”
— Russel Ackoff
SEMANTIC FOUNDRY ATELIERMADE WITH LOVE

20. Foucault on Power
• Legitimate Power which is formal authority in a hierarchy.
• Expert Power is derived from possessing knowledge or
expertise in a particular area.
• Referent Power is based on the use and exercise of
interpersonal relationships a person cultivates and social
capital a person accumulates.
• Coercive Power is derived from a person’s ability and
willingness to influence others through threats, violence, or
sanctions.
• Reward Power arises from a person’s ability to influence the
allocation of incentives within an organization including pay,
appraisals and promotions
• Informational Power relates to a person’s ability to control
the flow of information and disinformation within a social
group.
“There is no power relation without a
correlative constitution of a field of
knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not
presuppose at the same time power relations.”
– Michel FoucaultFrench, John R. and Raven, Bertram (1959) The Bases of Social Power. Studies in Social Power

21. Structuring
Structures
Power is created and
recreated culturally and
symbolically, and re-
legitimizes itself through
the interactions between
agents and structure.

22. Bourdieu’s Habitus
“The relation to ‘what is possible’ is
ultimately a relation to power.”
— pierre bourdieu
SEMANTIC FOUNDRY ATELIERMADE WITH LOVE

23. Habitus
Habitus is ‘the way society
becomes deposited in persons in
the form of lasting dispositions,
or trained capacities and
structured propensities to think,
feel and act in determinant ways,
which then guide them’.

24. Practice (or habit) isn't a matter
of cultural conformity to
structures of power - there is an
interaction between agency and
structure - it is adaptive (or
some some cases maladaptive)
but also strategic, reactive and
active, as well as modulated by
cultural signifiers whilst
temporally influenced by them.
Practices

25. A field is a network, structure or
set of relationships in which
people express and reproduce
their dispositionality, where they
engage in practice, and where
they compete for the
distribution of different kinds of
capital.
Fields

26. Habitus is constituted through the
exchange of 4 kinds of capital
between agents in a field modulated
by habitus:
§ Financial capital
§ Social capital
§ Cultural capital
§ Symbolic capital
Four Capital(s)

27. Four Capital(s)

28. Identity Management
Agents take action within a system
through the performance of context-
aware identities.
Identies are managed, and co-evolve
within the system and are sustainted
to act through the exchange of
various capitals.
Capitals enable agents to perform
their identities within microcultural
boundaries.
SEMANTIC FOUNDRY ATELIERMADE WITH LOVE

29. Facing the Problem
“Convictions are more dangerous
foes of truth than lies.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
SEMANTIC FOUNDRY ATELIERMADE WITH LOVE

30. Mapping the Domain

31. Evolution

32. Evolution

33. Three Horizons View

34. Methods to Context

35. Praxis to Domain Mapping
FROM WARDLEY, SIMON, “ON PIONEERS, SETTLERS, TOWN PLANNERS AND THEFT.”

36. Dispositions to Domains

37. Situational Dynamics
FROM WARDLEY, SIMON, “ON PIONEERS, SETTLERS, TOWN PLANNERS AND THEFT.”

38. Habitus Dynamics

39. Tribal Dynamics

40. Heretics
Heretics are agents with(in) a system,
characterized by a practical evaluation
and mastery of the terrain to see new
opportunities to create new
knowledge outside the ortho(doxa).

41. High Priests
High Priests are agents acting within a
system whose dispositionality allows
them to evolve new knowledge from
heretics into the system, integrating it
with the power structure, extracting
the value, enforcing behavioral norms,
and maintaining the system of power
flows through the gospel.

42. Hagiolotry
Hagiolotry is simply the making of
saints. Sometimes High Priests can
become saints, but more often than
not it’s the heretics that become
saints after execution.
Saints act as powerful attractors
within a social system, and can reify
unstated, tacit, or taboo stories to
bind actions.

43. Contextual Awareness
§ What are requisite variety of dispositions and practices for
pioneers (heretics*), as well as the processes and methods
deployed are different than in other domains?
* Remember that heretics
have a history of getting
burned at the stake.

44. Contextual Awareness
§ What are requisite variety of dispositions and practices for
pioneers (heretics*), as well as the processes and methods
deployed are different than in other domains?
§ It’s about the movement between domains, and the
interactions between teams and across domains where
novelty can turn into capability.
* Remember that heretics
have a history of getting
burned at the stake.

45. Contextual Awareness
§ What are requisite variety of dispositions and practices for
pioneers (heretics*), as well as the processes and methods
deployed are different than in other domains?
§ It’s about the movement between domains, and the
interactions between teams and across domains where
novelty can turn into capability.
§ Expertise (High Priests*) is important and valuable, but can
also become a trap.
* Remember that heretics
have a history of getting
burned at the stake.

46. Contextual Awareness
§ What are requisite variety of dispositions and practices for
pioneers (heretics*), as well as the processes and methods
deployed are different than in other domains?
§ It’s about the movement between domains, and the
interactions between teams and across domains where
novelty can turn into capability.
§ Expertise (High Priests*) is important and valuable, but can
also become a trap.
§ Be pragmatic in your approach to the application of
methods and practices. Thought leaders aren’t saints that
should be followed blindly.
* Remember that heretics
have a history of getting
burned at the stake.

47. Final Thoughts
§ Start with the context.
§ Whole system(s), not local optima.
§ Both value streams and value chains are important.
§ Adapt processes & methods based on situational
awareness inside of culture.
§ Methods are methods, not religions.
§ Consume uncertainty with small experiments to create
more information.
§ Change starts small through practice modulated by
habitus with respect to culture.

48. References
Bourdieu, P. (1980). The Logic of Practice. Stanford,
Stanford University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the
Judgement of Taste. London, Routledge.
Bourdieu, P. (1986). ‘The Forms of Capital’. Handbook of
Theory and Research for the Sociology of Capital. J. G.
Richardson. New York, Greenwood Press: 241-58.
Foucault, M. (1991). Discipline and Punish: the birth of a
prison. London, Penguin.
Foucault, Michel. "The Subject and Power." In Michel
Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics,
edited by H. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow, pp. 208-226. 2nd
ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983.
Gaventa, J. (2003). Power after Lukes: a review of the
literature, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies.
Geertz, Clifford (1977), The Interpretation of Culture,
Basic Books Classics
Juarrero, Alicia (2002). Dynamics in Action, MIT Press,
Cambridge, Massachusettes
Moncrieffe, J. (2006). “The Power of Stigma: Encounters
with ‘Street Children’ and ‘Restavecs’ in Haiti.” IDS
Bulletin 37(6): 31-46.
VeneKlasen, L. and V. Miller (2002). A New Weave of
Power, People and Politics: The Action Guide for
Advocacy and Citizen Participation. Oklahoma City,
World Neighbors.
Wardley, Simon, “On Pioneers, Settlers, Town Planners
and Theft.”
Wardley, Simon, “An introduction to Wardley (Value
Chain) Mapping”

49. THANKS
Will Evans
will@semanticfoundry.com
@SemanticWill
http://semanticfoundry.com
http://linkedin/in/semanticwill
Copyright © 2016-2017 William EvansCopyright © 2016-2017 William Evans