On your first question, about metrics for social-capital. Short answer is that no. I haven’t done any direct metrics on that. The main work I’ve don in that regard is a diagnostic/metric called SEMPER – see sempermetrics.com. It’s more about measuring ‘ability to do work’ in a given context, and then working out what to do to improve it – which in effect is a kind of metric of social-capital, but possibly not in the sense that you mean.

It’s also not ‘mathematical’, in that it’s based in narrative-enquiry rather than external analysis. It is possible to put the results of multiple SEMPER diagnostics through the usual statistical mill if required, though I’m not convinced that’s always a useful thing to do – the deviations and ‘outliers’ are often a lot more important than the norms or averages, for example.

On your second question, about high-school as enterprise: again, no, I haven’t done direct work in that context (though I can put you in touch with others in Britain who have, if that’ll help). But it doesn’t take much to transfer the same reasoning over to there. For example:

- An ‘enterprise’ is in essence a ‘community of commitment’ (see ‘What is an enterprise?‘ on Slideshare); an ‘organisation’ is a social-construct bounded by rules and responsibilities; a high-school is merely one example of where these intersect. An organisation in effect is a common reference-point for an intersecting set of enterprises: what are the ‘commitments’ that describe those enterprises? What potential shared-commitment – i.e. ‘the enterprise’ for ‘the organisation’ – that can be used (as one of my clients put it) as “a totem-pole for all the tribes”?

- One of the most visible drivers in high-school, and especially for drop-outs, is what they term ‘respect’. If we look at the market model – the intersection of purpose, relationships, conversations and transactions – one of the ways in which that is expressed is in respect: ‘respect’ precedes attention precedes transaction in the market-sequence. The catch is that respect is actually social, whereas many in school (again, especially drop-outs) will think of it as a personal possession – because that is how they experience it. Given the confusions of this culture, they will often regard ‘respect’ as a ‘right’, and/or as something that can be ‘bought’ via transactions; we also see strong evidence of the delusion that ‘power is the ability to avoid work’, especially relational-work, in that ‘respect’ apparently negates any need to relate with others as peers, but instead enables non-negotiable static hierarchies of ’superiority’ versus ‘inferiority’.

I don’t know if this is making sense? – it probably needs a better explanation than I’m giving it here… But hope this will help as a start, anyway. And yes, would be glad to talk with you more about this!

I haven’t seen this stated quite this clearly before. It brings to mind two questions.

First on the issue of “metrics” for social capital. Following the framework you lay out in the post, it seems to me that associations and relationships lend themselves to behavior that can be observed. Once behavioral data is indentified mathematical models can be brought into play. I wonder if you’ve done work in that direction.

Second, have you or others who share this point of view ever focused on the high school as an enterprise? My thought is that if problem in high school dropout factories were framed as a deficit of social capital, it should be possible to craft minimally invasive interventions that makes

While walking my own labyrinth, I suddenly remembered your description of the labyrinth and learning, and chuckled. I guess I was having a long night of the soul. After that sense of perspective came back, and I’d had some sleep *grin*–well, the programming got done, and was better than before. I really do like the end result.

I came here to see if you’d published the concept anywhere — you have — and found this post.

Hello, Wyrd.

Not surprised this would make sense from an Army perspective, because infantry especially will need to be able to think fast on the fly, keeping the focus on the overall mission whilst adapting tactics to meet often rapidly-changing circumstances. Rigid rule-following was necessary in Roman or Napoleonic times, because the tactics (the line, the square) depended on unity and on interlock; but it’s not a viable tactic in an urban guerilla context. The old Taylorist analytic ’scientific management’, with its rigid hierarchies and equally rigid separation between ‘brain’ and ‘brawn’, does indeed work well for specific tasks (McDonald’s ‘THE way to clean a floor”) or for a wider context when there is little or no change; but the ‘anarchist’ skillset needs to come more to the fore wherever there are complex conditions and high rates of change. Neither the ‘analyst’ nor the ‘anarchist’ are correct for all circumstances: we need to be able to do either, as appropriate, according to the context. Which means we first need to know what the context is, how we use each skillset, and when and why we need to switch between them.

On the Cynefin ’sense / analyse / respond’ etc, perhaps ought to point out that these are selected decision/response tactics that would be used within a full process-loop such as John Boyd’s OODA, Deming’s PDCA or the Six-Sigma DMAIC. Follow the link on the Wikipedia page on Cynefin to Dave Snowden’s HBR article for more details on this, or contact Dave direct at Cognitive Edge. (Dave was formerly one of IBM’s leading consultants on knowledge-management – I know he’s worked with US Army and similar groups in the past, if that’s of interest.)

I was intrigued by your comment about “comparing business anarchist, organizational anarchist, and enterprise anarchist”. You’re right, they are different contexts, with somewhat different skillsets, though what I was focussing more on here was the contrasts between the roles and functions of overall ‘analyst’ and ‘anarchist’ skillsets. As you’ll see from my other weblog ( weblog.tomgraves.org ), my main business focus at present is an extended form of enterprise-architecture that covers the whole enterprise rather solely the enterprise-IT. The ‘enterprise-anarchist’ skillset comes in with common concerns such as applying a business-, performance- or technical-reference model (see FEAF or DODAF) to a real-world context where ‘the rules’ specified by the reference-model need adaptation to be usable in practice. In essence, I regard this aspect of enterprise-architecture and like as a bridge between strategy, operations and risk/opportunity-management – with the former and the latter relying more on the ‘anarchist’, and operations (or management, at any rate!) probably more preferring the ‘analyst’.

I also agree strongly with your point about the distinction between ‘breaking rules’ versus ’superseding rules’ – a subtle but very important distinction. The key anchor here is that the vision (’overall mission of missions’ might be an equivalent term in a military context?) provides both the justification and the guiide for any context in which we need to supersede ‘the rules’ of the ’standard operating procedure’ or the like. If we bend the rules, we expect to do so with full responsibility, and also with sufficient reason to show why we supersede the standard rules.

Much food for thought – many thanks again, anyway.

Of Michelle Tripp’s six skills, I concur completely – however, I would like to build upon skill #1. Instead of breaking rules, I would prefer superseding rules. This is important to bring out a focus on the actual concern. The concern would be upon that which is created such that that which is superseded is demonstrated as such. Interestingly, the superseding state obtained is gained though the exercise of the other five skills. What really intrigued me was the discussion of sense/ analyze/ respond. There are several of these types of process outlines. However, I find John Boyd’s OODA loop (observe/ orient/ decide/ act) to be most compelling due to its mathematical foundation and its demonstrated truth. I say truth, because a true anarchist enjoys heresy. I end with the following links – good places to start looking into this, if you wish:

http://www.goalsys.com/books/documents/DESTRUCTION_AND_CREATION.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_(military_strategist)