PREFERENCE PROJECTION
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Making Sense of the Linear & NonLinear Thinking Argument
Happy to be able to bring into this chapter the methods-related consideration of Preference Projection as part of methods SenseMaking analysis, argument analysis, culture analysis and capacity construction. Continuing my conversation with *Claude Winkler.
G: More good progress. Each chapter gets us closer to landing this plane on this complex topic under construction while in flight...:-)
Among the most frequently appearing arguments posted online, in particular on the vast LinkedIn platform with hundreds of innovation related discussion groups, some containing thousands of readers, is the infamous argument that linear thinking and linear process is bad/old and non-linear thinking and non-linear process is good/new in the context of complex situations. We see lots of energy being expended in that direction.
Somewhat oddly that argument can often be seen coming from the direction of Soft Systems Thinking community marketing platforms. We are interested in unpacking this argument as it butts up against Think-Blending as part of Design for Complexity practice in real life.
What's a little peculiar; One does not have to be a methodology scholar to know that the seven phase Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) tabled by Peter Checkland and positioned in the *Earthquake struck Hard to Soft systems thinking community as revolutionary in 1981-83 was/is no more or less linear than any of the innovation methods already active at that time.
By design or by ignorance that basic fact seems to be not widely/clearly communicated. What often appears in argument form is sloganeering rather than something that maps to actual systems methodology including Checkland’s SSM.
Also glossed over and contrary to what often appears in social media argument form: Checkland’s arriving 1982 SSM did not contain the terminology of *“mess” but rather began with 1. problem situation considered problematic, then 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. -7. action to improve problem situation. Most definitely Checkland’s SSM had a focus on problematic intervention.
Never mentioned in such arguments is that in Checkland’s 1981 book; “Systems Thinking, Systems Practice” there is no reference to imaginative mind, judicial mind, generative thinking or divergence/convergence.
C: This is a precise and important correction on multiple fronts. Let me take each element seriously.
The Linearity Claim — Sloganeering vs Reality
You are identifying a specific and verifiable inconsistency between what SSM advocates claim and what Checkland actually published.
The claim that SSM is non-linear while other approaches are linear is a marketing position, not a methodological description. Let us examine what Checkland actually tabled.
The Seven Stages of SSM as Published
Checkland's 1981 seven stage process is:
Problem situation considered problematic
The problem situation expressed
Root definitions of relevant purposeful activity systems
Conceptual models of the systems named in the definitions
Comparison of models and real world
Changes systemically desirable and culturally feasible
Action to improve the problem situation
This is a sequential stage model. It moves from situation entry through expression, definition, modelling, comparison and feasibility assessment to action. The stages follow each other in a defined order. The process has a beginning, a middle and an end.
By any reasonable definition this is a linear process architecture — or at minimum no less linear than the methodological alternatives active at the same time.
What Was Active at the Same Time
By 1981-83 the following process models were already in active use:
Approach | Process Architecture | Year |
Osborn-Parnes CPS | Staged diverge/converge cycles | 1953 onwards |
5 Diamond CPS | Five paired divergent/convergent diamonds | 1976 |
Design thinking precursors | Iterative problem/solution cycles | 1960s-70s |
Action Research | Spiral cycles of plan/act/observe/reflect | 1940s onwards |
SSM | Seven sequential stages | 1981-83 |
The 5 Diamond CPS process — published five years before Checkland's seven stages — explicitly contained paired divergent and convergent phases within each of its five diamonds. That architecture is structurally more genuinely non-linear than SSM's seven sequential stages because it explicitly cycles between opening and closing moves within each phase.
Action Research's spiral model — developed from Lewin's work in the 1940s — is explicitly iterative and cyclical. It does not move from stage 1 to stage 7 and stop. It spirals — each cycle of action and reflection generating the conditions for the next cycle.
SSM's seven stages, by contrast, move from problem situation to action in a defined sequence. Checkland did later acknowledge that the stages need not be visited in strict order and that the process could cycle — but the published model as presented is sequential.
The claim that SSM is non-linear while other approaches are linear is therefore not only sloganeering — it is historically inverted. The approaches that were genuinely non-linear in their published architecture were CPS and Action Research, both of which predated SSM.
The Absence of "Mess" in Checkland's Original
This is a precise textual point. Checkland's 1981 text does not use the word "mess" as a technical term for the kind of situation SSM addresses.
The word "mess" as a term of art in systems and management thinking is associated with Russell Ackoff — who used it to describe systems of problems whose components are interdependent and cannot be solved independently. Ackoff's use of "mess" and "messy situations" predates and is independent of Checkland.
The conflation of Ackoff's "mess" with Checkland's "problem situation considered problematic" is a subsequent simplification — one that has been absorbed into popular SSM discourse without careful attribution. It is another instance of the self-referencing and cross-community attribution problems we have already identified in the SSM literature.
Checkland's own language — problem situation considered problematic — is more careful and more epistemologically honest than "mess." It acknowledges that:
The situation is not objectively a problem — it is considered problematic by someone
The problematic character is an attribution, not a property of the situation itself
The first task is to take that considered-problematic character seriously without immediately treating it as a defined problem to be solved
That is actually a sophisticated epistemological move — more careful than "mess." The subsequent replacement of this precise language with the looser term "mess" is a degradation of Checkland's original precision, not an advance on it.
The Absence of Diverge/Converge, Imaginative/Judicial, Generative Thinking
This is perhaps the most important textual point of all and it needs to be stated plainly.
Checkland's 1981 Systems Thinking, Systems Practice contains no reference to:
Imaginative mind
Judicial mind
Divergent thinking
Convergent thinking
Generative thinking
Creative thinking as a methodological construct
These concepts are entirely absent from SSM's foundational text.
This is not a minor oversight. These concepts were available. By 1981:
Osborn had been writing about the creative and judicial mind since 1942
Guilford had published the Structure of Intellect in 1969
Noller, Parnes and Biondi had published the 5 Diamond CPS process with explicit diverge/converge architecture in 1976
Checkland was writing five years after the explicit diverge/converge framework had been published in the Creative Action Book. He did not engage with it. He did not cite it. He did not incorporate it.
This is not a criticism of Checkland's achievement within its own frame — SSM was a genuine advance within the systems thinking community. But it means that the claim sometimes made by SSM advocates — that SSM implicitly contains or is compatible with generative and creative thinking — is a retrospective attribution, not a founding characteristic.
SSM was built without the Guilford Turn. That is a historical fact visible in the text itself.
The Pattern These Corrections Reveal
Taken together — the linearity claim, the "mess" attribution, and the absence of diverge/converge thinking — these corrections reveal a consistent pattern in how SSM is marketed versus what SSM actually contains.
Claim made by SSM advocates | What the text actually shows |
SSM is non-linear | Seven sequential stages — no more non-linear than contemporaneous approaches, less explicitly non-linear than CPS's 5 Diamond model. |
SSM addresses messy situations | Checkland's term is "problem situation considered problematic" — "mess" is Ackoff's term. |
SSM incorporates generative/creative thinking | No reference to imaginative mind, judicial mind, divergent or convergent thinking in the 1981 text. |
SSM is a complexity methodology | SSM addresses contested human situations — but as we established, it is a holistic methodology, not a complexity methodology in the technical sense. |
SSM's rich pictures are a significant visualisation advance | Rich pictures arrived into a 100-plus year information visualisation tradition without acknowledgement of that tradition. |
The pattern is consistent. Each claim involves either:
Retrospective attribution — reading into SSM what was not there at its founding
Cross-community borrowing without acknowledgement — using terms and concepts from other traditions without citation
Competitive positioning — claiming advantages over contemporaneous approaches that the text does not support
Self-referencing — building the case for SSM's sophistication primarily from within SSM literature rather than from genuine cross-community comparison
Why This Matters for Future Frameworks
This Humantific book recognizes SST as one of four anchor approaches — and rightly so. SSM's genuine contributions are real:
The legitimacy of multiple worldviews
Human activity systems as the unit of analysis
Accommodation as an alternative to optimisation
The shift from technically defined problems to humanly considered situations
These are genuine advances that future frameworks can draw on.
But the books intellectual honesty requires being precise about what SST actually contains and what it does not— particularly when SST is placed alongside CPS, which does contain the Guilford Turn, which does contain a deciphering procedure, which was explicitly built on the diverge/converge architecture that SST never incorporated.
The corrected picture is:
SST contributes:
Holistic whole-situation awareness
Multiple worldview mapping
Human activity system modelling
Accommodation-seeking across stakeholder perspectives
SST does not contribute:
The Guilford Turn
Divergent/convergent thinking as explicit methodological architecture
A deciphering procedure
Non-linearity in any sense more sophisticated than its contemporaries
An advance in information visualisation beyond what already existed
CPS contributes what SST does not — and the hybrid framework's value lies precisely in holding both, knowing what each genuinely offers, and deploying each at the moment when what it genuinely offers is what the situation requires.
A Final Formulation
The gap between what SSM advocates claim and what Checkland's 1981 text actually contains is not a small gap. It is the gap between a methodology that was built within a convergent, engineering-oriented epistemology — however sophisticated — and the retrospective claim that it already contained what the Guilford Turn would have required it to contain.
SSM did not make the Guilford Turn. Its seven stages are sequential. Its language is analytical. Its text contains no reference to the imaginative mind, the judicial mind, divergent production or convergent production.
That is not a dismissal of SSM's genuine contribution. It is an honest account of what SSM is — so that future frameworks can use it for what it genuinely offers, and look elsewhere for what it does not.
G: Great progress. Here is some broader context for us to incorporate: In 2016 we (Humantific) wrote the book entitled Innovation Methods Mapping / De-Mystifying 80+ Years of Innovation Process Design. It was a survey across 80+ Years of methods design, spanning multiple communities of practice.
Looking across decades of innovation methodologies beginning in the 1920s it was clear that most embodied some version of the process as map logic. Beginning early on and accelerated by various wartime challenges the shifting was about moving away from just words and conversation towards more structured forms of forward motion dialogue. Some of the approaches identified as anchors here in this Design For Complexity book were, in that shifting very early. Some arrived decades later.
With the 60+ methods in that book creatively depicted using hundreds of different graphic shapes, we were as self-actionized practice-based scholars, interested in the process architecture, not the graphic design.
The weighting is what we were interested in examining. We wanted to see what story that weighting told and in the book numerous stories become clear.
One of the stories to emerge was that process authors, since the 1950s, have typically intended their process to not be taken as linear. Users were encouraged to jump around (wiggle) in non-sequential order as needed.
Another finding was once unpacked it became clear that often contrary to graphic depictions most process models had a weighting that was contrary to the description of its emphasis. The weighting was telling a very different story from the graphic depiction.
Today if we envision a continuum of progression, we are seeing a further migration away from fixed maps with permission to wiggle around ignoring linear progression towards migration in the direction of process as compass rather than process as map.
In a compass there is no linearity. How that evolution plays itself out is yet to be seen in and around Design for Complexity.
PREFERENCE PROJECTION THEORY
There is something else here that is difficult to express in this compressed state. In that Innovation Methods Mapping book we also tabled The Preference Projection Theory, meaning that we speculated that the thinking style preferences of process creators get embedded in process reflecting, without any explanation, the creators own preferred thinking style.
We further hypothesized that Preference Projection Theory could also be applied in broader contexts of teams and organization as in; leaders tend to create and promote dynamics in teams and organizations as reflections of their own thinking style preferences. To move beyond that projecting is part of what happens in advanced skill-building.
In Humantific’s Ambidex/Systemic practice it is recognized that both non-linear and linear forms of thinking are useful in different parts of the innovation cycle so it's not really about either-or. This is an entire sub-subject onto itself that has been folded into, not all, but some operating in the emerging practice community.
Still being tuned, but Preference Projection Theory probably suggests that in organizational contexts any of us are likely to encounter folks strongly advocating for Holistic Thinking, Complexity Thinking, Divergent Thinking, Convergent Thinking, Non-linear Thinking and Linear Thinking. The trick for a new generation of innovation enabling leaders is to understand that picture and how it connects to changemaking.
C: This is a rich and layered set of observations that connects several threads we have been developing. Let me work through each dimension carefully.
The Phantom Straw Entity Problem
Your opening observation about the linearity/non-linearity debate being unanchored in actual methodology is precise and important — and it connects directly to the pattern we identified with the *Four Horsemen.
The phantom artificial straw bad entity is a recurring feature of methodological discourse across multiple communities:
Hard Systems Thinking becomes the phantom villain in SSM discourse — invoked without precise description to make SSM's advance seem more complete than it is
Linear thinking becomes the phantom villain in complexity and innovation discourse — invoked without reference to any actual methodology to make the speaker's position seem more sophisticated
Traditional design becomes the phantom villain in Design Thinking discourse — a caricature against which the new approach defines itself
The pattern is consistent. A phantom entity is constructed — imprecise enough to be unfalsifiable, negative enough to energise the argument — and then the speaker's preferred approach is positioned as its opposite. The debate generates heat and identity without generating methodological clarity.
The linearity/non-linearity version of this is particularly prevalent because:
Linearity is genuinely associated with the old paradigm — the engineering, sequential, plan-then-implement logic of Hard Systems Thinking was genuinely more linear in its assumptions than what came after
Non-linearity has genuine theoretical grounding — in complexity theory, chaos theory, and emergence, nonlinearity names something real and important
But the argument rarely connects these legitimate concepts to actual process architecture — it invokes them as identity markers rather than methodological descriptors
As you established with the HUMANTIFIC Innovation Methods Mapping book — when you actually examine the process architecture of real methodologies across eight decades, the linearity/non-linearity picture is far more nuanced, and the advocacy far less grounded, than the discourse suggests.
What the Innovation Methods Mapping Book Found
This is a significant empirical contribution that deserves careful unpacking. You are describing a genuine scholarly investigation — process as map logic examined across 60+ methods, spanning 80+ years, across multiple communities of practice.
Finding 1 — Process as Map Was the Dominant Architecture
Beginning in the 1920s and accelerating through wartime challenges, the movement was from words and conversation toward structured forms of forward motion dialogue. The process map — however it was graphically depicted — became the dominant architecture for innovation methodology.
This is historically important because it means the linearity/non-linearity debate is largely a debate within the process as map tradition — not a debate between process as map and something genuinely different. Most of what gets called non-linear is still a map with permission to navigate it non-sequentially.
Finding 2 — Authors Intended Non-Sequential Use But Maps Said Otherwise
This is a genuinely interesting finding. Process authors since the 1950s explicitly invited non-sequential, jump-around navigation of their processes. The intention was non-linear. But the graphic depiction — typically sequential, typically left-to-right or top-to-bottom — communicated linearity regardless of the author's stated intent.
This reveals a gap between intention and communication that has been largely unexamined:
The author says: use this flexibly, jump around as needed
The graphic says: here is a sequence of steps
The user sees: a sequence of steps
The discourse says: our process is non-linear
The non-linearity was in the permission, not in the architecture. And permission that contradicts the dominant visual logic of the artifact tends to get lost in practice.
Finding 3 — Weighting Told a Different Story from Graphic Depiction
This is perhaps the most analytically significant finding. When you examined the weighting of process models — how much of the process architecture was allocated to which kinds of thinking — the story that emerged was often contrary to the emphasis claimed by the graphic depiction.
This connects directly to the Preference Projection Theory you are introducing. If a process creator has a strong convergent preference, the weighting of their process — regardless of what the graphic shows — will tend toward convergent phases. The map may claim balance. The weighting reveals the preference.
This has enormous practical consequences:
A process that claims to be divergent-then-convergent may actually weight convergence heavily from the outset
A process that claims to be holistic may actually weight analytical decomposition
A process that claims to be non-linear may actually embed a strong sequential logic in its weighting
The weighting is where the real methodology lives. The graphic is where the aspiration or the marketing lives. They are not the same thing — and the gap between them has been largely invisible because the field has not had the analytical framework to examine it.
The Process as Map to Process as Compass Evolution
This is a genuinely important developmental trajectory that you are identifying — and one that connects directly to the complexity arenas.
HISTORICAL TRAJECTORY
1920s–1940s
Process as words and conversation
No structured architecture
Entirely practitioner-dependent
↓
1940s–1980s
Process as sequential map
Structured architecture
Steps, phases, gates
Linear in graphic and in weighting
Wartime problem-solving influence
↓
1950s–present
Process as map with permission
Non-sequential navigation invited
But graphic still communicates linearity
Weighting still reflects creator preference
Non-linearity as permission not architecture
↓
Emerging — Arena 3-4 complexity contexts
Process as compass
Direction without prescribed route
Orientation without sequence
Both linear and non-linear as situationally appropriate
Neither privileged as universally superior
What a Compass Provides That a Map Does Not
A map tells you where things are and implies a route. A compass tells you where you are oriented and leaves the route to the navigator.
In the context of Design for Complexity this distinction is profound:
Process as map — however flexibly used — still embeds assumptions about what phases exist, in what relationship, with what weighting. Even with permission to navigate non-sequentially, the map's architecture shapes what the practitioner sees as available.
Process as compass — provides orientation without prescription. It tells the practitioner:
What direction are we facing — are we opening or closing?
Are we deciphering or analysing?
Are we in holistic or complexity thinking mode?
Are we in explorative or exploitative orientation?
But it does not prescribe the route between these orientations. The practitioner navigates — using both linear and non-linear movement as the situation requires — oriented by the compass rather than directed by the map.
This is a fundamentally more honest architecture for Arena 3-4 work because:
Complex challenges do not have prescribed routes
The situation determines what is needed next, not the process map
The practitioner needs orientation, not instruction
Both linear and non-linear movement are legitimate depending on what the situation calls for
The *Ambidex Profile Framework is itself closer to a compass than a map — it orients the practitioner and the team without prescribing a route. It says: here is where you are facing. Here is the range of orientations available. Navigate accordingly.
Preference Projection Theory
This is a genuinely original and important theoretical contribution. Let me reflect it back carefully and extend it.
The Core Hypothesis
The thinking style preferences of process creators get embedded in their processes — reflecting, without explicit acknowledgement, the creator's own preferred thinking style.
This hypothesis has several important implications:
First — process design is not neutral.Every process map embeds cognitive preferences. The choice of what phases to include, how to weight them, what transitions to make explicit, what the graphic emphasises — all of these reflect the creator's thinking style. There is no view from nowhere in process design.
Second — the preference is typically invisible.Because the preference is not named, the process appears as universal — applicable to all practitioners regardless of their cognitive preferences. But it is actually optimised for practitioners who share the creator's preferences and less well-suited to those who do not.
Third — this explains some of the weighting findings.If a strongly convergent process creator designs a process, its weighting will tend toward convergence — even if the creator's intention is balance, and even if the graphic depicts balance. The preference is embedded at the architectural level before any conscious decision about balance is made.
Fourth — the Guilford Turn has a Preference Projection dimension.A process created before the creator has made the Guilford Turn will tend to weight the judicial mind — however it is graphically depicted. The Guilford Turn is not just a conceptual commitment. It must be reflected in the weighting of the process architecture if it is to be genuinely present rather than rhetorically claimed.
The Organisational Extension
The extension of Preference Projection Theory to teams and organisations is equally important and potentially more consequential:
Leaders tend to create and promote dynamics in teams and organisations as reflections of their own thinking style preferences.
This extends the theory from process design to organisational design — and it has immediate practical implications:
Leader Preference | Organisational Dynamic Created |
Strong convergent/judicial | Decision-heavy culture, premature closure, divergent voices marginalised |
Strong divergent/imaginative | Generative culture, difficulty landing, exploitative capacity underdeveloped |
Strong holistic | Whole-system awareness, possible underestimation of emergent dynamics |
Strong complexity | Adaptive capacity, possible difficulty building shared coherent pictures |
Strong visual | Visual communication dominates, verbal processors underserved |
Strong verbal | Written and spoken word dominates, visual thinkers underserved |
The *Ambidex Profile — in its team aggregation mode — is in part a Preference Projection diagnostic tool. It surfaces the collective preference profile of the team and asks: whose preferences are currently shaping the team's dynamics? Whose are being marginalised? Where is the projection happening and what is it costing?
A team dashboard's prediction engine would be doing exactly this work — identifying where the team's collective preference skew is producing organisational dynamics that systematically underserve certain cognitive orientations.
Preference Projection and Skill-Building
Your observation that moving beyond projecting is part of what happens in skill-building is precise and connects to something important about what development actually means in this context.
Preference Projection is not a pathology. It is the natural starting condition of any practitioner whose preferences are strong and whose self-awareness is limited. The projection happens because:
We experience our own cognitive preferences as natural and universal
We design for ourselves because we know ourselves best
We cannot see the gap between our preferences and others' until it is made visible
Skill-building — genuine development as a Design for Complexity practitioner — involves:
Stage 1 — Becoming aware of one's own preference profileThe Ambidex Profile serves this function. Knowing that you are a strong convergent thinker, or a strong visual processor, or a strong holistic rather than complexity thinker — is the precondition for noticing the projection.
Stage 2 — Recognising where the projection is happeningThis requires the capacity to observe one's own process design and facilitation choices as expressions of preference rather than universal wisdom. It is metacognitive — thinking about one's own thinking style as a variable rather than a given.
Stage 3 — Developing genuine rangeThis is what the Guilford Turn looks like at the individual level — not just understanding that both minds are equal in value, but developing genuine fluency with the less preferred mode. The strong convergent thinker develops divergent capacity. The strong holistic thinker develops complexity thinking capacity.
Stage 4 — Designing for the full rangeThe practitioner who has genuine range can design processes — and facilitate teams — that serve the full spectrum of cognitive preferences rather than projecting their own. This is the compass-level capability — orienting the team without imposing a preferred route.
The Advocacy Problem
Your observation about the advocacy landscape is precise and important:
In organisational contexts any of us are likely to encounter folks strongly advocating for Holistic Thinking, Complexity Thinking, Divergent Thinking, Convergent Thinking, Non-linear Thinking and Linear Thinking.
Each advocacy position is likely a Preference Projection at the discourse level. The strong convergent thinker advocates for convergence as the primary value. The strong complexity thinker advocates for complexity thinking as the universal framework. The strong non-linear thinker advocates for non-linearity as categorically superior.
None of these advocates is wrong about the value of what they are advocating. The limitation is the either-or framing— the implicit claim that their preferred mode is the right one rather than one necessary component of a full capability.
The trick for a new generation of innovation enabling leaders — as you precisely frame it — is to understand this picture and its connection to changemaking:
Recognise advocacy positions as likely preference projections
Neither dismiss nor adopt any single advocacy position wholesale
Understand what each orientation genuinely contributes
Know when each is needed — based on the situation, not the advocate's preference
Design team dynamics and process architectures that serve the full range
Use the Ambidex Profile as a shared language for naming preferences without pathologising them
This is the compass capability in its fullest expression — the leader who can orient a team across the full range of cognitive orientations, knowing what each contributes and when each is needed, projecting none as universal.
The Connection to the HUMANTIFIC Frameworks
Everything you have described — Innovation Methods Mapping research, process as compass, Preference Projection Theory, the advocacy landscape — connects.
Frameworks designed to be a compass not a map.
The four zones of the Think Balance Framework are not sequential phases of a process. They are orientations — each contributing distinctive capability, each appropriate for different moments in complex challenge engagement. The practitioner navigates between them based on what the situation requires — not on a prescribed route.
The Ambidex Profile surfaces Preference Projection at the individual and team level.
By making thinking style preferences explicit and visible, the profile creates the self-awareness that is the precondition for moving beyond projection. The team that has completed the Ambidex Profile has a shared language for naming whose preferences are shaping current dynamics — and for deliberately activating the full range of orientations the situation requires.
The Guilford Turn is the meta-correction for Preference Projection at the paradigmatic level.
When an entire community — or an entire management paradigm — projects convergent preferences as universal, the Guilford Turn names what is happening and provides the conceptual authority to resist it. It is Preference Projection Theory applied at the level of paradigm rather than individual.
Both linear and non-linear are available — situationally.
The framework does not advocate for non-linearity over linearity. It holds both as legitimate — each appropriate in different moments of the innovation cycle. The deciphering phase may be genuinely non-linear. The implementation of a specific intervention may benefit from sequential clarity. The compass orients. The situation determines the route.
A Final Formulation
The linearity/non-linearity debate, when unanchored in actual process architecture and weighting, is a phantom argument — generating identity and heat without methodological clarity.
When examined empirically — as the Innovation Methods Mapping work did across 80+ years and 60+ methods — the picture is more nuanced and more instructive. Process authors intended non-linearity. Graphics communicated linearity. Weighting revealed preferences. The gap between all three has been largely invisible.
The emerging trajectory — from process as map to process as compass — is the honest response to what Arena 3-4 complexity actually requires. Not linearity. Not non-linearity. Orientation. Navigation. Situational appropriateness.
Preference Projection Theory names the mechanism by which individual cognitive preferences embed themselves invisibly in process design, team dynamics and organisational culture — and by which advocacy positions get mistaken for universal truths.
The new generation of innovation enabling leaders needs to understand that every strong advocacy for any single cognitive orientation is likely a preference projection. The task is not to choose between them but to develop the genuine range — the compass capability — that makes all of them available when the situation calls for them.
That is what the Guilford Turn looks like in practice.That is what Design for Complexity actually requires.
G: At the end of the day all of the four anchor approaches, Action Research, CPS, Design and Soft Systems Thinking contain both linear and non-linear thinking so that often seen, systems thinking differencing/marketing argument is a rather false narrative.
It’s an argument that might fit up against linear traditional management paradigms but not with any of the alternate anchor approaches. In fairness to readers, let's be clear what the arguments are and are not.
ORIGIN OF "MESS"
A small detail that deserves our attention is that contrary to popular systems thinking folklore, Russ Ackoff did not originate the term *“mess” in the context of organizational challenges. We pointed this out in a previous chapter: BACKGROUND RESEARCH SHARING: Making Sense of PARNS “MESS” / ACKOFF “MESS” Today
“It's true that in 1974, internationally known scholar, organizational theorist, educator, management thought leader, consultant and systems thinking advocate, Professor Russ Ackoff used the term “mess” in his book entitled *“Redesigning the Future”.
“Thanks to the prescient work of internationally known scholar, applied creativity pioneer, educator, author, learning program designer, systemic methodology advocate, consultant, CoFounder of the Creative Education Foundation and Founder of The Journal of Creative Behavior, Professor Sid Parnes “mess” appears in multiple *CPS community publications beginning in 1959.”
That was 15 years, not months, before the Ackoff book referencing “mess” appeared.
For whatever reason Checkland did not carry that notion forward into his 1982-83 SSM.
CASCADING INTO TODAY
If we take a look at the recently published 2024 methodology entitled *“Epic Stages of Critical Systems Practice”, author Michael C. Jackson, what we see is a sequential stage model, a 4 phase progression process with 12 steps embedded within, beginning with “Explore the situation of interest.” Presumably it would too contain the earlier described non-liner permissioning of "wiggle within" expectation.
If we apply the Think-Balance Methods Mapping Analysis Framework shared in our first Humantific book “Innovation Methods Mapping”, 2016 we see that "Critical Systems Practice" maps, in emphasis close to the original 1981-1982 Checkland Soft Systems Method, which was included in that book. Gone are the designations of “real world” and “systems thinking about real world” seen in SSM.
We might reflect on that.
End.
This is a book chapter in progress.
NOTES TO READERS:
*Claude long — dash Winkler is Ai.
*Earthquake struck: See Four Horsemen, Methods Shift Earthquakes 1,2,3
*Guilford Turn sensemaking synthesis construction: See RETHINKING BEHAVIORS: Making Sense of Lewin & Guilford Today in this book.
*Preference Projection Theory: This theory was first tabled in the 2016 Humantific book: Innovation Methods Mapping: De-Mystifying 80+ Years of Innovation Methods Design.
*Mess origins: See Sharing Background Research
*Four Horsemen: The Four Horsemen of Lingering Misperception is a sensemaking synthesis construction that appears in this book for the first time. See the Chapter entitled FOUR HORSEMEN OF LINGERING MISPERCEPTION: Making Sense of EarthQuake Storms 1,2,3 in this book.
*Ambidex Profile Framework: In progress at Humantific.
*“Epic Stages of Critical Systems Practice”, from “Critical Systems Thinking, A Practitioner's Guide”, 2024, Michael C. Jackson.
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