#viable system model

In my first note on OrgLens I asked whether an AI agent could diagnose an organisation using Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model (VSM). The answer was yes, more or less.

The reports were written for someone like me using terms such as System 3*, algedonic channels, and requisite variety. Those terms can be useful if you know VSM, but most people who might benefit from an organisational health check do not, and shouldn't need to.

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Systems thinking is a way of looking at organisations as sets of connected parts rather than as collections of individuals or departments. The Viable System Model, or VSM, is one approach within it. It asks whether an organisation has the parts it needs to keep going: people doing the work, ways of coordinating that work, checks on whether the work is happening, people looking ahead, and a way of agreeing what the organisation is for.

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