given up on balance

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Link: http://socialea.chickenbrain.de/2012/10/given-up-on-balance.html

From Social Enterprise Architecture

A blog post of Amanda Fenton about balance reminded me about a core concept I use in the space of GLUE and the change introduced via GLUE. In my post Fixing Flows I wrote about the joy of getting something to work and therefore eliminating a GLUE Disease. Maximizing the throughput in the GLUE Space in each and every domain is what I am aiming for and unfortunately the slowest domain decided upon the speed of the whole GLUE Space.

So what is my key to success here? I try to achieve balance (all domains do have almost the same throughput) by giving up on balance myself. Now that seems to be counter intuitive, but it is exactly what I do:
 
To achive balance I give up on balance!
 


The key aspect behind this thinking can be found in my way of tackling complexity:

  1. In the simple domain there is no need to give up balance.
  2. In the complicated domain there is limited need to give up on balance, but in a very controlled way.
  3. In the ambiguous domain there is permanent need to give up on balance, but action can be done one by one.
  4. In the Not-Known domain balance does not exist.

I like to use the analogy of walking:

  1. Standing on both feet in balance
  2. Decide where to go (“automatic” after the initial decision where to go)
  3. During the step out-of-balance
  4. continue with 1

Therefore to move the Architecture from one state to the other (As-Is -> Transition Architectures -> To-Be Architecture) the whole system gets out of balance all the time, because it is the only way to move. The whole GLUE Division Discovery is completely dedicated to out-of-balance behaviour, so the same flow as walking with GLUE terminology:

  1. GLUE Division Defence (As-Is)
  2. GLUE Division Destination (To-Be)
  3. GLUE Division Discovery (Transition, get to the target)
  4. continue with 1

In a perfectly running GLUE the next To-Be is close to automatic (or at least very fast), which translates into a system where the change between balance and non-balance is done so fast and automatic that everything is perfectly in flow. In most cases I find (or throw myself at) systems where the flow is out of balance, but the system stable (and unwilling to change). Here I give up my own balance (entering willingly Not-Known) to create a momentum to change.

And I do not know why, but this flow of events is kind of a Zen feeling for me: things happen unpredictable and real time around, with and due to me while I try to categorize (EPIC SCAN) them, set a direction (WISE SCAN) and support the execution (PACE SCAN). In most cases this require to be very flexible with the methods and tools and therefore I apply most of the time (80%) agile techniques. And here the technical tool I use is a whiteboard and markers.

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