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Designing Organisations That Work


Cybernetics may be making a comeback. Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model can help us diagnose organisational failures—and improve the conditions for success.

He had intended to write a detective mystery about cybernetics, he says, but has spent eight chapters describing the construction of the murder weapon. You can simply discount the flannel and doorknob polishing you get from Chief Executives and their boards about their corporate purpose, and look at what they actually do. The central banks weren’t paying enough attention to the debt bubble, and they had weakened communications systems to senior policy makers.

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