Learning by Training

By Arend van Campen

CYBERNETICS: THE ART OF STEERING

Perhaps you drove to work this morning behind the wheel of your car. With that wheel you can steer your car from left to right in order to avoid bumping into things – other cars, people in the street – and stay on the road. Perhaps last weekend you were on your boat and sailed to an island where you and your family went ashore to make a camp fire and have a barbeque.

You may think that driving to work or sailing to that island is easy, but that is not the case. To reach such destinations, you will need not only skills, a driver’s licence and a boat licence, but also information. That information can be gathered by looking at the weather, directions on a map, how much fuel you will need, other traffic, depth of water, draft of your boat or speed of your car. Many pieces of information are necessary to arrive in one piece.

Recently I met with HCB’s editor-in-chief, Peter Mackay, in London and he asked me how to steer an organisation by using feedback – aka information. I was at that time not aware he had made a short video about feedback, mentioning that corporations that do not use feedback are not able to sustain themselves. This is a fact. All feedback is needed to ‘steer’ a corporation too, just like a car or boat.

So what happens if information that does not suit a goal or purpose is ignored? You guessed right: the goal can’t be reached unless it depends on externalities, i.e. costs or damage to others, the environment or social expenditure, which then causes vulnerability of the corporation. Feedback is an absolute condition to reach a goal and maintain stability not only when driving your car or navigating your boat, but in all organisations.

You can easily observe when information is being evaded in politics, polluting corporations or, for example, in the case of Brexit. Those who support Brexit ignore information that contradicts their goals, but the opposing group does exactly the same and only sees the advantages.

Controlling and governing any man-made system, be it a car or a corporation, can only be done with real-time information and immediate adjustment (steering). This would mean that regulations or compliance are always too late and are only valuable as references, but not as tools to sustain companies.

Organisations can maintain themselves only by constant adaptation through feedback. This would mean that ethics (reality) as a requisite variety and regulator must be implemented to accept even that information which one may not like. You can compare it with how our bodies function; through cognition (interaction with the environment) they constantly learn and adapt and you will know when important feedback about our wellbeing is denied, because our minds (neurons) will send you a warning message.

Ignoring feedback is the cause of all global risks and the inevitable decline of corporations and governments, because they can’t be ‘steered’ any longer.

This is the latest in a series of articles by Arend van Campen, founder of TankTerminalTraining. More information on the company’s activities can be found at www.tankterminaltraining.com. Those interested in responding personally can contact him directly at arendvc@tankterminaltraining.com.