Join a conversation at Metaphorum 2025 about how artificial intelligence can help organizations become more adaptive, creative, and democratic by supporting bottom-up design with the Viable System Model (VSM).
Conglomerates now dominate our lives, a recent survey by the Guardian found that 80% of groceries were produced by four mega-corporations. Of greater concern is that these corporations do not only sell the groceries they control the whole means of production from farm to consumer. Food production is only one area where major corporations dominate our lives.
Do co-operatives provide a means by which ordinary people can collectively harness their synergy to push back against the omnipresent power of conglomerates to create an alternative lifestyle and means of production?
This workgroup aims to examine the factors that control the viability of co-operatives and productivity of social groups. To see what enhances and diminishes their effectiveness and whether or not a software application can be used to overcome some of the difficulties.
An early version of the software is available for examination, and it is hoped that the workgroup will provide guidance on its further development.
The areas for discussion, to be conducted as a Pask conversation are to examine the issues with;
communication amongst the group, such as the use of Pask Conversations and communication frameworks to identify problems,
the coordination, cohesion and harmony of activities and their role in creating shared values and beliefs the use of bottom up activities and adaptivity rather than top-down design
the management of resources and work, in particular manpower and finance using an Eisenhower Matrix,
the establishment of norms of behaviour, routines and rituals that create shared meaning,
coherence and the creation of shared values and beliefs,
the use of common activity to realign beliefs into realistic shared values,
maintaining organisational integrity through shared values,
the creation of a sense of purpose and belonging amongst group members,
mechanisms for decision making that remove politics and disperse power including the use of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) / Analytical Network Process (ANP).
the use of civil gossip and connectors as an algedonic signal,
the creation of self-reflection and mechanisms for re-entry to the system to create self-awareness amongst the whole group,
mechanisms for creating shared distinctions of the environment
the use of AI built into the software to enhance these activities.
How as a cooperative do we create the conditions for a bottom up meets top down organization design and operation?
How can Huxley software support the day to day self-organisation and self-management of a cooperative and specifically Metaphorum? Should Huxley take the 20 year old Access based program and re-engineer and re-program for the web for Metaphorum?
Are the people in the room prepared to continue as a working group after the 2025 conference to support the reprogramming effort?
https://app.slidespeak.co/presentation/cmce12j6j00a4sdrst8jrt198/share
