THINK/BALANCE RESEARCH
- Admin
- 2 hours ago
- 6 min read
Welcome back Humantific Journal readers. This week we are sharing a refreshed overview summary from a previous experiment related to Think/Balance that we undertook in 2023 using an earlier version of ChatGPT.
In the big picture sense, we became interested in what we first called “Architecture of Conversation” several decades ago, long before "big data" and or Ai. Early experiments focused on decoding live conversations were made without much technology but the subject remained near and dear to us as a form of sensemaking.
For those readers who might not know; It was in our 2020 book Innovation Methods Mapping that we tabled Think/Balance and the *Preference Projection Theory. In that book we looked across 80+ years of process design history and wondered out loud if humans tend to create methods that are direct projections of their personal thinking style / cognitive preferences.
Being organizational change practitioners, and practice-based methodology scholars, we further wondered if humans create not just processes but vision documents, strategies, points of view, reward systems and even organizations via the same cognitive preference projections. This wondering became the *Preference Projection Theory.
PREFERENCE PROJECTION
Building on the weighting lessons learned from the 2020 Innovation Methods Mapping book we wanted to extend the Think/Balance logic to other forms of analysis. One stream was to create a digital text analysis tool with an assembled bundle of words (Magic Word Bundle) connected to, synchronized to what we know today as the *Guilford Turn and Humantific’s innovation cycle.
To undertake experiments in the direction of document analysis related to Think/Balance we built a 50+ word bundle of terms. The ThinkBalance Analytics Text Tool was originally conceived as a mechanism to help us look at the vibrations, signaling and weighting inside various corporate strategic documents as part of adaptive readiness assessment. Would such analysis make transparent disconnects, discontinuities between exposed intentions and actual underlying dynamics? It’s the walk the talk question.
Using a micro version of that larger bundle, we began to experiment with the version of ChatGPT that existed at that time. Key to the equation was that we wanted to see if original text could be retrieved and scanned without us supplying it. At that time we were Ai novices and sought to wade into ChatGPT asap in ways that were useful to us in that moment. (We later went on to utilize ChatGPT in numerous other ways.)
EXPERIMENT 1:
As part of that document analysis experiment we sought to examine the published works of 1-10 thought leaders related to the subjects of innovation and changemaking.
We pondered:
How might we determine the Think/Balance weighing embodied in the authors texts?
How might we consider the implications of that weighting?
In addition, we pondered if such weighting existed in an organization or a leadership team, what might it mean related to organizational innovation enabling and innovation leadership?
As part of the output analysis we are also interested in the question of; What are the discipline backgrounds of the authors in the study and how does that correlate to weighting?
The first set of texts that we *examined in 2023 were authored by Herbert Simon (1916-2001). As noted in wikipedia: "His primary research interest was "decision-making" within organizations."
HERBERT SIMON / Think/Balance Weighting
In this example we show the summary results of taking a look at the sum-total text inside 5 books written by Herbert Simon, published between 1957 and 1997, containing approximately 560,000 words.
This experiment was of particular interest to us as Simon is known for several often referenced design related quotes: “Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.”and “Think of the design process as involving first the generation of alternatives and then the testing of these alternatives against a whole array of requirements and restraints.”
BOOK 1:
"Models of Man", Social and Rational: Mathematical Essays on Rational Human Behavior in a Social Setting" Herbert Simon,1957
Approx.: 284 pages, 113,600 words.
SUMMARY:
Word Bundle Weighting Results:
7 Divergent / 179 Convergent
BOOK 2:
“The Sciences of the Artificial”, Herbert Simon, 1969
Approx.: 174 pages, 69,600 words
SUMMARY:
Word Bundle Weighting Results:
40 Divergent / 113 Convergent
BOOK 3:
“Human Problem Solving”, Herbert A. Simon, 1972
254 pages, 101,600 words
SUMMARY:
Word Bundle Weighting Results:
16 Divergent / 162 Convergent
Book 4:
“The Structure of Ill-Structured Problems”, Herbert A. Simon, 1973
211 pages, 84,400 words
SUMMARY:
Word Bundle Weighting Results:
37 Divergent / 180 Convergent
BOOK 5:
"The New Science of Management Decision" Herbert A. Simon, 1960-1997
578 pages, 200,000 words
SUMMARY:
Word Bundle Weighting Results:
28 Divergent / 282 Convergent
SUMMARY OF TOTALS:
DIVERGENT TOTAL WORDS: 127
CONVERGENT TOTAL WORDS: 924
Least appearing bundle word: Imagination: 35
Most frequently appearing bundle words: Decision: 310 and Analizing 297.
This would suggest that the Think/Balance weighting of the total Herbert Simon texts is heavily weighted towards convergence.
In the context of organizational innovation enabling we recognize that convergent thinking and decision-making are interchangeable terms. Divergent thinking generates and widens. Convergent thinking judges and narrows. Both play important roles in the innovation cycle, typically appearring in each phase.
See anything notable in that weighting?
We might ponder: What would this weighting translate to as an organization?
Much to reflect upon.
CLOSING
This part of Humantific R&D background work related to internal dynamics of innovation is ongoing.
We are always open to collaboration. If you are working in this subject terrain and wish you have a conversation send us an email.
If you are an organizational leader and wish to discuss how this practice-informed research can be directed towards organizational adaptive capacity building in the face of continous change and high complexity send us an email: kickitup (at) humantific (dot) com.
End.
UPDATE / NOTES TO READERS
*ChatGPT: This first experiment/study was undertaken via ChatGPT before its functionality was reigned in and altered, evidently due to several outstanding lawsuits. Presently what it will search and synthesize and not search is not 100% stable.
*Guilford Turn is a terminology created by Humantific to denote the arrival and embrace of cognitive psychologist JP Guilford’s tabling of his divergent/convergent production model that appeared in his “The Structure of Intellect” in 1955 and “The Nature of Human Intelligence" in 1967. We consider Guilford Turn to be a significant fork in the evolution road of intervention methodology architectures that cascades forward and has multiple spin-off implications that are now part of numerous everyday changemaking practices. Among other things Guilford Turn became central to consideration of weighting/proportionality in methods design and thinking. This consideration was referred to as Think/Balance in our first and second books, Innovation Methods Mapping and Rethinking Design Thinking. The consideration of proportionality is also central to our upcoming book, Advancing Design for Complexity. Without the insights of Guilford Turn present, an often unacknowledged inherited imbalance and unfairness tends to dominate the power dynamics of cross-disciplinary human collaborations. There is a direct line of connection between awareness of Guilford Turn and the enabling of holistic psychological safety. See also Encouraging Creativity below.
(See “RETHINKING BEHAVIORS: Making Sense of Lewin & Guilford Today” in Advancing Design for Complexity.)
*INBOUND/OUTBOUND is a practice-based lens created by Humantific. It is a strategic conversation sensemaking lens.
*Encouraging Creativity: Not all approaches being presented as holistic encourage creativity. Some encourage the tradition of looking and valuing from one part of the Guilford Turn while referring to themselves as holistic. Without the presence of the Guilford Turn lens that tilting bias is not seen or acknowledged. The complexity is that some approaches can be holistic in OUTBOUND form and not holistic in INBOUND form where the dynamics of creativity typically are environmentally situated. See Half-Baked in DUALITY 1 Lens diagram in RETHINKING PLURALISM: Advancing Design for Complexity / the book.
*Examined: Part of the criteria was that we did not supply the books. We did not know if this part was going to be possible via ChatGPT at that time.
*Cautions: In the original post we noted numerous cautions and caveats. ChatGPT was not/is not 100 percent stable.