Complexity, citizen engagement in a Post-Social Media time | David Snowden | TEDxUniversityofNicosia

Summary

This talk explores the dichotomy between ordered and chaotic systems, advocating for a more nuanced understanding of complex adaptive systems in nature. The speaker critiques the overemphasis on outcome-based measurements in society, which stifle intrinsic motivation, particularly in health and education. They propose a shift towards managing these systems by understanding connectivity and emergence, rather than strict control, using the metaphor of organizing a children's party to illustrate different management approaches. The speaker also discusses the importance of engaging people directly with their own narratives for genuine societal change.

Takeaways

• 😀 The speaker contrasts ordered systems and chaotic systems, highlighting the value of order in providing legal structure and reliability, but also noting the negative impacts of imposing order unnecessarily.
• 🔍 Over the past 40-50 years, society has adopted an engineering focus, emphasizing outcome-based measurement which has led to a reliance on targets and numbers, potentially stifling creativity and freedom.
• 🧠 Scientific evidence suggests that explicit targets can destroy intrinsic motivation, which is crucial in fields like health and education, yet these are the areas where targets are most heavily imposed.
• 🌐 The speaker introduces the concept of complex adaptive systems, which are defined by their connectivity rather than structure, and emphasizes the importance of understanding and managing these systems differently from ordered or chaotic systems.
• 🎉 Using the metaphor of organizing a party for children, the speaker illustrates the differences in managing an ordered system versus a complex system, highlighting the need for flexibility and understanding of the system's nature.
• 🚫 In complex systems, management involves setting boundary conditions, introducing catalytic probes, and managing the emergence of beneficial coherence, rather than trying to control every aspect.
• 🌟 The speaker advocates for engaging people directly in understanding and managing complex systems, arguing that their own voices and interpretations are crucial, rather than relying on external experts or AI interpretations.
• 📚 The importance of abstraction and increasing cognitive load is emphasized, suggesting that art and reflection can play a significant role in scientific invention and understanding complex systems.
• 🔄 The speaker discusses the need for a new theory of change, focusing on making small, incremental changes in the present to nudge systems in the right direction, rather than setting unrealistic future goals.
• 🌱 The concept of fractal engagement is introduced, suggesting that engaging people at all levels of society and across generations can lead to sustainable change, by focusing on creating more beneficial narratives and patterns of behavior.
• 🌐 The speaker concludes by emphasizing the need for a scientific approach to managing complex ecosystems, rather than treating them as engineering problems, and invites governments and countries to engage in this open program for global change.

Q & A

What are the two types of systems traditionally contrasted in human history according to the speaker?

The two types of systems traditionally contrasted in human history are ordered systems and chaotic systems.

Why are ordered systems valuable to human beings?

Ordered systems are valuable to human beings because they provide legal structure and reliability, such as in operating theatres where surgical instruments are counted to prevent the need for a second operation.

What negative impact does the fear of chaos have on society as mentioned in the script?

The fear of chaos is being used to impose order unnecessarily, which can destroy creativity and freedom.

How has the engineering focus on society over the last 40 to 50 years affected human motivation?

The engineering focus on society has compounded order with excessive outcome-based measurement, which according to scientific evidence, destroys intrinsic motivation when human beings are pursuing explicit targets.

In which two fields is the negative impact of imposed targets most evident and potentially harmful?

The negative impact of imposed targets is most evident and potentially harmful in health and education.

What is a complex adaptive system and how does it differ from ordered and chaotic systems?

A complex adaptive system is a type of system defined not by its structure but by its connectivity, where everything is connected with everything else, but many of the connections cannot be known. It differs from ordered systems by its lack of a fixed structure and from chaotic systems by the presence of underlying connections and patterns.

What is an example of a complex system mentioned in the script?

The Internet and humanity itself are examples of complex systems.

How does the speaker suggest organizing a party for nine-year-old children under the assumption of a chaotic system?

Under the assumption of a chaotic system, the speaker humorously suggests that the children would act without constraints and their behavior would be random, possibly leading to destructive outcomes like discovering drugs and alcohol or even burning down the house.

What is the main difference between the management approach of an ordered system and a complex system when organizing a party?

The ordered system approach involves setting clear learning objectives, creating a project plan, and conducting an after-action review, while the complex system approach focuses on setting boundary conditions, introducing catalytic probes, and managing the emergence of beneficial coherence within attractors.

What is the importance of understanding the nature of a system before attempting to manage it according to the speaker?

Understanding the nature of a system is critical for effective management because it allows for the appropriate application of strategies and techniques that align with the system's inherent characteristics, rather than trying to force an engineering solution onto an ecological problem.

How does the speaker propose to engage people in understanding and managing complex systems?

The speaker proposes engaging people by allowing them to be ethnographers of their own condition, capturing and interpreting their own stories and experiences within a quantitative framework, and using these insights for small, actionable changes in the present.

What is the concept of 'adjacent possible' in the context of making changes in complex systems?

The 'adjacent possible' refers to a cluster of narratives or stories that are near the current state but moving in the desired direction. It is used to identify areas where small changes can be made to nudge the system towards the desired state.

How does the speaker suggest scaling the process of capturing and interpreting personal narratives for societal change?

The speaker suggests scaling the process by using abstraction, increasing cognitive load, encouraging reflection, and avoiding the overemphasis on STEM education that could stifle creativity. They also propose using technology and training to empower individuals to capture, interpret, and enact changes based on their own narratives.

What is the significance of fractal engagement in the speaker's approach to societal change?

Fractal engagement is significant as it involves multiple levels of society working together to create small, local changes that can lead to larger, sustainable societal change. It is based on the understanding that change should be context-appropriate and not subject to a one-size-fits-all approach.

Outlines

00:00

🧩 The Dichotomy of Order and Chaos

The speaker discusses the historical contrast between ordered and chaotic systems, emphasizing the value of order in providing legal structure and reliability, such as in operating theatres. However, they caution against the misuse of fear of chaos to impose unnecessary order, which can stifle creativity and freedom. The speaker critiques the engineering approach to society, which focuses on excessive outcome-based measurement, arguing that it undermines intrinsic motivation, especially in fields like health and education. They introduce the concept of complex adaptive systems, which are characterized by connectivity rather than structure, and suggest that managing these systems is about understanding connections and changing linkages, not about control.

05:04

🎉 Organizing a Party: A Metaphor for System Management

Using the metaphor of organizing a party for nine-year-old children, the speaker illustrates different approaches to system management. The chaotic approach assumes children will act without constraints, leading to unpredictable and potentially destructive behavior. The ordered approach, taught in management schools, involves setting clear objectives and milestones, aligning with educational missions, and using motivational tools like posters and playing cards. The complex-systems approach, in contrast, involves setting flexible boundaries and introducing 'catalytic probes' like games to trigger beneficial patterns of play. Management in this context is about fostering beneficial coherence within boundaries, rather than strict control.

10:04

🌐 Empowering People as Ethnographers of Their Own Lives

The speaker advocates for empowering individuals to be ethnographers of their own lives, capturing their experiences and interpreting their own narratives. This approach is contrasted with relying on external experts or AI machines. The speaker discusses the importance of engaging people directly with their stories, without layers of interpretation that can obscure reality. They highlight projects in South Wales and Northern Ireland where people are given tools to capture and interpret their experiences, becoming active participants in their own health and community engagement. The goal is to enable people to report their own stories within a quantitative framework, fostering a deeper understanding of their conditions.

15:05

🔍 Nudging Systems Towards Change: A Complexity Science Approach

The speaker discusses a new theory of change based on complexity science, emphasizing the importance of describing the present and making small changes to nudge systems in the right direction. They argue against the traditional approach of defining a desired future state and closing the gap, which they view as ineffective in complex systems. Instead, they advocate for identifying 'adjacent possible' narratives and stories that are close to the current state but moving in a positive direction. The speaker also introduces the concept of 'vector measure,' focusing on the direction and speed of change rather than outcomes. They illustrate this with examples from health and safety projects, showing how micro observations can reveal underlying patterns and challenges in systems.

Keywords

💡Ordered systems

Ordered systems are characterized by their structure and predictability. They provide legal and operational frameworks that humanity relies on, such as counting surgical instruments in operating theatres. In the video, the speaker emphasizes the value of order for human beings, but also warns against the misuse of order to stifle creativity and freedom. The concept is used to contrast with chaotic systems and to highlight the need for a more nuanced approach to societal management.

💡Chaotic systems

Chaotic systems are depicted as lacking constraints and exhibiting random behavior. The speaker uses the hypothetical example of organizing a party for children to illustrate the potential dangers of a system without order, such as the risk of destructive behavior. This concept is used to highlight the negative aspects of a system that is not managed or controlled in any way.

💡Complex adaptive systems

Complex adaptive systems are systems defined by their connectivity rather than their structure. They are characterized by the interdependence of their components, with many connections being unknown or 'dark constraints.' The speaker explains that these systems, such as the internet or humanity itself, require a different approach to management that focuses on understanding connections and changing linkages, rather than trying to control them.

💡Intrinsic motivation

Intrinsic motivation refers to the internal drive to engage in an activity for its own sake, rather than for external rewards. The speaker argues that setting explicit targets can destroy intrinsic motivation, which is particularly problematic in fields like health and education where this type of motivation is crucial. This concept is used to critique the current focus on outcome-based measurement in society.

💡Boundary conditions

Boundary conditions in the context of complex adaptive systems refer to the limits or constraints within which the system operates. The speaker uses the metaphor of drawing a line in the sand to illustrate how setting boundaries can help manage a complex system, while also emphasizing the importance of flexible, negotiable boundaries to avoid catastrophic breakdowns.

💡Catalytic probes

Catalytic probes are interventions or stimuli introduced into a complex system to trigger a pattern of behavior or activity. The speaker uses examples like a football or a barbecue to explain how these probes can help create 'attractors' or beneficial patterns of play within the system. This concept is part of the management strategy for complex adaptive systems.

💡Attractors

Attractors in complex systems are patterns of behavior or activity that emerge and are sustained within the system. The speaker explains that by introducing catalytic probes, certain beneficial patterns can be encouraged and amplified, which is a key aspect of managing complex systems.

💡Narrative

Narrative in the video refers to the stories or accounts that individuals tell about their experiences. The speaker emphasizes the importance of allowing people to tell their own stories and interpret them, rather than having them fit into preconceived narratives or being interpreted by external experts. This concept is central to the speaker's approach to understanding and engaging with complex systems.

💡Fractal engagement

Fractal engagement is a concept introduced by the speaker to describe a method of citizen engagement that involves multiple levels of society working together to create change. The speaker explains that by engaging people at different levels and across generations, and by using their stories and experiences to inform policy and action, sustainable change can be achieved.

💡Adjacent possible

The adjacent possible in complexity science refers to a set of potential states or changes that are close to the current state of a system. The speaker uses this concept to describe how small changes in the present can nudge a system in the right direction, rather than trying to force a leap to a distant, idealized future state.

💡Vector measure

Vector measure is a term used by the speaker to describe a method of assessing change in a system by measuring the direction and speed of travel, rather than just the end outcomes. This approach allows for a more nuanced understanding of how a system is evolving and what small steps can be taken to guide it in a desired direction.

Highlights

Contrasting ordered systems and chaotic systems and their impact on humanity.

Order provides legal structure and reliability, such as in operating theatres.

Fear of chaos is used to impose unnecessary order, stifling creativity and freedom.

Society has been overly focused on engineering and outcome-based measurement.

Pursuing explicit targets destroys intrinsic motivation, especially in health and education.

Introducing the concept of complex adaptive systems defined by connectivity, not structure.

The Internet and humanity exemplify complex adaptive systems.

Management in complex systems is about understanding connections and changing linkages.

Using the analogy of organizing a party for children to illustrate different system approaches.

Chaotic systems approach in party organization leads to unpredictable and potentially destructive outcomes.

Ordered systems approach emphasizes learning objectives and project plans, aligning with societal missions.

Complex systems approach simplifies management by setting boundaries and introducing catalytic probes.

The importance of engaging people directly in their own narratives, not through AI or experts.

Empowerment through the ability to interpret one's own narrative, not just sharing it.

The need for abstraction in understanding complex systems to avoid gaming and increase cognitive load.

Using art and abstraction to enhance scientific creativity and avoid overemphasis on STEM education.

The concept of fractal engagement, involving multiple levels of society in sustainable change.

The idea of using 'adjacent possible' narratives to guide small, incremental changes in complex systems.

The importance of changing day-to-day narratives for creating a new future in society.

The practical application of these concepts in South Wales, involving young people and older generations.

Transcripts

Transcriber: Mollie Wilson-Milesi Reviewer: Peter van de Ven

For all of our history as a species, we've contrasted two types of system:

ordered systems and chaotic systems.

Ordered systems have huge value for humanity.

It gives us legal structure.

At the prosaic level, in operating theatres,

it means we can rely on the fact

that they'll count out the surgical instruments

as they counted them in,

and you won't have to be operated on for a second time.

As I get older, I find that sort of process of increasing importance.

Order is hugely valuable to human beings.

On the negative side,

the fear of chaos is being used to impose order unnecessarily

and destroy creativity and to destroy freedom.

The reality is over the last 40 or 50 years,

we've taken an engineering focus on society,

an engineering metaphor,

and we've actually compounded order with excessive outcome-based measurement.

If you actually look at the whole history of the last 40 or 50 years,

everything has to have a target.

Everything has to have a defined outcome and it has to be a number,

whether it's KPIs, number of published papers or whatever else.

The reality is, all of the scientific evidence

says that when human beings are pursuing explicit targets,

it destroys intrinsic motivation.

There is no evidence to contradict that.

And where do we most need intrinsic motivation?

In health and education.

And where do we impose the worst targets?

In health and education.

So we need to start to think differently about this,

and we need to move away from a primitive dichotomy

in which we contrast one highly structured system

with an absolutely chaotic system

into something more sophisticated.

Now, there is actually a third type of system which exists in nature.

It's a complex adaptive system.

It's a system defined not by its structure,

but by its connectivity.

In a complex system, everything is connected with everything else,

but many of the connections cannot be known.

We talk about dark constraints,

a reference to cosmology and dark matter.

We can see the impact of a constraint,

but we don't know what the constraint is.

We see there are boundary conditions which aren't defined.

We see connections making things novel or different in different ways.

The Internet is an example of a complex system.

Humanity is a complex adaptive system.

Now, understanding these and understanding how we manage them

is critical.

And it's not about control.

It's about understanding the connections, about changing the linkages.

And the best way I've ever learnt

to define the difference between the three types of system -

ordered systems, complex systems and chaotic systems -

is to start to think about how we would use those approaches

to manage a day to day problem.

So imagine, if you can, that tomorrow you have to organize a party

for a bunch of nine-year-old children.

Everybody can imagine that, yeah?

And you're making the mistake of holding it in your own house.

You learn not to do this, as you actually have more than one child, right?

The advantage of community centres is they have fire hoses.

Fire hoses are very useful for cleaning up after a party,

and they're occasionally necessary for crowd control during the party itself.

(Laughter)

So let's imagine how we would organize a party,

based on what assumption we make about the type of system.

If we assume that the system is chaotic,

then it means the children are acting without constraints.

Their behaviour is random.

So they'll probably discover drugs and alcohol

and go on a personal experience of self-discovery.

Your house may burn down in the process,

but it was socially constructed in the first place,

so why are you worried about it?

I have a friend in California who did try this once.

Yeah, he's never going to do it again.

The recovery cost was too high.

(Laughter)

The ordered-systems approach, on the other hand,

is taught in all good management schools

and all good business consultancy outfits.

Under this, it's of critical importance to agree learning objectives to the party

in advance to the party itself.

The learning objectives should be aligned

with the mission statement for education in the society to which you belong

and should be clearly articulated and printed off on motivational posters

with pictures of eagles soaring over valleys

and water dropping into ponds,

and placed around the walls of the room where you're going to hold the party.

As the children come into the party, they should be given Disney playing cards

with the party value statement clearly printed on the back.

You will, of course, have produced a project plan for the party.

The project plan will have clear milestones throughout the party,

against which you can measure progress against ideal party outcome,

and the senior adult will start the party with a motivational DVD -

you don't want the children wasting time in play

which isn't aligned with the learning objectives -

and then they'll use PowerPoint

to demonstrate their personal commitment to the party objectives

and show their children how their allowances are linked

to the achievement of the milestone targets.

(Laughter)

Following the highly successful completion of the party,

you conduct the after-action review,

update your best practice database on party management

and mandate future process improvement.

If at this stage, for any remote reason, the children aren't happy,

you hire one of the new happiness consultants

who will train them to be really very, very happy,

and God help them if they're not the next time they come to a party.

(Laughter)

The complex-systems approach, on the other hand, is much simpler.

We start off by drawing a line in the sand

known as a boundary constraint in complexity theory,

and we look the children squarely in the eye

and say, "Cross that and you die."

(Laughter)

And one of the things you learn pretty fast as an adult

is the value of flexible, negotiable boundaries,

because rigid boundaries have a habit of breaking catastrophically

when you least expect them.

We then introduce catalytic probes -

a football, a barbecue, a computer game -

any type of thing which will actually trigger a pattern of play,

which is called an "attractor."

If it's beneficial, we give it more resources.

If it's not beneficial, well, that's where we deploy the fire hoses.

What we manage is the emergence of beneficial coherence

within attractors, within boundaries,

and we manage the only three things

that you can manage in a complex adaptive system:

the boundary conditions, the probes and the amplification strategy.

Management and governance is much simpler

when you understand the nature of the system

and you stop trying to treat an ecosystem as if it was an engineering problem

when it's an ecological problem.

So the work I've been doing with my research group and elsewhere

is to find new methods or new ways to deal with this,

but you have to understand what's going on.

You can only understand a complex system

by understanding the small particular parts

of day-to-day interaction.

For humans, those are the anecdotal data

of the school gate, the street story, the beer after work.

They're not the grand narratives of workshops.

It's the day-to-day anecdotes of people's existence.

And we need to understand them through the voice of the people who tell them,

not through an AI machine interpreting the text

or an expert making them fit their cultural expectations.

People's own voice has to be subject to their own interpretation.

And then we need to allow those in power at any level of society

to have direct access to the raw stories of the people they govern,

without multiple levels of interpretation

which allow them to hide from reality

behind the guise of policy reports and everything else.

So that's kind of like the work we're doing.

In order do that, we have to engage people.

And people have had enough of surveys.

They've had enough of focus groups.

Focus groups are biased by the facilitator within 15 minutes.

Opinion polls aren't trusted anymore.

We've never, ever lived, by the way, in a fact-based society.

It's just we used to trust experts and now we're trying demagogues for a change.

The reality is

we actually hand over a lot of our cognitive processes to structures;

it's not based on ourselves as individuals.

So in order to do that, we have to engage people.

So, for example, in South Wales,

we found that girls' rugby clubs are the main agent of change

in some of the industrial communities.

So we give them tools by which they can capture their experiences

and the experiences of the people they're trying to recruit.

Then they go into old people's homes

to actually help those people become more healthy

because they've become engaged.

We're actually working now through schools

because teachers need to teach kids

about community engagement, about statistics.

So we give them tools so that every month

their children can go into their communities

and gather stories from those communities

so they become ethnographers to their own condition

rather than relying on outside experts.

This is a huge programme

which we're starting off through small countries and city states -

Wales is a small country.

And the goal is to allow people

to be ethnographers to their own condition,

to report their own stories,

but within a quantitative framework, not a qualitative framework.

Over the last 30 or 40 years,

I've seen many attempts at digital storytelling,

at gathering people's stories,

but nobody thinks about how to scale it,

and nobody allows people the power to tell you what their story means,

because that's something done by the people who gather them.

That kind of like leads us on

to using people as ethnographers to their own condition.

This is a picture from work in Africa,

where we got young girls trying to understand the abuse

that they and their colleagues have suffered,

but making them the ethnographers,

not external experts.

In order to get there, as I say, we have to empower people.

And power comes from the power to interpret your narrative,

not from the power to actually hand your narrative over to somebody else.

In order to do that, we have to find a way to scale it.

So there are several key elements on this.

One is we need to work with abstraction.

If you don't know it, art comes before language in human evolution.

The ability to abstract allows for scientific invention.

In fact,

the overemphasis on STEM education at the moment around the world

will destroy scientific creativity

because without art there is no invention.

That's basic scientific fact.

So if we move up a level of abstraction, we avoid gaming.

We need to increase cognitive load

because we need to use the popular language

to have people thinking slow, not thinking fast.

We need reflection, not the immediate response you get on questionnaires.

This is an example from work we've been doing in Northern Ireland,

another small country,

in which we've been empowering patients

to keep the stories of their own journey through the health system

and then self-interpret those stories

so they become a subject in their journey for health,

not an object.

It doesn't challenge the role of the health professional,

but it makes them a partner in the journey,

not the dominant partner, but a co-partner.

And here, as you can see, by telling the story

and balancing it on a triad between three qualities,

you don't know what the right answer is,

you get better data.

That gives us quant data at scale,

typically five to six triangles together with other geometric shapes.

It is more like a game, but it's quant backed up by qual,

and it means we can capture narrative in written form,

oral form or pictorial form.

We're not restricting it to text for data analytics,

because what you can write down is at best 10 percent of what you know.

If you focus on information, you radically reduce human knowledge.

It's far more than we can write down.

Then, of course, we have to find a way to enact what comes out of that.

We have to find a way to make real change.

Then we come on to a whole new theory of change.

This is an example from a project working on health and safety.

You get very similar patterns, whether it's in aerospace manufacturing

or the health sector.

These are two patterns from two groups:

the vertical dimension here is rule compliance;

the horizontal dimension is job completion.

This comes from thousands of micro observations,

recorded and interpreted by patients or by health professionals.

This is not based on surveys; it's a continuous mass capture.

Now, you can see immediately on the left they've got a problem.

You either follow the rules, or you get the job done.

The two are mutually incompatible states.

All of the questionnaires, all of the focus groups,

all of the interviews say they're doing both

because people know that's the right answer,

so that's what they tell you.

The day-to-day micro observations tell you something completely different.

On the right, it looks better because you've got a pattern at the top

in which everybody is actually following the rules

and getting the job done.

But that turns out to be a crisis.

Yeah, it's accident and emergency,

it's not the day-to-day operations.

On a day-to-day basis, people have to break the rules

to provide empathetic care to patients,

but increasingly - bottom left - more people are just giving up

than doing what they need to do to survive,

a pattern we're seeing in universities.

So now, how do we change that?

A traditional change mechanism, and this is the engineering culture,

would define a desired future state and try and close the gap.

That's bad complexity science.

In complexity, what matters is we describe the present,

and we make small changes in the present

to nudge the system in the right direction.

But I don't mean the conventional approach of behavioral economics

and nudge economics

because to be quite honest, that's more yanking than it is nudging.

It decides where it wants people to be,

and it tries to tug them towards it.

What we want to work out is where people are

and see when it's ready to change.

So in this case,

I look for what in complexity is called an "adjacent possible,"

a cluster of narratives, a cluster of stories,

near to where I am, but going in the right direction -

and this, by the way, is called a "vector measure."

I don't measure outcomes, I measure vectors:

direction and speed of travel for intensity of effort.

I click on the material and I say, What can I do tomorrow

to create more stories like these and fewer stories like that?

That is an instruction which can be understood by anybody

at any educational level.

What can I do within the compass of my power

to create more stories like this and fewer stories like that?

If this is a hospital administrator, they ask the questions of themselves.

They don't say, What can I get my staff to do?

Because basically, as we go underneath that,

every ward, every nurse group, every health group,

at a government level,

every district has their own map from the same source data,

so they can all nudge their systems

in a direction appropriate to their context

rather than being subject to the tyranny of the average approach,

the global campaign.

We need to start doing small things in the present

rather than promising massive things in the future

because that just leads to perpetual disappointment.

And we can go beyond that.

This is from work on peace and reconciliation,

where we've taken ideas as to how we can resolve a conflict,

and we've presented it to hundreds and thousands of people

for them to interpret it,

and we've drawn a pattern

how different groups in society represent or see the same data.

You see here that the blue and green groups

see the world in such a different way

that there's no point in getting them to sit down and talk

because you'll just increase conflict.

The only thing they're both agreed on is that the red guys are really stupid.

So we actually have to try and find a way to channel that:

How can we create more stories like this, fewer stories like that?

How can we change the day-to-day narratives of the present

so a new future is possible?

If you don't change the way that people describe the past and the present,

you haven't got a new future anyway.

So that is called fractal engagement,

where the new key concepts on citizen engagement will abide.

It goes beyond that.

In the South Wales valleys at the moment, as we gather this data in,

we're then starting to pair people.

Instead of young people coming together and having a great event

and be terribly idealistic and then nothing happens,

we're saying to young people, we'll train you how to use the software,

we'll train you in data analytics,

but you have to bring somebody from your grandparents' generation with you

so you work together as a trans-generation player,

because actually,

grandparents will tell things to their grandchildren

they won't tell to their children,

and vice versa.

And if you start to create interventions at your local level which work,

we'll make you a trio with somebody from the government

who can make your ideas happen.

So at the ministerial level,

What can I as a minister do to create more like this, fewer like that?

At a council level, What can I do to create more like this, fewer like that?

At a local community centre, an arts centre,

What can we do to create more like this, fewer like that in our community?

Multiple mass fractal engagement

to achieve genuine sustainable change in society,

and based on a scientific approach, not an engineering approach,

based on managing a complex ecosystem

rather than trying to maintain a machine.

It's an open programme for governments,

for countries, for engagement worldwide.

Thank you very much for your time.

(Applause)