5. Act on constraints and constructors

5 Act on constraints and constructors

• Having set the boundaries, focus is now the constraints and constructors in the middle - the space of legitimate activity and available change (aka Affordance landscape)
  • Robust constraints are either governing or fixed
  • Resilient constraints are enabling
    • Culture wheel elements can also be enabling
    • Heuristics can be enabling
  • Constructors create a replicable outcome
• Which should be maintained? Amended? Destroyed?

• See on the grid where legitimate small changes are easily possible
  • Test by nudging the CAS
  • A nudge should only be done to shift things to an Adjacent Possible
  • A nudge is taking a oblique rather than a direct path

• Change human-imposed constraints to enable new desirable patterns to emerge
  • Formal vertical hierarchical structures (slabs)
  • Informal horizontal networks (cliques, tribes, factions, silos)
  • Scaffolding as an OD Constraint to support Emergence

• What if we haven’t got an Adjacent Possible to move to easily?
  • • Launch safe-to-fail experiments to create one
    • Overall the more we know, the more we are able to manage