EdGrimshaw.com

This creates controversy! Cause Effect thinking can be improverished as a means for describing the world in which we live. It does create the illusion of making life seem simple. It is economic, sometimes efficient but often inaccurate. In DBM ® Developmental Behavioural Modelling there are alternative models to more accurately describe that part of the world being modelled. We separate parts from what were wholes, then stick sometimes rigidly with those selections.

Much of business uses cause effect tools to solve problems such as root cause analysis or 5 Whys model - a lean tool. These have mixed results.

For instance its difficult to describe the fermentation of wine or the baking of bread using a cause effect model. its difficult to describe the onset of disease or development of a child through cause effect. In business areas such as safety, quality and culture they do not result from single or multiple causes.

We can start the think emergently if we think about the conditions that are relevant to a potential outcome. Just as smoking does not cause cancer it is one of the conditions that may well lead to a higher immanence of cancer being present. In business we attempt to build processes that guarantee success but unfortunately the conditions are not always that predictable. We can never guarantee a quality product but we can increase the immanence that a product is more likely.

Cause effect present an illusion of certainty. If we do this we get that. We like to think we have control of our environment. If theres an accident there must be someone to blame. Whether its the Space Shuttle Challenger, Concorde or the old man who runs down a young family on the pavement.

On a larger scale the evolutionary process cannot be described accurately through cause effect modelling. Each species emerges from a previous one, development is slow as is the variation in DNA.

Once we have the conditions, a number possibilities may emerge from those conditions. The driver who loses control of the car can produce a number possibilities, it easier in describing the full sequence in detail rather than just picking out salient pieces. Cause Effect thinking tends to select those aspects that are significant to the modeller. The full dynamic sequence is not fully investigated.  

A problem for emergent modellers is how to scope a relevant sequence. Where to start. As Richard Bandler says "The real cause of your problems starts when you were born" but then thats only one place to start. Its your parents that Fuck you up! We could start with their DNA etc etc.

So the DBM ® model develops (Sensory Systems - John McWhirter)

 Immanence

 Emergence

 Transcendence

We can use this to model a sequence. Any sequence - the benefits of a universal model. The accident being transcendent, an event that cannot be reversed. The output of product, the result of a race, the chemical ouput of a reaction. The transcendence of one scoped event becomes the immanence of the next.

E Grimshaw