Cwarel Isaf Institute

Stafford Beer

Ten Pints of Beer

The Rationale of his Cybernetic Books

Juli 2002

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Cybernetics and Management ............................................................................... 3

Decision and Control ............................................................................................... 4

Brain of the Firm ...................................................................................................... 5

Management Science .............................................................................................. 6

Designing Freedom ................................................................................................. 7

Platform for Change ................................................................................................ 8

The Heart of Enterprise ........................................................................................... 9

Diagnosing the System for Organizations .......................................................... 10

Beyond Dispute ..................................................................................................... 11

How Many Grapes Went into the Wine .............................................................. 12

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1959 – Cybernetics The book was selected as the management book of the
year by the prestigious reviewers of the Sunday Times,
and Management and Norbert Wiener himself came to refer to Stafford
Beer as “the father of managerial cybernetics“. Despite
adding a new chapter in 1967, to comment on the
progress of automation, the basic book has never been
amended -- because, it offered a new perspective on
the history and philosophy of science, which are them-
English Universities Press, London. John Wiley, New selves matters of record. The book was constantly re-
York. Reprinted 1960, 1965, New Edition (with new printed over a period of more than twenty years, after
Chapter) 1967, reprinted 1970,1971,1973 etc. which it was lost to view in a series of publishers’-
Translated into Spanish, Russian, German, Czech, takeovers and reorganizations.
Polish, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, French and
Japanese. That new perspective was essentially an appeal for
holism, to be achieved through the study of total sys-
The foundation of cybernetics as a science by Norbert tems, as distinct from the reductionism which already
Wiener, and characterized by him as “control and pervaded the scientific method. Forty years later,
communication in the animal and the machine“, was reductionism is triumphant everywhere, from its base
marked by his publication of Cybemetics in 1948. in academia, through science and medicine, to the
Stafford Beer encountered the book in 1950, and at social sciences. Those seeking to understand the work
once recognized its direct relevance to his own work in of Stafford Beer as a whole would do well to begin
management science in the British steel industry. with his own first book.
Having written and lectured extensively about the new
field, he presented three plenary addresses to the In a preface to Cybernetics and Management, the author
International Association for Cybernetics at the found- pointed out that the ultimate source of energy in the
ing assembly in Namur, Belgium. As an outcome, he hydrogen-helium fusion had been discovered and put
was invited in 1957 to give a series of lectures and to work. It needed to be balanced by equivalent ad-
seminars by the Royal Swedish Academy of vances in the ultimate source of control -- that is, in
Engineering Sciences in Stockholm and Uppsala. the cybernetics of natural processes, especially in the
He was urged by the sponsors, who presented him evolution of the nervous system and brain itself. Forty
with the Silver Medal of the Academy, to incorporate years later that ambition remains compelling.
these lectures into a book. Cybernetics and Management
was the result, and it was first published in 1959.

The context of system was set against the reductive

processes that have dominated our culture. From the
managerial point view, systems were seen as being
essentially in control or not in control -- these turning
out to be functions of perception, conditioned by the
ubiquity of feedback. The description of complex situ-
ations as black boxes, and the notion that a purposive
system is defined by the black-box output itself [rather
than by wishes or intentions], was the origin of
Stafford Beer’s later celebrated dictum the purpose of a
system is what it does. The role of theoretical logic as
conditioning the world, and leading to a cybernetic
account of management itself was revolutionary. Above
all, the book was the first to argue the possibility of
designing an organization scientifically to be a learning
adaptive and evolving system.

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1966 – Decision and in active leadership of operational research in the biggest

steel company in Europe. The multidisciplinary profes-
Control: sional staff reached 70, and by 1965 had installed the
first computer ever dedicated to management science.
The meaning of The outcome was not a product of academic research.
Indeed, his first academic appointment followed publi-
Operational Research cation of Decision and Control, and was as a full
Professor at the Manchester Business School, where he
and Management remained for 24 years. He has held the same title in
many universities around the world. All of his teaching
Cybernetics. work has always been on a part-time basis, however,
because he has remained a senior manager or consul-
tant to this day.

Stafford Beer still believes that his problem-orientation

is vital to society, and that his advocacy of cybernetics.
John Wiley, 1966, reprinted 1967, 70, 71, 74, 78, 79, offers the most powerful approach to multidisciplinary
88 etc. Translated into Spanish. 1994 - paperback. model building available. That is why the book remains
fresh. In the meantime, academic demands for curricu-
Intended as a definitive statement about holistic science lum, for a list of techniques that lend themselves to rit-
and problem-solving, this book has been continuously ual examination, have turned OR into something
in print for more than thirty years. It was awarded the approximating to applied mathematics, and removed
Lanchester Prize by the Operations Research Society of from the creative solution of problems. Decision and
America as “the outstanding contribution to the litera- Control does not regard all models as mathematical,
ture of management science in the world“ for 1966. although mathematics may serve as a powerful lan-
guage in discussing them. He has used models ranging
From the early days in World War II, the objective of from the A of Apiary to the Z of Zoology. In the
Operational Research was to address intractable prob- book’s index, under the entry listing types of model,
lems, and to increase the probability that decisions there are 31 entries.
taken under conditions of extreme uncertainty would
be effective. The approach was formalized by Stafford That leaves the problem of the appropriate methodolo-
Beer at the invitation of the Operational Research gy for selecting and handling models. In Chapter 6
Society when he first joined the Council, and was offi- About Models [pages 95 to 119] the foundation is laid
cially adopted by the Society. The definition was print- for a distinctive approach to the epistemology of sci-
ed in the front of every issue of the Society’s Journal ence, based on the holistic nature of systems. This is
for a great many years. It reads: the book’s major contribution to scholarship. The
more rigorous account had already appeared in the
“Operational Research is the attack of modem science on prestigious journal Nature [No. 4968, Jan. 16, 1965]
complex problems arising in the direction and manage- presented as the Stephenson for 1964, under the title
ment of large systems of men, machines, materials and The World, the Flesh and the Metal.
money in industry, business, government and defence. Its
distinctive approach is to develop a scientific model of the
system, incorporating measurements of factors such as
chance and risk, with which to predict and compare the
outcomes of alternative decisions, strategies or controls.
The purpose is to help management to determine its policy
and actions scientifically.“

The purpose of the book was to elucidate and illustrate

these propositions in the management context. The
Preface points out that Stafford Beer had already spent
more than twenty years working in the field -- all of it

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1972 – Brain of the Firm In the meantime, the Second Edition of Brain includ-
ed five new chapters that constitute a case study of
truly massive importance. The First Edition was still
with the printers when the author was invited by
President Salvador Allende to apply cybernetic think-
First Edition: Allan Lane the Penguin Press, London; ing to the whole social economy of Chile. He took
Herder and Herder, USA. Translated into German, with him the manuscript of the First Edition, which
Italian, Swedish and French. became the project’s “Bible“. As the Project Director,
Stafford Beer was directly responsible to Dr. Allende,
Second Edition -- much extended: John Wiley, until the coup of 1973 and the murder of the
London and New York -- 1981. Reprinted 1986, President.
1988, etc. Translated into Russian. 1994 - paperback.
The story, called The Course of History, recounts how
This book is an account of the firm -- or any other managerial cybernetics transformed some two-thirds of
cohesive organization -- based on insights derived from the social economy in a few short years. The VSM was
the study of the human nervous system. Such under- of course deployed as the framework for the project.
standing of neurophysiology as is required, is explained The whole premise of this work is novel, and nothing
in the text. Brain and management structures are eluci- should be taken for granted. Orthodox information
dated and continuously compared, and a theory of systems were totally supplanted by a real-time comput-
effective organization is thereby evolved. This process erized system, based on Kalman filters and Bayesian
should not be thought of as providing an “analogy“, probability theory. It used microwave link [covering
but as the pursuit of fundamental principies whereby the 4000 miles extent of the country], automatic statis-
self-regulatory viable systems are necessarily constructed. tical filtration of information, and operation rooms as
ergonomically designed environments for decision.
The model distinguishes five subsystems that have par- Economic information, at every level of organization
ticular systemic roles, and can be measured according from the plant through industrial sectors to the cabinet
to a particular protocol that assesses numbers of rela- and President himself, was filtered to highlight matters
tive potential states. The five subsystems continuously of importance -- and none of this information was
interact to maintain an overall balance, known to bio- more than 24 hours late. Even so, the computing sys-
logy as homeostasis, whereby we customarily say that tem was organized to decentralize authority.
the total organization is “in control“. This means that
the flux of significant variables achieving the balance Despite the evident complexity of all this, Brain of the
are all maintained within limits that do not stress any Firm in its extended edition, is written to be under-
one of them. The entire regulatory process is intended stood by managers. There is little mathematical con-
to ensure survival in both the short and long-term, tent, only descriptions and diagrams. The book should
through processes of learning, adaptation and evolu- be read in its entirety, and in the order presented, or
tion. The five subsystems cannot be isolated from each the argument will not be followed, and the Chilean
other, and attempts in the literature to identify them story at the end will make little sense.
separately with managerial names are ill-conceived.

Brain of the Firm is the first of a trilogy of books devot-

ed to explaining what is now known as The Viable
System Model -- or VSM. Using the epistemology
described in Decision and Control, the VSM was newly
investigated on the basis of the necessary and sufficient
conditions that would account for viability in any sys-
tem. The second book, then, entitled The Heart of
Enterprise, presents an enriched version of the Model
shorned of neurophysiology.

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1968 – Management Another preoccupation of Management Science was the

virtually total ignorance of the theory of probability at
Science: the time the book was written. Managers considered
that figures were either right or wrong, influenced no
The Business Use of doubt by accountancy and especially bookkeeping.
Estimates were at best inadequate figures that ought to
Operational Research be “put right“, and probabilities were treated as equiva-
lent to guesses. The whole scientific domain of likeli-
hood was [and unhappily largely remains] a closed book
to managers.

Therefore an attempt was made to introduce some basic

Aldous Books UK and USA, hardcover and paperback. statistical theory in an interesting way. For example,
over many years the author mystified audiences by con-
Translated into German, French, Swedish, Japanese, sidering the probabilities that two people in the room
Finish, Dutch and Norwegian. shared the same birthday. In fact, the odds are even
when only 23 people are present. In a sizable audience
Decision and Control was a weighty tome, although of say 90 people, the chance of a shared birthdays is not
every effort had been made to make the work digestible. one-in-four, as most people think, but 99.99 percent --
Other publishers thought that there was a serious need virtual certainty.
to convey the underlying message in a more readily
accessible form -- in a book limited to 200 pages, and We know that managers ought to be able to read a bal-
decorated with plenty of diagrams and pictures. The ance sheet, to understand costings, to consider person-
book was to be published simultaneously in many lan- nel factors, to peruse market research, to offer leadership
guages, based on a text of uniform layout in them all. and so forth, and obviously these are particular skills
which can be communicated about all such matters. But
The standpoint of Management Science is expressed like the claim that there is a management science cannot be
this. To say that there can be a science of management justified as if it were simply a collection of topics in that
is not to deny that management is an art. At the time, way. The issue is about complex, probabilitistic sys-
controversies raged in the business press over this issue. tems, considered as a whole. The science of a subject is
It is still true today that heavily intuitive entrepreneurs always about its very nature, not about virtuosity.
tend to disregard the scientific possibilities of systemic
synthesis. But the man with the genius for designing
buildings is not less of an artist because he is a competent
architect. It is a good thing for us all that he is.

Secondly, we should not confuse the contention that

there can be a systematic knowledge of management,
based on systems theory, with the notion that there are
particular techniques used by managers which can be
taught and applied to situations like a poultice. This is
an argument already familiar to readers of Decision and
Control, and annoyance with the way in which problem
solving was already giving way to an obsession with
pre-packaged technique is evident. “This is a mistake
which is sometimes made in very high quarters“,
declares the dust jacket of Management Science.

Once again, as we saw in Decision and Control, there is

an emphasis on the nature of models, and the idea that
models can be made larger or smaller -- by analogy with
optical resolution -- does not invalidate their utility.

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1974 – Designing summer the political situation was highly volatile. Beer
continued as scientific director, but left Santiago to live
Freedom incognito in the small village of Las Cruces on the
Pacific Coast. Political associates visited there, or he
went to the capital, covertly during the night. That
was how the first of the Massey Lectures came to
choose the ocean location to make its first points, and
the third Lecture entitled ‘A Liberty Machine in
CBC Learning Systems, Toronto, 1974, and John Prototype’ draws obliquely on Project Cybersyn itself.
Wiley, London and New York 1975. 1993 transferred By the time of writing the final Lecture, Beer was back
to House of Anansi, Toronto 1994 -- Wiley paperback in London having said goodbye to the President -- and
Translated into Spanish, ltalian and Japanese. three weeks after that Allende was dead. The use of the
oxymoron in the title of Designing Freedom was the
Following the author’s extensive applications of cyber- more poignant given that the despot General Pinochet
netics across Canada in major organizations and gov- seized power, and plunged Chile into long years of tor-
ernment departments during the 60s and onward, the ture, murder and repression.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation invited him to
deliver the Massey Lectures for 1973. This was the Producer James Anderson responded to the stress he
thirteenth in the annual series, which had included detected in Stafford Beer’s situation, and discovered
Noam Chomsky, Northrop Frye, Carlos Fuentes, that the cybernetician is also a poet. He therefore com-
R. D. Laing, Doris Lessing and George Steiner. missioned a further programme to follow the Massey
Lectures -- on the night of the seventh week -- for a
The Lectures consisted of a series of six broadcasts full hour’s programme of his poetry. The occasion, fol-
transmitted coast-to-coast on consecutive Wednesdays. lowing a dinner party at his home in England, involved
The objective was to explain some key concepts of Stafford Beer and a close friend -- the prominent
cybernetics to the general public -- although the audi- British actor Barrie Ingham, who had a penchant for
ence was likely to have attended a university. The his poetry. These two men had an informal inter-
Lectures were set in a context of discussions and semi- change of readings: the programme itself was
nars at York University near Toronto, promoted and unplanned and unscripted. Although the Lectures were
broadcast by the Ideas programme of CBC under the greeted with critical acclaim, far more letters were
direction of James Anderson. The programme was received at CBC from the public about the poetry ...
transmitted and repeated in many countries of the
world, and the Lectures themselves are available in
audio tape. The published book was embellished with
the author’s own sketches -- intended to add to under-
standing rather than merely to decorate.

Canada has a special copyright arrangement for the

Massey Lectures, which remain in print at a cheap
price for a book of only a hundred pages. The Wiley
publications, both in hardcover and later in paperback,
were published in keeping with its overall pricing poli-
cy for this author, and the international retail cost was
about five times the Canadian version it was unsuc-
cessful on each occasion, but sales in the Canadian
version continue to this day.

The Lectures had to be prepared during 1973. This

was during the final year of Project Cybersyn in Chile,
while Stafford Beer was reporting to President Salvador
Allende. The project ended with the assassination of
the President in September. For sometime during the

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1975 – Platform for was devoted to designing different statements, specific

to their audiences, which between them would be a
Change vehicle of more encompassing intention. That was to
express the relevance of the new science of cybernetics to
holism, and to propose it as a new worldview. Insofar as
key cybernetic insights were concerned, to illustrate
them in all those different contexts should buttress the
thinking.
John Wiley, London and New York. Reprinted 1978, etc.
1994 - paperback The work in Chile pre-empted the preparation of the
book, which therefore took until 1975 to achieve its
The year 1970 saw a commitment to make an unprece- consolidated basis, although the over-arching plan had
dented number of major speeches to specialized audi- to be in place from the start. This consists of a thesis
ences at a very high-level. There was to be a keynote called the total system, which represents a philosophy
address for an international assembly of the Pierre about the world written as a single systems diagram.
Teihard de Chardin Association in London. Following The integral thesis comprises six statements, each with
the authors election as President of the Operational an appropriate explanatory systems diagram, which are
Research Society, there had to be an inaugural address. developed during the course of the book, and printed
There was to be a major address in London on the man- on blue pages. Meantime, the fifteen Arguments of
agement of health, a report for UNESCO, a plenary Change, as the individual public statements were called
address to the International Cybernetics Congress, and proceed in ordinary printed format on white paper.
a presidential address for the Institute of Management
Science. An annual memorial lecture for the police Each Argument of Change is prefaced by a personal
would soon have to be followed by an appearance in statement, presented on yellow pages, explaining what
Washington D.C. to talk about complexity to a U.S. the author was thinking about the occasion. This is fol-
House committee. Obviously, immense significance lowed by a more formal explanation of the intention
attached to that. underlying the statement -- these are the gold pages.
The yellow and gold pages, like the thesis in blue, are
Meanwhile, there was an important article to fit in, presented in a format that breaks sentences down, and
and a radio broadcast, before major addresses began arranges the words in groups -- thereby replacing most
again. A dinner address for the British Institute of punctuation. This is an experiment in communication,
Management would be followed by a second visit to which clearly distinguishes the text of the Arguments
Washington to talk about ecological systems. from the metasystems in which they are embedded. The
Following election as President for the Society for result gives the appearance of free verse, but it is by no
General Systems Research in the United States, there means intended as poetry [“I do write poetry and this
would have to be another presidential address, this isn’t it“ says Stafford Beer].
time in Philadelphia. There was a big statement to cel-
ebrate the Five Hundredth public lecture, and the orig-
inal idea was to conclude Platform for Change with
that address in that same year of 1970. However, the
SGSR meeting moved into another year. Finally, just
edging into the following year of 1973, another
memorial lecture was chosen to make the first public
announcement in Britain about the Chilean work,
while President Allende was making his own
announcement in Santiago simultaneously. These two
writings were so germane to the whole thesis of the
book that they were included in the final plan.

The commitments of 1970 were daunting indeed. It

was on option to write one basic piece, and then tailor
it for 15 different audiences ... Instead, the whole year

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1979 – The Heart of The reference to heart in the title was meant to deal
with another criticism -- that the cybernetic approach,
Enterprise because it invokes scientific rigour, is basically posi-
tivistic, and fails altogether to deal with human factors.
Some contend that it is in fact inhuman. The Heart of
Enterprise tried to deal with this second major issue
too. It set out to discover the necessary and sufficient
John Wiley, London and New York. Reprinted with conditions that must apply to any viable system; and
corrections 1988. this was explicitly to include human systems. This did
1994 - paperback not satisfy those who feel that nothing human can be
said that does not involve sententiously pious senti-
This is the second in the trilogy dealing with the VSM -- ments expressed in gouts of emotive language. On the
The Viable System Model. After the first book Brain other hand, the fact that each chapter of Heart ends
of the Firm had become well-known, it became clear with a conversation in a bar was widely tut-tutted as
that people could not handle the theory of models for “inappropriate“ in a serious work ...
which it called -- an epistemology elucidated in
Decision and Control and many papers. It was often The real meaning about the interchanges called “Later
said that the book was a treatise on neurophysiology, in the Bar ...“ has everything to do with humanity
to which other kinds of organizational might be ex- after all. On page 562 a systems diagram is described
tended “by analogy“. According to this position, the specifying the layout for the whole book. The episodes
“analogy“ might prove to be useful or not depending in the Bar are shown as attempts to foresee the misun-
on circumstances. In fact, the book postulated cyber- derstandings that might predictably arise from the pre-
netic principles that were supposed to be independent vious chapter, and to correct them through the medi-
of context. um of provocative conversation -- in which humour is
not disdained.
This was a much stronger position altogether. In the
1970s when Brain was written, Stafford Beer had No review has yet commented on this structural inno-
thought that -- since people knew about their own vation. In the expectation, that none of this would be
bodies -- they could be helped to perceive undregula- understood, Appendix Three draws attention to the
tion well enough, Brain of the Firm would help them ‘bar problem’ by providing an alleged review of the
to learn about the central nervous system, and pre- book. The language of this is completely meaningless,
scribed course work accordingly! but no one has ever commented about that fact either.
The review is signed by the initials C.W.R.W., writing
The second book in the trilogy was written to assert from Wales. Someone may be interested to know that
the stronger position. It does not mention neurophysi- cwrw [pronounced cooroo in Welsh] is the Welsh
ology. It proceeds from a basic discussion erlying word for beer. Between Appendix Three and the spoof
cybernetics principles by referring to them. However, review is a wholly serious select bibliography, innova-
several universities and a leading teaching hospital took tively organized as a model of a reading list -- arranged
a reverse position. They said that because people could in a circle. The only comment on the bibliography,
understand about as to the very meaning of the word written by a distinguished reviewer, complained that
system, and its essentially subjective and relativistic there was none. It seems that neither novelty nor irony
nature, through modes of measurement, to the discov- is much appreciated.
ery of the five subsystems deemed essential to support
any viable system. Two regulatory aphorisms, four
principles of organization, and three axioms of man-
agement, are put forward, together with a theorem of
recursion and an associated law of cohesion. All of
these are inferred from first principles. Part Four of the
book contains notes on implementation, and includes
a full-scale case study of the evolution of a manage-
ment cybernetic process, based on a mutual life insur-
ance company.

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1985 – Diagnosing no less than thirteen levels of recursion. An organiza-

tion for planetary protection was conceived and
the System for designed. The family as a viable system turned out to
be an elaborate affair. Finally, the recursive embodi-
Organizations ments of language led to some surprises when submit-
ted to the VSM.

To give a full-scale account, with all its multiple recur-

sions, of these studies would probably have taken a full
year and a very large book to write. There was no time
John Wiley, Chichester and New York. Reprinted 1988. for any of this, and no particular interest in its publica-
Translated into Italian and Japanese. 1994 - paperback tion anyway. The value was in testing the presentation
of the VSM in highly diverse systems. The workbook
The third in the VSM trilogy is a kind of workbook. Diagnosing the System was written following this expe-
By working through these 150 pages systematically, a rience. There was a significant reason for taking this
particular application of any viable system may be cre- much time over a small book. It concerned the core
ated. This was meant to be done on the understanding diagrams of the VSM.
that the underlying theory in Brain and Heart had
already been studied, which would mean that the cru- The Viable System Model had its origins in a mathe-
cial cybernetic philosophy of science entailed would matical model of the brain, first published in 1960.
already be deeply embedded. The workbook, then, This set-theoretic model [reprinted in How Many
provides a checklist of actions, and a recapitulation of Grapes Went into the Wine] was not accessible to the
key terms, to facilitate the development of a given general reader. Moreover, the notion of recursivity
application. which became central to the VSM is also a difficult
mathematical concept. Stafford Beer took the decision
Sadly, some people have naively plunged into to represent the mathematics in terms of rigorous dia-
Diagnosing the System without reading the first two grams. The diagramatic rigour meant that the mathe-
books. Perhaps because it is the more recent of the matics itself would maintain its validity. This is the
three, and despite or because of its brevity, and ignor- reason why the author has made so many attempts to
ing its opening warning, it has been taken as an inclu- preserve the accuracy of the diagrams -- with little suc-
sive compendium on the viable system. Many writers cess, as so many writers have felt free to ‘improve’ the
have presented applications of VSM models which ref- drawings to make them ‘more comprehensible’ -- and
erence only the workshop book. lf they have followed have destroyed the theoretical validity in the process.
the instructions, they have rarely made monumental
mistakes, but they offer little of substance beyond the The first attempt to do this, in Brain, correctly depict-
pretty pictures. Most of all, they fail to make the ed the structure of a single recursion. Every attempt to
advertised diagnosis -- because they have not sufficient build into that structure the full recursivity of the
understanding to know where to look for dangerous VSM failed. In Brain, therefore, icons were used to
symptoms or how to quantify them. indicate that a diagram repeated itself. In Heart, con-
siderable diagramatic advances were made, and the
In June and July 1982 a group of nine mature post- rigour was achieved -- but without much artistic ele-
graduate students collected in Concordia University in gance. In Diagnosing, however, the problem was finally
Montreal to study the cybernetics of organization with solved by depicting a level of recursion below the VSM
Stafford Beer. Teams were formed to apply the VSM to in focus at an angle of 45 degrees. Since then, the for-
a range of viable systems. The whole group would be mal depiction has been adopted and insisted upon --
involved throughout, so that the applicability of the not out of obstinacy, but because no alternative dia-
same model to the diversity of topics would be appre- gram has ever been presented that preserved the math-
ciated. Seven systems were chosen for study. The uni- ematical basis correctly.
versity itself, and a manufacturing industry, were obvi-
ous starters. The health service of Quebec Province
came next: we were meeting in Montreal after all. Next
came a third world broadcasting corporation, covering

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1994 – Beyond Dispute: asm and commitment among those involved in the
team -- who after all are the sole-designers and genera-
The Invention of Team tors of the outcome. No agenda are put before them at
the start, and they settle their own priorities as they go
Syntegrity along. Although the invention was founded on the
urgent need to make Three-Four homeostasis in the
VSM effective, the technique can be used in other
contexts -- for example to explore conflict resolution,
or to generate new products.

John Wiley, Chichester and New York. Part One of Beyond Dispute explains the origins of
these ideas -- many of which antedate the VSM and
A reader who studies the VSM diagrams in any one of the path-finding experiments that led to its eventual
the trilogy Brain, Heart, or Diagnosing that discusses formulation as a model and technique. Part Two elabo-
the viable system model, will have noticed the ‘fat rates further, particularly in relation to the VSM and
arrows’. These are uniquely used to designate one fea- to governance in general. The form of the model and
ture of the VSM -- the homeostat connecting System its icosahedral space are addressed in Part Three, and
Three and System Four. The fat arrows are an attempt much deeply significant mathematical issues are dis-
to emphasize the importance of the balancing device cussed at the high-school level.
that provides homeostasis between [Three] energies
devoted to maintaining the profitability of the status Part Four consists of a single Chapter Fourteen which
quo, and [Four] energies devoted to creating the explains what Stafford Beer means by the notion of
future. Team Syntegrity was an invention designed to “group consciousness“. He traces the cybernetic devel-
create a process that would facilitate the homeostasis opment of his theory that consciousness begins with a
marked by the fat arrows. lt is directed to normative, single nerve cell, or neuron, and by a process of
directional, and strategic planning -- and other creative increasing complexification reaches the level of
decision processes. self-awareness. The Part concludes with a few specula-
tive paragraphs on the notion of transcendence.
The underlying model is a regular icosahedron. This
can be thought of as a sphere with twenty flat faces. The final Part contains supporting work by a number
The resulting solid object has 20 equal triangular sides. of collaborators. One returns to the mathematics
lt also has 30 equivalents edges, each of which repre- involved -- not this time at high-school level, but using
sents a person. An internal network of interactions is graph-theory and spectral analysis. The design of the
created by a set of protocols -- ’rules of the game’. lt is algorithm required to choose between the allocation of
so arranged that each person selects a unique ‘owner- individuals in the way most satisfying to the partici-
ship’ in two of the group’s twelve eventual topics, and a pants comes later. Two chapters deal with problems of
responsibility to act as a critic towards two different facilitation in supporting the team’s activity. There are
groups. Group organized like this is an ultimate state- two chapters about practical concerns one in organiz-
ment of participative democracy, since each role is ing and one in implementing the outcomes. Finally,
structurally indistinguishable from any other. There is there is a very brief note to introduce the VSM to
no hierarchy, no top, no bottom, no sideways. Stafford those who know nothing about it.
Beer illustrates how continued dynamic interaction
between persons causes ideas and resolutions to hum
around the sphere, which reverberates into a kind of
group consciousness. Mathematical analysis of the
structure shows how the process creates synergy by
spreading information uniforrnly throughout.

Team Syntegrity offers managers and their advisers a

new planning method that captures the native genius
of the organization in a non-political and non-hierar-
chical way. lt has been found to generate great enthusi-

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 Stafford Beer: Ten Pints of Beer Cwarel Isaf Institute

1994 – How Many Pegasus], major increases in productivity were record-

ed. The department’s holistic and problem-solving
Grapes Went into the approaches dominated the purely analytic enquiries of
orthodox O.R. Before the com- puter arrived, com-
Wine pletely innovative techniques were invented: massed
batteries of controlled charts were designed by nomog-
Stafford Beer on the raphy, and simulations of stochastic processes were
undertaken on a mechanical machine called SAM.
art and science of Both are described here.

holistic management Part Two consists of a number of addresses introducing

cybernetics -- considered as a new world view. These
date from the late 50s to the early 60s, and feature a
number of seminal writings. They include a plenary
address at the second world conference on cybernetics
in Belgium, and the Stevenson Lecture in Newcastle
edited by Roger Harnden and Allenna Leonard which laid the foundations for the author’s epistemolo-
gy. This was followed in 1960 by the inaugural address
John Wiley, Chichester and New York. for the new Institute of systems founded at the Case
Institute in Cleveland. The speech made here was
This collection of Stafford Beers writings covers impor- regarded as revolutionary, Many other events of a
tant early work which is difficult to find, and publishes six-week intensive visit were recorded in a long forgot-
some which has never been printed before. The editors ten diary, which is printed here for the first time. It
included a few poems and cartoons as light relief in adds retrospective comments noted in 1992. These
tracing the historical and intellectual progress of some- point to the fact that much of the advanced and
one who considers that rigorous methods and goal well-funded work on cybernetics, welcomed with such
alignment may coexist with artistic achievements and a enthusiasm in 1960 has been virtually forgotten since.
concern for human beings. The title itself is a quota- It is slowly and hesitantly being rediscovered today.
tion from a poem that mocks the technique of cost
benefit analysis. The editors entitle Part Three as dealing with complex-
ity in human and social affairs. It contains four major
After an introduction by the editors, Stafford Beer’s writings. In India, the government founded an
own writing opens with a relatively recent [1987] Institute in honour of the country’s illustrious scientist,
address given as President to the triennial conference Dr. Zaheer. Stafford Beer was asked to give the inau-
of the World Organization of Systems and gural address. He was also invited to write a critical
Cybernetics, which summarizes the holistic position. essay as the Preface to Maturana’s seminal work on
This is immediately followed by way of juxtaposition autopoiesis. Finally, there are two Memorial Lectures --
with an account of empirical research undertaken in strangely enough commissioned on the same day. The
the 50s, seeking systems that could be inherently first was in honour of the founder of General Systems
self-organizing. Theory, Ludwig von Bertalanffy. The second honoured
Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit paleontologist and
Only then does Part One of Grapes begin with selec- mystic. Stafford Beer took a full year to write these two
tions on interdisciplinary applications. papers which, otherwise apparently unconnected, both
Of operational research to tangible problems. These ended in the recital of the eighty-second Psalm ...
writings all date from the 1950s, and all are concerned
with industrial production and its organization. Perhaps the most influencial paper in the whole book,
Throughout this decade, Stafford Beer was Head of which is also the most difficult to read and under-
management science for the largest steel company in stand, is Chapter 10 in Part Two. This presents a
Britain. For much of the time he also held the manage- model of the brain, couched in Bourbakian set theory,
rial position of production controller. With a scientific which Stafford Beer was working on throughout the
staff that grew to seventy, and the world’s first computer 1950s. This may well have been the earliest formal
[1956] dedicated to management science [a Ferranti model to take the position that the brain is a closed

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 Stafford Beer: Ten Pints of Beer Cwarel Isaf Institute

system. lt also argued that the vast complexity of the

brain must necessarily be attenuated by a conditional
probability process -- and postulated a possible neuro-
mathematical mechanism that would make learning
possible. The contentious theorem on the indetermi-
nacy of configuration structure belongs here.

The chapter concludes by displaying a picture of the

operation of a cybernetic factory which was actually
being implemented in a steel rolling mill. This in-
cludes a printout of an “electroencephalograph“ of the
company’s “brain“. The occasion of this presentation
was a small closed conference on self-organizing sys-
tems called by Heinz von Foerster, and attended by
both Warren McCulloch and Ross Ashby who were
Stafford Beers mentors. Their confirmation of his work
was crucial to his support, as was that of Joel Elkes, a
leading authority on the brain, when he came across
the 1960 paper in 1982 [pp. 226/7]. From these ori-
gins were developed the Viable System Model.

Chapter 10 ends: “A self-organizing system must

always be alive and incomplete. For completion is
another name for death.“

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