Visual Control, UK Government and Large Hadron Collider!

Which is the simpler system? Running a country as “sophisticated” as the UK or running an experiment in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in CERN, Switzerland?

The answer is straightforward if you have read the series of blogs on the CYNEFIN Framework (the first of 4 is here: https://blogs.cranfield.ac.uk/leadership-management/cbp/computer-says-so-innovation-and-cynefin-first-of-four-on-this-subject-2).

It would enable you to position UK Government in the Complex Domain and Large Hadron Collider in the simpler, Complicated Domain.

So when the Cabinet meets to decide on issues that potentially affect millions of lives, you’d think they might want to keep in touch with reality via a Visual Control System – with all critical information at their fingertips, all sharing the same data and information, with the capability to access the same simulations where they could run simple “what-if” questions – like “What will be the impact to the economy if the country votes for BREXIT?” So you might expect to see a room like the one below, where every key player can see every other key player, and they are all accessing the same sources of data / information / simulations, perhaps with each ministry’s perspective on that?

Er, no! That’s the room running the LHC!

Here’s the room from where they run the UK! There are only two pieces of equipment in the room providing Visual Control for keeping in touch with reality – two clocks! And they’re both presenting two versions of the truth – if you look carefully, they’re both showing different times!

Could be a relativistic effect I guess, but, somehow, I think the only people who’d understand that would be in the top room above!e