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35,1/2 Transcending organisational
autism in the UN system response
to HIV/AIDS in Africa
10
John G.I. Clarke
Icosindaba Development Associates, Pinegowrie, Johannesburg, South Africa

Abstract
Purpose To encourage the ongoing transformation of the UN system by conceptualising leadership
challenges within a cybernetics/systems paradigm.
Design/methodology/approach A grounded theory methodology was used to explore the
paradox of plenty within the UN system in Southern Africa how the system can more effectively
metabolise the considerable latent creative synergic potential within it, to respond to the challenges of
HIV/AIDS in Africa.
Findings Statements from UN leaders call for a new paradigm of humanitarian assistance if the
challenges of HIV and AIDS are to be met. However, conversations with a wide range of people both
within the UN system and closely connected to it suggest a disconnect between what the system does
and what the system espouses a bias toward doing things right rather than doing the right
thing. Drawing on the writings of Berry (eco-spirituality), Beer (VSM), Argyris and Schon (double
loop learning), Hock (chaordic organisation) and Ackoff (corporate planning) the sub-optimal
organisational performance is interpreted as an autistic condition, whereby organisations become
so locked up inside themselves that nothing and no one can get in. Interactive dialogue with primary
health care workers in Swaziland generated five interconnected principles for developing a systemic
response to HIV and AIDS. These are proposed as antidotes to counteract autistic tendencies within
the UN system.
Research limitations/implications The principles are offered for discussion and refinement
through further research by cyberneticians and systems thinkers.
Originality/value If internalised by UN leadership the perplexing challenges that HIV/AIDS is
posing could be met with renewed confidence and hope.
Keywords Cybernetics, Leadership, International organizations, Acquired immune deficiency syndrome
Paper type Conceptual paper

HIV/AIDS is a huge problem. Its gender aspects are manifold. It demands novel responses.
Right now the academic community, the policy community and the donor community are not
thinking these novel thoughts or identifying novel responses. To do this, recognition of the
longer-term nature of the problem is essential. Gender and mainstreaming in any
conventional sense will not be enough (Seeley and Barnett, 2004, p. 97).

Introduction
In Southern Africa rampant HIV infection, deepening food insecurity and the erosion of
governance capacity (collectively dubbed the triple threat), is challenging the United
Kybernetes
Nations to develop a new response paradigm that more effectively addresses the
Vol. 35 No. 1/2, 2006
pp. 10-24 This paper does not necessarily represent the views of the World Health Organisation or the
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0368-492X
United Nations Regional Interagency Coordination Support Office, and is the sole responsibility
DOI 10.1108/03684920610640191 of the author.
chronic systemic vulnerability of millions of people in the region. Not only does the Transcending
triple threat make the targets for most of the eight UN Millennium Development
Goals[1] (MDGs) unattainable for the countries in the region, but also it is causing
organisational
many of the indicators of progress to, in fact, show reversals (infant and under five autism
mortality rates, life expectancy, nutritional status, etc.).
The United Nations system has prioritised internal reform, led by the UN Secretary
General Kofi Annan (2002). He states: 11
Increasingly, the world looks to the United Nations to address social problems that assume
global importance above all the eradication of extreme poverty and to help to articulate a
global consensus on how to deal with them. The Organization played this role notably in 2001
by raising the profile of HIV/AIDS as a global issue, through the convening of a special
session of the General Assembly and the preparatory and follow-up activities associated
with it.
There is obviously no room for complacency on this issue, and I will continue to make it
one of my personal priorities. However, the ability of the United Nations to make a vital
contribution in such areas is, I believe, no longer in question.
This paper takes its cue from his statements, and is informed by the insights of
management cybernetics the applied systems science Beer (1979) defines as the
science of organisational effectiveness. It probes the contradictions and ambiguities
that the UN system in Southern Africa faces in its institutional response to the
perceived triple threat, offers an interpretation, and proposes five working principles
and a collective proposition for UN leaders to consider in their efforts to change the
way the UN does its business in the Southern African region.

Problem statement
Within the UN system the conventional response is geared to intervene with
humanitarian relief in a sudden shock turn of events where acute conditions cause
rising mortality and a situation of abnormality. Through interventions of material
relief in the short term, prescriptions of technical improvements in the medium term,
and economic structural adjustment in the long term, the implicit assumption is that
normality will return. New coping strategies are to be developed that reduce the
susceptibility of affected populations to whatever hazard happened to have stretched
their tolerance limits to give rise to an emergency.
In crisis situations across the world, the usual response has been for international agencies to
bring in emergency relief along with new implementing teams largely as a separate process to
long-term development projects that were in place beforehand. Calls for a better integration
between these processes have a long history in development literature (Buchanan Smith and
Maxwell, 1994 cited in Harvey, c2003), which reflects the recognition that the linear concept of
a continuum between relief and development has been inadequate. A simultaneous approach
has, therefore, been suggested as a better concept, although with the understanding that there
is a powerful argument for a distinctiveness of humanitarian aid (Drimie, c2004).
It is the advent of HIV/AIDS that has most challenged the conventional paradigm
because HIV/AIDS is producing a slow-onset, deeply rooted, compound/complex
systemic phenomena that can only be managed by recognising the complex systemic
nature of the phenomena as it infects the body and spreads through society via the
most vulnerable members. Because HIV attacks the younger, sexually active
population, upon whom the future development of society depends, and given that
K the prevalence rate among 20-30 years old adults is so high in the region (estimated at
35,1/2 46 per cent in Swaziland) it is no exaggeration to suggest that Southern African
societies are in a state of incipient systemic collapse. This makes the parable of the
boiled frog an appropriate albeit disturbing metaphor to convey both the gravity
of the Southern African humanitarian crisis, and the need to characterise it in complex
living systems terms.
12 If you place a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will immediately try to scramble out. But if you
place the frog in room temperature water, and dont scare him, hell stay put. Now, if the pot
sits on a heat source, and if you gradually turn up the temperature, something very
interesting happens. As the temperature rises from 70 to 908F, the frog will do nothing. In
fact, he will show every sign of enjoying himself. As the temperature gradually increases, the
frog will become groggier and groggier, until he is unable to climb out of the pot. Although
there is nothing restraining him, the frog will sit there and boil. Why? Because the frogs
internal apparatus for sensing threats to survival is geared to sudden changes in his
environment, not to slow, gradual changes (Senge, 1990).
Drimie (c2004) concurs:
The advent of AIDS in particular underscores the fact that business as usual is no longer
applicable, as this creeping disaster has steadily eroded the livelihood base of millions of
people. Increasingly the challenge should be for the development component of the response
to go beyond rehabilitation and to be built centrally into projects. This raises an imperative
for agencies to seriously consider their medium and long-term assistance priorities as
silo-oriented fragmented development support (Drimie, 2004).
This call echoes the challenge that donor agencies and government leaders have issued
for the UN to become more than a collection of discrete agencies, preoccupied by
narrow interpretations of their various mandates and constrained by a structure that
discourages innovation and experimentation.
Impatient with the slow pace of UN reform, donors are in many countries now
choosing to by-pass the UN in determining aid and development assistance to poorer
nations through what is called direct budgetary assistance.
Recognising this and other challenges facing the UN system, UN Secretary General
Kofi Annan (2002) has called for a very different way of doing business. In particular,
he has called for:
Doing what matters by prioritising advocacy for human rights and ensuring the UN brings
its influence to bear to champion the rights of those most marginalized and exploited, girls
and women.
Working together better, entailing the development of joint programmes, building
common databases, and pooling resources, between UN agencies as well as between the UN
and NGOs.
In Southern Africa, serious effort has been made, led by the special envoy for
Humanitarian needs in Southern Africa, James Morris, to model a new way of doing
business. A body has been formed of UN Regional Directors in Africa to endorse a
more joined up approach to addressing the HIV/AIDS crisis. Structures and processes
are evolving to intensify action at the country level to restore confidence in the UN
system, while it proves it able to counteract the triple threat through doing what
matters and working together better. This paper seeks to critically explore what this
means in terms of a managerial cybernetics paradigm.
Response and methodology Transcending
Given my interests and background described below, my recruitment into the UN organisational
system provided an opportunity to reflect upon this deep learning question: given the
overwhelming threats of HIV/AIDS, food insecurity and weakening governance, how autism
can the UN system in Southern Africa become an extra-extra-ordinary organisation?
The enquiry took the form of a participant observation study roughly following the
techniques of grounded theory methodology to explore the above question, but in a 13
natural conversational mode rather than structured interviews or focus groups. Given
the inter-subjective process of making meaning, it is appropriate my own subjective
interest be explained and the process of learning outlined.
A yearning phrase from Beers book Beyond Dispute: The Invention of Team
Syntegrity, was held tacitly in mind as I proceeded in the enquiry/advocacy process.
We need to metabolise the creative and the synergetic resources of the enterprise
(Beer, 1993).
This thought was connected to Druckers observation that organizations exist to
enable ordinary people to achieve extraordinary things (OReilly and Pfeffer, 2000), as
an incentive to bring to the surface latent energy in the United Nations Southern
African humanitarian response system. Employed by the World Health Organisation
specifically, I have over the past three years worked in an UN inter-agency
coordination and support office as an advocacy and communications officer. Having a
background in social work and an interest in promoting organisational development
that achieves Druckers ideal, especially in organisations with an avowedly human
service intent, I discovered the work of Stafford Beer a decade ago. Since then I have
sought to penetrate the mysteries of organisational behaviour in complex systems
aided by Beers (1979, 1989) Viable Systems Model, together with the insights of other
systems thinkers and practitioners Ackoff (2003), Checkland (1981), Hoebeke (1994),
Hock (1997) and Senge (1990).
The professional mandate of social work is to instil hope, and promote an attitude
that recognises the self-fulfilling nature of human fears and anxieties. Thus I sought to
test out in my conversations the aphorism that says hope is believing, in spite
of the evidence, and then watching the evidence change (Harrison, 1996), to inspire
perseverance.
However, as intellectually convinced as I was of the need for managers to shift from
mechanistic to systems thinking if they were to achieve the extraordinary performance
promised by Drucker, practical experience was needed to produce the changing
evidence that hope sought. The testimony of Dee Hock (1997), founder and CEO
emeritus of visa, provided tremendous encouragement that there was indeed
changing evidence to justify hope. His riveting autobiographical account of the
remarkable organisational innovation that came to be known as visa was grist to
the mill. Visa has indeed changed the face of international banking by modelling a
unique chaordic organisational form that was able to match and transform the chaos
in the banking system that prevailed at the time. However, Hock is under no illusions
about the daunting challenge still to be faced, if chaordic, systemically managed,
flexible, adaptive, creative, empowering and transforming organisations are to become
the norm in twenty-first century human civilisation and society. Many (including
Stafford Beer), would consider the United Nations to be the last organisation to shed
what Hock (1997) characterises as:
K . . . an anachronistic, 19th Century, Newtonian command and control management orthodoxy
that was inimical to the human spirit and destructive of the natural environment.
35,1/2
I suggested in the conversations that, given the extra-ordinary people at its disposal,
the UN ought, according to Druckers logic be a superlative organisation, and bring the
MDGs within reach despite the triple threat. How could this paradox of plenty be
resolved? Mindful of Argyris and Schons (1978) work on double loop learning and the
14 tendency toward learned incompetence in large bureaucratic organisations,
conversations were held with a wide range of people both within the UN system
and closely connected to it, to gain an understanding of how they interpreted the
apparent disconnect between the espoused theory and the actual theory in use.
However, I was also keenly aware of the danger of promoting a self-fulfilling prophecy
of doom, and inspired by Bohms (1965) work on dialogue sought to balance enquiry
into the underlying dynamics that robbed the UN of its latent potential, with advocacy
for an attitude of hope in spite of the evidence.
It was with this frame of mind that I engaged in the conversations that inform this
study.

Findings and interpretation

While leaders of UN agencies at country, regional and Headquarters almost without
exception want to see a UN system where form follows function the reverse tends to
prevail. Having evolved out of the dominant Newtonian organizational management
paradigm of the nineteenth century that oversimplified accountability into two precepts
political command and bureaucratic control the UN system was generally
experienced to be a system that prioritises compliance and order. Respondents saw the
need for innovation, but recognised that since innovation implied risk, in situations
where lives are at stake, they sympathised with disinclination by UN managers to rock
the boat especially in a choppy sea, and were disinclined to thrive on chaos. At the
same time, the vast number of rules and regulations in the UN allow for a certain amount
of freedom to pick and choose which ones to follow.
I interpret this as typical characteristic of command and control hierarchical
structures, which do not ordinarily have the capability to generate sufficient internal
variety to absorb the variety and complexity that innovators always generate. Bold
leaders at country and regional level dared to create the systemic and structural
conditions for a more developmental variety/complexity dynamic to emerge. This had
to be done with astute skill in managing their higher-level managers and directors,
anxious that exceptions to the established rules might become new rules that more
senior managers did not understand, and thus could not administer. It was clear that
the levels of anxiety about the risks of change, gave rise to typical defensive routines
(Argyris and Schon, 1978) where problems (and solutions) were externalised. Leaders
at country level would confide that the agency politics at higher level were
frustrating rather than facilitating. At the same time, higher level leaders expressed
concern about the reluctance of UN country team members to promote the UN systems
long-term interests over the short term interests of their particular agency; despite the
fact that it was clear that the UN reform agenda had to be internalised by the UN
country teams.
However, it was also acknowledged by almost all respondents that failure to
innovate and take risks would render the UN increasingly irrelevant and discredited.
It would be vulnerable to accusations of a solution in search of a problem, and of Transcending
trading strategic effectiveness in the outside and future off against operational organisational
efficiency in the here and now (perhaps not even achieving these criterion of viability
very well). Ackoffs (2003) trenchant warning was offered as a challenge. Explaining autism
the difference between strategic and operational planning, he says:
It is better to do the right think wrong, than to keep doing the wrong thing right. By doing the
wrong thing right we become wronger. But by doing the right thing wrong, we become 15
righter! (assuming we embrace our errors in a learning feedback loop).
This insight was generally welcomed at first, but when the implications began to
dawn, there was an understandable reluctance to risk the tolerance of the system for
making mistakes.
To explain the defensiveness, it was suggested that the implicit managerial
paradigm held by most UN leaders was still largely based on a Newtonian reductionist
scientific logic, which is very good at defining cause-effect relationships. Consequently,
it was natural for the UN to be preoccupied in finding how to do things right by
increasing technical sophistication and the definition of precise algorithms that
guarantee a solution. However, I argued that by relying on consultants with various
technical specialities, the UN was becoming super-saturated with technical information
and knowledge more than it can possibly absorb, while continuing to define the
problems it faces in largely technical/analytic terms. It was suggested that doing the
right thing requires a different orientation, known as heuristic search.
An algorithm is a set of rules for solving a problem. If the rules are followed correctly, a
solution (if it exists) is guaranteed. Algorithms work by systematically reducing the variety
(size or density) of the solution space, and tend to be effective in the solution of relatively
simple (low-variety) problems. Heuristic methods, on the other hand, are rules for enlightened
search. They do not guarantee a solution, only improvement if improvement is possible.
The optimum path is not known in advance, nor, in fact is the method by which one might
find such a path. Heuristic methods, in contrast to algorithmic methods, begin with intelligent
expansion of the potential solution space, thereby initially increasing the situational variety
that must be handled. . . (Waelchli, 1989).
However, while there was sympathy from some, clearly the message was perceived as
too radical. One respondent, a consultant, was honest enough to admit that he dared
not ask probing questions that might cause his client to doubt their strategy, as he
feared they might terminate his contract, and he desperately needed the income. Even
the prospect of a more creative enterprise was not enough to overcome slavish
adherence to past institutional algorithms, rules and tried and tested methods of doing
things right. However, others were more tolerant of the ambiguity, and recognised
that to lock oneself inside the organisational orthodoxy meant that new information
would not be assimilated and changing demands and environmental/contextual
circumstances would ultimately defeat the organisation.
This was starkly illustrated when a seminar was held where a recent analysis by
the Humanitarian Practice Network of Food Security Interventions in the Great Lakes
region of Africa, was presented. The study embarrassed the UN in particular and the
humanitarian community in general by showing that:
The same stereotyped interventions are been used, largely because these responses are not
based on an understanding of the real needs of people, and insufficient attempts have been
K made to find out what those needs might be. Many responses were based on questionable and
untested assumptions, were plagued by logical inconsistencies, and provided poor value for
35,1/2 money (Levine and Chastre, 2004).
This study, provocatively entitled Missing the Point urged humanitarian agencies
and the UN to acknowledge the problem and increase their commitment to improving
responses to food insecurity. Welcoming the challenge I argued that the authors of the
16 study were themselves perhaps missing the point by concluding that too little
analysis of the appropriateness of the standard set of food security responses and
their belief that a long term analytical perspective is needed. I argued that this
invited still more technical and managerialist responses, whereas the situation rather
appears to require leadership and strategic thinking. The HPG authors proposed
remedy has the distinct flavour of more of the same Newtonian reductionism rather
than an understanding of Albert Einsteins famous dictum:
The significant problems we face can never be solved by the same level of thinking that
created them.

Misconnect between normative, strategic and operational domains

Given the above exchanges, I now offer a more collected interpretation of the UNs
managerial and leadership challenges. Stafford Beers modelling of organisational
viability is used to offer a better conception of such.
Beer found in Ashbys (1964) statement only variety can destroy variety an
insight profound enough to inspire at least seven of his 13 books. Rephrased to soften
the militaristic tone, Beer elucidated it as only variety can absorb variety while
dubbing it Ashbys law of requisite variety. Stafford Beers entire corpus of work can
be interpreted as a plea for organizational leaders to discover that the viability of an
organization at the macro scale derives from the viability of embedded, human-scale
organisations within, which have variety requisite to the environment within which
they must operate. Viability is a function, therefore, of a dynamic equilibrium between
a context and the systems living within that context. This is captured by Beers (1979)
First Principle of Organisation.
Managerial, operational and environmental varieties, diffusing through an institutional
system, tend to equate; they should be designed to do so with minimum damage to people and
to cost.
To the extent that institutional systems are designed to continuously absorb and
equate the residual variety the variety that is left unattended by processes of
self-organisation and self-regulation (Espejo and Harnden, 1989) so will the
composite system facilitate development of both the embedded systems within, and
the system as a whole. It is thus a question of optimising the variety equation, to
simultaneously achieve autonomy of the parts and cohesion of the whole. Or to use
conventional management terminology, to employ both decentralisation and
centralisation. Usually cast as dichotomous opposites, Beer argues that, on the
evidence of how the central nervous system in the human body does not decide
each breath that is taken by the respiratory system, or micro manage the digestion
of food within the stomach, viable systems are only such because the brain, follows
a policy as it were of simultaneous decentralisation and centralisation, to
maintain the survival of its host organism, within the limits and circumstances of
the particular environment within which it lives, moves and has its being. Only if a Transcending
sudden change in the environment occurs, such as when one falls overboard into organisational
water, will the brain overrule the normal breathing response, lest water rather than
air be inhaled. autism
In this respect, Beers VSM articulates very well the principle of subsidiarity,
strongly espoused by the UN Inter Agency Standing Committee for Humanitarian
Affairs a Geneva-based structure for coordinating humanitarian appeals and 17
responses as they occur around the world. The principle of subsidiarity states,
decisions will be taken at the lowest appropriate level. It implies that higher levels
of managerial discretion and decision-making are in fact subsidiary to the lower ones
and should be at their service rather than the reverse.
Illustrating the principle, Beer traces the provenance of the Viable Systems Model to
his fascination with the paradox that confronted him during his service as an Army
psychologist, in 1948. He relates how intrigued he was by the viability of a military
unit of 180 men who, despite their individual low level mental functioning, together
displayed a surprising viability as a system, able to perform at a much higher level
than a calculation of their average IQ would have suggested.
At the end of my military service, I spent a year as an army psychologist running an
experimental unit of 180 young soldiers (a moving population, 20 of them changing every
fortnight). All these men were illiterate, and all had been graded by a psychiatrist as
psychopathological personalities. They could not write a letter home, nor read a
newspaper, and such sums as 4 3 ? had them fooled. But they could debate with
great energy and verbal facility if not felicity; they could play darts 21 thats 15 and a
double three to go; and they could state the winnings on a horse race involving place
betting and accumulators with alacrity and accuracy, and apparently without working it
out. They had their own conception of discipline, involving terrorism and violence in the
barrack room, which met every desideratum of a military unit in its ends, though not in
its means.
. . .What made these people, unusual as they were, tick and be motivated and be adaptive
and be happy too (for most of them were)? And how did the description of individuals carry
over into the description of the whole unit, for it seemed so to do: every one of many visitors to
this strange place found it quite extraordinary as an organic whole. It simply was not just a
unit housing a population of unusual soldiers. The first regimental sergeant major asked for a
posting.
This was the empirical start of the subsequent hypothesis that there might be invariances
in the behaviour of individuals, whether they be normal or not, and that these invariances
might inform also the peer group of individuals, and even the total societary unit to which
they belong (Beer, 1989).
Beers recollection of this unusual group functionality of otherwise dysfunctional
individuals is an intriguing instance of an organisation existing to enable
sub-ordinary people (if one can pardon the pejorative) to achieve ordinary things.
It shows up the reductionist fallacy that says that the properties of a whole can be
deduced from an analysis of its component parts, by illustrating that the whole can
become more than the sum of it parts.
I emphasise can to acknowledge that the opposite is also true: a whole can also be
less functional than an analysis of its parts would predict, which prompted Senge
(1990) to provocatively ask:
K . . . how can a team of committed managers with individual IQs above 120 have a collective
IQ of 83?
35,1/2
Over the three-year period, I experienced both extremes in different working groups
and teams in which I participated. Although perturbed by the general preponderance
toward a sub-optimal team functioning overall, I reasoned that it would be
counterproductive to present this as a judgement. Nor would it have been helpful to
18 focus on the personal virtues or failures of individuals to explain the differences
between good and poor team performance, as this would inevitably lead to
defensiveness.
However, having gained the confidence of many colleagues, from among both the
ranks of the leaders and the led, I needed to develop a theory to explain the team
pathology and identify strategies for either healing it (if it could be cured) or learning to
transcend it in much the same way as a person with a chronic illness learns to
transcend their illness by finding new life forces.
Argyris and Schons (1978) concept of double loop learning was suggested by one
colleague as a useful way to promote awareness. It could explain why groups of highly
gifted persons are skilled in developing sophisticated defensive routines that constrain
team learning to but a single loop of learning (error correction for improved technical
operation within governing variables that are assumed to be immutable. This is likely
where organizational mandates, goals, values and strategies are taken for granted).
High performance teams emerge when, cognizant of a contextual demand for better
than the best practice, the organisation embarks upon a second loop of learning
whereby governing variables are questioned and team members are willing to stand a
few paces further back than normal, to surface and examine tacit (invariably
conflicting) frames of reference (mental models) and assumptions. The expected
dividend from double loop learning is a greatly enriched sense of meaningfulness,
enhanced vitality, and strategic relevance.
But, since this cannot be guaranteed, we reasoned that perhaps those in charge of
the UN system in Southern Africa opted to play safe by doing business as usual
because they perceived the risks to be more than they could tolerate, or demand of their
respective agencies, notwithstanding the consequence that considerable latent creative
synergic potential remained dormant and festering, manifesting in cynicism, petty
power-plays and subtle sabotage of anything innovative which may disturb the
peace.
Again, Beers VSM together with Hoebekes (1994) perceptive distinction between
four domains of management discretion the value added domain, the innovation
domain, the value systems domain and the spirituality domain enabled me to diagnose
this as a dangerously complacent equilibrium which could only be achieved by mentally
disconnecting the operational added value domain (system 3) from the strategic
innovation (system 4) domains, and/or disconnecting the strategic innovation
domain (system 4) from the normative value systems domain (system 5).
But to find a term to describe the organizational pathology (other than Stafford
Beers terms pathological autopoiesis or the decerebrate cat guaranteed to
immediately activate defensive routines in UN managers if spoken out loud), the term
organisational autism came to mind. The inspiration came from another intellectual
mentor, Thomas Berry, who uses the term in association with spirituality, to describe a
much more ominous disconnect that is happening at a much larger scale the
disconnect between humanity and nature (or in Hoebekes terms, the disconnect Transcending
between the spirituality domain and the other three domains, implicit in embedded organisational
recursions within the system).
autism
Berry went to a high school one day to talk to the students, wanting to convey to them a sense
of our current spiritual predicament. The term autism came to mind, and he asked if anyone
in the class could define what that meant, unsure if he would get a good answer. A student
jumped up and explained clearly: People being so locked up in themselves that no one and 19
nothing else can get in. Exactly, Berry thought. That is what has happened to the human
community in our times. We are talking only to ourselves. We are not talking to the rivers, we
are not listening to the wind and stars. We have broken the great conversation. By breaking
that conversation we have shattered the universe. All the disasters that are happening now
are a consequence of that spiritual autism (Heffern, c2001).
Thus for similar reasons we could characterize the disconnect between the operational,
strategic and normative domains of the UN organisational system as an invitation for
the onset of a condition of organizational autism. In this condition, where in spite of
the existence of considerable latent potential for intelligent, cohesive and synergistic
performance, the system operates in fits and starts, jerking uncontrollably, absorbing
more energy than it needs, reducing its natural life span, and constantly demanding
special care.
The parallel between autism and the UN was considered particularly apt, because in
every case where sub-optimal team performance was evident, it could be attributed to a
lack of or breaking off of inter-agency conversations and retreat behind formal agency
mandates, bureaucratic rules and presumed political interests of agency leaders at
higher levels. This was associated with attitudes of superiority of ones own agency
over others, and the unwarranted assumption of greater cleverness.
Again, while perhaps true, it was not considered particularly helpful to leave the
diagnosis there. Hoebeke (1994) advises:
[Paying attention] to what Beer calls organisational pathologies and their diagnosis is not
very helpful for putting effort into their improvements. Asking someone to stop smoking
because of his or her health, while he or she is not feeling ill does not often lead to the requisite
action, in spite of being a relevant diagnosis. I experienced much more success with the model
when I was able to point out why a work system was still viable in spite of apparently major
variety imbalances revealed by the VSM.
My thinking was influenced by Vickers (1971) famous observation that the trap is a
function of the nature of the trapped and his notion of appreciative systems (as
interpreted by Checkland and Hoebeke, 1994). I now attempt to articulate and amplify
some principles which suggest themselves as antidotes to autism, because they invite
people, perhaps inclined to see themselves as trapped within the pathology and
perversities of the UN system, to reframe their experience, true to the higher reaches
of our human nature. Vickers explains:
Lobster Pots are designed to catch lobsters. A man entering a man-sized lobster pot would
become suspicious of the narrowing tunnel, he would shrink from the drop at the end; and if
he fell in, he would recognise the entrance as a possible exit and climb out again even if he
were the shape of the lobster.
A trap is a trap only for creatures that cannot solve the problems that it sets. Man traps are
dangerous only in relation to the limitations on what men can see and value and do.
K The nature of the trap is a function of the nature of the trapped. To describe either is to imply
the other.
35,1/2 I start with the trap, because it is more consciously familiar; we the trapped tend to take
our state of mind for granted which is partly why we are trapped. With the shape of the
trap in our minds, we shall be better able to see the relevance of our limitations and to
question those assumptions about ourselves which are most inept to the activity and
experience of being human now.
20
Swaziland rural health motivators
Circumstances conspired to provide an opportunity to formulate such principles in the
very real life context of the devastating impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on the
citizens of the Kingdom of Swaziland. Responding to a call by the Swaziland Minister
of Health for exceptional measures to be taken to respond to the increasing burden of
care that the approximately 4,000 rural health motivators were facing, as AIDS related
morbidity and mortality increased, a project proposal was formulated to enhance the
role and function of Swazilands rural health motivators in preventing HIV infection,
treating AIDS and facilitating community healing. The proposal utilised Hock (1997)
framework for formulating a dynamic learning organisation (purpose, principles,
concept, structure, people, practice), which offers a circular, spiralling process for the
maturation of a chaordic organisation.
The purpose of the project was as follows:
To realise the latent potential of RHM groups to boost Community Immunity to HIV/AIDS,
by enabling communities at risk to understand and overcome their chronic vulnerability to
the pathology of HIV/AIDS by empowering RHMs to influence their choices and actions
toward health and well-being within a dynamically changing cultural context.
The following principles were garnered through a process of discussion and
consultation, to try to collectively express the wisdom we sought to inspire the vision
and guide the practice.
Ubuntu. The African cultural philosophy of life that asserts Umuntu, ngumuntu, ngabantu.
Translated as people depend on people to be people. Identity is both who we are and whose
we are our sense of belonging. While not negating the right of self-determination of the
individual, ubuntu frames this within the realisation that the need for identity can only be
satisfied through inter-personal relationships that are affirming of a shared sense of
humanity and marked by compassion for those suffering most within and on the margins of
the community.
Where there is life there is hope. The aphorism hope is believing in spite of the evidence, and
then watching the evidence change, expresses this well. It implies an attitude that looks for
the life forces, beneath the pain and suffering, which keep people alive, and seeks to amplify
these. It seeks to affirm rather than blame, and encourages a non-judgemental attitude, and
openness to talk about things which are sensitive or taboo issues.
Healing an endogenous developmental process. Recognises that pain is what the patient
says it is, not what the doctor diagnoses it to be. It regards the health professional role as
enabling self-reliance and personal accountability, in accordance with the wisdom that says
problems dont exist, only people with problems.
Leadership is learning and Learning is leadership. Recognises that leadership can be
learned, and that the best leaders are innovators and agents of change, who learn by doing,
 embracing error in the quest to do the right thing rather than playing safe by only do Transcending
things right.
organisational
Whole systems perspective. Seeks synergetic relationships that create systems that have autism
emergent properties as a complex whole that dont exist in the parts if kept in isolation.
As such the process seeks to collect and connect: Accumulate knowledge through analysis
of parts, as well as generate understanding though synthesis and shared reflection on action,
to discern unintended consequences and desirable changes/adaptations to achieve the 21
purpose. Thus the contribution of all relevant UN agencies (FAO, UNICEF, UNFPA, UNDP,
WFP) beside WHO is sought as is the contribution of various academic and professional
disciplines, notably epidemiology, systems thinking (managerial cybernetics), development
economics, agricultural science, social work, psychology, nursing, nutrition, etc.
Interpreting the above principles, the program seeks to develop a strategy that creates
safe places facilities close to where vulnerable people live, which serve as open
spaces protective boundaries within which dialogue and interaction deepens and
develops between the rural health motivators and their clients, and a bridge to
accessing services offered by other governmental and UN agencies.
Having been drafted in consultation with a team from Swaziland, these principles
were presented to the UK Cybernetics Society conference in London in August 2004.
Participants were invited to validate them from their own experience. No significant
dissent was expressed, but one participant questioned the leadership is learning
principle. He was concerned that this implied leadership was vested in an individual
rather than a function to be performed by different persons, each with their particular
set of skills and abilities, which in combination offered a richer variety to absorb the
variety in a given environment. The easy answer was to point out that in terms of the
principle espoused, anyone presuming to be the leader whether by conviction, claims
of divine right, or inheritance, or superior academic qualifications, etc. needed to be a
learner rather than learned. The memorable quote from Hoffer (1976) was recalled.
In times of change, those who are ready to learn will inherit the world, while those who
believe they know, will be marvellously prepared to deal with a world that has ceased to exist.
Moreover, I argued that the five principles were inter-connected and inter-dependent.
To attempt to exercise leadership without practicing ubuntu, or disregarding life
forces, or without instilling hope or without striving for a holistic view, would hardly
inspire any following. But to adhere to just these four principals was also insufficient.
However, I also argued that leadership required individual conviction, commitment
and courage. Sociological studies have suggested a perverse group dynamic known as
the tall poppy syndrome where an individual gets put down if s/he dares to show
exceptional ability, above the prevailing norm. Indeed the principle of ubuntu could in
fact encourage this static conformism, if interpreted simplistically and without
recognising the implicit identity paradox. The cybernetic explanation of this
phenomenon is also implied in Beers First Principle of Organisation stated above. The
varieties within an institutional system tend to equate as the system seeks equilibrium
and ultra stability. Beer adds an imperative it should be designed to do so with
minimum damage to people and to cost. His identification of the tendency for
bureaucracies to drift into pathological autopoeisis defined by Jackson (2000) as the
self-maintenance or self-production of a system despite a negative balance of its effects
on the larger whole suggests that creating a viable and dynamic organisation is
K entirely a matter of people who are motivated equally by humanitarian concern as well
35,1/2 as desire for economic efficiency, exercising conscious leadership to structure the
organisation to minimise and mitigate damage to both.
Thus to take account of possible misconceptions and to encourage both reflection
and practical action, the following elaboration has been added to the
leadership/learning principle.
22 Recognises too that leadership needs to be distributed and shared, rather than concentrated,
so as to build resilience throughout the system through a rapid transfer of knowledge and
experience, especially given the situation of high mortality and declining life expectancy in
Swazi society.
Upon still further reflection it has dawned on me that perhaps of all five principles,
leadership is the gravitational force (I concede due homage to Newton) that holds all
the principles together. This suggests a proposition that I offer as a concluding
invitation for further dialogue among cyberneticians and systems thinkers. An
organisations susceptibility to autism rises and falls in relation to the quality of
leadership exercised.

Conclusion
Whether or not the rural health motivator project receives the required funding to
move from concept to practice, it is hoped that the principles and concluding
proposition articulated above will indeed serve as antidotes to autism, wherever the
condition threatens to manifest itself.
The golden thread that I have sought to weave through the discussion is about
learning to lead, and learning for leadership. I hope I have managed to do so with due
respect for the multiple sensitivities that a deeply contextualised, action research
approach will inevitably touch upon. To have resorted to anonymous abstraction
rather than practical reflection would have denatured the system. Stafford Beer, while
always seeking to define invariances that could be abstractly formulated in positivist
scientific logic, was equally concerned that learners understood the self-referential
nature of viable systems. The purpose of the system is what it does, is one of his most
famous observations. The ambiguity and paradox of the statement is an invitation for
any person with influence in a system to ask what the system in which they
participate, is in fact doing. This should (but often does not) lead to other questions,
what am I doing in the system to contribute to its viability or its vulnerability?
Perhaps, this second question is not asked or answered sufficiently because it becomes
tinged with judgement, blame and consequently fear. Defensive routines are activated,
and enquiry is shut down, and autism prevails. This study has sought to offer a
different way of thinking about the challenges that the UN system faces in its response
to HIV/AIDS in Africa, which at its simplest says the epidemic will continue to control
us if we seek to control it with old style management thinking. Leonard (2000)
observes:
Some of the new control problems lie more in what is not there than what is. Blind spots,
unfortunately, dont show up as dark patches. Our eyes and our minds fill in the blanks and
we do not see that we are not seeing. The missed opportunity, the emerging threat, the
unacknowledged stakeholder, and the ham handed response to a crisis are all possibilities
that old style control thinking may not register. The new challenge is to anticipate risks from
 many directions and prepare to meet them. Understanding the contexts and thinking behind Transcending
old style control is a valuable precondition to examining existing control assumptions and
practices in the light of current needs and values. organisational
The UN system globally has prioritised change and reform of itself. The extent to
autism
which the UN system will become a more viable system is inextricably bound up with
the extent to which double loop (perhaps even triple loop) learning processes and
leadership processes reinforce each other, to metabolise the considerable latent, 23
synergetic potential of the people within to exercise their creativity, generate variety
and inspire change in the midst of a very serious human tragedy in Southern Africa.

Note
1. Adopted by Member States of the UN in 2000 as part of the Millennium Declaration, as
follows: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education;
promote gender equality and empower women; reduce child mortality; improve maternal
and reproductive health; combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensure
environmental sustainability; develop a global partnership for development.

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About the author

John Clarke is a professional social worker, writer, ethicists and organisational development
facilitator, currently employed as Advocacy and Communications Officer in the World Health
Organisations Health Action in Crisis unit, but serving a UN Interagency Coordination and
Support entity based in Johannesburg, that was formed in 2002 to ensure a consolidated response
to humanitarian needs in Southern Africa. He graduated as a Social Worker in 1982, from the
University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban and received a Social Science honours degree from the
University of Cape Town in 1989 in Religious Studies. He is self taught in management
cybernetics, under the inspiration of Stafford Beer, and in the Human Scale Development
methodology of Manfred Max-Neef, Chilean barefoot economist. He has authored several
published papers in the field of organisational and community development.

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