Over the last forty years, Stafford Beer has published a steady stream of books and papers in which he has applied cybernetic science to organizational problems. In all of these he has explained underlying principles and developed new theories and recorded a great variety of practical applications. He has now invented and demonstrated Team Syntegrity. Syntegrity is a powerful invention in the organization of normative, directional, and strategic planning, and other creative decision processes. The underlying model is a regular icosahedron (20 sides). This has 30 edges, each of which represents a person. An internal network of interactions is created by a set of protocols. A group organized like this is an ultimate statement of participatory democracy, since each role is indistinguishable from any other. There is no hierarchy, no top, no bottom, no sideways. 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 is determined by the even spread of synergy. The aim of the book is to provide managers and their advisors with a new planning method that captures the native genius of the organization in a non-political and non-hierarchical way. The book includes an enquiry into Beer's concept of recursive consciousness, based on this model, that is relevant to both neurocybernetics and the social systems sciences.

THE STORY OF AN ORGANIZATIONAL IDEA. A Long Gestation. On Protocols. Path-Finding Experiments. The Academic Milieu. The Corporate Scene. In the Community. ENHANCING PROCEDURES. Protocols Revisited. Vexed Questions of Allocation. Developmental Planning. Governance or Government?. THE FORM OF THE MODEL. The Structure of Icosahedral Space. The Dynamics of Icosahedral Space. Self-Reference in Icosahedral Space. EPILOGUE. The Concept of Recursive Consciousness. COLLABORATORS' SURPLUS. Reverberating Networks: Modelling Information Propagation in Syntegration by Spectral Analysis (A. Jalali). From Prototype to Protocol: Design for Doing (J. Truss). Pliny the Later: Elective Selection (J. Hancock). You Drive for Show but You Putt for Dough: A Facilitator's Perspective (A. Pearson). One Man's Signal Is Another Man's Noise: Another Facilitator's Perspective (D. Beatty). About Face: A Turn for Better Planning (J. Truss). The Very Model of a Modern System-General: How the Viable System Model Actually Works (A. Leonard). References. Index.