Because people don’t arrive at an explicit model of the thinking process that generates process models until late in their career typically. Whitehead in his later years founded the Center for Process Studies. Gendlin eventually wrote A Process Model. Douglas Englebart founded the Bootstrap institute in his later years. There are other examples I’m not remembering off the top of my head.
A contrast for illustration: Boyd wrote about the OODA loop in his late 40′s but never seemed to make the next meta level jump up to trying to instill the kind of reasoning that generated the OODA loop (or EM theory for that matter) pedagogically.
Process models seem very similar to the field of phenomenology in that every few years someone independently reinvents it and creates their own vocab and models. Then they turn it into a management course. So it doesn’t seem to advance much. (IIRC Korzybski of ‘The Map is not the Territory’ fame, basically LW in the 1920′s went this route as well). It’s a shame because when people do try to do something on this level with a field the results are often interesting. Gendlin came up with Focusing by doing process modelling of psychotherapy before making the jump later to explicitly generalize the mental motion.
Also, it often seems that the people capable of thinking useful thoughts in this area are all in math and ignore practical applications.
Boyd wrote about the OODA loop in his late 40′s but never seemed to make the next meta level jump up to trying to instill the kind of reasoning that generated the OODA loop (or EM theory for that matter) pedagogically.
This is exactly what he did with “The Discourse on Winning and Losing”
Boyd is one of my favorite examples of a great process modeler and meta-level thinker because he did it at every level of his career:
Process modelling of why he was such a good fighter-pilot led to EM theory.
Process modelling of why EM theory worked led to OODA loop.
Process Modelling of how he kept doing great process modelling (including the OODA loop) led to “Destruction and Creation” and Process modelling of how the OODA loop worked led to “A Discourse on Winning and Losing”
I think this is actually a general pattern that happens in most knowledge worker careers, not only late in careers. Certainly when I was a career coach one of the key things I did to help people move up in their careers was to help them move a level up in their thinking.
I think one of the reasons that the particular meta-level up move that you’re talking about happens late in careers is that at that point people who are at the top of their careers basically don’t have another meta-level up they can move to understand their field—they’ve already made that move. So the only meta-level they can move to next is to apply the move to itself.
Because people don’t arrive at an explicit model of the thinking process that generates process models until late in their career typically. Whitehead in his later years founded the Center for Process Studies. Gendlin eventually wrote A Process Model. Douglas Englebart founded the Bootstrap institute in his later years. There are other examples I’m not remembering off the top of my head.
A contrast for illustration: Boyd wrote about the OODA loop in his late 40′s but never seemed to make the next meta level jump up to trying to instill the kind of reasoning that generated the OODA loop (or EM theory for that matter) pedagogically.
Process models seem very similar to the field of phenomenology in that every few years someone independently reinvents it and creates their own vocab and models. Then they turn it into a management course. So it doesn’t seem to advance much. (IIRC Korzybski of ‘The Map is not the Territory’ fame, basically LW in the 1920′s went this route as well). It’s a shame because when people do try to do something on this level with a field the results are often interesting. Gendlin came up with Focusing by doing process modelling of psychotherapy before making the jump later to explicitly generalize the mental motion.
Also, it often seems that the people capable of thinking useful thoughts in this area are all in math and ignore practical applications.
This is exactly what he did with “The Discourse on Winning and Losing”
Boyd is one of my favorite examples of a great process modeler and meta-level thinker because he did it at every level of his career:
Process modelling of why he was such a good fighter-pilot led to EM theory.
Process modelling of why EM theory worked led to OODA loop.
Process Modelling of how he kept doing great process modelling (including the OODA loop) led to “Destruction and Creation” and Process modelling of how the OODA loop worked led to “A Discourse on Winning and Losing”
oh awesome I wasn’t actually familiar with that. So it fits the pattern of happening later in most careers (dated 1987? he would have been 60)
I think this is actually a general pattern that happens in most knowledge worker careers, not only late in careers. Certainly when I was a career coach one of the key things I did to help people move up in their careers was to help them move a level up in their thinking.
I think one of the reasons that the particular meta-level up move that you’re talking about happens late in careers is that at that point people who are at the top of their careers basically don’t have another meta-level up they can move to understand their field—they’ve already made that move. So the only meta-level they can move to next is to apply the move to itself.