“… if cybernetics is the science of control,
management is the profession of control – in a certain type of system.”
Stafford Beer
Stafford Beer, 1926 - 2002, the founder of management cybernetics was one of the great polymaths of the 20th century. In his outstanding work, Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Stafford Beer provided the crucial models, methods, tools and solutions for tackling the central problem of today’s world and its organizations – their immense complexity and the best way of managing it. Never before has there been such a vast and obvious need for them. It is impossible to over-estimate the significance that Stafford Beer’s management cybernetics has in this respect.
After studying philosophy, psychology and mathematics and serving in the army in the Second World War, also as a company commander in one of the legendary Ghurka regiments in British-controlled India, Stafford Beer took up his first job in industry as production controlled for United Steel, England’s leading steel-making company at the time, where he was responsible for the first applications of operations research to the control of steelworks. What was then the largest operations research department in industry, employing more than seventy specialists from numerous scientific disciplines, was built up under his direction.
More than 40 years ago, Stafford Beer had already provided the scientific foundation for management. His teachings are constantly being passed on in Management Zentrum St. Gallen’s training courses and seminars and in its consultancy projects.
Stafford Beer’s life work was the outcome of the most exacting practical AND scientific demands. The founder of management cybernetics was very closely associated with Norbert Wiener, Warren Mc Culloch, W. Ross Ashby, Heinz von Foerster and the forefathers of information technology.
Stafford took the laws of nature relating to control, regulation and the transmission of information in living and mechanical systems that these figures had discovered in the mid-20th century and integrated them to produce a model obeying laws of nature, the Viable System Model (VSM). This model represents the crucial structures, functions and information loops that any viable or effective organization has to have.
Today, there is no longer anyone who doubts the tremendous significance that the flow of information and communication have in management. Stafford Beer described how, as a result of their nature, they should both be designed. In the VSM he demonstrated the neuro-cybernetic conditions and modes of operation of effective organizations. Those of information management and of communication he implemented in his method known as Team Syntegrity®. Its purpose is to facilitate optimum clarification, formulation of objectives, planning and decision-making in large, heterogeneous groups – one of the most difficult problems of our times.