Middle Ages Renaissance Modern Age What is the purpose of life? Middle Age Nature •Life expectancy was 27 years •40% of the children born did not survive infancy •95% never travelled more than 4 miles from their place of birth •Majority lived in abject poverty Big Question in Middle Age – What is the purpose of life? Renaissance Nature •Peter the Hermit’s crusade let 40,000 men across the face of Europe for the first time in contact with culture they never have seen. • Opening of trade out of the city- states of Italy •Merchants travelled far to East and West •Curiosity about human differences •New interest to find out things Big Question in Renaissance – “Is understanding of the universe possible?” The Answer is “Yes, it is.”
In Modern Age there is a method of thinking called Analysis – hailed as the tool to enlightenment/understanding. Analysis is a 3-step process by which you take something you want to understand apart, try to understand the behaviour of each part taken separately , and then assemble the understanding of the parts aggregated into an understanding of the whole. First step: take it apart. Second step: try to understand what the parts do. Third step: try to assemble the understanding of the parts into an understanding of the whole. This became the dominant method of thought in the Western World.
Doc 1 Cause and effect Our commitment to cause and effect thinking led to three very fundamental doctrines which permeated our thought for almost 400 years. • First ,If I want to explain a phenomenon, all I have to do is find its cause. When I find this cause, I have a complete explanation of the phenomenon because the cause is sufficient for the effect. The question is – is there any end to the causal regression? • The second consequence of cause-and-effect thinking was even more profound. We did not need the environment to explain anything. It enabled us to develop a theory of explanation that excluded the environment. • The third component that came out of cause and effect was this: does anything ever happen by chance? Spontaneously? Certainly appears to be so.
Science became a crusade in search of the element, because we believed that understanding the universe would only be possible when we had understanding of the elements of which it was composed, and therefore we first had to identify them and understand them.
If you take these three doctrines together – understandability, analysis as a method of inquiry, cause and effect as sufficient relationship to explain everything, and put them together, what would we get? Isaac Newton – because he was the first one to synthesize all those thoughts into a single image. - Newton said the universe is a machine. He did not say the universe is like a machine, he said it is a machine.
The Industrial Revolution was about the mechanization of work The problem: deal with work so we could mechanize it, apply machines to it. Here is a job to be done - how do we do it? First , analyze it. Take the task apart. How far down to do you take it? Frederick Taylor believed in reducing work to its elements by work analysis. Then next is to mechanize those tasks.
Two fundamental concepts:
Work Machine
We assigned these tasks to people; we mechanized the others. Following the analytical procedures, we aggregated all of them, so we had a sequence, or a network of elementary tasks performed by men and machines to produce a product. Compiled by Dr. L Mee-Yan Cheung Judge © 1
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More recently, there is a combination of using large group interventions with applying some of the insights of systems thinking – which led to a field of activity known as whole systems. (Plamping, Pratt, and Gordon) Systems thinking is a crucial component of complexity theory and many of the insights that are now labelled “complexity” re classic systems concepts.
• In the 1980s, Checkland developed a methodology for working with soft systems – those where the problem does not lend itself to being quantified; in complex problems, situations, messy, ill-defined, ill-structured, not independent of people and where there may be no agreement about appropriate objectives. (Daelenbach) • In the 1980s and 1990s, system thinking was popularised i.e. made more accessible to practising managers and others – largely by Peter Senge of MIT. It was incorporated into a wider field of study about individual and organisational learning, heavily influenced by the work of Chris Argyris and David Bohm.
During the 1970s with the influential work of Ackoff, there was an increasing realisation that in human activity systems, the system often cannot be “named” convincingly, as its objectives are frequently multiple and often conflicting.
Compiled by Dr. L Mee-Yan Cheung Judge ©
Aristotle noted the whole is greater than the sum of its parts but this concept became lost in the revolution in the scientific approach spearheaded by Newton in the 17th century. –
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History of system thinking
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Doc 2 System thinking originated in the 1920s within several disciplines, notably engineering and biology. Biologists noted organised complexity in the organisms they were studying. They observed a hierarchy of levels of organisation, each more complex than the one below it, with properties that emerge only at that level and do not exist (or have any meaning) at lower levels.
Von Bertalanffy, in the 40s distinguished between open and closed systems: closed being completely autonomous and having no relationship with their environment; open exchanging with their environment materials, energy and information. Also in the 1940s, Wiener and Bigelow, drawing on principles from control engineering and control theory and on their way to developing the field of cybernetics, realised the importance and ubiquity of FEEDBACK. Activity within a system is the result of the influence of one element on another, that influence being called feedback. They identified positive and negative feedback; positive has since been called amplifying or reinforcing feedback and negative has been termed balancing feedback.
• In the 1950s, a group of individual from different fields came together to found the society for the advancement of General Systems Theory and systems thinking became an academic subject, amassing a body of knowledge, an academic status, and the usual subdivision due to specialisation. • Systems Engineering developed in the 1950s aimed at designing or changing systems. It was originally the province of engineers working with physical systems. It soon became applied to human activity systems also. • These methods which all required the naming of the system and a defining of its objectives (Checkland) and in which the analyst stands outside the system intervening in it to try to reach a desired end, it became known as Hard Systems. • At about the same time, system analysis was developed by the RanD corporation. • System thinking has its foundation in the field of system dynamics, founded in 1956 by MIT professor Jay Forrester who recognised the need for a better way of testing new ideas about social systems, in the same way we can test ideas in engineering. --Aronson, Daniel
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Definition of System Thinking A system is an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organised in a way that achieves something. It is more than the sum of its parts, e.g. a body vs individual cells; a university vs individual students; an ecosystem vs an individual plant or animal. A living being is a system, but it loses its system-ness when it dies. –Green, Duncan A system can be described as having a purpose and made up of various interrelated or interdependent factors, such as activities and interactions. The arrangement and performance of the system’s factors affect the performance of the overall system, as does its ability to receive and use feedback. –Alman, David Understand system thinking, we will need to keep two aspects separate: •Understand the whole •Understand the dynamic interplay between parts - LMYCJ The essence of system thinking is seeing inter-relationships rather than linear cause-and-effect chains, and in seeing processes of change rather than snapshots.(Checkland)
A system is a set of elements, connected together, which form a whole; this showing properties which are properties of the whole rather than of its component parts.(Checkland)
Compiled by Dr. L Mee-Yan Cheung Judge ©
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A system is a whole that consists of two or more essential parts that satisfy the following conditions: (1) each of these parts can affect the behaviour or properties of the whole; (2) none of these parts has an independent effect on the whole; (3) every possible subset of the essential parts can affect the behaviour or properties of the whole but none can do so independently of the others; (4) cannot be divided into independent parts and be effective.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science e.g. defines a “system” as “any collection of things that have some influence on one another.” Individual things – like people, schools, communities – are all systems of interrelated elements. At the same time, they cannot be fully understood apart from the larger systems in which they exist. –Ackoff, Russell L.
Systems thinking is a way of interpreting the universe as a series of interconnected and inter-related wholes. It is a way of identifying the inherent organisation within a complex situation and has been called organised complexity. Systems thinkers contrast dynamic complexity (the relationships between things) with detail complexity (details about things). (Checkland) The term systems thinking – is preferred to holistic or whole systems, which have looser and more intuitive meanings, and emphasize understanding the whole rather than the dynamic structure of the system – which are the forces and interrelationship that shape the behaviour of systems. –thwink.org 3
Map of Organisations
Values
Learning from every encounter Constant reflection to learn from experience and mistakes
Phase 3 The Collaborative Organisation
Managing group conflict Balancing work and leisure Partnership style
Phase 2 The Institutional Organisation
Quality control Planning Performance management Focused on problems
Security
Empathetic communications throughout Moving toward interdependent fully integrated individual
Up, down and sideways information shared freely with everyone
From the top with feedback from below
Top down structured reporting
Phase 1 The Hierarchical Organisation
Receive Creative, self- Follows directions orders. Do actualising, your job. self-starting Defined roles Complete worker task. Fulfil job Maximising description results Takes ownership and responsibility Customer service Product delivery Quality impact of organisation on society and communities
Quality impact of the organisation at the cultural level of nature and world Compiled by Dr.L Mee-Yan Cheung Judge Š
Mission Context
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Centralised directive
Rigid, dominated by power, status Day to day survival Bottom line driven
Servant leadership
Management through coordination and objectives Efficient bureaucracy
Visionary, empathetic leadership
Enabling others to Managers facilitate lead and encourage collaborainnovation tively Lattice organisation Cross functional teams and projects
Highly structured
Layered mentoring
Interdependent network of individuals and teams
Great structural flexibility
Identify problems and create solutions Focus on measurements
Structure
The Worker
Courtesy Efficiency Contribution Recognition
Skills Interpersonal skills Drive for insight Creative sharing, Self-reflection
Leadership
Communication
Vision, accountability Risking collaboration Seeing parts re whole Generativity
Phase 4 The Learning Organisation
Enabling evolution of organisation. Getting all parts working together to increase creative solutions. Quality of interaction throughout organisation and impact of organisation on quality of life in society
Preoccupation
Source: R. Brian Stanfield The Art of Focused Conversation (2000)
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Insights Afforded by Systems Thinking System thinking allows people to make their understanding of social systems explicit and improve them in the same way that people can use engineering principles to make explicit and improve their understanding of mechanical systems. Wholes have properties that are the properties of the whole and not of the parts (dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants). Senge We can’t understand a wider system by looking in detail at its parts, because some properties only emerge when they are combined. So if we want to know how a patient experiences a service, we cannot find that out by considering only the constituent parts, we need to look at the whole patient journey (across organisational boundaries).
Barry Richmond coined the term in 1987: “System thinking is the art and science of making reliable inferences about behaviour by developing an increasing deep understanding of underlying structure”
One of the key benefits of systems thinking is its to raise our thinking to the level at which we create the results we want as individuals and organisations even in those difficult situations marked by complexity, greater numbers of interactions, and the absence or ineffectiveness of immediately apparent solutions.
A system also interacts with its environment, and the behaviour of a system can only be understood in the context of its environment. There are two parts of the environment; a) the environment over which the system does not exert power but does have some influence (sometimes known as the wider system of interest); and b) that over which it has no influence. It is important for us to help the client to describe the environment, and the influence that it has, of any service or system we are interested in.
Components of a system interact with each other in a reciprocal flow of influence, and in most management situations understanding this dynamic complexity is more important than understanding detail complexity. These inter-relationships mean that cause and effect are not closely related in time and space, and that the results of any intervention in a system may well be unexpected. As a result, any interventions we make will have many effects we did not predict or expect, in parts of the system we were not aware of influencing.
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Cultivating this “art and science” leads to routine use of CORRECT mental models that see the world as a complex system whose behaviour is controlled by its dynamic structure, which is the way its feedback loops interact to drive the system’s behaviour.
Everyone in the world can also be divided into two groups based on how they see the world around them: event oriented thinkers and system thinkers. Most people (95%) are event oriented. People in this category see things from a simple cause and effect chain, and if you want to solve a problem, find the cause and fix that (called classic activism) vs systems thinkers who see that in order to shift behaviour or solve the problems, system structure must be understood and changed Once we understand true systems thinking we will see system behaviour as the result of its feedback loops. Feedback loops are everywhere. The application of systems thinking to more complex problems can often turn a problem from impossible to solve into one easier to solve.
Traditional analysis
System thinking
Focuses on separating the individual pieces of what is being studied; in fact the word “analysis” actually comes from the root meaning – “to break into constituent parts.”
In contrast – system thinking focuses on how the thinking being studied interacts with the other constituents of the system – a set of elements that interact to produce behaviour – of which it is a part. This means that instead of isolating smaller and smaller parts of the system being studied, systems thinking works by expanding its view to take into account larger and larger numbers of interactions as an issue is being studied.
This way of analysis will produce strikingly different conclusions than those generated systemmakes thinking type of analysis. This by approach it extremely effective on the most difficult types of problems to solve. E.g. Compiled by Dr. L Mee-Yan Cheung Judge ©
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Open System – Concepts and Properties Open System Concepts
What does the concept mean?
HR/OD Practitioners’ Potential Intervention
Doc 6 Notes / Questions
Always look at whether what the organisation puts out will make them relevant to the outside world - external and how externally savvy they are. Systems are inter-dependent with each other – Actively create contact to ensure working relationships especially those which are external to the system exist between the internal and external environment and itself. among the internal component. Have strategy to manage What one can see is that the system is embedded those relationships proactively. Environmental Interdependence and will attempt to influence its external world, as well as being influenced by the external environment – exchange resources, energy, needed services/commodities, etc. Pay attention to how (what mechanisms) the system To maintain the integrity of the system uniqueness, the system will ensure they establish establishes boundaries; to gather data to find out whether its boundary is too tight or too porous. How do clear boundary maintenance from the external environment and also encourage the internal sub- they work with the cycles of feedback, adaptation, selfgenerating, learning and continuous alignment, branding units to have clear boundaries from each other. Boundaries However if the system boundary is too tight, it will and how readily they adjust the unit boundary. suffer from acting like a “closed system”, and if it is too porous, it will lose its uniqueness and integrity. The challenge for the organisation and its leaders is how to balance the two. ITO –
Homeostasis
Input – through put – output.
The natural tendency of a system is to avoid changing; homeostasis is a coping mechanism people use to create tolerable fits within their own environment.
While the system prefers to “stay put”, they also Steady state and pay attention to the ratio between entering dynamic energy and free interplay of forces. They prefer homeostasis status quo, but keep their eyes on the dynamic interplay between the organisation and those powerful external forces.
Leaders prefer status quo than change – “if it is not broken – do not fix it” is their motto. Pay attention to find out how long they can afford to stay in this state and how to support them to discover when it is a suitable time to move out from Homeostasis. Purposefully create a disturbance in the system – to stir the system into a dynamic state to move out of steady state.
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Doc 6, cont. Open System Concepts
What does the concept mean?
Systems have a tendency, if left alone, to move toward disorder and death; system tendencies toward too much disorder will run down unless Entropy they are renewed. Some system theorists believe that the system has such powerful tendency to wither they eventually lose all vitality and die. System effort to self-correct to bring in new energy through feedback to stop decline. There is Negative Entropy always someone in the system who would see the danger and max out their VOICE to reverse the direction – or leverage a powerful external factor to “wake up” the system. Integration means that every system has the need for more “sameness” than “difference” and “relations/connections”.
Integration/ Differentiation
HR/OD Practitioners’ Potential Intervention
Notes / Questions
“Protection of status quo” is a characteristic of “entropy.” Help the system to stop their gradual movement to not pay attention to external feedback and let what – once upon a time – ran well – stay as it is. Selectively choose data to think of how to help them to not continue the status quo. Import new energy (new hire; major restructuring, etc) to wake up the system. Bring the outside world in – to confront the system face to face to max out the impact.
Look for effectiveness of alignment or lack of alignment between different divisions, units, functional groups.
Find out from leaders whether they believe in The global system always wants all sub-units to be differentiation as the best thing to ensure diversity is the consistent (sameness); yet the sub-units want to edge. be unique and different. Too much sameness or too much differentiation or too The word is “Balance”. weak a connection will impact negatively on the system. This is not only is difficult but almost impossible because system is always self-organising. Differentiation means how a system moves from “sameness” to more diffuse or unconstrained activities to specialism. System needs to have variety. Every system needs diversity.
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Doc 6, cont. Open System Concepts
What does the concept mean? The ability of a system to reach the same end in many ways.
Equifinality
Process of getting to the same goal or end state through different paths or trajectories.
HR/OD Practitioners’ Potential Intervention
Notes / Questions
Instead of fighting this tendency, help the leaders to build a semi-autonomous culture, simple rules – focus on giving clear parameters (givens) and clear goals, and then leave the units to go do their own thing to deliver those results.
Represents the complex and unpredictable behaviour of open systems. Represents the complex and unpredictable behaviour of open systems. Interdependence describes how each part of the Help the leaders in my system to work hard to keep their system has an interconnected relationship. This subsystems interconnected with other subsystems in a interdependence manifests itself differently – e.g. holistic way. Interdependence share resources, use intelligence and knowledge of another part to enable the sub-system to achieve e.g. To have a joint pot of money to encourage cross its goals......all interdependences imply change in divisional innovation projects, etc. any part of the system affects the whole system. Feedback happens to every system as those who Help members of any system not to take a defensive are inside and outside have the propensity to give stance, but to work with the feedback to ensure the the system data to ensure the system stays in top double learning loop habit exists. Help the system to build quartile health. a feedback culture – to ensure the system is constantly Feedback being adapted and adjusted to ensure its viability is high. Information concerning the outputs or the processes of the system should be fed back as an input into the system, which will lead to changes in the transformation process.
The big leadership question is, how do leaders influence the conditions in the system so that they will be in a healthy interdependent relationship and have sufficient fitness with the environment? What more should HR/OD practitioners do to promote that?
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Doc 7 An example of a System Approach in solving problems: a case of a major performing art organisation. Problems
Solutions
Revenue dropped for 3 seasons
Every department submits plan for 12% cut of their expenditure Increase fund raising efforts by development officer Greater push on Friends of the theatre
Increase of unfavourable reviews by some powerful theatre critics
Get powerful board members to take critics to dinner to scoop out issues Build relationships with other rising critics Renew our key networks in the top 5 newspapers
Recruitment of FRIENDS OF THE THEATRE did not produce targeted increase
Pull together a caucus of powerful FREINDS and ask them each to host a recruitment event (like dinner before or after the show) to get more people to sign up
Overspend of annual budget from workshop (Prop department, Costume design department)
Find cheaper suppliers for wood and other core material we need for props Train workshop staff to know how to work more efficiently and bear costs in mind.
New acting company is not gelling well and there are a lot of egos.
Commission a team-building event to build relationships – also plan an intervention to help them understand how their egos stand in the way of being an “ensemble”
Marketing campaigns were rated by external professional organisation as low quality
Identify which of the staff in the department are not doing well, send them for further training. Bring in an experienced marketer to coach and support them. Also build in the required improvement in the performance criteria of every staff member
9 Compiled by Dr. L Mee-Yan Cheung Judge ©
Doc 8 System way of diagnosing this problem Leadership is primarily populated with artists who have a tradition to undermine the contribution of the Finance function. The acceptable practice from the top is “nothing is spared to create artistic excellence”.
Fundraising Dept wants to assign each artist to attend ‘Friend Events’ to build relationships. But artists always make excuses not to attend.
Very limited interest in what other theatres are doing / see themselves as the elite in artistic terms. Stay ‘closed’ to external learning.
• Don’t make time to meet with the head of the workshop to discuss props and design for each play • Fax requirements to workshop • Takes an average of 4 times to get the design right • Average cost = £28,000 per play
The acting company see themselves as the most important part of the organisation
Deputy CEO (who is not an artist) wants to introduce a dialogical practice of working theatre / play production by inviting critics / friends / etc to attend rehearsals and give instant feedback, but meets so much resistance he postpones the practice.
Do not let the Costume Dept know the rehearsal schedule despite persistent requests from its Head of Costume. So Costume Dept miss all the rehearsal dates based at a venue close to their office. There need to be 3 measurement and fitting sessions to get the costumes right. Average cost of taking many trunks around the country = £12,000 per play
Marketing Dept want to attend a couple of rehearsals so that they can write up the publicity, but are refused by the Artistic Director.
What systemic intervention would you consider as an HR/OD practitioner? 10 Compiled by Dr. L Mee-Yan Cheung Judge ©
Lesson 1: To promote systems change, foster community and cultivate network Capra noted that most of the qualities of a living system – which is nature sustains life by creating and nurturing communities. Lasting change frequently requires a critical mass or density of interrelationships with a community. Famed essayist Wendell Berry wrote “if nothing exists in isolation...then all problems are circumstantial: no problem resides, or can be solved, in anybody’s department.” To achieve systems change, leaders must cross department boundaries and bring people together addressing parts of the problem around the same table.
Lesson 2: Work at multiple levels of scale NESTED SYSTEMS is a core ecological principle. Like the Russian “matryoshka” dolls that fit one into the other, most system contain other systems and are contained with larger systems: cells within organs with individuals within communities; ....Changing a system affects both the systems within it and the systems in which it is nested. The challenge for change agents is choosing the right level, or levels, of scale for the changes they seek. The answers is often working at multiple levels: top down, bottom up, outside in, and inside out.
Seven Lessons for Leaders in System Change
Lesson 5: Facilitate – but give up the illusion that you can direct – change. “we never succeed in directing or telling people how they must change...we don’t succeed by handing them a plan, or pestering them with our interpretations, or relentlessly pressing forward with our agenda, believing that volume and intensity will convince them to see it our way.” Margaret Wheatley. So what can we do? You can never direct a living system, you can only disturb it. How? By introducing information that contradicts old assumptions, by demonstrating that things people believe they can not be done already are being accomplished somewhere else. By inviting new people into the conversation, by rearranging structures so that people relate in ways they are not used by, by presenting issues from other perspectives.. Meanwhile, you can create conditions that take advantage of the system’s capacity for generating creative solutions. Nurture networks of connection and communication, create climates of trust and mutual support, encourage questioning, and reward innovation.
Lesson 6: Assume that change is going to take time. “Quick fixes are an oxymoron” says Margaret Wheatley. Taking time for stakeholders to understand each other’s concerns and learn to trust each other’s motivations and intentions can be time well spent.
Compiled by Dr. L Mee-Yan Cheung Judge ©
Doc 9 Lesson 3: make space for self- organisation Fritjof Capra writes “perhaps the central concept in the systems view of life” is that the pattern favoured by life “is a network pattern capable of self – organisation.” “life constantly reaches out into novelty, and this property of all living systems is the origin of development, learning and evolution.”
Lesson 4: Seize breakthrough opportunities when they arise Living systems generally remain in a stable state. That is a good thing: otherwise we will be living in chaos. But it is also why systems change can be so difficult. From time to time, however, a system encounters a point of instability where it is confronted by new circumstances or information that it can not absorb without giving up some of its old structures, behaviours, or beliefs. The instability can precipitate either a breakdown or – due to systems’ capacities for self-organisation – a breakthrough to new possibilities. A former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”
Lesson 7: Be prepared to be surprised Change in living systems is nonlinear. As they develop and evolve, living systems generate phenomena that are not predictable from the properties of their individual parts. System theorists call these “emergent properties.” Source: Michael K. Stone and Zenobia Barlow Seven Lessons of Leaders in Systems Change (2014)
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We need: • Support from the top, • Heroes from the middle • Include employees who have no formal power but huge influence and can rally the troops • Recognise the cultural differences between organisation • Not to forget the role of story telling and be open to include a spiritual dimension.
To have a possibility mind-set and creative orientation coming from all parts of the system (vs a problem-solving methodology and then go back to their silos).
There needs to be an increasing recognition that the interdependency exist in any system, hence there needs to be coordination across all parts of the system we are trying to change.
Implications for Change Agents in System Change
The essential ingredients for a successful systems change programme is to realise what moves change forward is a willingness to change behaviours and come together to collaborate on the win solutions. This is far from easy and requires a certain skill set, including a sense of humility and sensitivity. Compiled by Dr. L Mee-Yan Cheung Judge ©
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Collaboration is often the best opportunity for working with complex change as well as scaling up changes.
Build your competency in OD works on 1. Whole system change methodology 2. Large group intervention 3. High Engagement methodology 4. The need for co-construction 5. Using high leverage methodology as our DNA 6. Learn how to amplify Diversity to seek common ground 7. Learn to know how to walk with conflicting groups. 12
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Ever Changing Organisation CAS – Complex Adaptive System Self-organisation is key • Everyone can be intentional change agent • Everyone is given a chance and role to play • Wisdom exists in all levels of organisation • Whoever needs information has information to act • Most powerful process of change is at the micro level • Continuous and small experimentation is important
Relationship and quality interaction is key • Organisation grows conditions that foster positive relationships • Team ability – both within and across is a basic skill and a mindset • High quality inquiry and dialogue is a norm • Proactive search to build constructive relationships with whoever to get things done. • Diversity provides competitive advantages • Relational view and holistic views dominate
Transformational learning is key • System players are externally savvy and use stressful unplanned situations to catalyse learning • Leader’s famous motto ”what can we learn from this situation?” • Be prepared that nothing ever happens the same i.e. “cause = effect = cause = effect • Data and learning insights, and diverse wisdom leads to Innovation Action • Take feedback seriously and build a “ feedback will lead to growth” culture
Patterns and rules dictate outcomes • Pay attention to the existing patterns and how they facilitate or derail the intention of the organisation • Leaders take a key role to shift and shape patterns to make organisation flexible and fit • Simple and minimal rules are a norm • Everyone is encouraged to propose simple rules when facing a complex task
Ability to work with polarity is key • Order and chaos coexist • Change can be revolutionary and evolutionary • Both respect and irrelevance of the past will give us the edge • Leadership is top down and bottom up
FITNESS An increasing level of co-ordination, autonomy, interdependence, flexibility and integration. A continual improvement in functionality and behaviour and a more accurate view of reality by all. Compiled by Dr. L Mee-Yan Cheung Judge ©
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Twelve Simple Rules of System Thinking for Complex Issues 1. Connect the disconnected – in complex systems, all the elements or agents are interconnected, as in a giant web. They are also inter-dependent – what happens to one affects all others.
2. Ground yourself in unpredictability – There are multiple agents or elements, combining and interacting in unpredictable and non-linear ways. This means decisions often lead to unintended consequences. This is because complexity is the nature and condition of living systems and the world we live in.
3. Create conditions for quality engagements – in the giant web of interconnectedness, the points or nodes where the agents meet are the relationships, or opportunities for interaction. These interactions determine what will happen to the system. The nature and quality of these relationships, therefore are critically important. That is why we work hard to bring social healing/dialogue initiatives that bring former enemies into new relationships with one another.
4. Rebalance the flows across boundaries – we know that all living systems exchange energy, matter, and information across their boundaries. When we can identify imbalances in these flows, stuck places, over- or underaccumulation. . etc. We can shift things to be more equitable and more sustainable.
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7. Pay attention to emerging networks – the basic format of organisation is networks, that is, groups of parts joined together in a de-centralised way for some period of time, hence living systems organise themselves through the interactions of their agents or parts.
8. Seek coherence within chaos – Systems move between various degrees of stability and instability, order and disorder. When the disorder, or chaos, becomes too great, things fall apart. When the order is too rigid, things cannot grow or develop. Yet a certain degree of instability, or the edge of chaos, can also be a powerful moment of creative change.
9. Look to the Impact of self on the system – All living system s exist within a field of potential, where the observer is a player, our thoughts have consequences, and creative solutions emerge though our interaction.
10. Articulate, communicate, the stories you hold – For human systems, that context is the narrative that gives meaning to our choices and actions. Knowing the unique context living systems exist is important. Learn to communicate by narrative.
5. Re-pattern for sustainability and well-being of the whole - All living systems develop patterns Often these patterns are self-reinforcing and become deeply embedded and difficult to change. Many of these patterns in human systems are common, recognisable and often promote independence and silo mentality .
11. Define and revisit goals and purpose – living systems need coherence and move around a common shared purpose, hence getting a clear goal and purpose often galvanise the system energies and interest.
6. Attend to ever smaller parts and ever larger wholes – in living systems that everything is a whole in itself and at the same time part of a larger whole. Look at both Macro & Micro factors.
12. Learn and change from inner and out messages – Living systems are capable
Compiled by Dr. L Mee-Yan Cheung Judge ©
to be learning systems, hence they can adapt from the feedback they receive from their internal and external environments. Source: Louise Diamond, Ph.D . Global Systems Initiatives. Twelve Simple Rules of Systems Thinking of Complex Global Issues (2008)
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Doc 13 It is important to be accountable for all of the consequences of your actions on these systems – we need to know that as we pursue our own self-interests without considering the consequences on those systems.
Always strive to see the systems of which you are part of – all life on our planet exists only because we are enmeshed within a complex web of interdependent ecological and social systems. – we need to live in the natural law of interdependences.
Five Inter-Related Commitments to Help Leaders Make the Shift to Systems Thinking
To break free from the false beliefs. – many of us have been taught that focusing on selfinterest alone – maximising our personal, family, and organisational wellbeing over everything else – is natural and good. This view confuses self-centredness with individual freedom. We need to think systemically at any time. Compiled by Dr. L Mee-Yan Cheung Judge ©
It is important to abide by society’s long held universal moral principles of equity and justice – the natural law of a moral justice says that any action that causes unjustifiable human suffering and death is morally wrong. Spend sometime to investigate the many ways an organisation can do NO HARM is a powerful exercise.
Acknowledge your trustee obligations and take responsibility for the continuation of all life – We have to know and acknowledge that human activities, not natural processes, will now determine the fate of our planet. Each of us are the trustee of the planet with the responsibility to ensure the continuation of all life for current and future beneficiaries. 15
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System Thinking and Behaviour
1.
All systems are composed of interconnected parts. The connections cause behaviour of one part to affect another. All parts are connected. A change to any part or connection affects the entire system.
4.
Complex social systems exhibit counter intuitive behaviour – the problems of such systems therefore cannot be solved using intuition and our everyday problem solving methods. The use of intuitive methods to solve difficult complex social system problems is a common trap.
6. Once we realise how complex the behaviour dynamics of even a simple system really is, you will never again assume you can look at a system and predict how it will behave.
Compiled by Dr. L Mee-Yan Cheung Judge ©
2.
The structure of a system determines its behaviour. (Structure is the pattern of part connections, which is how the system is organised.) System behaviour is at least 1000 times more dependent on connections than parts because that is what determines how the parts work together. To understand a system’s gross behaviour, understand its structure. To change a system’s gross behaviour, change its structure.
3.
Feedback loops control a system’s major dynamic behaviour – a feedback loop is a series of connections causing output from one part to eventually influence input to the same part. This circular flow results in amplification, delay and dampening effects. Feedback loops are the main reason a system’s behaviour is emergent.
5.
System behaviour is an emergent phenomenon – to understand system behaviour you cannot inspect its different parts. This is because: a. Parts are tightly coupled b. The parts and structure are constantly changing c. Feedback loops are present d. Nonlinear relationships exist e. Behaviour paths are history dependent f. The system is self-organising and adaptive g. Emergent behaviour is counterintuitive h. Time delays exist i. The human mind has very limited calculation abilities, etc.
7.
Meadow thinks that to understand system behaviour over time is to understand a. Stocks vs flows b. Feedback (two kinds of loops – reinforcing and balancing). Delayed feedback loops (the norms) can lead to wildly different behaviours – dampening, small or very large oscillations.
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“Being” Characteristics and “Doing” Skills
B E I N G D O I
Doc 15
• 'I' & 'Thou' (Martin Büler) • In awe about the scale of 'interdependence' of human existence • Refuse to be blinded by the illusion of control and prediction • Stay true to facts (honour and protect information) • Respect the system's own self-maintenance capacity - pay attention to what already exists • Stay humble, expose your mental modles to get feedback • Stay an eager learner • Exercise your voice and name things & events to disrupt the pattern or surface the "unspeakable" • Stay faithful to the good of the whole not just what is drawn to your attention • Expand time, thoughts, horizon and the boundary of care • Hold fast to the goal of goodness
• Empathetic listening • Dialogic / inquiring / conversation skills • Weaving & joining & converging skills • Conflict surfacing & resolving skills • Evocative & provocative skills
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• Stay strategic & act pragmatic (Macro & Micro level of thinking)
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• Whole System methodological skills Put together by Dr. L Mee-Yan Cheung Judge ®
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Doc 16
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