Writer’s block

You’ll see I haven’t been blogging much recently.  It’s not that I haven’t been doing any thinking or reading – just that none of it is coherent enough to rally together into a blog post.  It’s a little weird not having the rigour of an academic course to say – read this, think about it, reflect it back in assignments – at least the academic courses gave me a route, a journey to follow, and a timetable.  Sure I did little forays every now and again – up interesting cul de sacs and detours, but the main journey was charted for me and I could see what it was to make progress. Continue reading

To institutionalise…or not to institutionalise?

Ison (2010, 9) highlights his concern that – to date – we have failed to institutionalise systems thinking and practice in society in general and in organisational practices in particular.  I noticed that some of my student colleagues have commented on the course forum or their own blogs about whether ‘institutionalisation’ is desirable or not – this resonated with my gut reaction.

Is this really something we want for systems thinking and practice? Continue reading

The nature of change

I use the word “change” a lot but never really stopped to think about my understanding of the concept.  Just had a few minutes fun looking up “change” on http://www.visualthesaurus.com/ (the trial version).  It has loads of connections so it is obviously quite a rich word.

So what are the foundations of my understanding of “change” and how has that changed (!) as I have got more into systems practice. Continue reading