Seems weird that since November I have been studying a course with “Managing systemic change” as the module title and I now start questioning whether I know what it is or not? I think in part it is because I am trying to connect up how ‘social learning’ fits into ‘managing systemic change’.
There have been a couple of forum threads on what we understand by managing systemic change but each time I think I grasp it, it goes away again.
I have been pondering the concept of self-organisation and feel the need to pull the threads together.
I have mentioned the term in posts before but never felt I have a real grip on it. Then the other day, I was at a workshop to do with community empowerment which not-surprisingly discussed the notion of the “Big Society”. One of my voluntary and community sector colleagues spoke and referred to a handout he had written on “Kauffman’s essential preconditions for self-organisation”. He had my attention immediately…
(Activity 3.7 based on Chapter 1, Blackmore (ed) (2010))
I have heard of Schön before. Mostly in connection with his work on reflective practice and also from his work with Argyris on learning (Ramage and Shipp, 2009). I had not really come across his work on change where he uses ideas connected with social learning. He is included in the course as one of the ‘early’ works on social learning systems – the chapter in the book was written in 1973.
After reading the Chapter, I come away with the following understanding of Schön’s key concepts
Something happened this week that I am ever so proud of. It is actually quite a small step – just like the first pawn you move at the beginning of a chess game, but it feels significant all the same.
(Activity 2.27, Table 2.3)
Back in early December, I identified my situation of concern and wrote a post giving an overview of the concern. In short, this is a concern about the lack of systems thinking and practice in my workplace. In that same earlier post I started exploring the situation through a meta-narrative.
I intend to use the process of TU812 to conduct a systemic inquiry into this situation of concern. To be honest, the heavy workload of the course material has meant this has disappeared to the back of my head. In fact, I have realised that I have not been very purposeful in that inquiry – it has been a bit purposive because the course suggested I did it rather than it being willed. I think it is time to revisit that now – the situation of concern is still alive and interesting at work and now I have more concepts and tools under my belt it’ll be interesting to see how they help me.
So, I need to become a little more purposeful – to help with that I have now explored and defined the purpose of the inquiry – just so there is something I can latch onto…
TU812 is structured in a way to help me to to conduct a systemic inquiry into my own systems practice for managing change. I have commented on this in An inquiry into my systems practice for managing change.
However the module also encourages me to identify a situation of concern that I can also apply systemic inquiry to. I have really struggled with identifying a situation of concern – narrowing something down from just a generalised ‘my work’ into something that is more subject to investigation.
Part of the reason for this is outlined in my post Writer’s Block – telling sticky stories in which I am a player does not come easily to me.
But I have I have finally had the – aha – moment. I have realised my situation of concern has been staring me in the face all along – I have even posted about an occasion when I took purposeful activity to act in this situation of concern (Elevator Pitch). Continue reading
It’s funny how things go in circles:
– my blog on ‘Elevator pitch‘ kickstarted a thread in TU812 course cafe forum about introducing new things into an organisation. Another student commented there about the cultural receptiveness to change.
– my blog on ‘Change‘ kickstarted a thread in Systems Place about innovation.
These two threads reminded me of something I covered in B822 Creativity, Innovation and Change. Continue reading
I am sure I am not the only ‘systems practitioner’-in-training who finds it difficult to introduce systems practice into their workplace. I think it is different if you are an ‘external’ consultant or facilitator because clients expect you to bring something that they don’t know yourself. But when you are an employee, colleagues (especially people who are more senior than yourself) don’t really expect you to innovate on how to do or think about things, just what you do.
So I try to do it by subterfuge. A little bit here, a little bit there. But the other day, I missed an opportunity because I was not prepared. Continue reading
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