This is a bit of a stream of consciousness and partial connections…..
The other week I was in a meeting when someone presented a paper which included, among other things, the thorny issue of how we go about ‘prioritisation’ at a strategic level. For some reason the word niggled me and I had a sharp intake of breadth – the Chair noticed it and invited me to speak. Now I know I could have stayed quiet, but I didn’t… instead I tried to articulate my concern. Continue reading
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.
(Activity 3.22, 3.23, 3,24)
It felt clever giving this title to a post about Communities of Practice (CoP). However, as I am not sure where I am going to go with the post I don’t really know whether it is relevant or not!
I have covered a little bit of ‘community of practice’ theory before – when I studied Managing Knowledge. In that field they were seen as a refreshing change to an information management approach as they focused more on human interaction.
Then there is my more recent experience – I think the phrase ‘community of practice’ is getting over-used and applied to entities that don’t really fulfill the essence of what Wenger describes – he and Lave coined the term to describe something very particular
Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. [source E Wenger, http://www.ewenger.com/theory/ , accessed 27 February 2011]
but it seems to get used to refer to any type of group network, especially when internet based social networking platforms are used.
Seems a pity that we participate in things we think of as ‘communities of practice’ but in reality they are not CoP and therefore we may overlook the opportunity to take part in a ‘real’ one.
Perhaps I need to explore my experiences some more….
Just a short quick note about the word ‘identify’ or maybe I mean the practice of identification. I want to put it here as it is an understanding I have gained from the stream of posts on the course forum, and, well, I just don’t want to lose it.
In a world of objects, identify seems to be about pointing out, labelling and naming. It assumes tangible-ness.
So how does the practice of identification work with systems?
(Activity 3.12)
As Blackmore (2010, 20) explains in an editor’s note, Vickers did not represent his idea of an appreciative system in a diagram or model. However, Checkland and Caser did produce a model based on their understandings of Vickers work in 1986. This is reproduced in Blackmore (2010) on page 21.
I struggled with this diagram at first – mainly because of its title “Diagram of Vickers’ appreciative systems model”. After posting about this to the course forum, I was helped by one of the tutors (Jitse) who said that it may be better to think of the diagram as a “conceptual representation of the process of appreciation”. I found this much more helpful as a trigger to understanding my own experience. I am still not sure about the diagram itself but I can now use it as a springboard for reflecting on a recent experience of appreciation.
I first posted my reflections on what I do when I do what I do in this post from 5 December. This was before I had the opportunity to learn about the juggler and use it as a heuristic to reflect on my practice. So I thought I would revisit the question in the light of material I have covered since then.
I have now submitted my assignment and should be moving on from Part 2 to Part 3 of TU812, I’m quite reluctant to do so because I feel as if there is so much I haven’t got straight yet. There was so much to get a handle on in that part of the course and I kind of fear that it is all going to fade away.
But I also want to acknowledge the fact that I am leaving the part of the course that Ray Ison has been the lead author – not just the study guide but his course text too. I guess he is now a formal part of my Systems lineage and I want to take stock of what I ‘inherit’. I have covered all the big stuff – like the practice dynamic, the juggler and various academic concepts – in other posts in this blog. But there is something more I want to take with me – a few choice phrases that capture for me some of the spirit and principles of systems thinking and practice.
(Activity 2.33)
Ison (2010, 260-262) describes the concept of a ‘design turn’. I am finding it one of the more difficult concepts to get a handle on so I will use this post to explore my understanding of the concept and apply it to my systems practice.
Before I do, I want to quote what is – to date – my biggest and most significant insight from studying TU812. Of course, I kind of knew it before but having it pointed out made me realise its significance:
The direct consequence of the profound changes in the character and role of organised knowledge is that the future most now be regarded as increasingly a human artefact – an art-in-fact. The future can no longer be regarded as a natural object, a fact already there or objectively determined by present trends. It must be chosen.
Hooker (1992) cited in Ison (2010, 261)
So this is why design is important. It is part of the way we choose the future. Every design will create ripples that becomes its legacy or artefact. So what is design?
(Activity 2.7, ref. Table 2.3 in study guide)
It seems like ages ago when I wrote the post “An inquiry into my systems practice for managing change“. I am reminded now that this is a purposeful inquiry – the purpose I identified when writing that earlier post is to achieve a better level of ability to manage change systemically.
In this inquiry the situation is my current systems practice i.e. what I do when I do what I do. I am concerned with developing my understandings and practices associated with doing systems practice.
The juggler isophor is introduced in order to help make sense of what I do when I do what I do (and why I do when I do what I do). It is therefore a “system tool” that helps me make sense of the situation – a tool to use in my inquiry. Continue reading
(Activity 2.31 based on Ison (2010, Chapter 8))
The M-ball is for Managing. Ison says it is:
about how the practitioner is Managing their involvement with the situation (page 58)
I have to say that I found Chapter 8 quite difficult to work with. It was not the individual paragraphs or the concepts being introduced or used. I just found it really difficult to get the overall thread, thrust and argument of the chapter. There are sections that do not flow from their own headings (or at least how I understand/understood those headings). And I lost track of how the juggler and the balls ‘worked’ for Managing. But, this is after all an inquiry – it was up to me to take responsibility for understanding the discord I was (am!) experiencing. So before I look at the particular concepts highlighted in activity 2.31, I want to summarise where that inquiry has brought me so far.