Writer’s block: a sticky story

(Activity 2.2)

In my last post, I ended up by saying that I often think too big about the situations I want to address – global warning, world peace, health inequalities and the entire UK public sector!   I suppose that is consistent with the approach to use of Systems in TU811 – there we worked on situations requiring strategic interventions and our assignments focused on distant news stories.

That approach does not seem right for TU812, where there is much more of a focus on you as a practitioner in everyday situations.  I therefore need to think more local, more immediate…..well more….everyday. Continue reading

Legacy

One of the activities in Part 1 of TU812 asks us to draw a Trajectory diagram that shows our points of entry to the module.  Effectively, how is it we got here.

In my Trajectory diagram, I have a note ‘first exposure to word systems – King’s Fund work in Newcastle using whole systems’.  It set me thinking… Continue reading

On becoming a practitioner

I have been reading and finding out about systems stuff for ages.  Going way back – maybe I’ll cover that one day.  Now I am part way through a postgraduate diploma in Systems Practice with the Open University.  This blog is adapted from a post I did to the student forum early in the first module….

In the beginning, we did lots of reading (interspersed with the odd ‘practice’ activity that you can get away with doing half-heartedly). The reading was interesting and I learned a lot about what systems thinking is; how it applies to strategy making; the lives and works of key historic thinkers; the importance of tools and so on.

Then the first assignment came along and told us to do systems thinking for real – or at least practice it. Continue reading