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Part 1: Starting the course
Part 2: Experiencing complexity
Part 3: Understanding systems approach to managing complexity
Part 4: Making sense of your experiences of complexity

Thinking about expectations
Preparing to tackle this course
Introducing ourselves

What is your purpose in doing this course?

What do you hope to get from the course?

What is your emotional state as you approach the course?

Are you excited, bored, eager, puzzled, tired?

What anticipations do you have about doing the project?

What sort of skills do you think you might need for the project?

How do you rate your overall capacity to succeed in this course?

What do you understand the course title to mean?

What do you understand by a systems approach?

The nature of systems thinking and system practice
Taking responsibility for your own learning
Approaching epistemological issues

Epistemology: is the branch of philosophy that deals with knowledge and knowing: How do I know about the outside world?

There are no simple definitions for either systems thinking or systems practice; They arise from particular ways of seeing the world
What are the important features of systems thinking?

Systems thinking respects complexity
Systems thinking gives attention to the relationships
Systems thinking makes complexity manageable by taking a broader perspective and understanding the big picture

Mental attitudes to adopt:

Being open and sensitive; being willing and able to see the situation from all kinds of points of view; being open; trying to find out how other people see the constraints and boundaries; enjoying diversity and complexity in a situation; not minding too much if there are areas of uncertainty;…

Introduction

An Activity Sequence

Decide on Strategy for engaging with case-study

Immerse yourself in complexity through reading a case-study

Represent complexity by drawing a rich picture.

Recognize your own location within the case study situation

Add self to rich picture.

Opportunity to get on with it – actually getting stuck into an experience of a complex situation. Through that experience, you need to illustrate the process of getting to grips with the complexity of the situation by looking for systems, or elements of systems within it. Then you need to have the opportunity to use these systems to understand the situation.
You need to draw together some of your previous understandings of systems with some of your systems skills and to consolidate them. It will form a firm foundation for proceeding with the course. You also need to develop systems-diagramming skills.

Supporting you in acquiring the skills of assessing the quality of your own diagrams. In the case study you will encounter with making several diagrams, each highlighting different features of the situation.
The last purpose is to convey something of the flavor of the course. You would have probably formed your own sense of what flavor has been conveyed. This flavor has to do with the way a complex situation can be understood by interacting with it in a number of different ways, taking different viewpoints or perspective.

The rich picture is a representation of your encounter with the situation, so drawing a rich picture needs you to have represented the situation to yourself. The rich picture allows you to see the whole situation at once – something that would be very difficult to do in your head.

Appreciate rich picture as a metaphor for experiencing complexity.
Decide how to tackle reading
Read case study
Draw initial rich picture
Examine rich picture critically
Improve rich picture
Recognize author’s role in representing the case study
Locate own initial position in case study situation
Include self in picture
Re-examine rich picture as metaphor for experiencing complexity.

There are certain traps, which you may fall into while drawing a rich picture.

Representing the problem and not the situation.

Q: Does this rich picture represent the situation or is it just my interpretation of what the problem is? Does it include all the features noted as problematic?

The impoverished rich picture.

Q: Have I included everything I know about the situation in my representation of it?

Interpretation, Structure an analysis

Q: Is this rich picture just one story or is it rich enough to suggest lots of stories about what is going on?

Words and wordiness

Q: Do I need to do a lot of reading to see relationships between elements in the picture.

The final version trap

Q: Have I had any new insights about the complex situation since I last added something to this picture

Do some activities for practice purpose

Purpose is about finding ways of thinking about complex situations – making sense of complexity. This is a process of discovery. It involves thinking about complexity in an orderly way that allows you to enter deeper understanding of the complexity. It goes beyond immersion in, and representation of, complexity.

Systems Maps

Searching for System

One can define system in a simple way that a system is an assembly of components interconnected as if they have a purpose.

System of interest – A system of interest is one that a systems thinker chooses to focus his interest on.

Drawing system maps

The next step is to draw some system maps-this helps you to identify what to include and what to exclude; deciding where components are located; redefining boundaries, and sometimes starting again.

Influence Diagrams

In the case of influence diagrams, we look for inter-connection in the form of influence to hold together a structure that resolve some of the complexity. (Please look at the page#50 for this type of Diagram)

Multiple-cause diagrams

In this type of diagrams, we look for an interconnection between cause and effect. (Please look at the page#52 for this type of diagram).

Control model diagrams

In this type of diagram, you start to form the view there were some ambiguities about purpose in the case-study situation. Control models are a useful way of investigating purpose and the means in place to achieve it. They address issue like ‘What is X trying to achieve ?, How are they trying to do it?’ Control model diagrams provide a structure for exploring these questions. (Please see page#55 for this kind of diagram).

Introduction

As a system practitioner you need to observe and understand the complexity through a different perspective in order to solve the problem. (Figure 17 on page# 59 has been used as a metaphor to understand complexity)
In a metaphoric sense it represents:

Yourself as an observer

The ideal system practitioner as the understandascope; and

The complexity you are trying to understand as residing in the relationship between the observer (you) the understandascope (your appreciation of system practice) and the context (the messy situation depicted in the cartoon.)

BECM

Being, Engaging, Contextualizing and Managing

The juggler metaphor involves being aware that these four balls need to be juggled – it takes active attention and some skill, to keep them in the air.
Things start to go wrong if anyone of them slips.
To be an effective practitioner you need to continuously think about, and act to maintain, four elements BECM in the situation.

Making sense of the metaphor

The metaphor of the juggler keeping the four balls in the air is a powerful way for you to think about what you do when you try to be effective in your practice. It takes concentration and skills.
The juggler metaphor conceals that the four elements of effective practice often seem to be related.
The effective practice – the movement of the balls – are not only interdependent but also dependent on your action.

Being: “Being” means the awareness of the system practitioner about the situation.
Engaging: “Engaging” means the engagement of the system practitioner with the real world situation. It’s an engagement of a situation that can be experienced as messy and complex.
Contextualizing: It means to put the complex situation into context to taking action. Adopting an approach towards solving the real world complex situation.
Managing: This is concerned with an overall performance. This describes the process by which a practitioner manages a real world complex situation.

Being a system practitioner ‘B’ Ball – An activity sequence

Become aware of constraints and possibilities of observer and review modeling in the modeling pack

Appreciate your basis – distinguish between history and tradition – distinguish between systemic (General) and systematic thinking and action.

Consider what being ethical might mean

Review implication for practice of juggling the B ball.

Become aware of constraints and possibilities of observer

It is often claimed that the essence of a systems approach is that of seeing the world in a special way. System practitioner experiences the situation in different way in order to solve the problem easily, by being aware of the constraints.

Appreciating your basis for understanding

We each construct our own version of reality and therefore cannot be an objective observer, which in turn means we have to take responsibility for our observations and explanations.

Distinctions about systems practice

Emphasis on the whole instead of parts has come to be known as systemic and the way of thinking it implies is called as systems thinking.
System thinking is contextual thinking and since explaining things in their context means explaining them in relation to their environment.
Two adjectives arise from the word “System”. Systemic thinking, thinking in terms of wholes, may be contrasted with systematic thinking, which is step-by-step thinking.
Both systematic thinking and systemic thinking have their place, but when managing a complex and messy situation, it’s more appropriate to approach the task systematically. In other words systemic thinking provides the context for the systematic thinking and action.

Table 2 on page#80 summarizes some of the characteristics that distinguish between systemic and systematic thinking and action.

Learning and effective action

Learning is about effective action. When you learn you perform better. Hence, learning is not about the ideas stored in your mind but action.
To be highly competent in practice, any practice, requires learning to be adopted.

Being Ethical

Ethics within systematic practice are perceived as operating on multiple levels. Within systematic practice ethics and values are generally not addressed at central theme unless the practitioners are aware of the choice they are making.
The choices made have ethical implications. Hence, the system practitioner must be aware of the ethical issues related to the complexity.

Engaging with complexity ‘E’ Ball.

This is regarding what you understand by the term complexity, and how to compare it with ideas of difficulty and mess you may encounter.
The term ‘complexity’ and ‘system’ each carry a rich set of meanings. As with complexity, the everyday senses of ‘system’ can get in the way of acquiring a rigorous understanding of its meanings in systems thinking and practice.
A system practitioner must articulate initial appreciation of the complexity.
Experiencing the complexity as mess or difficulty. The mess of this situation is that the problems of the high ground tend to be relatively unimportant to individuals or society at large.
There many domains of human activity where professionals fail to take action in situations of uncertainty, complexity, uniqueness and conflict.

Given that in many situations, unexpected and potentially disastrous events may occur, it make sense to think about doing some things differently. Doing things differently requires changes in thinking and in the actions that result from thinking.
Being prepared for, minimizing, or even avoiding unintended potentially disastrous consequences means engaging with complexity.

Where is the complexity and what is it?

Choosing to distinguish between complex situations and complex systems;

Russell Ackoff claimed for a set of elements to be usually viewed as a system, it was necessary that:

The behavior of each element of the set should have an effect on the behavior of the whole set.

The behavior of the elements, and their effects on the whole set should be interdependent.

However subgroups of the elements are formed, each subgroup should have the same effect on the behavior of the whole and none should be completely independent.

Go through the table 4 page# 99 for the characteristics ascribed to simple system and complex system and complex adaptive system.

Appreciating some implications for practice

A situation can’t be described as complex until it’s perceived as complex.
A complex system can be described as a system until you make sense of it by using system thinking and a system of interest within it is found or formulated.
It means you have a stake in the issue – an interest.
In system terminology you need a purpose for engaging with the ‘real world’ situation.
When you do not have such a purpose in mind, you are using the word system in everyday sense rather than in its technical, systems practice, sense.

The fundamental choice that faces both systems theorists and complexity theorists

As something that exists as a property of some thing or situation and that therefore, can be discovered, measured and possibly modeled, manipulated, maintained, or predicted; or

As something we construct, design, or experience in relationship to some thing, event or situation.

The first one is E ball depicting a system practitioner’s engagement with the ‘real world’.
While, the second one has a lot to say about the practitioner and about what they know and are able to do, as well as about their relationship to the thing or event they experience.

Contextualizing systems approaches – ‘C-Ball’

An aware practitioner is able to contextualize a diverse range of methods at their disposal creating an opportunity for a greater range of advantages changes in the real world situation.
Systems is a subject that provides a language for talking about other subject.
The challenge to the system practitioner is to be able to engage in double learning – learning about the domain as well as juggling the other balls.
This is the basis for developing your capacities as a system practitioner.

What are systems approaches!!!!!!!?????

An approach is a way of going about taking action in a ‘real world’ situation. For example, a scientific approach, a philosophical approach etc.
A system practitioner, as an observer, has choices that can be made while dealing with complexity.
As far as system approaches is concerned, the choice for it is system thinking, that is to approach the world systematically.

Conditions, which must be fulfilled for a System to demonstrate purposefulness.

A System must be purposeful.
A System has a measure of performance.
There is a client whose interests are served by a System.
System has purposeful components which co-produce measure of performance of a system.
System has an environment.
System has a decision maker.
System has a designer who influences the decision maker.
The designer aims to maximize System’s value to the client.
Purpose of the System defined by the designer’s belief, must be achieved.

Purposeful and Purposive behavior

As observers to assign a purpose for what we or others do or actions we take.
The particular action or activities will differ from observer to observer due to different perspective the observers have.
Assigning purpose is an important process in taking a systems approach to managing complexity.
Two terms of behaviour in relation with purpose have also been distinguished:

Purposeful behaviour: Which Checkland (1993) describes as behaviour that is willed or intended – there is thus some sense of voluntary action.

Purposive behaviour: behaviour to which an observer can attribute purpose.

Hard and soft traditions of system thinking compared

The hard system thinking tradition	The soft systems thinking traditions
Oriented to goal seeking	Oriented to learning
Assumes that the world contains systems that can be engineered.	Assumes that the world is problematic but can be explored by using system models.
Assumes system models to be models of the world (ontology).	Assumes system models to be intellectual constructs.
Talk the language problems and solutions.	Talks the language of issue and accommodations.
Advantages	Advantages
Allows the use of powerful techniques.	Is available to all stakeholders including professional practitioners; keep in touch with human content of problem situations.
Disadvantages	Disadvantages
May lose touch with aspects beyond the logic of problem situation.	Doesn’t produce the final answers, accepts that inquiry is never-ending.

Methodology, method, technique, and tools

A method is used as a given, much like a recipe in a recipe book whereas a methodology can be adapted by a particular user in a participatory situation.
A technique is a toolbox, which any practical person can adopt at the time of solving a problem. Within system practice technique is concerned with both the skill and ability of doing or achieving something and the manner of its execution. An example of technique is drawing a systems map to a specified set of convention.
A tool is usually something abstract, such as a diagram.

Hard Systems Method (HSM): HS-method can be taught as dealing with aspects of decision making that are designed to prevent problems and messes from occurring and recognizing opportunity and seizing them in the most advantageous way.
Soft System Method (SSM) – Soft systems methodology (SSM) is a systemic approach for tackling real-world problem situations. SS-method provides an approach to solving management problems, which requires skills and judgment.
Viable System Model (VSM) – The Viable Systems Model, or VSM is a model of the organizational structure of any viable or autonomous system. A viable system is any system organized in such a way as to meet the demands of surviving in the changing environment. One of the prime features of systems that survive is that they are adaptable. The VSM expresses a model for a viable system, which is an abstracted cybernetic (regulation theory) description that is applicable to any organization that is a viable system and capable of autonomy.

Managing Complexity ‘M’ Ball

Perspective on Managing

The concern here is about a manager who is engaged in taking purposeful action. It can be anyone and can be in any manifestation.
Some of the verbs, which can be thought about and could be associated with managers are: understanding, surviving, seeing, visioning, allocating, defending, leading, supporting, backing, enabling, coping, informing, modeling, facilitating, empowering, encouraging, delegating etc,.
The above verbs can be indentified in three small categories and they are a) getting by; b)getting on top of; and C) creating space for.

The part is about revising your understanding by doing activities.

THE END

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