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T306

MANAGING COMPLEXITY: A systems approach

Block 1 Juggling with complexity: Searching for system

Prepared for the course team by Rosalind Armson and Ray Ison, with a case study by Joyce Fortune

SUP 80211 0

First published 2000. Second edition 2004

Edited, designed and typeset by The Open University

2 Block

2005 The Open University

system, transmitted or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

1.1

photocopying, recording or otherwise .

This edition produced for use by the Arab Open University.

SUP 80211 0

Contents

Course aims 5

Block 1 aims 7

Part 1 Starting the course 9

1 Thinking about expectations 9

2 Preparing to tackle this course 13 2.1 The nature of systems thinking and systems practice 13

2.2 Taking responsibility for your own learning 17

2.3 Appreciating epistemological issues 18

2.4 Review 20

3 Introducing ourselves 22

Part 2 Experiencing complexity 25

1 Introduction 25

2 Immersing yourself in complexity 26

3 Representing your experience of complexity 28 3.1 Complexity and rich pictures 29

3.2 Complexity from someone else’s perspective 32

3.3 Summary 33

4 Being inside complexity 33

5 Exploring complexity 38 5.1 Systems maps 38

5.2 Influence diagrams 48

5.3 Multiple-cause diagrams 49

5.4 Sign graphs 53

5.5 Control-model diagrams 53

5.6 Diagramming a complex situation 55

5.7 Perspectives review 56

6 Review 57

Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity 59

1 Introduction 59 1.1 Making sense of metaphor 62

2 Systems practice – unpacking the juggler metaphor 63

3 Being a systems practitioner 67 3.1 Being aware of the constraints and possibilities of the observer 68

3.2 Appreciating your basis for understanding 73

3.3 Being ethical 82

3.4 Reviewing some implications for systems practice 83

Contents, Aims, Learning outcomes, Synopsis 3

4 Engaging with complexity 84 4.1 Articulating your appreciation of complexity 86

4.2 Experiencing complexity as mess or difficulty 86

4.3 Where is the complexity and what is it? 94

4.4 Choosing to distinguish between complex situations and complex systems 98

4.5 Appreciating some implications for practice 101

5 Contextualizing systems approaches 103 5.1 What are systems approaches? 104

5.2 Purposeful and purposive behaviour 106

5.3 Methodology, method, technique, and tools 112

5.4 Experiences that motivated the development of systems methods 114

5.5 Contextualizing any particular systems approach 127

6 Managing complexity 128 6.1 Perspectives on managing 128

6.2 Modes of managing systemically 131

6.3 Reviewing the juggler through the understandascope 138

Part 4 Making sense of your experiences of complexity 141

1 Revising your understanding 141

SAQ answers 142

Activity answers 151

Appendices 155 Appendix A Course team responsibility 155

Appendix B Case study: Financial support for the children of lone parents 156

Appendix C Some perspectives on complexity 181

Appendix D Soft systems methodology 192

References 205

Acknowledgements 213

4 Block 1

Aims The aims of this block are to:

1 Enable you to recognize and value your previous experience of Systems and your reasons for undertaking this course, and to use these as a foundation for future learning.

2 Outline and exemplify a mode of learning that is reflective, and invites you to take responsibility.

3 Provide a case study that we expect you will experience as complex as you immerse yourself in it.

4 Provide opportunities for you to structure complexity using diagrams and other means, so that you can begin to formulate systems of interest.

5 Introduce the idea of an ideal systems practitioner, who uses an action- learning framework.

6 Introduce, from a range of perspectives, some systems approaches to managing complexity.

Learning outcomes At the end of this block you should be able to:

Reflect on your purposes and expectations in doing this course (Activity 1)

Record in your Learning Album your initial and developing understandings of what the course is about (Activities 2 and 4)

Use your Learning Album as an on-going record of your developing understandings, expectations and experiences (Activities 3, 6, 30, 33, 34 and 35)

Use your Learning Album to record your reflections (Activities 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 etc.)

Begin taking responsibility for your own reflections (Activities 8, 28 and 29)

Use reflection to understand some of your own preferred styles of working (Activity 9)

Draw a rich picture of a complex situation, review it, identify traps you have set for yourself within it, locate yourself and draw yourself in it (Activities 10, 11, 12, 15 and 16 and SAQ 1)

Identify any stakes you have in a complex situation and any traps these stakes might set for the systems practitioner (Activities 13, 14 and SAQ 2)

Identify some systems-with-purpose in a complex situation (Activities 17, 18, 47 and 48)

Draw a systems map, review it, and use it to prompt further questions (Activities 19, 20 and 21)

Identify the main objectives in drawing a diagram and the outcomes of systems maps, multiple-cause diagrams, rich pictures and control-model diagrams (SAQ 5)

Identify defects in systems maps and multiple-cause diagrams (SAQs 3 and 4)

Draw an influence diagram (Activity 23)

Contents, Aims, Learning outcomes, Synopsis 5

Draw a multiple-cause diagram (Activity 24)

Evaluate your diagramming skills (Activity 25)

Use a sign graph to explore the relationships between variables in the case study (Activity 26)

Draw and use a control-model diagram as a diagnostic tool (Activity 27)

Develop your awareness of your own practices and their measures of performance (Activities 31 and 43)

Begin to use metaphors as a means of exploring your own systems practice (Activity 32)

Develop and take responsibility for, your own understanding of complexity (Activities 40, 44 and 46)

Distinguish between messes and difficulties and explain the implications of treating complex situations as being either one or the other (Activities 41 and 42; SAQs 10 and 12)

Discuss complexity in the context of messes and difficulties (Activity 44)

List the properties of an observed system (Activity 45)

Understand some of the implications of recognizing the role of the observer and their own tradition (Activities 36, 38 and 39; SAQ 6)

Appreciate some ethical implications of being a systems practitioner (SAQ 8)

Distinguish between systematic approaches and systemic approaches (SAQ 7)

Identify examples of formulating a system of interest (SAQ 11)

Appreciate the experiences that gave rise to the development of soft systems methodology (Activity 49)

Discuss the way a systems practitioner manages the engagement with complexity (Activity 45, 50 and 51)

Discuss the importance of being aware for a systems practitioner and the implications of not being aware (SAQ 9)

Discuss the importance of contextualizing systems approaches (SAQ 15)

Distinguish between purposiveness and purposefulness (SAQ 13)

Distinguish between a tool, a technique, a method, and a methodology, in a given context; and recognize the importance of the context in making this distinction (SAQ 14)

Develop your own appreciation of what might be entailed in managing complexity (SAQ 16)

Recognize the four distinguishing features of a systems practitioner engaging in practice and the implications of not maintaining each of these four features (SAQ 17)

Make connections with the history of lineages of systems thinking and practice (Activities 5 and 33)

6 Block 1

Synopsis of the block

Starting the course Part 1

Engaging with your Learning Album

Engaging with a case study

Experiencing complexity Part 2

Brushing up your diagramming skills

Understanding systems approaches

to managing complexity

Making sense of your experiences

of complexity

Part 3

Figure 1 An activity-sequence diagram showing the structure of Block 1

When you meet with a situation you experience as complex you need to think about yourself in relation to the process of formulating a system of interest. Only with this awareness, can you increase your range of purposeful actions in the situation which are ethically defensible. To do so is the hallmark of systemic thinking and practice compared to systematic thinking and practice. The metaphor of the systems practitioner as a juggler of four balls is introduced as a device to explore skill development for effective systems practice – the balls are being, engaging, contextualising and managing.

Part 1 Starting the course

To start, you will be invited to think carefully about yourself in relation to the course itself – as an introduction to thinking about yourself in relation to any system you devise.

Part 2 Experiencing complexity

Next, presented with a situation you experience as complex, you will be offered powerful systems-thinking tools for devising systems of interest that will support you in making sense of the situation.

Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

You will then be invited to consider your own role in becoming a systems practitioner through the lens of an ideal model and the metaphor of the systems practitioner as juggler.

Contents, Aims, Learning outcomes, Synopsis 7

Part 4 Making sense of your experiences of complexity

At the end of the block, you are invited to reflect on the sense you have made of systems practice and ‘managing complexity’ together with your own role in making this sense. That leads to considering what you might be able to do in the situation as a precursor to studying the remaining Blocks in the course.

8 Block 1

Part 1 Starting the course Welcome to T306 Managing Complexity: a Systems Approach. As I write, I experience a sense of excitement. For me, as for you, this is the beginning of the course. These are the first few sentences I’m writing and so, although I have a good idea of how the course is going to turn out, the details are by no means clear. Nevertheless, the excitement and anticipation I, and maybe you, are experiencing now is an important ingredient in what will become our experiences of the course.

The structure of the block is illustrated in Figure 1. You will find a number of activity-sequence diagrams in Block 1. In an activity-sequence diagram activities at the pointed end of the arrows can only happen after the activity at the other end of the arrow has been completed. The sequence of activities for Part 1 is shown in Figure 2.

Exploring your expectations

Preparing to tackle the course

Introducing ourselves

engaging with your Learning

Album

Section 1

Section 2

Section 3

Figure 2 An activity-sequence diagram showing the activities in Part 1

1 Thinking about expectations Anticipations and preconceptions are an important determinant of how people learn, so before you read on, I would like to you to record some of what you are experiencing now as you begin the course.

It’s important to get these impressions noted down now, because new ideas and new impressions will quickly overlay the experience. What you are experiencing now will be re-interpreted as new understandings emerge. You are also likely to form some judgements about your expectations. So before any of that can happen, make some notes on your responses to the questions in the activity below. I suggest you make your notes in a form that allows them to be incorporated, either directly or indirectly, into your Learning Album. You will need to keep referring back to them as the course progresses. It will also be helpful later if, as you make notes, you date them and leave space for later thoughts and jottings.

The notes you make for this, and some of the other activities, will be important later in preparing for your TMAs, and in your work for the examination at the end of the course. You should do them as conscientiously as possible. Their role in developing your skills will become more evident as you work through the course. Your notes should capture as many elements of your responses as possible.

Rosalind writes ...

1 Thinking about expectations 9

I anticipate you might spend around 90 minutes on this activity. It may take longer. This may seem like an enormous amount of time, but thinking about the issues carefully is likely to take that long.

Your Learning Album will be an important resource for your study of this course and for the assessments and for exam revision. If you are unclear about how to go about setting it up and working with it, refer to the Course Guide.

ACTIVITY 1

What is your purpose in doing this course?

What do you hope to get from the course? I imagine you might have some expectation that you will enjoy, or benefit from, doing the course. What benefits do you expect? What was it in what you heard about the course that suggested you might benefit from it? What was it about the course or its descriptions that appealed to you? What is it about you that the course appealed to? Not everyone chooses to take this course so there must have been something about you that connected with what you heard, or read, about the course. Make a note of any specific items that appeal to you. Make a note too of any items that worry or concern you.

What is your emotional state as you approach the course?

Are you excited, bored, eager, puzzled, expectant, tired? What is your present body posture? Does it tell you anything about how you feel? Is it right? Can you improve your physical comfort?

Are you comfortable with your workspace? Are there things you can do to improve it?

You may be aware there is a project as a part of this course: what anticipations do you have about doing the project?

Again, I imagine you might have some expectation that you will enjoy or benefit from working on material of your own choosing, or perhaps not. Perhaps you have worries about a course where project work carries a significant proportion of the marks. How do you feel about the prospect of the project?

What sort of skills and capacities do you think you might need for the project? How many of these do you have already? What skills will you need to pick up? What will you need to look for in the course to acquire these skills and capacities?

And finally, how do you rate your overall capacity to succeed in this course?

You first need to decide what, for you, would constitute success. The simple answer might be that you pass the course. However, would you regard a bare pass as a success, as a partial success, or as no success at all? Does your course grade even matter? Is your concept of success simple enough to be measured by an exam grade? Are there other criteria important to you? What are they? When will success become apparent?

How does your answer compare with your notes on what you hope to get from the course? Are they congruent or does the answer to this question throw new light on what you hope to get from the course?

When you make a judgement about how you rate your capacities, what are you basing it on? Are you taking account of external factors such as the time you have or the circumstances in which you study? Are you basing your judgement on your own evaluation of your intellectual capacities? Do energy, enthusiasm and commitment come into the evaluation?

What would it take to improve your prospects of success, measured by whatever criterion is important to you? Can you act to improve your chances of success?

Learning Album

10 Block 1 Part 1 Starting the course

The activity you have just engaged in is the first of several such activities. It is an example of a pattern of activities that constitute reflective practice or reflective learning. This style of learning is based on the notion that the understandings most useful to us, and that most readily become part of us, are learnt by experience. The activities are designed to enable you to discover your own learning by experience.

There will be a lot about reflective practice in this course but for now I want to introduce you to some basic ideas about it.

Learning by experience

It’s a familiar idea but it implies two activities: learning and experiencing. Both activities need to happen if I am to say that learning from experience has happened. Experiencing seems to have two components. The first is the quality of attention that allows me to notice the experience and its components. The second is memory. Calling experience to mind allows me to examine the experience and to think about it in ways that were not possible at the time. Learning is what I take away from that process that influences my behaviour or thinking in the future.

But huge amounts of experience escape without being consciously experienced; I am insufficiently aware at the time to notice what’s going on. Later I am too busy to recall the experience and so little conscious learning takes place. Of course, it’s useful to carry out familiar activities ‘on auto pilot’ – without conscious attention. It’s easy to miss out on important learning from unfamiliar activities too. I may become wrapped up in the activity itself or simply not notice the range and quality of the experience. Either way, a conscious attempt to recall the experience and to think about it, gives the opportunity to learn from the experience.

So, what was my purpose in asking you to do the activity above? I wanted you to experience the starting of this course as richly as possible. I was asking questions that I hoped would prompt you into awareness of what you were experiencing. It may be you discovered something new about yourself; your expectations of the course; what you hope to gain from studying it; or about your capacity to succeed in it as a result. If not, don’t worry. The point of the activity was raising awareness rather than discovery; and recording material that will be useful in future learning and reflection.

Spend a total of about 15 minutes on the next two activities.

ACTIVITY 2

What do you understand the course title to mean?

The title of this course is Managing Complexity: a Systems Approach. Before you go any further, and so your Learning Album contains a record of your starting point, make notes about what you understand by the term ‘managing complexity’.

What do you understand by a systems approach? Don’t worry if you feel you only have vague ideas at this stage, record all your ideas as fully as you can by listing all the things you think it might mean. You may also wish to distinguish ideas you feel confident about from those you are not sure of.

Learning Album

1 Thinking about expectations 11

ACTIVITY 3

Add any further thoughts about your expectations.

You may feel some of the expectations you had have already been changed. Add any postscripts about this to the notes you made earlier. Make it clear in your notes these are postscripts and what has happened to change your views.

This is a level 3 Systems course. This carries certain implications about its level and its likely content. You are likely to have drawn some conclusions about what these implications are. Recognizing explicitly the presuppositions and assumptions you carry into a situation allows you to examine them. Presuppositions can get in the way of understandings. For example, if I assume a book is just about koalas, and don’t notice it’s about koalas in their eucalyptus habitats, I am quite likely to experience the text about eucalyptus forests as a distraction. This might lead me to misunderstand what the text is saying about eucalyptus habitats and, almost certainly, I would misunderstand its importance to the koalas. At the very least this will make me an inefficient reader and may make me an inefficient learner.

The next activity will help you to think through your expectations, assumptions and presuppositions about this course.

Allow yourself about 30 minutes to do Activity 4, making notes as before.

ACTIVITY 4

What activities do you expect to undertake in studying a level 3 course?

You may already have some experience of Open University courses. You may have other experiences of studying. What sort of activities do you expect to engage in when you study a course? What sorts of activities have in the past been most effective in enabling you to learn? These questions are easier to answer if you think back to a specific course or other learning experience. What did you actually do? What were the components of that course? What was their relationship to each other? If you have studied only level 2 courses before, what differences do you expect in a level 3 course? If you have studied at level 3 before, can you identify any differences between those courses and other, lower level courses?

Which components of your previous learning experience have you enjoyed most? Why?

Some people enjoy the initial meeting with new material most. Others enjoy testing their newly acquired understandings in exercises. Still others enjoy their new perspectives on things quite external to the course that their new understandings give them. Do any of these match your previous experience? If not, what was it for you? You may also like to explore the question of what you didn’t like. Have you changed in ways that might make your experience of this course different?

What were you, as the student, expected to do as you worked through previous courses?

Many courses follow a fairly steady pattern of a bit of theory, followed by an example of what the theory means in practice, followed by an exercise where the learner applies what they have just learned to another situation. Do you

Learning Album

12 Block 1 Part 1 Starting the course

recognize this pattern? Have you experienced it? Have you experienced variations on this theme? What were they? Have you experienced alternative approaches? How successful have these patterns been for you? Success, in this sense, might mean examination success or it might be a success criterion you have set yourself, or one you want to apply now. It may parallel the criteria for success you identified for this course.

2 Preparing to tackle this course Perhaps it will not surprise you if I say you may experience this course as rather different to any you may have previously encountered. Like any course, you are likely to find surprising and interesting material in it but there are three specific ways this course may surprise and even challenge you. These three ways are concerned with:

(a) The nature of systems thinking and systems practice;

(b) A style of learning where you have to take most of the responsibility for your own learning;

(c) The way you know about the world; interpret information about it; and construct mental models. These are epistemological issues. The bases for knowing about, and acting in, a situation is different to that encountered in most other courses with a ‘T’ (technology) code.

Each of these will be discussed briefly below.

2.1 The nature of systems thinking and systems practice

There are no simple definitions for either systems thinking or systems practice. It’s difficult to find definitions that capture all the perspectives that the ideas carry for people who think of themselves as systems thinkers and systems practitioners. Most systems practitioners seem to experience the same kind of difficulty in explaining what they do or what it means to be systemic in their thinking. Through experience I’ve developed some criteria by which I characterize systems thinking, but they seem to be quite loose in the sense that those characteristics are not always observable in what I recognize as systems thinking. In any case, they seem to be my list of characteristics, similar to, but not the same as, other people’s lists. This issue will be developed but, for the moment, I would like you to hold the idea that systems thinking and systems practice arise from particular ways of seeing the world.

My hope is, through interacting with the course and asking yourself questions about your experiences, you will discover at least some of these characteristic ways of seeing the world. If you have previously studied Systems courses, you will already have experienced forms of systems thinking and perhaps ‘caught’ it in some way. You may even have developed your own understanding of systems thinking and what it means. If you have not experienced a Systems course before, you need to be aware the course cannot make you into a systems thinker or a systems practitioner. It can only provide you with a framework through which you can develop your own characteristic ways of being a systems thinker and a systems practitioner.

2 Preparing to tackle this course 13

You will already have encountered, in previous Systems courses or through your preparatory reading, some of the central ideas of systems thinking.

If you have not previously studied a Systems course and you have not yet done your preparatory reading, do it now.

Gather up your ideas of what these central ideas are by spending around 15 minutes on the following activity.

ACTIVITY 5

Make notes on what you think are the main features of systems thinking.

This is not a test question. There are no right or wrong answers. I am simply inviting you to explore what you already understand about systems thinking. Try to make your answer as comprehensive as you can. You could use diagrams if they’re a more convenient way for you to represent your ideas.

If you have already studied Systems, you may find this task quite demanding because you will have to abstract these general ideas from what may be quite detailed understandings. Don’t be afraid to spend slightly longer on this if you need to.

If your only experience of Systems is through your preparatory reading of T551 Systems Thinking and Practice: a Primer, you may want to base your answers directly on your recent reading. That’s fine but try to ensure that, in doing this activity, you are building your understanding and not just abstracting a list from someone else’s ideas.

As before, date your notes and leave room for later additions. Put your notes with the rest of your Learning Album.

Your notes from this activity will form a powerful basis from which to build your understanding of, and capacity for, systems thinking. You will develop your own ways of working with the notes you take as you work through the course. My own way is to add new material in a different coloured ink, indicating the date of the new colour. I’ve also sometimes photocopied the notes and added new notes to the photocopy, which I photocopy again for yet more amendments and crossings out, dating each one as I go. This saves completely re-writing and I only need to rewrite when I have a different appreciation of something, or when it has developed so far the old version is no longer helpful as a foundation. Other people use computer files in a similar way. I prefer not to throw away any old version, even if it gets superseded. It provides me with a record of my developing understanding, especially if I note down what I now understand and why I now think the old understanding is unhelpful. Even notes I think are redundant can prove to be the anchors for new insights.

You don’t have to do it my way but I would urge you to find a way that suits you. You will need to be able to record your own learning for use in revising for the exam. Perhaps even more importantly, you will find these notes invaluable as you take responsibility for your own learning.

My own answer to Activity 5 follows. You should not treat this as the right answer. You should certainly not make judgements about your own performance in the light of my response. My notes arise from my experiences, yours arise from your own. I would like to think you and I were both engaged in an activity that gives rise to new experiences and

T551

Learning Album

14 Block 1 Part 1 Starting the course

thus builds our own understandings from our own experiences. So I would much rather you treated the following as if we were in a conversation and use my ideas to develop your own.

The important features of systems thinking, as I see them, are these.

1 Systems thinking respects complexity, it doesn’t pretend it’s not there. This means, among other things, I accept that sometimes my understanding is incomplete. It means when I experience a situation or an issue as complex, I don’t always know what’s included in the issue and what’s not. It means I have to accept my view is partial and provisional and other people will have a different view. It means I resist the temptation to try and simplify the issue by breaking it down. It also means I have to accept there is more than one way of understanding the complexity.

Complexity can be quite scary. But it need not be: complexity becomes frightening when I assume I ought to be able to ‘solve’ it. Systems thinking allows me to let go of this notion and allows me to use a multiplicity of interpretations and models to form views and ideas about the complexity, how to comprehend it, and how to act purposefully within it.

2 Systems thinking attends to the connections between things, events and ideas. It gives them equal status with the things, events and ideas themselves. So, systems thinking is fundamentally about relationship and process. It is often the relationships between things, events and ideas that give them their meaning. Patterns become important. The nature of the relationships between a given set of elements may be manifold. They may be causal (A causes, leads to, or contributes to, B); influential (X influences Y and Z); temporal (P follows Q); or relate to embeddedness (M is part of N). These relationships spring to mind immediately but there are many others, of course.

This attention to relationships between things, events and ideas means I can observe patterns of connection that give rise to larger wholes. This gives rise to emergence. Thinking systemically about these connections includes being open to recognizing that the patterns of connection are more often web-like than linear chains of connection.

3 Systems thinking makes complexity manageable by taking a broader perspective. When I was studying engineering as an undergraduate, we were taught to break down problems into their component parts. This approach is so deeply entrenched in western culture it seems natural and obvious to anyone brought up or educated in this culture that this is the way to tackle complex problems.

While this approach is powerful for some problems, it’s hopeless for others. For example, it now seems clear that climate change induced by human activity is likely to have major impacts on the planet, its environments, and its living organisms, including people. But all of these effects are so interdependent it is impossible to discover what the effects are likely to be by breaking the problem down.

Systems thinking characteristically moves one’s focus in the opposite direction, working towards understanding the big picture – the context – as a way of making complexity understandable. Most people recognize they have been in situations where they ‘can’t see the wood for the trees’. Systems thinking is precisely about changing the focus of attention to the wood, so that you can see the trees in their context.

2 Preparing to tackle this course 15

Understanding the woodland gives new and powerful insights about the trees. Such insights are completely inaccessible if one concentrates on the individual trees. Figure 3 illustrates this sort of shift of attention vividly.

Figure 3 This well-known puzzle picture only reveals its secret if you allow yourself to see the pattern of relationships between the black blobs. Studying individual blobs reveals nothing. If you really cannot see anything other than the blobs, don’t worry. It doesn’t imply anything about your capacity to be a systems thinker. You can sniff out a meaning to the blobs at the end of Part 1.

Systems thinking seems to come more naturally to some people than to others. Others have to learn to think systemically. People trying systems thinking for the first time find it quite tricky in the early stages. The temptation to break down the situation of interest into smaller bits is strong. The systems approaches you will encounter take account of this and are designed to enable you to capture the complexity before you move on to exploring it.

During the 1980s and 1990s, there were significant advances in Systems theory. There were two main drivers for this. One was the tremendous advance in computing capability. This allowed the behaviour of fluid, chemical, biological, and other phenomena to be modelled through time. This generated wonderful new insights into what came to be identified as chaotic phenomena. The second was the renewed synergy between biology and Systems. Both these stories are exciting, and there are a number of well-written books for the general reader that describe some of this work

1 .

Regarding the second driver, the synergy first emerged in the early 20th century among biologists concerned with the properties of whole organisms. This led to an exciting phase of synthesis of ideas from many disciplines that gave rise to General Systems Theory. Since that time, biologists who look at living systems as a whole have turned to systems theory for new insights and, in response to their findings, systems theorists drew new insights from biology.

For me, the practicality of Systems is even more exciting than these developments. This course is as much about systems practice as it is about systems thinking. There is an exciting synergy between systems theory and attempts to find better ways of engaging with problems and opportunities.

1 Would-be Worlds (Casti, 1997, John Wiley & Sons Inc., New York) arose out of the computer

exploration of systems behaviour. James Gleick’s classic Chaos (1987, Penguin, London) is also in this

tradition. Fritjof Capra’s The Web of Life (1996, Harper Collins, London) explores some of the

developments in Biology that arise from a systems perspective.

16 Block 1 Part 1 Starting the course

This is what T306 is about. It is an invitation to engage with systems thinking in such a way that you are better able to address the problems, complexities and opportunities that you encounter as you engage with the nitty gritty of whatever you do. Systems thinking provides me with tools- for-thought and the opportunity for a powerful way of looking at the world, whatever the context. The contexts stretch all the way from international issues such as global warming to the day-to-day problems that arise in work, in domestic life and in the local community.

Systems practice in the context of this course refers to the practice of Systems within whatever profession or calling you follow. You can be a systemic medical practitioner, a systemic wood turner, a systemic technician or a systemic manager by applying systems thinking, insights and approaches to the complexity that you encounter in any of these or other domains.

2.2 Taking responsibility for your own learning

Not much of this course conforms to the traditional pattern I mentioned earlier – the theory-example-exercise pattern. In particular, you will find you are expected to discover much of it for yourself. Why is this? This is a legitimate question and deserves a full answer. One year, a student at a residential summer school complained I had not taught him properly. I was, he told me, an expert and so why did I not demonstrate how to tackle the problem he was working on and pass my expertise on to him. He felt the tutorial was ‘a wasted opportunity’. I could understand why he felt aggrieved. But I think he had missed an important feature of learning a skill such as systems thinking.

More and more, I’ve come to realize that whatever expertise I may have in systems thinking and practice, it is my expertise and it only works for me. In this I find myself in agreement with C. W. Churchman

2 , who was one

of the first people to write about what systems thinking might mean in practice, when he said ‘there are no experts in a systems approach’. When I look at the people whom I believe to be experts in this area, I realize there are many ways of being good at systems thinking and many ways of being good at systems practice. Each systems thinker seems to be good in their own way. I believe this is because Systems is about ways of experiencing the world, ways of thinking, and about ways of dealing with the complex situations I encounter.

Consequently, systems expertise is unique to each person. I cannot tell you how it’s going to work for you or how you should understand it. You have to find your own ways. All I can do is to invite you into experiences that are likely to help you create your own meanings from the material. As well as being the only logically consistent way of learning systems thinking, there is plenty of research evidence

3 to show that understandings and

knowledge that one acquires through discovery is retained and developed much more readily than the understandings one acquires through being told, or even shown.

2 Churchman, C.W. (1971) The Design of Inquiring Systems, Basic Books, New York

3 For example, see Using Experience for Learning (Boud, D. Cohen, R. and Walker, D. (eds) 1993, Open

University Press, Buckingham)

2 Preparing to tackle this course 17

Taking responsibility for your own learning in this way is challenging but it need not be difficult. It requires a preparedness to experiment with ideas and styles of learning that may not initially feel right or comfortable.

All this means learning Systems, as the course team understands it, is an intensely personal business. Don’t worry if you’re not used to reflective learning, you will be able to develop your capacities for learning this way, as you go. This is why it was important to think through what you want to achieve from the course. It can operate at a level beyond acquisition of skills and knowledge. Because it is about different styles of thinking, the process of thinking systemically can itself give rise to new forms of learning. It has the capability of bringing understanding into being from sources inside oneself. This is the process known as reflective learning.

For some people, systems thinking will be something they practice from time to time. It will be a set of tools-for-thought they use when the need arises. This is a powerful and important potential outcome from the course. The course can also lead you towards becoming systemic, as well as being about systems. You can use it to become a different sort of thinker.

Either way, I strongly urge you to tackle the activities. They are designed to enable you to discover your own learning by experience. They are much more important than practice-makes-perfect activities. They will support you in making systems thinking and systems practice your own. Without them, systems thinking and systems practice remain ‘out there’ – something you may know about (description) but not know how to use (competence). This course has aspirations beyond that, which I hope you will come to share; to support you in becoming a systems thinker and a systems practitioner. This is why the activities so far appear to be focused on you. You might see them in terms of preparing the soil in which skills, competencies and confidence can grow.

2.3 Appreciating epistemological issues

Common sense tells me my experience and understanding of the world are limited. I am 173 cm in height. That limits my view of the world. It may not matter much that I cannot see what my house looks like from above but it does mean there will be things going on in the roof I may not notice until they impinge on areas that I can experience.

More significantly, there is a real limitation on understanding the experiences of other people. You might tell me about your experience but your description is likely to be only a partial representation and, however good your description, I cannot share your experience. I can only construct my own mental representation of what your experience might be like. But the limitations on my understanding of the world are even more fundamental than this.

My mental image of the world is a model. It is a partial representation of reality based on the partial knowledge I have of the external world. So, when I think I am thinking about the world I am thinking about my model of the world. This model of the world is built up in a way that is itself a model. So I am using a model, built by a model, to represent the world I think I see.

18 Block 1 Part 1 Starting the course

This has important implications. The model that represents the world tells me what I see and tells me what to see. The model both limits what I see and reinforces itself. When I think about the world, I am thinking about my own thinking; I have no direct access to the world at all.

Many people find this idea unsettling when they first meet it. It seems to defy common sense. It raises the question of how real the so-called real world really is.

Many people think of the brain as very similar to a computer. Both have a similarly large proportion of ‘processors’ operating on internally generated signals. But there is an important and absolutely fundamental difference. The computer does not create its own meanings. The computer has no capacity for deciding, for example, which are its favourite paintings in the National Gallery. I do. I have a history of interacting with external stimuli that generate new ways of interacting with further stimuli and the internal structure of my brain changes as a result. The computer’s ways of dealing with data are not the result of its own self-production. The way the computer works remains the same, whether it is processing pictures from the National Gallery or whether it is processing letters of the alphabet. The rules that relate input to output are constant over time.

The question of what I can know about the outside world is an ancient one and has always been central in philosophy under the theme of epistemology. Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that deals with knowledge and knowing: how do I know about the outside world? how do I know my senses are not fooling me? what constitutes evidence about the world?

Neither discussions about modelling, nor the insights of philosophy, can tell me how true my internal representations of the world are, but neurological studies seem to suggest the outside world is unknowable as it is. This course considers this important issue. Epistemology becomes a central concern. This contrasts sharply with many other courses where epistemology is never addressed. The world is assumed to be ‘out there’ and more-or-less as it appears.

Recognizing the world is unknowable as it is presents me with a choice. How do I deal with the day-to-day observations and events that seem to emerge from it? Each person, once they become aware of this unknowability, is confronted with, and needs to make their own choice.

Each choice is individual but seems to cluster around three main poles. The first of these is to adopt a stance that the world is more-or-less as I see it, and to ignore the incompleteness of my viewpoints and my representations. This is equivalent to saying ‘there is no epistemological problem about the world as I see it’. The second is to decide that the world is more-or-less as I see it but to recognize that my viewpoint is limited and the view-from-here may be misleading because it is only partial – there is no view of the roof, to use my previous metaphor. This is a stance that accepts that I must be careful to explore the world as fully as I can because I cannot see everything and may be misled. The third pole is to take on fully the implications of the world’s unknowability. This stance demands that I always carry an awareness that I will never know the world and must therefore always be trying to account for my own role in my perceptions of the world. Consciously making the choice between these poles, and all the variants in between, is an act of epistemological awareness.

Later in the block this theme will be explored more fully – the choice one makes has profound implications for one’s ranges of thought and action.

epistemology

epistemological awareness

2 Preparing to tackle this course 19

Of course, knowing most of what I’m aware of is actually generated within my own brain does not mean I can make up any version of reality I choose. But it does mean I have to recognize my knowledge of, and understanding of, the world is partial and provisional and depends to a significant extent on my internal processes of constructing representations. This theme will come up repeatedly but for now it seems to suggest a number of attitudes or mental stances will be helpful.

Some of the mental attitudes I try to adopt are:

(a) Being open and sensitive to all kinds of information about a situation: not just so-called factual information but impressions, intuitions and hunches, including other people’s when they express them;

(b) Being willing and able to see the situation from all kinds of points of view in addition to my own;

(c) Being as open as I can be to seeing the situation and not letting my theories, presuppositions and assumptions tell me how I ought to see it;

(d) Not taking terms of reference, boundaries or constraints too seriously; I try to assume they may not be as rigid as they seem to be;

(e) Trying to find out how other people see the constraints and boundaries;

(f) Being wary of any solution to a complex question (including my own solutions);

(g) Enjoying diversity and complexity in a situation; resisting the temptation to discard inconvenient bits of information; paying more, rather than less, attention to awkward facts, impressions or ideas;

(h) Not minding too much if there are areas of uncertainty in my understanding, or bits of information I don’t have; being sceptical about the facts I do have.

Adopting a set of stances isn’t necessarily easy so here are some suggestions about things you can actually do when you are looking at a complex situation that mystifies you in some way. (There are likely to be times when the course itself looks like a complex situation that mystifies you.) Practising these will help you to develop the open, enquiring style that can make systems work so exciting.

Make sure you include in your thinking about the situation:

(a) The preceding history and the wider context of the situation;

(b) Information about how people (including you) involved in the situation feel about it; what are the hunches, intuitions and suspicions they, and you, have about it;

(c) Information about the dynamics (procedures, flows, communications, feelings) of the situation as well as the structure (roles, organization framework, boundaries, materials, components) and how the process and structure fit together;

(d) Information about how the situation appears to other people, including those around the situation as well as those directly involved;

(e) Attention to what is not going on and what is not present.

2.4 Review

The title of this block is Juggling with complexity: searching for system. This title seemed to capture something essential about the block. Juggling

20 Block 1 Part 1 Starting the course

is a rich metaphor and will be used explicitly in Part 3. But it also carries the idea of a skill that needs to be practised and that might seem incredibly awkward to begin with. You may find this idea helpful as you review your work in Part 1. Juggling is also a skill that, once practised, becomes second nature. This too may be an important idea to carry forward to Part 2 as you begin to work on the search for system.

In working through this section, you have identified some of your initial expectations and I have explained some of what I think you will discover as you work through the course. It would be appropriate at this point to look at some of the questions I asked you about your expectations again and note ways your expectations have changed.

Spend a total of around 30 minutes on the next three activities.

ACTIVITY 6

Looking through your previous notes and my previous questions, identify and record any ways your expectations have changed.

Have any new expectations emerged from your reading of this new section? Do any of your expectations look less realistic now? Do your previous expectations seem more, or less, likely to be met.

Do you have any new ideas about what you would like to get from the course?

ACTIVITY 7

Do you feel able to adopt any of the attitudes I have suggested?

Most people move into and out of the attitudes I described earlier. The difference I am proposing is that you consciously try and adopt them as you improve your capacities as a systems thinker. Do you think these attitudes will be useful to you? Have you adopted them in doing this activity? How successfully? You may like to record some judgement about whether you like the idea of these attitudes. Notice that I referred previously to ‘a willingness to experiment with styles of learning that may not initially feel right or comfortable’. Does this reflect anything you are experiencing at this stage?

ACTIVITY 8

How do you understand the focus on your own responses in the activities and in the reading you have done so far?

Notice your intuitive responses as well as your intellectual responses. Are you puzzled? Stimulated? Surprised? Excited? Hoping it will get somewhere? Eager to find out more? Suspending judgement? Frustrated?

Any or all of these responses, even if they are a little difficult to live with, are likely to enable you to make good use of what comes in the rest of this block, and in the rest of the course.

It may also be you are unused to, or uncomfortable with, the focus on yourself and your own experience in an academic course. This need not inhibit your learning, provided you recognize your discomfort. If you stick with it, the unfamiliarity of this type of approach is likely to disappear. The payoff: you can become a person who can think and practice systemically. Without engagement with your self, Systems is likely to remain, for you, a collection of techniques that are never really your own.

It would be unreasonable for me to expect that you would instantly recognize this is an effective way of starting a course on Systems.

Make a note of your present understandings and responses.

Learning Album

2 Preparing to tackle this course 21

3 Introducing ourselves Since I’ve just claimed learning to be a systems thinker is a personal business, it would be inconsistent to ask you to read the texts for this course as though they represented some absolute truth or even an authorized version. (Actually, representing the absolute truth is not possible for any course, but it seems to matter less in the context of, for example, surveying or engineering thermodynamics).

I am saying it is not possible in a course like this to be objective in the traditional scientific sense. Objectivity traditionally carries the implication that if I state that X is the case, it is possible in principle for anyone else to go and check whether X really is the case, to the best of human ability to know.

If my writing is to be consistent with my espoused epistemology, clearly I cannot claim to be objective. This raises an interesting question whose answers have important implications for you as the reader. If I cannot be objective, what standards am I to apply to what I say so that I can hope you will be able to take seriously what I write? The answer to this question seems to be that I have to be responsible.

If I write I experience X as being the case, based on my experience that X is like this and that experiences Y and Z also suggest that X is the case, then you can make up your own mind. You can decide based on whether my experiences have some resonances with your own and on your evaluation of the usefulness or otherwise of my insights, taking into account your previous experience of these. I am responsible in the sense that I will not offer you ideas that I believe will inhibit your learning, which I have not thought through or which I have not found to be useful ways of thinking about the world.

Being responsible also means I have to leave space for you to develop your ideas – a space that would be blocked if I were to say ‘this is the way it is – take my word for it’. It also seems to suggest I must tell you something about myself so that you can identify why I believe and write the things I do. As a course team author, I am not writing in isolation. I am a member of a course team. The way the team works, and takes collective responsibility for the course is described in Appendix A to this block.

As an author, I take responsibility for what I am writing. But it is clear to me this cannot mean I have the right to say this is mine and mine alone. The course team shares with me the responsibility for making sure my writing is as clear as possible, for challenging me to show what I write supports your learning and fits into the overall design of the course. But perhaps more importantly, I must also acknowledge that nothing I write is solely mine. I am able to write this text because of all the contributions the course team have made to the understandings I now have. This is an on- going process – there is no final, definitive understanding that I can aspire to. The process of writing this block through successive drafts is one of vigorous discussion between the authors and the course team and we have both been forced to challenge our own understandings by things the course team have said to us.

So finally, I have to acknowledge an ethical position as well as an epistemological one. That position is one of humility in acknowledging nothing of what I write is truly my own, it all emerged from interactions

22 Block 1 Part 1 Starting the course

with other people, including the course team. But I have to take responsibility for what I write and the views I express, and the team validates it and allows me that responsibility.

Since taking responsibility means each author must write responsibly from their own understanding, you will hear some distinct voices in the course. It will help you to know who they are and:

^ How they deal with the questions about epistemology;

^ What excites and interests them – this is reflected in the importance they attach to different aspects of their subject matter.

Block 1 authors

Rosalind Armson and Ray Ison wrote the main text.

I came to Systems from engineering because it seemed to me the really pressing technological issues faced by humankind could not be addressed by engineering approaches alone. Systems seemed to offer a way to address those issues. I have not been disappointed. I retain my interest in engineering but I am also very interested by the ways people can manage the interactions between ideas, techniques, relationships and skills each person brings to complex situations. My metaphor for these interactions, and as a way of understanding the world, is a beautiful patchwork quilt. Designing a quilt is a practice that deals with overlying patterns, and the interplay of design and colour. I am the main author of Part 1 and Part 2 of this block.

I came to the Open University Systems Group, attracted by its focus on applied systems studies. I liked the commitment to taking action. I know too that I am attracted by the theory side of Systems. In particular, I am interested in the way theories about the observer are built into the design of research and environmental decision-making. I am excited by Systems because, coming from a rural development background, I see very clearly the unintended consequences that arise from attempts to improve human- activity systems when non-systemic approaches are used. I am the main author of Parts 3 and 4 of this block.

Given up already?

Figure 3 can be seen as a Dalmatian (spotty) dog. The dog is facing away from the viewer, sniffing the ground with its black ear falling forward. Its head and dark collar are half way up the picture and about one third of the way across the frame. Its rump is near the right hand edge of the frame.

Rosalind writes ...

Ray writes ...

3 Introducing ourselves 23

24 Block 1 Part 1 Starting the course

Part 2 Experiencing complexity

1 Introduction I have a number of purposes in mind as I write Part 2. You can read these in conjunction with Figure 4.

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

Figure 4 An activity-sequence diagram for experiencing complexity and working with it. As before, the arrows imply activities at the back end of the arrow must necessarily happen before activities in front of the arrow can be completed. The actual sequence of activities, as presented in this block, is represented by the numbers against the arrows.

Firstly, I want to give you the opportunity to get on with it – actually getting stuck into an experience of a complex situation. Through that experience, I want to exemplify the process of getting to grips with the complexity of the situation by looking for systems, or elements of systems, within it. I want you then to have the opportunity to use these systems to understand the situation.

My second purpose is to allow you to draw together some of your previous understandings of Systems with some of your systems skills and to consolidate them. They will then form a firm foundation for proceeding with the course. In particular, since diagrams will be really important throughout the course, I want you to have an opportunity to practice and develop your diagramming skills.

Make good use of both the text and CD provided in T552 for this. The text will explain the theory and ‘rules’ for each diagram type and the CD will show how each diagram type is constructed and refined.

If you have previously studied a Systems course, Part 2 will function as a kind of work-out, allowing you to ‘get fit’ with a new coach in a new gym. If your previous experience of systems study is limited to T551 Systems Thinking and Practice: a Primer, you have a harder task in Part 2. You will need to develop systems-diagramming skills for the first time. You should pay particular attention to understanding the purposes and conventions of each diagram type, as described in T552 Systems Thinking

Rosalind writes ...

T552

1 Introduction 25

and Practice: Diagramming. Whether or not you have done systems diagrams before, T552 is an important resource in working through this part. You will need to refer to it later in your work on this case study.

My third purpose is to support you in acquiring the skills of assessing the quality of your own diagrams. The case study you will be engaging with is very complex and it would be possible to draw an enormous range of diagrams of each type, each highlighting different features of the situation and each taking a slightly different perspective. This means that, if you are truly to engage with the complexity, you are unlikely to produce a diagram similar to any of mine. How are you to know if your diagram is any good? The answer is first to recognize there are many ways a diagram can be good. The second is to develop a series of questions, or several ways of looking at your own diagram, which will prompt you to improve your diagram if it needs it.

As you work through the diagramming activities later in this part of the block, I suggest you make a point of noting the criteria I suggest for evaluating your diagram in your Learning Album. They will come in useful as you do further diagrams. Being able to evaluate your own diagrams is likely to be a hugely more effective way of developing your skills than comparing your diagram with mine – especially when mine is unlikely to be addressing the same issues as yours.

My fourth purpose is to convey something of the flavour of the course. At the end of Part 2 you will probably have formed your own sense of what flavour has been conveyed. For me, this flavour 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 perspectives.

It is as if, with a telescope, I observe the situation from a number of different vantage points. This will reveal images of the situation from different directions so that different parts and sides become apparent. But I also take the trouble to view it at a number of different magnifications, including more or less of the situation and its environment in each image. I might also change the focus, examining both foreground and background. Later in the course, the telescope itself (if I extend the metaphor) is examined to discover what it is good at showing and what it tends not to see so well.

2 Immersing yourself in complexity The first three activities in Figure 4 are to plan a strategy, then to immerse yourself in an example of complexity, and then represent that complexity through drawing a rich picture. I’ve selected a rich picture as the focus of this task because it is a means of bringing you into a rich encounter with the complexity of the situation described. The rich picture is a representation of your encounter with the situation, and so drawing a complete 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. My purpose is to offer the encounter, and then to consider the experience of the encounter, between you and the complexity. The rich picture is simply the means and the evidence of this happening. Bear this in mind as you work through the sequence of activities represented by Figure 5. Figure 5 is an unfolding of the first two activities of the overall task of experiencing complexity described by Figure 4.

Learning Album

26 Block 1 Part 2 Experiencing complexity

decide how to tackle reading

read case study

locate own initial position in case-study

situation draw initial rich picture

include self in picture examine rich picture critically

recognize author's role in representing

the case study

improve rich picture

re-examine rich picture as metaphor for

experiencing complexity

appreciate rich picture as metaphor for experiencing complexity

Figure 5 Activity-sequence diagram for experiencing complexity through constructing a rich picture of a case study. The numbers beside the arrows indicate the order I have chosen to discuss the various activities.

At this point, I would like you to prepare for reading the case study, the second activity in Figure 5. Your task is simply to grasp as much of the case-study complexity as you can. Notice that, at this stage I am not suggesting you do any analysis of the situation described. At the end of this task you should only aim to have a general impression of the overall complexity and a representation of that complexity. Detailed study and analysis will come later. The case study is about 9500 words long. The next activity should help you decide how to tackle this reading.

There are a number of things in planning how to deal with this amount of material. Firstly, you may not be able to grasp all the detail at the first reading. Don’t worry about this. The case study was chosen, in part, because the feeling of being overwhelmed is quite a common one in systems practice and the course team thought this would give you some of

2 Immersing yourself in complexity 27

that experience. Even if you feel overwhelmed, don’t be discouraged. The later activities are proven ways of dispelling the sense of being overwhelmed. A bit of determination to get through it all will help.

Spend about five minutes on this activity.

ACTIVITY 9

How do you read most effectively?

It may be helpful to think of a specific experience where you were trying to understand a detailed piece of text. Did you have a strategy for reading it? What was that strategy? Does your strategy involve skim reading first to get an overall sense of the shape and returning to the beginning for a more careful read and then, finally, a third pass taking notes about the development of the narrative? Or perhaps your strategy, completely different from the first, involves a process of careful reading taking notes, followed by a second read- through to check the notes are as complete as they can be. Be as specific as you can in identifying a strategy that works for you. Make a list of the sequence of processes you anticipate will work well for you.

You should also assemble materials for drawing a rich picture.

Once you have identified a style of text-reading you think will work well for you, move on to the task of reading the case study. The course team chose the case study because it is a real-life example of a complex situation where an attempt to put right a problem had results nobody intended. It also contains lots of soft complexity. So-called soft complexity is often the hardest to deal with since it involves human values, beliefs and emotions. In this case study, all of these collide.

Expect to take a total of around 5 hours to complete the next activity but if this course is your first serious engagement with systems work, allow rather longer. You will need to get to grips with the concept of diagramming and, the concept of drawing rich pictures in particular. Don’t attempt to tackle the task in one long session. You may get more out of it if you take it in two blocks of time, perhaps on consecutive evenings.

ACTIVITY 10

Read the case study in Appendix B and draw a rich picture.

Using your chosen style of reading, read through the case study and represent the situation in a rich picture. Make sure your rich picture is as rich as you can make it. Remember a rich picture is not intended to be an analysis. If you have any thoughts and ideas about the situation, or your rich picture of it, make a note of them so you won’t forget but concentrate on the main task of representing as much of the situation as you can in the rich picture.

3 Representing your experience of complexity The last activity was a demanding task. People I asked to do it during the writing of Block 1 found it took a lot of concentration but it brought up lots of ideas, feelings and suggestions for action. Most of them were also concerned their rich picture might not be good enough. I imagine you will share some of these reactions. If you share any of these concerns, remember there are lots of ways of drawing a good rich picture and almost all rich pictures can be improved. Improving your rich picture, and your appreciation of the complex situation it represents, is the next task.

Learning Album

T552

Rosalind writes ...

28 Block 1 Part 2 Experiencing complexity

ACTIVITY 11

Review your rich picture.

When you come back after a break, spend about 5 minutes taking a good look at the rich picture. Is it as complete as you thought it was? Are you pleased with it? Are you stuck for ideas about how to improve it? Do new features strike you as you look at it? Do questions arise about it, or the complex situation it represents?

Make appropriate additions to the picture if necessary and record any thoughts or questions that occur to you.

Taking a break seems to be an important part of the process of drawing a rich picture. It is almost as if one of the characteristics of the process is to generate thoughts and ideas that only become apparent when you see it afresh.

You have now completed the fourth activity in the central spine of Figure 5.

3.1 Complexity and rich pictures

This section is mostly concerned with thinking about your rich picture and the complex situation it depicts.

There are lots of ways of drawing a good rich picture and very few ways of drawing bad rich pictures. So my next strategy in supporting your learning, and your experience of this complex situation, is to propose a number of checks you might use to ensure you have not fallen into the trap of the less-effective rich picture.

Although my discussion will focus on rich pictures, I am also talking about the complexity the rich picture represents. I am using the task of generating a useful rich picture to illustrate the process of experiencing and capturing complexity.

Trap 1: representing the problem and not the situation

This trap is one of the most fundamental mistakes you can make in systems thinking. There are lots of metaphorical phrases in English that can entice you into the trap. We can talk about ‘the nub of the problem’, ‘the key issue’, ‘the basic problem’, ‘the real difficulty’ and so on.

Like all traps, once it has sprung, it can be very difficult to get out. The trap seriously limits one’s ability to think about the situation in its full complexity. This is precisely because, by identifying every problematic feature as stemming from one single interpretation of the problem, you limit your possible ways of dealing with the situation to those that might be answers to this single problem. You have imposed simplicity on the situation, which does not reflect the very complexity that makes it problematic.

In contrast, one of the reasons this case study seems to be complex is precisely the difficulty of identifying anything that could be described as the key issue. It seems to be a tangle of interrelated key issues.

The whole point of a rich picture is to represent all you can about the situation. To identify the problem within the picture, or to include only the elements that seem problematic, is to prune out potentially important elements of the complexity.

3 Representing your experience of complexity 29

So, the check for avoiding this trap is to ask:

^ 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?

Trap 2: the impoverished rich picture

A distinguishing feature of rich pictures that turn out to be useful seems to be they are just what they say they are, rich. If I take usefulness as the criterion, the useful rich pictures are the ones bursting with interest and activity. They don’t seem to tell a single story, there are lots of stories going on simultaneously. They reveal stories you didn’t consciously build into them.

How is such a rich picture to be achieved?

Use everything you find in the situation. This means incorporate everything you know about the situation. Either put things into the picture as you re-read the description; or make lists of the protagonists, the organizations, the structures, and then put them into the picture. Include people as well as the roles they inhabit.

Indicate the connections. Where the structural entities you listed above have connections and relationships between them, indicate what they are. There are all sorts of ways of doing this, especially if you ask yourself about the nature of the connection. You could use physical proximity (or distance) or representations of the nature of the connection (hearts, daggers drawn, telephones, deafness, walls of silence). Lots of people quite unconsciously use visual metaphors in their everyday language. (’Every so often they drop a bombshell on this department.’ ‘We’re swamped with memos.’ ‘We’re drowning in paperwork.’) Talk to yourself about the situation and you may pick up clues about how to represent features of the situation. Arrows and lines tend to be less useful but they’re not forbidden. Don’t force the images, use the ones that seem to come naturally. There is no library of approved symbols.

Use all the geographical locations, if this is relevant.

Use all the processes. Include all the changes, and activities. Include impressions as well as reported facts.

Some people use computer clip-art to draw rich pictures. It rarely works in my view. Some essential quality seems to be missing. This quality might be ownership or engagement or it may be the very act of sitting at a computer keeps the activity at a rational level – it does not allow for the impressions and half-formed awareness to express themselves through the act of making marks directly on to paper.

The check for avoiding the impoverishment trap is to ask:

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

Trap 3: interpretation, structure, and analysis

If you deliberately impose an interpretation or analysis on your picture, you preclude the possibility of seeing other, potentially more interesting, features later. Remember the rich picture is a representation of the complexity. If you structure that complexity, you are no longer

30 Block 1 Part 2 Experiencing complexity

representing it as you experience it. You also lose the possibility of using the drawing process itself as a means of encountering the complexity in all its fullness.

The trap takes a number of forms. Beware of representing events in their chronological sequence, either explicitly or implicitly. Also, organizational structure may take over and become the structure of the whole picture. Elements of other diagram forms may creep in. (Systems maps and influence diagrams can be quite a temptation.) Watch out for the temptations you are susceptible to. Artistic abilities, if you have them, can represent their own temptations – they too can be a part of the structuring trap.

It may be inevitable that interpretations suggest themselves as you draw. Stop yourself thinking ‘this is really about ...’ One way of stopping this is to jot the idea down somewhere – not on your picture – in the form of a question. Once you’ve written it down, the idea is much less likely to keep popping up as if it were trying to ensure you won’t forget it.

So, the check for avoiding this trap is to ask:

^ Is this rich picture telling just one story or is it rich enough to suggest lots of stories about what’s going on?

Trap 4: words and wordiness

I have seen some effective rich pictures with lots of words in them but they are quite rare in my experience. More often, lots of words make the rich picture less rich. Part of the later use of a rich picture might include looking for patterns. Words inhibit your ability to spot patterns.

If you do use speech bubbles, use what people say, not your interpretation, unless the bubble is about some general attitude. Examples might be ‘Aaagh!’, ‘Help!’, ‘Oops!’ – the sort of things found in comic books.

The check for avoiding this trap is to ask:

^ Do I have to do a lot of reading to see the relationships between elements in the picture?

Trap 5: the final version trap

Ironically, the biggest mistake you can make, having got this far, is to assume your picture is finished. New realizations will crop up. Add these to your picture as you appreciate more and more of the complexity.

So, the check for avoiding this trap is to ask:

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

SAQ 1

List the main traps you can fall into when you draw a rich picture of a complex situation.

Examine the rich picture you have just drawn and identify any remaining traps your picture may be still be caught in.

3 Representing your experience of complexity 31

3.1.1 Getting out of traps

Remember to date your rich picture and not to throw away any previous versions. Old versions of rich pictures provide you with a record of your developing understanding.

The next activity is an invitation to improve your rich picture by digging yourself out of any of the traps you may have fallen into. In this activity, I suggest a certain ruthlessness in reviewing your efforts so far. You should not, however, see this as an evaluation of your performance in the task. My experience is that knowing about the traps is only part of the skill of representing complexity. Sometimes one simply falls into them.

The worst possible result is falling into a trap and not realizing it has happened. So, the next bit is about learning to recognize the traps when you’ve fallen into them and learning to get out of them. With that experience behind you, falling into any of the traps isn’t a disaster. My hope, without being malicious, is you’ve fallen into at least one trap and in the next activity you’ll get out of it. The next activity may take only 15 minutes. If you need to re-draw it will take longer – but not as long as the first drawing took.

ACTIVITY 12

Look at your rich picture.

Check you have not fallen into the trap of an over hasty identification of the problem. It is not easy to spot this trap if you have already fallen into it, so be ruthless. Be prepared to re-draw your picture if you discover yourself in this trap. It may be possible to add the necessary elements but the trap is such a disabling one that often it’s better to completely re-think your representation. I’ve fallen into this trap, and still do, many times. In my experience, re- drawing is never a waste of time.

Check you have not fallen into the trap of impoverishment. It’s fairly easy to spot if your representation of the situation is rich or poor. Compare it with the example rich picture in T552. Has it got that same quality of buzzing with activity and interest? Use the tips for getting everything in described above. Make your picture as rich as you can.

Check you have not fallen into the trap of structuring, interpreting or analysing the situation. If you have, re-drawing may be worthwhile. Once structure, interpretation or analysis is there, it’s hard to disguise them and they become a distraction.

Check the richness of your picture isn’t swamped by words and the words are not structuring your representation of the situation. Make the necessary improvements. Add anything else that seems to be part of the situation.

You have now completed the activities connected by arrows 1 to 6 in Figure 5.

3.2 Complexity from someone else’s perspective

You may already have noticed, and included, the author of the case study in your rich picture. The clues that this is necessary are in Figure 5 and in my comments about epistemology in the introduction to the block. Just how important the writer of the case study is becomes obvious when you consider almost all the detail you have access to in this situation probably comes through that person’s writing. Even if you have first hand

T552

32 Block 1 Part 2 Experiencing complexity

experience, and are aware of all the intricacies of the situation described, it is the author of the case study who has largely defined the situation – an element of pre-structuring that needs to be recognized.

At this stage, it is not appropriate to try and evaluate just how much this person’s view of the situation – whatever that view is – has influenced yours. But it undoubtedly has. Including the author in your picture is simply a recognition that, in writing the case study, she went through a process of deciding what was relevant; sorting what she would include and what she would leave out; she ordered it into a readable bit of text; and she made some judgements about when to use quotations and when to simply report. Just include the writer as an element of the picture, don’t try and impose structure or interpretation by deciding, for example, it is all seen through her eyes.

3.3 Summary

I hope that, by now, you have a rich picture you are pleased with. This is a considerable achievement because, despite the informality of the rich picture’s style, a rich picture that effectively captures the complex situation takes a lot of effort to achieve. It depends crucially on being prepared to enter into the experience of the situation of interest and to interrogate that experience thoroughly. Noticing is not enough. Each feature of the situation has to be carefully captured by representing it in the rich picture.

My point in inviting you to draw a rich picture was not just to give you practice in rich-picture drawing – useful as that will be for the course. The drawing of the rich picture is also a means of enabling you to enter into relationship with this complex situation – to experience complexity.

This completes the first three activities in the activity sequence depicted in Figure 4 and the activities linked by arrows 1 to 8 in Figure 5. One essential element of the rich picture remains to be added, and for this, the focus of attention must be changed to experience another component of the complexity. This happens in the next section.

4 Being inside complexity Before moving into a discussion of the missing element of the rich picture, I want to direct your attention to all the thoughts and ideas I have encouraged you not to put into your rich picture. I imagine you might have collected quite a list of loose ends. The next activity will involve some of these.

Expect to take about half an hour to do the next activity.

ACTIVITY 13

Identify and record any stake you hold in this situation.

First, identify any stake you hold in the situation described in the case study. Such a stakeholding might arise in any one of a number of ways.

Are you a lone parent, a parent who lives (or has lived) away from your children, or a parent with sole (or most) care of your children (or child)? Are you a child of a single-parent family? Do you have professional or other interests in the Child Support Agency; the Benefits Agency; or charitable or campaigning organizations working in these areas? Do you have a role in an

4 Being inside complexity 33

equivalent agency outside the UK? Do you have any role in forming government or political policy? Do you subscribe, through membership or otherwise, to a political-party view on these issues? Do you have family members, friends, neighbours or colleagues, in any of these roles? Perhaps you have a stake as a tax-payer.

Record your current thinking about this situation.

In particular, record any ideas about what the core issues are, people or agencies that you might hold responsible for some of the problems described in the case study, areas where you feel clarity is missing, and so on. Are there places where you feel tempted to say things like, ‘if we could just deal with X then Y might be better’.

What passages of the case study seem to represent particular clarity or do you particularly identify with?

Make notes on your own view of the extent of parents’ rights and responsibilities with respect to their children, and the role the state should have, if any, in ensuring that children are adequately supported.

Record your current feelings about this situation.

Are you angry? cynical? amused? amazed? Do you have any feelings on behalf of any of the protagonists? Do you feel it’s not fair? (Be specific about what’s not fair, not fair to whom.) Do you have any positive emotions? Do you feel compassion (for whom?), empathy, approval (of what?), pleasure?

It’s easy to censor feelings, especially perhaps in the rational activity of studying a course. The censorship arises from the idea that irrational emotions have no place in rational discussions or from, for example, the desire to avoid passing judgement on someone else’s behaviour or attitudes.

Feelings are not necessarily politically correct either. While political correctness can challenge us to examine the basis of our feelings, gut reactions are generally not guided by intellectual principles. Get past this censor as much as you can.

Another block to recognizing feelings is the idea the feelings have to be justified in some way. You don’t have to do this in this context. You should simply record the emotions that are there. Be as specific as you can about what you feel.

If you have no direct stake in the UK’s arrangements for child support, perhaps because you live outside the UK, record your feelings and questions about the situation described. Include your impressions about the social arrangements that give rise to the situation described. Include also, any judgements you make about these. Does the text give rise to any questions concerning arrangements and social conditions in the country where you live?

If you pay taxes in the UK, or live in a household that pays taxes, what are your feelings about the situation as a tax-payer?

Record your initial views about what should be done to improve this situation.

Don’t worry if these are based on gut reactions. Any ideas you have about what should be done, or about what you feel should be explored, should be recorded. They may be more or less feasible, or more or less long-term. Use the language that first springs to mind, even if it’s in the form of, for example, ‘A and B need their heads banging together’, or even, ‘people should be stopped from having babies’.

In particular, if you have any ideas that take the form ‘X could ...’, ‘X should ...’, or ‘X ought to ...’, record them because these word forms usually disguise some judgement about someone’s culpability.

34 Block 1 Part 2 Experiencing complexity

Some people find it quite easy to record their emotional responses to a situation – indeed, they might even find it quite difficult not to express their feelings forcibly. Others find it difficult to express, or even to recognize, any emotional response to a situation such as this. Other people are, of course, either somewhere in between these two extremes or somewhere else altogether. Neither is good or bad. The point is, if I am to start thinking deeply about a complex situation I have to recognize I do have emotions, even if I’m not fully aware of them. They contribute to the complexity of the situation because they condition the way I perceive and evaluate the situation. Your own values are important. The point is not just to simply record your values and responses, and then ignore them, but to acknowledge them.

I and, I suspect, many other people, find it impossible not to have emotional responses to most situations. Indeed, without emotions I would not be interested in the situation at all. I would be less than fully human. The question then becomes, ‘How do I think sensibly about any complex situation I care even slightly about?’ The answer to this conundrum, I believe, lies in learning how to account for one’s emotional responses as part of the complexity of the situation.

Professionalism, in Systems as in any other practice, assumes the practitioner will endeavour to set aside purely personal preferences in favour of attaining good resolutions

4 in problematic situations. I’m not

suggesting this professional standard be abandoned by systems practitioners. But, it seems to me unlikely anyone could be a good systems practitioner without having some views on, and opinions about the situation of interest.

So, as a systems practitioner, I need to be able to manage these views and opinions. This may involve setting them aside but at the very least it involves accounting for them. I can only manage what I know about and so, as a responsible practitioner, it seems to be important I acknowledge any prejudices so that I can take account of them. I can also be aware of the ways initial views, feelings and opinions condition what I am able to observe, what I am able to enquire about and what I am able to do.

This theme will be taken up later in the course. For the moment, I want to propose the activities described in Figure 6 (overleaf) as a way of managing the complexity that you, as a person with experiences of, stakeholdings in, and feelings about the situation, bring to it. You have already completed the four activities at the top of the diagram.

The next activity addresses the role your stake in the situation has in supporting some of your initial reactions to the situation, including your emotional ones.

Expect to take around 10 minutes on this activity.

Expect to take around 10 minutes

4 Of course, a resolution has to be recognized as ‘good’ by somebody but that is another discussion and

will come up later in the course.

4 Being inside complexity 35

identify stakeholding

identify initial thinking about the

situation

identify initial strategies for improving

the situation

identify influence of stakeholding on your thinking and

feelings

re-evaluate stakeholding in situation

identify traps in your stakeholding

include self in rich picture

identify initial feelings about the

situation

Figure 6 Activity-sequence diagram for locating your own position in a complex situation and representing it in a rich picture

ACTIVITY 14

Examine the initial responses you identified in the light of the stakeholding you identified earlier in Activity 13.

Are they related in any way?

Even if you did not identify a specific stakeholding, do your initial responses form any pattern? Do they suggest you identify with any individual protagonists in the situation, or groups of protagonists? Do they suggest you have additional stakes, even if simply emotional ones, in the situation?

I’ve found it’s not at all uncommon to discover I have a stake in a situation. Complex situations often spread their tentacles into all sorts of areas, so that the number of people touched by them can be very large. This increases the chances of an individual acquiring a stake, even an indirect or second hand one. The human capacity to empathize draws me into a situation so that I form pre-judgements about fairness, blame and so on without really trying. In many ways this is to be welcomed – a direct stake can, for example, mean I have access to additional information.

But stakeholdings can also set traps. The principal one of these is the trap of getting caught in one perspective. If I am to be able to respond to a situation in a way that respects its complexity, I have to be able to see the

36 Block 1 Part 2 Experiencing complexity

situation from more than one point of view. Any view is always a view from somewhere. Staying with one viewpoint will mean some aspects of the situation will remain hidden. I have to move between viewpoints.

SAQ 2

Imagine some friends read the case study and they recorded their initial reactions as follows.

Jane: I’ve experienced exactly what this is all about. I’ve had no end of problems ever since Billy’s father left. And the CSA has been no help at all.

Martha: Mmm! It doesn’t really seem fair that fathers who’ve been very responsible and have met all the conditions of their court orders should suddenly find themselves having to pay out much more than they’d planned for.

Pete: This is all motivated by the government’s drive to save money. It’s fundamentally dishonest to dress it up as help for families.

Liam: I don’t really have an opinion. If people chose to have children then their problems are all of their own making - and nothing to do with me. I just have to pay up through the tax system.

How would you help your friends to identify any traps to do with their first thoughts before they start to think more systemically about the situation? Hint: Whether your friends’ reactions are right or wrong, in your opinion, is not important.

The next activity asks you to make notes of traps you think may be inherent in your initial evaluations of the situation. The notes you make will serve as an alert as you continue to work through the case-study material. Often, simply being aware of initial evaluations and being determined to treat them sceptically and open-mindedly is enough to avoid them becoming traps. Be prepared to change your mind.

Expect to spend about 15 minutes on the next two activities.

ACTIVITY 15

Identify traps that may arise from your initial evaluations of the situation, for example, traps set by stakeholdings or identification; the ‘core issue’ trap; the ‘unacknowledged feelings’ trap; the ‘gut-reaction solution’ trap, all discussed above.

Make notes on any traps you identify as a result of studying your notes from Activities 13 and 14.

Finally, having done all this, you can locate yourself in the rich picture. Take a few minutes to do this in Activity 16.

ACTIVITY 16

Locate yourself in your rich picture.

Decide how you are going to represent yourself in your rich picture. Where do you stand in this situation? You might, for example, see yourself as a student, eager to see what can be done to improve the situation. You may want to represent yourself avoiding traps (or using some other metaphor, you don’t have to use mine). You may want to represent yourself as a lone parent. Give it some careful thought but also listen to your instincts, and be prepared to change or add to your representation later.

4 Being inside complexity 37

5 Exploring complexity This section 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 a deeper understanding of the complexity. It goes beyond immersion in, and representation of, complexity.

The invitation I am making in this section is to move into the possibility of structuring complexity. Notice I am not suggesting there is structure in the complexity I can discover. Rather, it is about discovering ways of structuring the complexity in ways that make sense to you. By structuring the complexity, I can think more effectively about it and possibly discover ways of improving the situation.

To discover ways of thinking about the complexity in the case-study situation, I am going to use systems diagrams. If you have used systems diagrams before, this is a useful opportunity to revise and hone your skills. If you have not encountered systems diagrams before you will need to spend rather longer on the case-study exercises. In either case, time spent studying T552 will be a good investment. The whole course makes extensive use of diagrams and, unless you become skilled in using them, you will miss out in important ways.

You may have already noticed the situation described in the case study has already been ordered. Completely unstructured, it would have been impossible to understand. The case-study author chose to describe the situation by ordering events chronologically. Thus, although she is describing a present mess, she does so by ordering events that led to the present situation, and describes the features of the complexity in the order they occurred. In some ways, the history of the situation could be said to inhere in the current situation and histories can be a powerful way of understanding complexity. Histories throw useful light on situations where a multiplicity of interpretations can be imposed. You will see examples of this later in this block where Ray uses histories and the related idea of tradition to explore some of the central concepts of the course. In the next few sections, I will use the idea of history as a starting point for structuring the case-study situation.

5.1 Systems maps

Later in this section, I will invite you to draw a systems map but I want first to explore how to start identifying some elements of system within this complex situation.

5.1.1 Searching for system

A simple definition of a system is an assembly of components interconnected as if they had a purpose. I am going to use the idea of purpose to look at the situation as I understand it.

Presented with the complexity of this situation it may be hard to know where to start. I have often found it helpful to start with the notion that somewhere in all this complexity there is, or was, some purpose. It is quite common in situations like this to find the mess has arisen because somewhere at some time someone had a purpose, tried to achieve it, but their intentions got lost in the unintended consequences of what they did. In the following activity, try to find as many answers as possible in the time.

Rosalind writes ...

T552

system

38 Block 1 Part 2 Experiencing complexity

Take about 10 minutes to do this activity.

ACTIVITY 17

What was the perceived problem (or opportunity) to which components in this situation seemed to offer a solution?

Identify at least two organizations, processes, activities or ideas in the situation that might be perceived as attempted solutions to some issue, problem or opportunity. Preferably, identify several more.

Identify the issues, problems or opportunities to which these might be said to be attempted solutions.

For each of these issues, suggest the person, persons, or organization that had the power to bring each of these attempted solutions into being.

This question, and others like it, seems to offer a powerful way into understanding the situation. First, it prompts me to ask what components in the situation have been brought into the situation by conscious design. I am then prompted to ask who brought them in and why. The question Why? thus leads me to some conception of purpose within the situation, and the Who? identifies potential owners of the solutions.

I can exemplify the way this question enables me to make these distinctions. Please don’t assume this example answer is a model answer, let alone the right answer. As you will see, the answers I identify are constructions I put on the situation – they are not, in this case, directly drawn from the case study material. Sometimes in complex situations purpose is explicitly stated, but more usually it has to be inferred.

Within the case study material, I can identify a number of elements that have been brought into the situation by human agency. The first one that struck me was the Department of Social Security. The DSS was brought into being well before the events that led up to the current situation. I can also infer, even if I do not know, a number of purposes may have been present at the time it was set up: the provision of social security for the citizens of the UK; the alleviation of poverty within the UK; the redistribution of income. It is possible a number of purposes were present, both implicit and explicit. I can infer that, as a government department, it was set up by a past government perhaps acting on behalf of the electorate. In this case, the DSS seems to be rather peripheral to the situation described in the case study. It is likely that exploring other, more central, entities will produce more insights. The Child Support Agency and the Child Support Act are more obviously central to the situation.

Spend about five minutes on the following activity.

ACTIVITY 18

Identify a potential system-with-purpose from your previous notes.

Rewrite each issue statement you identified in Activity 17 in terms of a system intended to address the issue. For example, an issue framed in terms of ‘a perceived need to encourage responsible parenting’ becomes ‘a system to encourage responsible parenting’.

5 Exploring complexity 39

Check the system you have identified is one the system owner could have seen, in principle at least, as being represented by the entity in the system they introduced. If not, look again at the possible problem you identified. Notice there is no need to establish whether the system actually worked, or whether it actually exists today.

The process you just went through for each of these systems is illustrated in Figure 7. Figure 7 is one possible schema for finding a system through which to explore a complex situation. I can refer to such a system as a system of interest. A system of interest is one that a systems thinker chooses to focus their interest on.

identify an entity in situation

see entity as an attempted solution

identify solution owner

identify system with purpose

deduce perceived issue to which the entity might

be an attempted solution

check for coherence between solution owner, system-with-purpose and

deduced issue

list system and system owner

Figure 7 An activity-sequence diagram for identifying systems of interest, and their owners, in an unstructured complex situation

The output from these activities is a list of systems and their owners. At this stage, there is no judgement about whether these systems actually exist in the situation; about whether they work; about their desirability; nor about their relevance to the purposes of their owners. They are lenses through which to look at the situation. I can now ask myself: if there is a system whose purpose is, say, to encourage responsible parenting, then what relationship do other entities in the situation have to this system, and to each other?

system of interest

40 Block 1 Part 2 Experiencing complexity

5.1.2 Drawing systems maps

The next step is to draw some systems maps. The art of drawing effective systems maps lies, I believe, in finding an appropriate balance. The balance lies somewhere between the learning, which comes from the process of drawing the maps, and the uses I might make of the end product.

If you have already had some experience of drawing systems maps, you will know the process generates insights and understanding by itself. This comes from having to decide what to include and what to exclude; deciding where components are located; redefining boundaries; and sometimes starting again.

It is often tempting not to bother with the final drawing once these insights emerge. It is usually worthwhile pursuing the process to a final version of each map, however. Some insights only emerge once the map seems to be complete. It is equally possible to be so focused on the final map all the insights get lost or forgotten, even if they are incorporated into the map. In the activities that follow, it would be useful to pay equal attention to both the process and the product.

SAQ 3

State the main defects in the systems maps relating to the case study shown in Figures 8(a) and 8(b).

Figure 8(a) Defective systems map of White Paper proposals

White Pa per

proposals

statis tical

data

critic al

respo nses

Child SupportAgency

secre tary

of sta te

!goodcause! asses

s- ment

tracing

parents

investigate

systems maps

T552

5 Exploring complexity 41

Figure 8(b) Defective systems map of the CSA

Expect to take about an hour for the next activity. Allow about twice as long if your experience of systems maps is limited or non-existent. If you find yourself taking very much less time, it is possible your map is not really representing the situation. Creating structure in complexity takes considerable effort.

ACTIVITY 19

Choose one of the systems you identified in the activities above.

The basis for your choice isn’t important at this stage but it might be useful to choose a system that seems to be central to the situation. This is your system of interest. Make a note of why you chose it – even if it’s no more than a vague preference.

Draw a systems map of your chosen system.

Use T552 as a support and guide.

(a) Make notes of the insights and understandings you gain as you draw your map.

(b) Give your map a title. Does the map you have actually drawn match the title? It is common, and not unexpected, to find you have drawn a systems map different to the one you intended to draw. Iterate until your title and map match.

(c) Be wary of drawing a systems map that simply reproduces an organizational chart. It should be purpose that defines the system and its boundary, not organizational structure.

CSA

non-resident parents enforcin

g paymen

t assessing liability

employers

tracing

non-resi dent pa

rents

mothers

sanction s

cutting o ff

benefit

DN A

tes ting

child ren

T552

42 Block 1 Part 2 Experiencing complexity

(d) Be wary of drawing a map of what would be needed for your system to achieve its purpose. The diagram you are drawing is a snap shot of the current situation.

(e) Take particular notice when the temptation to break the conventions seems strong. This experience nearly always signals an important trap. Resist the temptation and look for ways around the problem other than breaking the rules – almost always the reward is an important new way of understanding the complexity.

(f) Use your rich picture as a source, checking you have included all the items relevant to your system.

(g) When you have completed the first draft of your map, check it rigorously against the rules and guidelines for drawing systems maps given in T552. You should think of this process as being much more than a check for compliance with the rules. It is one of the mechanisms by which you begin a dialogue with your diagram.

There are dozens of different systems maps you could devise, don’t think of mine as a best map in any way. I am simply showing you what I learned from drawing my map.

I started by identifying the CSA as being something that could be interpreted as an attempt to address an issue. There were all sorts of issues it might have been attempting to address. You can see my notes in Figure 9. I quickly identified some potential systems.

The creation of the CSA was a government response to the child-support situation. It can therefore be seen as: 1 A sytem for reducing the cost of welfare benefits to

lone parents (owned by the gov’t of the day)

2 A system for supporting children in poverty, caused by the absence of one of their parents (owned by gov’t of the day)

3 A system for making sure parents do not escape their responsibilities (gov’t owned)

4 A system for ensuring that state does not have to pick up the cost of family break-up (owned by gov’t)

1 is bet ter

makes judg ement abou

t gov’t tha t

may lead to confusio

5 A system for tracing partners and getting maintenance payments from them (owned by gov’t and parents-with-care)

do parents -with-care

really !own ! this syst

em?

moral a genda

Figure 9 Some ideas for thinking of the CSA as a system with purpose

I chose to explore the second of my two systems, mainly because it looked the most straightforward. In Figure 10 (overleaf), you can see the notes I made as I explored this system. You will see I changed my mind several times as I went along. The first attempt at a systems map is shown in Figure 11.

5 Exploring complexity 43

us e th is on e! !

w he re d o ch ild re n fit i n al l th is? i t’s a s if th ey ,

an d th ei r w ish es , ar e inv isi ble

ch an ge t itl e to r ef le ct f ina nc ia l su pp or t ra th er t ha n

ot he r fo rm s of s up po rt

’m or al p an ic ’, ’fe ck le ss m ot he rs ’, !ne gli ge nt f at he rs ! do n’t b el on g

in th is ma p (p er ha ps o th er o ne ?)

ch an ge t itl e to r ef le ct t his

ST AT E sy st em

al so , no t al l

c hil dr en i n

po ve rt y

pr ob ab ly no t ne ce ss ar y to i nc lud e an y st uf f ab ou t pr ob le ms i n

sy st em s ma p

en fo rc em en t me as ur es

de du ct io n fr om

ea rn ing s or de rs

im pr iso nm en t

co un ty c ou rt

en fo rc em en ts

lia bili ty or de rs

se iz ur e of

go od s et c.

TO O DE TA IL ED ?

A sy st em f or s up po rt ing c hil dr en i n po ve rt y ca us ed

by t he a bs en ce o f on e of t he ir pa re nt s

(o w ne d by t he g ov ’t of t he d ay )

re al iz ed C

SA o nly p ar t of t his s ys te m

w he re d oe s th e no n- re sid en t pa re nt b el on g?

di ff er nt ia te b et w ee n no n- re sid en t pa re nt s?

di ff er en tia te b et w ee n ca rin g pa re nt s?

• no b en ef it or m ai nt en an ce

• re ce ivi ng b en ef it bu t no m ain te na nc e

•

th os e w ith c ou rt o rd er s an d/ or m ai nt en an ce a gr ee me nt s

loc at e mo st s ys te ms w

ith in di ff er en t lon e pa re nt s ys te ms ?

do n’t i nc lud e re gi on al o ff ic es a s pa rt o f C SA

s ys te m;

co nc en tr at e on f un ct io n

ei th er

or C SA

co lle ct ing

tr ac ing

en fo rc ing

as se ss ing

no n- re sid en t

pa re nt

ca rin g

pa re nt

C SA

re gi on al

of fic es

st af f

ch ie f

ex ec

YE S!

(d iff er en t in

go v’t v ie w )

(e ac h su pp or te d in fu nd am en ta lly d iff er en t w ay )

(it ’s a bit l ik e a ro ad m ap - i t te lls

w ha t’s t he re , no t w ha t’s g oi ng o n)

m it to ok m e ag es t o no tic e th e ca rin g pa re nt m ig ht

ha ve a w

ag e: a re t he ir w ay s of i pr ov ing w

ag e inc om e to

lon e pa re nt s? t ax b re ak s, et c? m ig ht b e al te rn at ive r ou te ?

F ig u re

1 0

S o m e p re li m in a ry

n o te s

44 Block 1 Part 2 Experiencing complexity

family-valuesdebate non-residentparents’

second families

A state owned system to support the children of

otherfiscal prioritie

government other child-support agencies

caring parent’s wages lone parents(1)

lone parents (2)

lone parents (3)

information for tracing non-resident

parents sanctions against non- cooperating parents

Child Support Act law

regulations

formula maintenance payments

other DSS benefits

income support

family credit

divorce courts

enforcement

collection tracing

assessment

CSA

are thesethe same?

appeals procedure

national average incomes

other legislation

annual target

for C SA

loan parents

non-resident parents

Figure 11 An early attempt at a systems map of part of the complex situation

Figure 11 is incomplete: it’s full of crossings out and the system boundary is tentative but it seemed to lead to some breakthroughs. I was aware I was going against some of the decisions I had made earlier but it was easy after the Figure 11 version to see my way to a much clearer system. I’d changed the title several times before I began to see a system emerging. Figure 12 (overleaf) is my almost-final version. It contains quite a lot of components and rather more levels of subsystems than I would normally expect to use. But despite all the detail, I decided not to simplify it – it worked for me as a way of locating lots of the elements. The map may need modifying as my understanding of the system improves.

5 Exploring complexity 45

other child-support agencies

information for tracing non-resident

parents

A system to support financially the children of lone parents

children

CSA subsystem

collection

formulae set by regulation assessment

procedures appealsprocedures

compensation for false identification

sanctions against non-cooperating caring parents

DNA tests etc.

enforcement measures county court enforcements

deduction from earnings orders

imprisonment

liability orders seizure of goods etc.

caring parent's own income subsystem

income support

family credit

disability living allowance

other state benefits

subsystem

other arrangements with non-resident parents

subsystem

maintenance agreements

court orders

non-resident parents

subsystem

divorce courts

non-resident parents' second families

government

tracing

Figure 12 An improved version of my earlier systems map

46 Block 1 Part 2 Experiencing complexity

Spend 15 minutes on the next two activities, perhaps longer if it prompts some reworking of your map.

ACTIVITY 20

Review your systems map.

Check it is drawn from a perspective. Is it possible to deduce from it who the owner might be?

Is the purpose of the system evident? Are the intended beneficiaries (or victims) present in the map in some form? Is there anything in the environment that affects the functioning of the system?

If you are not sure these challenges can be answered, have another look at your map.

Compare your map with your rich picture. Does your rich picture prompt you to include any other elements in your map?

The test of a good map is whether it clarifies the complex situation. Does your map do this?

ACTIVITY 21

Review your system boundary.

Look at the system boundary you have drawn. Does it represent a boundary between the system and its environment? Is it clear the subsystems within the system are part of the system’s working. Are your sub-subsystems part of the subsystem’s working? Is it clear the elements outside the system boundary influence, or are influenced by, the system?

What happens if you move the system boundary? If you include other systems as subsystems, does that change the title and purpose of the system. Does this change the systems that must be included in the environment? Is the new system more, or less, useful in aiding your understanding? Record any new insights.

If you feel you need practice in drawing systems maps, you may wish to take another of the systems-with-purpose you listed earlier and develop a new map. Although this task may take some time, it will be time well spent if you need the practice. If not, use my map to compare with your own in the next activity.

Expect to take about 10 minutes.

ACTIVITY 22

Compare your map with mine or with a second map you have drawn.

Resist any temptation to use my map as the basis for evaluating yours. Notice the ways the different system purposes – as expressed in the title – lead to different structures and different elements.

Notice any differences between the beneficiaries identified, the actors or activities, the perspective, the owners and the elements in the environment.

Does the comparison prompt any questions?

boundary

5 Exploring complexity 47

5.2 Influence diagrams I want to return to the definition of a system I used earlier: an assembly of components interconnected as if they had a purpose. In the last section, I used purpose as a way of structuring the complexity of the case study. In this section, and the sections that follow, I want to turn to the idea of interconnectedness as another way of structuring the complexity. In the case of influence diagrams, I search for interconnection in the form of influence to hold together a structure that resolves some of the complexity.

There are at least two ways of looking for influence connections from the myriad of possibilities a complex situation presents. The first is to start from a systems map, modifying it and adapting to identify the principal interconnections. The second is to start by identifying a component in the complexity that seems to be influential and building the influence diagram from there. There are advantages and disadvantages to both.

Allow yourself about 30 minutes to do the following activity. If this is your first attempt at an influence diagram, expect to take at least twice as long.

ACTIVITY 23

Draw an influence diagram that structures a system of influences within the case study.

Either use your systems map as a starting point or identify an alternative starting point within the complex situation.

Remember to give your diagram a title that matches the diagram. Use the guidelines given in T552.

As you do your diagram, make notes about any advantages or disadvantages you notice about your chosen approach. A good starting point for this is to notice why you are choosing your particular approach.

Make notes about any insights you gain about the situation as you draw your diagram.

When you think you have finished your diagram, check the guidelines rigorously. If you are uncertain you have complied with the rules, be strict with yourself about getting it right. Experience shows these points are the most effective at unlocking your understanding of the complexity.

Two of the hardest things to know when you are diagramming is whether you’ve got it right and when it’s complete. These concerns come up in all diagramming but seem to me to be particularly tricky when it comes to influence diagrams.

The first concern is the issue of rightness. I use diagrams mostly for exploring complex situations. This usually happens when I’m baffled by something and cannot see a way of getting to grips with it. The bafflement I experience often arises from false assumptions I am making; mis- attributions of connection and so on. So, in endeavouring to understand the complex situation, I am dealing with misunderstandings as well as lack of understanding. Following the rules, tedious though that often seems is, for me, a powerful way of unearthing misunderstandings. The challenge of forcing the representation into technically correct, diagrammatic form meets the misunderstandings head-on. Since other people seem to experience this too, I am encouraging you, in the activities, not to let yourself get away with bending the rules until you’re absolutely sure it’s justified. Use the rules rigourously as a form of challenge to your understanding.

influence diagrams

T552

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48 Block 1 Part 2 Experiencing complexity

Concerning completeness, I often find once I am no longer baffled the rest is relatively easy to understand. So in diagramming, I am often looking for an understanding that makes me feel more prepared to explore. So, in some senses, completeness is when I feel I have enough understanding to start being more directed in my exploration. This may involve further, more detailed, diagrams. This intuitive sense that it’s complete when I feel it’s complete enough, works well enough for me when I’m working by myself. A more appropriate idea of completeness for diagrams to be used with other people (including examiners in T306 exams) might include additional features. In this, a guideline that works well for me is to ask if there is a good match between the diagram and its title, and to ask if the diagram shows all the relevant pieces to meet the aims implied by the title. But a diagram for showing to other people also has to show something. It must actually be capable of being read. This may involve pruning so that I don’t simply reproduce the complexity in diagrammatic form.

Drawing an influence diagram about this situation illustrates the point about completeness. I discovered an important insight. I was trying to trace some of the influences that lead to the unpopularity and the perceived failure of the CSA. I had two diagrams that didn’t fit. One of them seemed to be turning into a multiple-cause diagram, so I shelved that for later. The other seemed to concern the motivations that led to the setting up of the CSA.

I discovered there seemed to be little coherence between the motivations that led to its setting up and what it actually set about doing. The motivations seemed to be mostly driven by the moral panic about so-called runaway fathers and feckless mothers, and a desire to reduce the welfare bill for supporting single-parent families. What the CSA was actually doing was more concerned with re-working maintenance agreements and court orders.

This insight seemed important enough to preserve the diagram so I drew it in a form that would be presentable to you. It is shown as Figure 13 (overleaf). I feel it is complete because it seems to represent all the reported motivations the government had in setting up the CSA. Again, you should not interpret my diagram as a model answer.

I decided to stick with the wording used in the case study, although I wondered if it was a trap in itself. The close identification of the parent with care with the mother, and the identification of absent parent with the father, might be a trap in my thinking and possibly in the thinking of the people in the situation.

5.3 Multiple-cause diagrams

Multiple-cause diagrams are another way of using interconnectedness to structure a complex situation. In this case, the interconnectedness is that of causation. Multiple-cause diagrams represent both sufficient and contributory cause, without making a distinction between them. Drawing multiple-cause diagrams allows for the identification of systems of causation. Such a system can be pictured as an interconnected group of events or effects; the effect is of a system that behaves as if its purpose were to cause other events and effects. Sometimes, if one of the input causes is removed, the output effects continue to happen, either because feedback loops are present or because there are other causes to drive the effects.

causation

multiple-cause diagrams

5 Exploring complexity 49

fiscal prioritiespolitical concern

about father's responsibilities

nuclear family ‘norm'

‘moral panic'

family breakdown

attitude to loan mothers

family structure

unmarried parenting

media ‘morality’

increased divorce rate

Influences that led to the setting up of the Child Support Agency

I’m not very happy about use of ‘mothers’ and ‘fathers’ to mean parent-with-care and non-resident parent

Figure 13 My attempt at an influence diagram of part of the complex situation

The power of multiple-cause diagrams as ways of structuring complexity goes to the heart of the idea of complexity. This will be explored later in the block but I mention it here because complexity is typified by causal links. Multiple-cause diagrams allow me to see past the simple idea of single chains of causation and allow me to represent the webs of causation that lie at the heart of many complex situations.

In drawing multiple-cause diagrams, even more than other diagrams, I find using a pencil and rubber is essential. It is a process of untangling the causal links so that they lie flat on the page with the minimum number of lines crossing. This takes a lot of iterations. The fewer lines that cross, the more your diagram will reveal.

Expect to take about an hour for the following activity; more if this is your first attempt at a multiple-cause diagram.

50 Block 1 Part 2 Experiencing complexity

ACTIVITY 24

Draw a multiple-cause diagram of the events or effects that seem to be central to the complex situation described in the case study.

Draw several drafts. Check and re-check against the guidelines and rules in T552. Use all the techniques for rigour you have used in the previous diagrams to get the best diagram you can.

Make notes about what your diagram reveals, questions it raises and things you would like to know more about.

It may be you can, at this stage, begin to see ways the situation might be improved. Make notes about this.

SAQ 4

Examine the multiple-cause diagram in Figure 14 (overleaf). Identify the strengths and weaknesses in the diagram, as it relates to the case study. What do you like about it? What are the things you find hard to understand? Are there any technical difficulties with it?

The next activity asks you to evaluate your learning needs. Notice it does not ask you to evaluate your diagram against a standard. (This is why I have not given you a version of my multiple-cause diagram.) If you really want to compare your multiple-cause diagram with someone else’s you should refer to the diagramming pack; or Figure 46, which shows a causal- loop diagram. Rather, you are asked to reflect on how pleased you are with your diagram.

Expect to take about 20 minutes on this activity.

ACTIVITY 25

Make some evaluations of your diagramming skills, using your multiple-cause diagram as the focus of your attention.

Identify the things in your diagram you are pleased with. This may be something quite technical, like a developing skill in reducing the number of crossed lines. Or it may be something like an increased ability to get insights from the diagram; the enjoyment of drawing the diagram; or the sense of achievement when you find yourself better able to understand the complexity of the situation.

Identify technical improvements you would like to see in your diagram. Improved neatness? More elements in the diagram? Less elements in the diagram? An ability to prune out elements that obscure the main points?

What changes will be needed to bring this improvement about?

Identify things you feel you should be getting from diagramming you are not getting yet? Are there things that still puzzle you? How are you going to resolve that puzzle? What sources of help and support do you have access to?

T552

5 Exploring complexity 51

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52 Block 1 Part 2 Experiencing complexity

5.4 Sign graphs

Next, in the exercising of your diagramming skills, I want to look at sign graphs. Unlike the three diagram types you have already drawn, a sign graph is not usually used to structure the understanding of complexity. This means it is likely to be relatively less useful in the task of searching for system within the complex situation described in the case study. Sign graphs can, however, be useful once some elements of system have been identified. They can support the exploration of how a system works. Although drawing a sign graph will not necessarily contribute to the main task of structuring the complex situation, this is a good opportunity for brushing up your skill in drawing them.

Sign graphs can help sort out how and why variables in the system change. A good way into such a diagram is to identify some variable, either from the text or from your rich picture. You can then explore other variables that drive that variable. Within the case study, I noticed ‘contributions collected from absent parents’ as a possible variable worth exploring. It caught my attention because it seemed to represent an implicit measure of the CSA’s success, or lack of it. A sign-graph would help to discover the influences that would increase the amount of contribution collected and those that decrease the contributions. You could either use ‘contributions collected from absent parents’ as a starting point or identify a variable of your own choosing.

Expect to take about 20 minutes on this activity. Allow longer if this is your first sign graph.

ACTIVITY 26

Use a sign graph to explore the relationships between variables within the case study.

Chose a variable to use as a starting point. Identify the variables that influence that variable and whether they have a plus-sign effect or whether they have a minus-sign effect. Be careful to use the signs correctly, using the guidelines in T552.

As well as the variables that affect your starting-point variable, include the variables the starting-point variable affects. Are there any feedback loops? What are the overall effects of changes in some of the key variables? Aim to have between 7 and 12 variables in your diagram.

Make a note of any insights your diagram generates, either about the case- study situation, or about the processes of diagramming.

Take the necessary steps to evaluate your diagram.

5.5 Control-model diagrams

Perhaps, like me, you are beginning 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 issues like ‘What is X trying to achieve?’ ‘How are they trying to do it?’ and ‘How will they know when they’ve done it?’ Control- model diagrams provide a structure for exploring these questions. The drawing of the model allows you to decide whether the elements are in place to support the achievement of the purpose – and whether they are the right elements.

sign graph

T552

control-model diagram

5 Exploring complexity 53

To get started on this, you could use one of the purposes you identified earlier. And, by expressing it in terms of a simple transformation, work through the formal elements of the diagram seeing if the elements were there and linked together in appropriate ways. Using the control-model form as a diagnostic tool, as you are here, often means you don’t get a diagram that conforms to the rules. This is precisely the point. If the diagram doesn’t work, it is because the system is not connected together in a way that would allow it to work, or because some of the elements are mismatched or missing.

The output from your diagnosis can then take the form of a precise description of the reasons for its failure to effect the transformation, or achieve the purpose it was meant to achieve. It can also suggest means of improving the performance of the system in achieving its purpose: by adding missing components; by connecting components of the system together in other ways; by changing components so that they better match the intention; or by, for example, using alternative measures of performance.

Spend about 20 minutes on the next activity.

ACTIVITY 27

Draw a control-model diagram to diagnose a system you have found within the case study that does not seem to be achieving its purpose adequately.

First, identify a system in the case study that you believe is not working as well as it should.

Think of the system as a transformation process in which an input or inputs are converted into an output or outputs. Draw this as a transformation diagram such as I have drawn in Figure 15. You will, of course, have different labels to my general ones.

Next, identify a purpose for this system. The idea is, if the transformation process is working properly, this purpose will be met. Express this purpose in the title of your diagram.

Now express the purpose as a goal.

Next, ask yourself how you will know if the transformation process is working properly. Then consider what property or quality in the output you would have to measure to find out if the transformation process is working properly.

Now return to your idea of the goal: can it too be expressed in terms of the same property or quality?

You may have to iterate between your ideas of goal and what you will measure.

When you are satisfied with your goal and measurement, represent them by converting your transformation diagram into a control-model diagram. Refer to T552 to get the conventions correct. Label the actuator, sensor, goal, and comparator appropriately. I have shown a general form in Figure 16.

unmet need

other inputs meeting a need met need

Transformation diagram of a system to meet a need Figure 15 A general form of a transformation diagram

T552

54 Block 1 Part 2 Experiencing complexity

unmet need

other inputs meeting a need met need

sensor: measure property x

actuator: modify input(s)goal:

ensure need is met so that property x reaches at least standard y comparator:

does property x meet standard y?

Control-model diagram of a system to meet a need to standard y

Figure 16 A general form of a control-model diagram

Compare your diagrammatic representation with the system you identified within the case study. Can you now see why the system in the case study does not work as well as it should? You have drawn an idealized system; the ‘real-world’ system may not be working because some important control element is missing.

Use you diagram to specify possible changes that might improve the system’s capacity to achieve its intended purpose.

5.6 Diagramming a complex situation

Diagrams are never an end in themselves. They have a purpose. They exist in relation to a situation and can be used to cast light upon aspects of that situation or to explain it to someone.

So, the next step is to look at the diagrams you have drawn and to ask yourself what you have learned about the situation. This answer may be in terms of a deeper appreciation of the situation. It may also be in terms of pointers towards possible interventions and some idea of the likely effects of such an intervention. The advantage of having a good set of diagrams to hand is it becomes possible to predict the likely beneficial – and detrimental – effects of changes that might be made.

Diagrams play a central role in systems practice. They allow the systems practitioner to impose some structure on a complex, and possibly problematic, situation. As you saw during the activities you did, it is possible to draw several of any type of diagrams and an experienced practitioner will often draw several diagrams of each type. Sometimes the variations will be in terms of perspective, sometimes they will explore different aspects of the situation. The systems maps will illuminate structures and relationships between structural entities in the situation. The influence diagrams and multiple-cause diagrams will illuminate the dynamic relationships between events, effects and structures, and the sign graphs will show something about sensitivities between variables.

5 Exploring complexity 55

Sometimes the insights gained from a few good diagrams are sufficient to give confidence in designing and making an intervention. It may be possible, for example, to predict the knock-on effects of an intervention in a way that allows the risks and benefits to be evaluated.

Your responses to the next activity will probably be tentative (maybe they ought to be tentative) but the process of answering the questions will help you to develop further your evaluation of your diagramming efforts.

Spend about 15 minutes on this activity.

ACTIVITY 28

List any ideas for interventions you would like to investigate further.

Simply list ideas that have occurred to you during the drawing and afterwards in the reviewing.

What ideas would you like to explore further?

Why do they appeal to you?

Do your diagrams give you any idea about any likely effects, both intended and unintended, that might occur as a result of your suggested intervention?

Don’t worry if your answer is no. There will be further opportunities to explore situations in this way later in the course.

SAQ 5

What are the overall objectives of using diagrams in Systems case-study work?

What are the main outcomes you expect from each of the following diagram types?

^ Rich pictures

^ Multiple-cause diagrams

^ Systems maps

^ Control-model diagrams

5.7 Perspectives review

Just as you were completing your rich picture, I asked you to identify and record any stakeholdings, thinking, feelings, and views about what to do. In the next activity, I invite you to do a similar exercise based on where you are now. I then want you to re-examine the notes and compare the earlier perspective against your current perspective.

Expect to spend about half an hour on this activity.

56 Block 1 Part 2 Experiencing complexity

ACTIVITY 29

Record your current thinking, current feelings, and your views about what should be done about this situation.

Try to do this in as much detail as you did before.

Look again at your previous notes.

Make notes about how your thinking has changed.

6 Review In Part 2 of this block, you have undertaken a major piece of work. In encountering the case study you were engaging with a set of events, issues, actors, stakeholders and intentions that was, by any standards, complex. In addition, you brought your own complexity to it, your own stakeholdings and understandings, your own reactions and feelings.

You used systems diagrams to structure the complexity you encountered in the case study. That then structured and clarified the situation in ways that helped you to see through the complexity, without, at the same time denying the complexity. You were able, I hope, to find ways of representing the complexity so that you could see how all the elements of it fitted. I hope you were able to glimpse a number of possible alternative ways of representing the complexity. There are potentially huge numbers of possible systems maps one could draw, lots of multiple-cause diagrams, dozens of influence diagrams. None of them is the right one. There is no right diagram, but there are lots of ways of gaining insights into how the complexity can be structured so that you can begin to comprehend it, and explore how the situation might be improved.

Throughout this section, I have been offering you ways of evaluating your own diagrams and developing them. It can be genuinely disconcerting not to have a single, best answer to aim for, especially for those of us with a technological or scientific background where right answers are an important indicator of learning.

Systems practice, as opposed to the simple appreciation of systems techniques, involves two levels of self-confidence. You need the confidence to use the techniques and approaches and you need the confidence that comes from knowing you are using them well. How are you to know you are using systems approaches well when each situation you encounter is unique? I now believe that skills in evaluating my own use of the approaches are as fundamental as the skills of using the approaches themselves.

Take about 30 minutes to complete the next activity.

ACTIVITY 30

Review what you have learned from Part 2 of this block.

Look back through all the notes you made on all the activities. Make notes in your Learning Album about the following:

^ The experience of engaging with a complex case study.

^ Your experience of drawing diagrams in order to structure complexity. Learning Album

6 Review 57

^ What you have learned about diagrams and diagramming.

^ Your evaluation of your own skills in diagramming. (What elements of your skills do you need to develop?)

^ What you have learned about evaluating your own diagrams.

58 Block 1 Part 2 Experiencing complexity

Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

1 Introduction I wonder if you experience complexity in your daily life? Perhaps you experienced the child-support case study as being complex as I did? For much of the time I struggle to keep my head above water as I try to understand and manage the complexity I experience as part of everyday life. I find social commentator and cartoonist Michael Leunig’s depiction of a solitary figure looking through an ‘understandascope’ (Figure 17) a particularly skilled way of capturing the sense of bewilderment I sometimes feel. For the purposes of Part 3 I am using his cartoon featuring the ‘understandascope’ because it raises a number of important questions relevant to my aims. Using Figure 17 as a metaphor, these questions are:

^ What is it about individual human beings that characterize how they observe the world? i.e. what are the properties of the observer looking through the understandascope?

^ How do humans engage with the world around them? i.e. what are the properties of the understandascope?

^ What sense do humans make of the world they experience? i.e. what sense is the observer able to make about the ‘messy’ sea of human activity that is being engaged with through the understandascope?

^ Does the observer stand outside the ‘messy’ situation being observed or do the properties of the ‘understandascope’ – the way in which s/he engages with the world – enable the observer to be an effective actor in it?

^ What new understandings does the observer have after engaging with the situation through the understandascope?

Figure 17 Understanding complexity? (Leunig, 1985)

Ray writes ...

1 Introduction 59

It will take about 40 hours to study this part of Block 1.

I use Leunig’s cartoon as a means to introduce my ideal of a systems practitioner. As you work through this part of the block I want to invite you to imagine an ideal systems practitioner as a type of understandascope, as a lens through which to develop your own systems practice and to respond to the questions posed above. By ideal, I do not mean highly desirable. I am using the term in a philosophical sense meaning a set of ideas about, or a model of, a systems practitioner.

At the end of this Block, my aim is that you will have a greater understanding of ‘systems approaches to managing complexity’. But what makes it possible to say ‘I understand someone or understand something about the world in which I live?’ Is there a state of mind or body that can usefully be referred to as understanding? By the end of this course our hope is to have provided the means to respond to the question: What is it that we would need to have observed, in others or in ourselves, for us to say that understanding systems practice had occurred? In the language of the cartoon I am asking you to envisage

1 yourself as the observer;

2 the ideal systems practitioner as the understandascope; and

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

You might find it helpful to return to this part as the course goes on. This will enable you to see how the issues raised here are taken up in subsequent blocks from different perspectives.

Figure 18 illustrates the general idea of a practitioner, P. I am using the idea of the practitioner as someone who engages with some so-called ‘real world’ situation in practice, using selected approaches.

A ‘real-world’ situation

Figure 18 A general model for a practitioner, P, engaging with a ‘real world’ situation using an approach, A

I am using the phrase ‘real world’ to distinguish from the conceptual world, the world of thinking. In many ways this is an artificial distinction because the world I perceive to be the ‘real world’ is, in fact, my own conceptual model. What I perceive is conditioned by my conceptual models. So for me the real ‘real world’, is unknowable. My desire is to change the question from ‘what is the world’ to ‘how do I know the world’. So every time I use the term ‘real world’ you should remember that this is a short-hand for the process of coming to know the world.

60 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

Later, I will introduce the idea of the systems practitioner who is a special case of the general practitioner. Figure 17 also depicts a form of practice – a person using an understandascope to do something.

In this Block, the idea of practice, or practising, is a general one in that it is something everyone does. The dictionary definition of practise is ‘to carry out or perform habitually or constantly ... to carry out an action’. Almost everyone has some role in which they practise. Most people occupy a number of roles, in their work or in their community. In these roles it is usual to encounter a number of issues that need dealing with, improving, resolving, or obviating. For example I am a practising father as well as a practising academic.

ACTIVITY 31

In your Learning Album list some of the practices you engage in personally and professionally. Suggest some measures of performance for these practices, i.e. how do you know if you do them well?

Note that some answers to some of the activities in Part 3 can be found towards the end of this Block.

It follows from the dictionary definition that a practitioner is anyone involved in practice – in carrying out an action. If I reflect on my own practice, I am aware that what I do is not as simple as the interaction between practitioner and situation portrayed in Figure 18. I experience myself as something of a juggler trying to keep a number of balls in the air as I practise.

Key:

The B ball symbolizes the attributes of being a practitioner with a particular tradition of understanding.

The E ball symbolizes the characteristics ascribed to the ‘real world’ situation the juggler is engaging with.

The C ball symbolizes the act of adopting or contextualizing a particular approach to a new situation.

The M ball is about how the practitioner is managing their involvement with the situation.

Figure 19 For effective practice four balls (BECM) are juggled

In this course we employ the metaphor of the systems practitioner as juggler and now I am going to focus on four particular balls we (the course team) think need to be kept in the air for any form of effective systems practice (Figure 19).

practice

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1 Introduction 61

Based on my experience, I claim that effective practice involves being aware that these four balls need to be juggled – it takes active attention, and some skill, to keep them all in the air. Things start to go wrong if I let any one of them slip. To be an effective practitioner, I find I have to continuously think about, and act to maintain, four elements: the processes of being a practitioner, my appreciation of the situation I engage with, putting the approach taken into context and managing in the situation. The four verbs, the activities, I am drawing your attention to are being, engaging, contextualizing, and managing. The remainder of the block is structured around these four balls being juggled by a systems practitioner.

1.1 Making sense of the metaphor

The metaphor of the juggler keeping the four balls in the air is a powerful way for me to think about what I do when I try to be effective in my practice. It matches with my experience: it takes concentration and skill to do it well. But metaphors conceal features of experience, as well as calling them to attention. The juggler metaphor conceals that the four elements of effective practice often seem to be related. I cannot juggle them as if they were independent of each other. I can imagine them interacting through gravitational attraction, or the juggler can juggle them differently e.g. the E and B balls with the left or right hand as depicted in Figure 20. This allows me to say that in effective practice the movements of the balls are not only interdependent but also dependent on my actions.

P P P

Figure 20 A metaphorical model of effective practice based on juggling four balls that are also interdependent

ACTIVITY 32

Write down your own initial impressions to the metaphor of the systems practitioner as juggler.

It might be helpful to explore what the metaphor reveals and conceals for you by relating it to one of the roles you have, or situations you have experienced. A spray diagram could be used.

Learning Album

62 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

2 Systems practice – unpacking the juggler metaphor

Systems practice, modelled in Figure 21, is a particular form of the general model of practice in Figure 18. An effective systems practitioner, Ps, is able to use systems approaches in managing complexity. I am not overly concerned with other approaches to practice, and will not be making any extravagant claims that a systems approach is better than other forms of practice. I will, however, develop arguments that enable me to make two claims.

1 Systems practice has particular characteristics that make it qualitatively different to other forms of practice.

2 An effective (or aware) systems practitioner (Ps) can call on a greater variety of options for doing something about complex ‘real world’ situations than other practitioners do.

These are important claims. They will structure most of the argument made in the rest of the block.

‘real-world’ situation

Figure 21 A general model for a systems practitioner, Ps, engaging with a ‘real world’ situation using a systems approach, As and who reflects on their experiences

I intend to build up a picture of an ideal systems practitioner in stages rather than attempting it in one go. Juggling is a set of relationships. A juggler is a person, or living human being, in a particular context, with their body positioned so as to be supported by the floor and in this case they have four different balls. If any of these things are taken away, the juggler, the connection to the floor or the balls then juggling will not arise as a practice. In some situations an audience might also be important, especially if juggling for money. Taking away the audience would destroy the ‘system’, the interconnected set of relationships being envisioned. But there’s more to this set of relationships then meets the eye. Take the juggler for example, she or he is both a unique person and also part of a lineage of groups of organisms called living systems. All living systems have an evolutionary past and a developmental past that is unique to each of us – a set of experiences which means that my world is always different to your world. We can never truly ‘share’ common experiences because this is biologically impossible. We can however communicate with each other about our experiences.

1 Introduction 63

Many well-known systems thinkers had particular experiences, which led them to devote their lives to their particular forms of systems practice. So, within Systems thinking and practice, just as in juggling, there are different traditions, which are perpetuated through lineages (see Figure 22).

ACTIVITY 33

Tick off those blobs in Figure 22 which you have heard of or with which you are familiar.

Do a web search and bookmark some sites which relate to those blobs you have not heard about. Use any search engine to do this perhaps starting with the words or people named in the figure as key words. Some resources can be found on OU Systems websites e.g. http://systems.open.ac.uk; http://open2.net/systems and http://spmc.org.uk.

Before finishing this introduction to the systems practitioner, I want to examine in more detail each of the balls being juggled.

The first ball the effective practitioner juggles is that of being. Juggling is a particularly apt metaphor in this regard because good practice results from centring your body and connecting to the floor. So juggling arises from a particular ‘disposition’ or embodiment. Effective juggling is thus an embodied way of knowing. Lakoff and Johnson (1999) argue that in the Western world, the most common sense view of what a person is arises from a false philosophical view, that of disembodied reason, that has influenced almost all of the professions. They contrast this with an embodied person (Table 1, page 66). For example in medicine until quite recently the brain was seen as quite distinct from the body – the mind– body dualism – whereas the brain is part of a much larger network that includes the nervous, endocrine and immune systems (e.g. Pert, 1997). It is for this reason that I have depicted the juggler with the light in their body rather than above their head. The light symbolizes embodied understanding.

ACTIVITY 34

List the two contrasting ideas from Table 1 (page 66) that you find most challenging to, or supportive of, your current worldview. Explain why.

Being, is concerned with embodiment, with our own awareness and thus our ethics of action, the responsibility we take as citizens. How a practitioner engages with a situation is not just a property of the situation. It is primarily a property of the background, experiences and prejudices of being the practitioner. So, in the next Section I will focus on some of the attributes of the practitioner. One of these attributes is awareness, awareness of self in relation to the balls being juggled and the context for this juggling. The nature of this awareness and what it means to be an aware practitioner will be explored.

The second ball is the E-ball – engaging with a ‘real world’ situation. It is an engagement that can be experienced as messy and complex, or experienced as a situation where there has been a failure or some other unintended consequence. Or the ‘real world’ could be experienced as simple, or complicated or as a situation or as a system. Because I am primarily concerned with situations that are experienced as complex, I will call this engaging with complexity; later I will expand upon what I mean by complexity.

Learning Album

awareness

64 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

information systems

Complexity sciences

OR management science

General Systems Theory

biology Bertalanffy,Miller, Garard

mathematics Rapoport

physiology

C a n n o n

economics

B ou

ld in

g philosophy

He ge

sociology Buckl

systems approaches

system sciences arising from

interdisciplinary movements in the sciences

critical systems

Ja ck

so n,

Ul ric

h, F

lo od

applied systems studies

Op en

Un ive

rsit y,

Ch eck

lan d systems

agriculture

Sped ding,

Baw den

social systemsBuckley, Berrie n,

Vickers, Easto n

Ackoff

systems analysis

RAND Corp.

systems dynamics

Forrester, M eadow

S enge

management cybernetics

S ta

ffo rd

B e e r

biology of cognition

family therapy

experimental epistemology

engineering

computing

information theory

physiology

mathematics

von Foerster

second-order cybernetics

first-order cybernetics

Pask, Maturan a

Ashby, Weiner

Varela

Sh ann

on, Weaver

Wood Harper, Stowell

Myers, Galliers

Figure 22 A model of different influences that have shaped contemporary systems approaches

1 Introduction 65

Table 1 Some contrasting features between the traditional Western conception of the disembodied person with that of an embodied person

Traditional Western conception of the disembodied person

The conception of an embodied person

The world has a unique category structure independent of the minds, bodies or brains of human beings (i.e. an objective world).

Our conceptual system is grounded in, neurally makes use of, and is crucially shaped by our perceptual and motor systems.

There is a universal reason that characterizes the rational structure of the world. Both concepts and reason are independent of the minds, bodies and brains of human beings.

We can only form concepts through the body. Therefore every understanding that we can have of the world, ourselves, and others can only be framed in terms of concepts shaped by our bodies.

Reasoning may be performed by the human brain but its structure is defined by universal reason, independent of human bodies or brains. Human reason is therefore disembodied reason.

Because our ideas are framed in terms of our unconscious embodied conceptual systems, truth and knowledge depend on embodied understanding.

We can have objective knowledge of the world via the use of universal reason and universal concepts.

Unconscious, basic-level concepts (e.g. primary metaphors) use our perceptual imaging and motor systems to characterize our optimal functioning in everyday life – it is at this level at which we are in touch with our environments.

The essence of human beings, that which separates us from the animals, is the ability to use universal reason.

We have a conceptual system that is linked to our evolutionary past (as a species). Conceptual metaphors structure abstract concepts in multiple ways, understanding is pluralistic, with a great many mutually inconsistent structurings of abstract concepts.

Since human reason is disembodied, it is separate from and independent of all bodily capacities: perception, bodily movements, feeling emotions and so on.

Because concepts and reason both derive from, and make use of, our perceptual and motor systems, the mind is not separate from or independent of the body (and thus classical faculty psychology is incorrect).

(Source: After Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, pp. 552–557)

The third ball is concerned with how a systems practitioner puts particular systems approaches into context (i.e. contextualizing) for taking action in the ‘real world’; that’s the juggler’s C ball. One of the main skills of a systems practitioner is to learn, through experience, to manage the relationship between a particular systems approach and the ‘real world’ situation she or he is using it in. Adopting an approach is more than just choosing one of the methods that already exists. This is why I use the phrase ‘putting into context’, to indicate a process of contextualization involved in the choice of approach.

The final ball the effective practitioner juggles is that of managing (the M ball). This is concerned with juggling as an overall performance. The term ‘managing’ is often used to describe the process by which a practitioner engages with a ‘real world’ situation. This is a special form of engagement, so later I will explore some of the features associated with managing. Managing also introduces the idea of change over time, in both the situation and the practitioner.

contextualization

66 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

There are clearly many ways in which being, engaging, and contextualizing are carried out, or could be carried out. Thus, when considering managing I shall be concerned with managing the juggling in ‘real world’ situations experienced as complex.

You will find that in each TMA for this course there is one question that relates to developing your project – where you have an opportunity to develop your systems practice. I would urge you to keep Figure 21 and the juggler metaphor in mind when you are answering these questions because a competent answer will always refer to the relationship between practitioner (you and your being), the approach you are envisaging given the nature of the situation as you and other stakeholders perceive it (i.e. your mode of engaging with a situation of interest), how you envisage adapting your practice to the circumstances (contextualizing) and how you plan to manage the overall activity.

3 Being a systems practitioner The structure of Section 3 is set out in Figure 23. Use this as a way of keeping track of the argument I am making.

become aware of constraints and possibilities of observer

review modelling in the modelling pack

appreciate your basis for understanding

distinguish between history and tradition

consider what being ethical might mean

distinguish between systemic and

systematic thinking and action

review implications for practice of juggling the B ball

Figure 23 An activity-sequence diagram for this section of Part 3: being a systems practitioner

5 This section is based around material prepared initially by Professor Peter Roberts, to whom I am

grateful.

1 Introduction 67

ACTIVITY 35

Develop a table in your Learning Album with three columns. Put the verbs from each of the blobs in Figure 23 in one column. Jot down what they mean to you now in the next column and, at the end of your study of this section, jot down how your understanding has changed, if at all, in the third column.

I am concerned with the juggling of the B ball in this section. As I write, I imagine this ball is shiny and thus acts as a mirror reflecting an image of the juggler. The properties of the juggler as systems practitioner come under the spotlight in this section. In choosing the word ‘being’ I am deliberately playing, metaphorically, with different meanings of being – one of which is, of course, ‘human being’. Some of the special features of being human include consciousness, language, emotions, and the capacity to reason or rationalize. It is also claimed that human beings live with a desire for explanations they find satisfying. You may have had the experience of a child repeatedly asking why?, how?, and then stopping after you have given a particular answer. The child finally finds your explanation satisfying – it makes sense within the child’s world – and the child no longer needs to ask.

Perhaps you have experienced explanations that did not satisfy at all. If you are aware of this occurring did you note what it felt like? By this I mean, were you in touch with your emotions when you became aware that a particular explanation was satisfying or dissatisfying? By asking this question, I am saying it is legitimate to acknowledge your emotions – they are part of living and need not be ignored. I would go further and argue that an ideal systems practitioner is able to include an awareness of their emotions as well as their rational ideas. I find my Systems practice is enriched when I am able to access both.

3.1 Being aware of the constraints and possibilities of the observer

It is often claimed that the essence of a systems approach is that of seeing the world in a special way. This immediately prompts the question of what is meant by the phrase ‘seeing the world’. Because we live so intimately with the world of objects, categories and people and phenomena, we tend to think our own way of seeing the world is the only way, or even of thinking, ‘Well that is my view because the world is like that’. Actually, your view is special in several separate ways.

(a) If your vision is not impaired, you see your surroundings using only light of wavelengths between 380 nm and 780 nm (nanometers or 1 610-9 m). Bees, for example, see flowers using wavelengths less than 380 nm. You have quite a small visual window on the world.

(b) Research on colour perception in the 1960s showed that colour was not something that is fixed in the world, but is a property of our own unique histories. This led one of the researchers involved to change the question he was concerned with from ‘how do I see colour’? to ‘what happens in me when I say that I see such a colour?’

(c) With normal hearing you hear frequencies of sound between 20 Hz and 20 000 Hz (Hertz). Bats use sound waves of higher frequency than 20 kHz, which we cannot hear.

(d) Your ability to detect odours is vastly inferior to a dog’s. A dog’s ‘smell world’ is vastly richer than its visual world.

68 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

(e) The language you have learned steers you into categorizing your world in ways you are largely unaware of, just as a fish is unaware of the water it is immersed in throughout its life. Sometimes it is possible to become aware of this when speaking another language – when immersed in the other language the experience is sometimes like being a different person.

(f) Your physiological state and the dynamic relationship of this with your emotional state also affect how you experience the world. This ranges from aspects of the functioning of your nervous system and its role in cognition, to hormonal events such as menstruation, and the release of natural endorphins during exercise.

(g) The culture of the society in which you have developed has determined what you see as well as how you can respond in any flow of relationships. Your culture determines what is implicit in your perceptions and emotions. So the ways you see manners, relationships and behaviours is dependent in turn on how people around you see and act.

(h) A special subset of the last point is the particular explanations we accept for things we experience. The ‘theoretical windows’ through which we interpret and act are always with us regardless of whether we are aware of them or not. Figure 24 provides a metaphorical account of this phenomenon. The theory or explanation you accept will determine what you see and thus the meaning you will give to an experience. Think here, for example, of the fundamentally different cosmology, the set of explanations for the origin and evolution of the universe, developed by the Mayan civilization in South America that was entirely coherent but so different to Western cosmology. This is sometimes described as the theory dependency of facts.

Figure 24 A metaphorical account of the way theories (planet on telescope) determine what we see in the world. The mischief makers in this example are the theory makers – their framing of the situation can determine what is experienced

1 Introduction 69

ACTIVITY 36

Checking out your own capacities as an observer.

(This should take no more than 10 minutes.) Even now, your mind set – the way you see things – can be easily influenced. To see how this statement is true follow the instructions carefully.

If your last name begins with a letter between A to M, look carefully at Figure 25. Then look carefully at Figure 27 overleaf.

If your last name begins with a letter between N to Z, look carefully at Figure 26. Then look carefully at Figure 27 overleaf.

If you are an A-to-M, you probably saw the young woman, and if you are an N-to-Z, you probably saw the old woman. Tests of these pictures, done with groups of students, show that prior influence is always powerful. This activity raises two important questions.

1 What is experience? In this example some people experienced a young woman whilst others experienced an old woman yet both looked at the same image. This leads me to claim that experience arises by making a distinction – if you are unable to distinguish a young woman then you have no experience of one!

2 Is it possible to decide on which interpretation, the young woman, the old woman or merely the ink on the paper, is correct? In other words do we reject those people who see only an old woman as being ‘wrong’?

On the basis of doing Activity 36 try the next activity. Spend no more than about 10 minutes on it.

Figure 25 Figure 26

70 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

ACTIVITY 37

When you talk about experience what do you mean?

Describe what was, for you, a new experience.

For me the following story was helpful in making sense of what I mean by experience. I had the good fortune to do a consultancy in South Africa just after the first multi-racial elections. It was a time of goodwill and enthusiasm and general optimism. An incident happened towards the end of a flight from Johannesburg to East London in the new province of the Eastern Cape.

As the plane taxied up the tarmac towards the terminal, I experienced my South African colleague, in the seat next to me, as becoming agitated and tense. Looking out the window, as he was, I could not distinguish anything that I could see as the cause of his distress. When I enquired, he pointed to some seemingly innocuous cement pillars, which he explained were the remains of gun emplacements left over from the state of emergency in the apartheid era. Because of his history, which was different to mine, he had seen what I could not see, that is his observation consisted of distinctions that I had not made. Furthermore, the distinctions my colleague made altered his mental, emotional and physiological state – they altered his being. My colleague made distinctions I was unable to make and thus he experienced something I did not.

The act of making a distinction is quite basic to what it is to be human. When we make a distinction we split the world into two parts: this and that. We separate the thing distinguished from its background. We do that when we distinguish a system from its environment. (Remember, using the word system is actually shorthand for specifying a system in relation to an environment.) In process terms, this is the same as drawing a circle on a sheet of paper. When the circle is closed, three different elements are brought forth at the same time: an inside, an outside and a border (in systems terminology, a boundary). In daily life we have developed all sorts of perceptual shortcuts that cause us to forget this is what we do – we live, most of the time, with our focus on one of these three elements: the inside, the outside, or the border. Biologically, we cannot focus on both sides of a distinction at the same time. Heinz von Foerster (1984) observed that the descriptions we make say more about ourselves than about the world we are describing.

While the old woman–young woman example is now well known, the implications that flow from it are not. The activity, and the points listed prior to that demonstrate that in the experience we cannot distinguish between perception and illusion and that ‘we do not see that [which] we do not see’ (Maturana and Varela, 1987). It is ironic that we pay money to go and see illusionists, and marvel at their artistry, yet remain unaware that illusion is also part of daily life. For systems practice this idea is challenging in a number of ways:

(a) It draws my attention to what is involved in the process of modelling, of which diagramming is a subset. It raises the question of whether we model some part of the world or model our models of some part of the world. This is a point that is not taken up in the Systems Thinking and Practice: Diagramming and Modelling packs (T552 and T553).

(b) It challenges the certainty of some practitioners who claim they are objective or they are right, and because of this, affects the way they practise.

Learning Album

T552, T553

modelling

1 Introduction 71

(c) It reminds me that my perspective is always partial and a product of my cognitive history (I would include emotions as part of a cognitive history). Thus, when forming a system of interest, the question of ‘perspective, who’s perspective?’ is crucial.

(d) It reminds me to be aware of the constraints and possibilities of the observer as I juggle the B ball in my practice.

The properties and role of the observer have been largely ignored in science and everyday culture despite Werner Heisenberg’s finding in 1927 that the act of observing a phenomenon is an intervention that alters the phenomenon in ways that cannot be inferred from the results of the observation. This is the essence of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which limits the determinability of elementary events (von Foerster, 1994). The story of how the observer came into focus is an interesting one in the history of Systems and its associated field of cybernetics. Lloyd Fell and David Russell (2000) describe it in Box 1; its lineage can be seen in Figure 22.

Being aware of the constraints and possibilities of the observer enhances our repertoire of behavioural responses. Because we are able to communicate with one another, and because we live within cultures we can take shortcuts: it makes sense sometimes to act as if we are independent of the world around us. Sometimes it also makes sense to act as if systems existed in the world and as if we could be objective. But remember, the two small words as and if are important in the context of our behaviour when we attempt to manage. From the perspective developed in this section, it is always a shortcut when we leave them out.

Figure 27

72 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

Box 1 How the observer has come into focus

Cybernetics, although often applied to the control of machines, has long been one of the foundations of thought about human communication, its central notion being circularity. Cybernetics ‘arises when effectors, say a motor, an engine, our muscles, etc., are connected to a sensory organ which, in turn, acts with its signals upon the effectors. It is this circular organization which sets cybernetic systems apart from others that are not so organized’ (von Foerster, 1992). In first-order cybernetics it was the idea of feedback control which mainly occupied the practitioners, but in time the question ‘what controls the controller’ returned to view (Glanville 1995a,b) and the property of circularity became the focus of attention once again.

Second-order cybernetics is a theory of the observer rather than what is being observed. Heinz von Foerster’s phrase, ‘the cybernetics of cybernetics’ was apparently first used by him in the early 1960s as the title of Margaret Mead’s opening speech at the first meeting of the American Cybernetics Society when she had not provided written notes for the Proceedings. [The understandings which have arisen from second-order cybernetics...] requires a loosening of our grip on the supposedly certain knowledge that is acquired objectively, about a reality existing independently of us, and a willingness to consider the constructivist idea (see Mahoney, 1988) that we each construct our own version of reality in the course of our living together. The virtue of objectivity was that the properties of the observer should be separate from the description of what is being observed. This led to what von Foerster (1992) called the Pontius Pilate attitude of abrogating responsibility because the observer is an innocent bystander who can claim he or she had no choice. The alternative attitude, which seems to be less popular today, is to own a personal preference for one among various alternatives.’

(Fell and Russell, 2000)

3.2 Appreciating your basis for understanding

In my experience, the explanation that Fell and Russell suggest (i.e. that 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) is challenging for many people. When I attend workshops where these ideas are expressed for the first time, people often become angry. You may be able to identify with them. If so, please try to use your discomfort productively for your own learning. It is profoundly disturbing to have the basis for your understanding of the world challenged. It seems important to do it, however, because in my experience, it gives access to new and practical explanations. I have already acknowledged you may find some explanations dissatisfying but, in the end, that is all they are – just explanations. If you don’t find them satisfying you need not accept them. Just the same, I invite you to look at them for a while before dismissing them.

ACTIVITY 38

Responding to the distinctions about the observer.

Find a way of expressing your emotional and rational responses to the material in Box 1 about the observer. One way could be to use your Learning Album to record these.

Learning Album

1 Introduction 73

the world

attention

problem solving

stimulus sensory register

(very short-term)

short-term memory

long-term memory

(knowledge, language, goals, etc.)

decision making

response

the world

Figure 28 The prevailing but questionable information-processing model of the mind (Rosch, 1992)

Relatively recent findings in cognitive science (e.g. colour perception), which are not widely appreciated, challenge some widely held ‘common sense’ notions. Take information for example. Many people assume that individuals would be better decision makers if they had better information. But how do we gain this information?

Since about 1950, the prevailing view in cognitive science has been that the nervous system picks up information from the environment and processes it to provide a representation of the outside world in our brain. This has been described as the information-processing model of the mind (Figure 28). We now know that the nervous system is closed, without inputs or outputs, and its cognitive operation reflects only its own organization. Because of this, we are imposing our constructed information – or our meaning – on to the environment, rather than the other way around. This is much like Figure 24, except this time the pattern of the planet is contained in our nervous system rather than the lens of the telescope. It implies our interactions with the ‘real world’, including other people, can never be deterministic; there are no unambiguous external signals.

Instead, our interactions consist of non-specific triggers, which we each interpret strictly according to our own internal structural dynamics (Fell and Russell, 2000). This has profound implications for how human communication is understood – it is not signal or information transfer but a process of meaning construction much as depicted in Figure 29 (but note, it is never shared as this cartoon depicts). Within this line of reasoning it is argued that we human beings exist, and are realized as such, in conversations. It is not that we use conversations; we are a flow of conversations. It is not that language is the home of our being but that the human being is a dynamic manner of being in language, not a body, not an entity that has an existence independent of language, and which can then use language as an instrument for communication.

For example when the word nature is used in modern Western discourse it is often used in such a way that leads us to live as if we human beings are outside nature. The concept ‘nature’ thus structures who we are and what

74 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

we do. In some indigenous, non-western languages the term or concept does not exist. Obviously, this view has implications for what we mean by communication within systems practice.

Figure 29 Human communication involves the construction of meaning (O’Brien, 1990)

The notion that we exist in language and co-construct meaning in human communication, much as dancers co-construct the tango or samba on the dance floor, suggests the need to consider on what basis we might accept that understanding has occurred. Asking this question is like opening a Pandora’s box. It raises all sorts of questions that we take for granted, like: What is learning? What is understanding? How do we know what we know? Some of these questions are addressed in the next sub-section.

3.2.1 Experience – making distinctions based on a tradition and constructing a history

Experience, and learning from experience, will be a major theme throughout this course. The model of experiential learning developed by David Kolb is increasingly well known and used as a conceptual basis for the design of all sorts of processes from curricula to consultancies (Figure 30). The model itself is developed in an applied form in Blocks 2 and 3. In itself, the model is powerful but it does not address what is meant by experience or learning. In what follows, I want to provide a brief account of what these could be taken to be. My explanation is not mainstream, but arises from an appreciation of the constraints and possibilities of the observer described earlier and from the lineage labelled as second-order cybernetics in Figure 22.

thinking enables

decision

leads toaction generates

experience

provokes

Figure 30 The experiential learning model adapted from Kolb which starts with experience

Figure 31 depicts a person (a living being) over time; as unique human beings we are part of a lineage and our history is a product of both ontogeny, which means biological growth and development, and social development. Together these form what I will call a tradition. A tradition is the history of our being in the world. Traditions are important because our models of understanding grow out of traditions. The various shapes in the clouds above the practitioner’s head in Figure 31 are used to depict

? ?

Pandora’s box

environment

1 Introduction 75

how our model(s) of understanding change over time. The lightbulbs depict how, over time, we can become more aware of our embodied understandings, which in turn influences systems practice.

the past

the present

tradition history

time

distinction

‘real-world’ situation

Ps Ps

Figure 31 A model of a systems practitioner (Ps) growing in awareness (shown by lightbulbs) with a tradition of understanding (shown by the different shapes) engaging with a ‘real world’ situation that has a history that can be explored

I have portrayed ‘a practitioner’ with a prior model of understanding and a current model of understanding in Figure 31. From their current model(s) – it need not be one – the systems practitioner connects with a ‘real world’ situation and makes a distinction. Based on this distinction, the practitioner can probe, or construct, the history of a situation.

Figure 31 is a refinement of the processes of being and engaging. I have now used the word tradition a number of times, including in Figure 31. I use the word in a specific way. I will call a tradition our history of making distinctions as human beings. Because experiences arise in the act of making a distinction, another way of describing a tradition is as our experiential history. To do this requires language – if we did not ‘live in’ language we would simply exist in a continuous present not ‘having experiences’. Because of language we are able to reflect on what is happening, or in other words we create an object of what is happening and name it ‘experience’

6 .

Let me try to explain what I mean in Figure 31 by considering the main fictional character Smilla, in Peter Høeg’s novel ‘Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow’ (1994). Smilla was born and spent her early years in Greenland. Her mother was an Inuit and an expert hunter. Being half Danish, Smilla subsequently pursued a Western education that built on her earlier experiences. She became an expert in the qualities of ice and snow. It was her understanding of the many different qualities of ice and snow that enabled her to solve the murder of an Inuit child around which the story is built. Her understanding also enabled her to survive in the snow and icy water when pursued by the murderers.

6 I am particularly grateful to Dr Pille Bunnell for comments on this section.

76 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

As an author, Høeg has grounded the distinctions Smilla is able to make about snow and ice in the history and culture of the Inuit people. Inuit culture is set against the background of continuous snow and ice. Survival depends on being able to ‘read’ the snow and ice in detail. This detail can reveal, for example, how long ago a wolf left its footprints and whether the ice will support the weight of a dog team. The distinctions the Inuit make assume their importance because of the actions they allow. They arise as embodied ways of knowing and acting in which knowledge is not separate from action. The distinctions Smilla, or other Inuit make, are not distinctions I could make except that, having read the book, I could claim to know about some of the different categories of ice and snow. But would I, in similar circumstances, be able to escape from the murderers and solve the case based on what I claim I know? The answer is no, because the distinctions Smilla makes are invisible to me; they are not part of my tradition. That would remain the case until such times as I was able to embody the distinctions about snow and ice quality and colour in my actions: for example being competent to run on snow without falling or to find the kind of snow that can be built into a shelter. From this example, the only connection I can make with my tradition is that of ‘making categories’. In contrast to Smilla, this is a rather poverty-stricken form of knowing about snow!

SAQ 6

On what does Smilla’s ability to distinguish different types of snow and ice depend? What would you have to do to develop a similar skill?

Traditions are not only ways to see and act but a way to conceal (Russell and Ison 2000a). Traditions in a culture embed what has, over time, been judged to be useful practice but there is a danger that they may become accepted practice (reified or institutionalised) in ways that no longer seem helpful. The risk for any culture is that a tradition can become a blind spot when it evolves into practice lacking any manner of critical reflection being connected to it. The effects of blind spots can be observed at the level of the individual, the group, the organization, the nation or culture and in the metaphors and discourses in which we are immersed.

A systems practitioner always engages with the ‘real world’ situation by making distinctions which are grounded in his or her personal history of distinction-making. Based on the distinctions he or she makes, the practitioner can probe the history of the situation, much like an archaeologist, to reveal those dynamics which relate to the distinctions he or she has made. It is possible to connect with a particular history whenever we make sense of a distinction in relation to its particular historical context. For example, if you look at Figure 32 I suspect that you would have little difficulty making sense of the distinction ‘British dinosaur’ in relation to a history of symbolizing British culture through the image of a bulldog and the union flag.

Because much of my practice is based in academia, and because I often encounter situations in which proposals are considered uncritically, I have found it useful to engage with the history of particular practices that impact on me. Many good insights can be found in Neil Postman’s book: Technopoly. The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1993). Of the many examples he cites, I was intrigued by the history of the practice of quantifying learning, that is, giving a mark or grade for academic work. Today it seems so much part of our daily life we do not question it. Yet prior to 1792, when it was first carried out at the University of Cambridge this was an unknown practice. Interestingly it was fostered mainly by military colleges.

1 Introduction 77

I call practices such as grading and examining, which become unquestioningly incorporated into a culture, social technologies – this is also what I mean by a practice becoming reified. All explanations also have a history, something which has become more apparent in recent years with the emergence of new academic disciplines in the history and sociology of science and technology. Explanations are also open to historical (re)interpretation.

So, after reading Peter Høeg’s novel I can claim that I know about the different categories of snow by listing them. Perhaps after visiting Greenland with an Inuit guide I could claim that I know the different kinds of snow if I can distinguish them successfully. To claim I understand them would require me to be able to explain how, when and where different kinds are formed or found, and what implications they have for various activities, my own and other animals. In this latter two cases I need to ground the categories or distinctions within the historical context of the Inuit, much as I have tried to do in my brief description above. However I would need to do much more to embody these distinctions in my practices in the snow, that is to know, or practice in, snow. To know snow I would need to be able to claim that I have embedded my distinctions in a tradition – my own network of pre- understandings out of which I think and act. A test would be that under similar circumstances to Smilla my behaviour had similar results.

Of course, sometimes traditions collide!

Figure 33 When traditions collide. This is particularly the case when dialogue is not possible or is not sought

Figure 32 A British dinosaur: making a connection with an example of a particular history of symbolic representation

78 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

ACTIVITY 39

Connecting with a history in your own context.

At the beginning of this part of the block, I invited you to consider one of your own role(s) and situation(s) that could be kept in mind as you worked through the part. With this in mind, are you able to think of a practice that is carried out unquestioningly? Are you able to engage in any elementary archaeology to uncover some of the history of this practice? Do try this activity but do not worry if you are unable to identify one.

3.2.2 Distinctions about systems practice

A tension has existed throughout the history of Western thought around whether to focus on parts or the whole. The practice that springs from this history carries the same tension. This tension has been particularly visible within science and philosophy for a long time and it gives rise to different approaches. I will be addressing these tensions in Section 4.

Emphasizing the parts has been called mechanistic, reductionist or atomistic. An emphasis on the whole has been called holistic, organismic or ecological. As Fritjof Capra (1996) notes: ‘In twentieth century science the holistic perspective has become known as ‘‘systemic’’ and the way of thinking it implies as ‘‘systems thinking’’.’ Capra also claims systems thinking is ‘contextual’ thinking; and since explaining things in their context means explaining them in relation to their environment, I can also say all systems thinking is environmental thinking.

Two adjectives arise from the word system. Systemic thinking, thinking in terms of wholes, may be contrasted with systematic thinking, which is linear, step-by-step thinking. Likewise, it is possible to recognize systemic practice and systematic practice. Table 2 summarizes some of the characteristics that distinguish between systemic and systematic thinking and action.

Both systematic thinking and systemic thinking have their place. I am not in any way trying to set up an idea that systemic is good, systematic is bad. They are not in opposition in the hands of an aware practitioner. My own perspective, when managing or intervening in messy situations is that it is usually more appropriate to approach the task systemically. In other words, systemic thinking provides the context for systematic thinking and action. Thus my ideal, aware, systems practitioner is one who is able to distinguish between systemic and systematic thinking and is able to embody these distinctions in practice. This has implications for the initial starting conditions for any form of purposeful action – i.e. do I start out systemically or systematically? I take this up in Section 4 in terms of engaging with complexity in a given ‘real world’ situation.

Of course, I am building an ideal model and day-to-day experience is different from this. No person can expect to become or embody the ideal overnight. It requires active engagement in a process of experiential learning. The other point I wish to make is that I am not equating the systems practitioner role with someone who is a professional consultant. This is a possible role, but in my idealized model the systems practitioner is anyone interested in understanding and taking action in any context.

Learning Album

1 Introduction 79

Table 2 A summary of the characteristics that distinguish systemic thinking and action and systematic thinking and action

Systemic thinking Systematic thinking

Properties of the whole differ, they are said to emerge from their parts; e.g. the wetness of water cannot be understood in terms of hydrogen and oxygen.

The whole can be understood by considering just the parts through linear cause-effect mechanisms.

Boundaries of systems are determined by the perspectives of those who participate in formulating them. The result is a system of interest.

Systems exist as concrete entities; there is a correspondence between the description and the described phenomenon.

Individuals hold partial perspectives of the whole; when combined, these provide multiple partial perspectives.

Perspective is not important.

Systems are characterized by feedback; may be negative, i.e. compensatory or balancing; or positive, i.e. exaggerating or reinforcing.

Analysis is linear.

Systems cannot be understood by analysis of the component parts. The properties of the parts are not intrinsic properties, but can be understood only within the context of the larger whole through studying the interconnections.

A situation can be understood by step-by-step analysis followed by evaluation and repetition of the original analysis.

Concentrates on basic principles of organization. Concentrates on basic building blocks.

Systems are nested within other systems – they are multi-layered and interconnect to form networks.

There is a foundation on which the parts can be understood.

Contextual. Analytical.

Concerned with process. Concerned with entities and properties.

The properties of the whole system are destroyed when the system is dissected, either physically or theoretically, into isolated elements.

The system can be reconstructed after studying the components.

Systemic action Systematic action

The espoused role and the action of the decision-maker is very much part of an interacting ecology of systems. How the researcher perceives the situation is critical to the system being studied. The role is that of participant- conceptualizer.

The espoused role of the decision-maker is that of participant-observer. In practice, however, the decision maker claims to be objective and thus remains ‘outside’ the system being studied.

Ethics are perceived as being multi-levelled as are the levels of systems themselves. What might be good at one level might be bad at another. Responsibility replaces objectivity in whole-systems ethics.

Ethics and values are not addressed as a central theme. They are not integrated into the change process; the researcher takes an objective stance.

It is the interaction of the practitioner and a system of interest with its context (its environment) that is the main focus of exploration and change.

The system being studied is seen as distinct from its environment. It may be spoken of in open-system terms but intervention is performed as though it were a closed system.

Perception and action are based on experience of the world, especially on the experience of patterns that connect entities and the meaning generated by viewing events in their contexts.

Perception and action are based on a belief in a ‘real world’; a world of discrete entities that have meaning in and of themselves.

There is an attempt to stand back and explore the traditions of understanding in which the practitioner is immersed.

Traditions of understanding may not be questioned although the method of analysis may be evaluated.

80 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

SAQ 7

Being systemic or systematic.

Classify the following statements as reflecting either a systemic or systematic perspective. What are the implications of classifying these statements in this way?

(a) My car is getting old and periodically refuses to start. When it does, I have to check a series of options and do some tests to discover what’s causing the latest trouble.

(b) There is no point in having a meeting to discuss this because the antagonisms within the department will dominate the situation and there are too few people interested in changing that.

(c) I am being investigated by the Inland Revenue because my accountant made an error in calculating the dividend I received from the business last year.

(d) The understanding of life is based on an understanding of DNA and how this is incorporated in genes.

(e) As the managing director, I always found out what all participants in a disagreement thought and felt about what went on. Therefore, I could never blame any one person for the conflicts and messes that arose. I did my best to help each participant understand the others were taking a different view and had misunderstood aspects of the situation.

3.2.3 Leaning and effective action

I claim that learning is about effective action. It is distinguished when I, or another observer, recognize that I can perform what I was unable to perform before. Following Reyes and Zarama (1998), I am going to claim learning is an assessment made by an observer based on observed capacity for action. From this perspective, learning is not about ideas stored in our mind, but about action. So what makes an action effective? Reyes and Zarama (1998, p. 26) make the following claims:

Assessments change through history.[...] A major blindness we often observe in people is the almost exclusive attention they pay to learning particular skills as a way to become effective and successful in the future. However, they do not pay much attention to the fact that the standards to assess effectiveness in the future may be very different from the ones used today.[...] Actions by themselves never generate effectiveness. Only actions that comply with existing social standards can produce it.[...] A good example [...] is the importance granted today to ecological concerns. Based on historical changes in standards of effectiveness, procedures that were considered extremely effective in the past are now discarded because they do not meet ecological standards.

This historical pattern of changes in what constitutes effectiveness is made in our social communications – it is referred to as discourses in the social sciences. Making judgements about effectiveness is something we do every day when we say, ‘He is a good footballer’, or, ‘She is a good manager’. Implicit in these statements are some measures of performance against which we judged effectiveness. I know from my own experience that my own standards of effectiveness are different to my daughter’s when, after listening to a CD, I say, ‘She is a good singer’!

1 Introduction 81

To be highly competent in practice, any practice, requires learning to be embodied – incorporated in the body itself. This is clear if we watch an Olympic hurdler or any other consummate athlete or performer. Every learning involves an alteration of the learner’s body to perform the newly- learned actions. Thus, practice must happen. If I have an aspiration it is to be able to embody my systems practice. I think I have a long way to go, but I have experienced systems practitioners who meet many of the criteria of my ideal. There is, however one further element of being a systems practitioner that requires juggling.

3.3 Being ethical

As outlined in Table 2, ethics within systemic practice are perceived as operating on multiple levels. Like the systems concept of hierarchy, what we perceive to be good at one level might be bad at another. Because an epistemological position must be chosen, rather than taken as a given, the choice involves taking responsibility. The choices made have ethical implications. Within systematic practice ethics and values are generally not addressed as a central theme unless the practitioner is aware of the choice they are making. If there is no awareness, they are not integrated into the change process because the practitioner or researcher takes an objective stance that excludes ethical considerations. Recourse to objectivity can be a means of avoiding responsibility (see also Maturana, 1988).

My concern is with the ethics of systems practice. Heinz von Foerster (1992), citing philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein claims that ‘ethics cannot be articulated’. Further, ‘it is clear that ethics has nothing to do with punishment and reward in the usual sense of the terms. Nevertheless, there must indeed be some kind of ethical reward and punishment, but they must reside in the action. Von Foerster goes on to consider the epistemological choice I outlined in Table 2 in terms of the following questions:

^ Am I apart from the universe? Whenever I look, am I looking as through a peephole upon an unfolding universe? Or

^ Am I part of the universe? Whenever I act, am I changing myself and the universe as well?

He then goes on to say:

Whenever I reflect on these two alternatives, I am surprised again and again by the depth of the abyss that separates the two fundamentally different worlds that can be created by such a choice. Either to see myself as a citizen of an independent universe, whose regularities, rules and customs I may eventually discover, or to see myself as the participant in a conspiracy [in the sense of collective action], whose customs, rules and regulations we are now inventing.

The ethical way forward, von Foerster argues, is to always try to act to increase the number of choices available. By this he seeks in his own practices to act in ways that do not limit the activities of other people: ‘Because the more freedom one has, the more choices one has, and the better chance that people will take responsibility for their own actions. Freedom and responsibility go hand in hand.’ (von Foerster and Perkson, 2002, p. 37).

82 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

A practical tool for acting ethically is to be aware of the language used in a conversation. For example, by turning away from statements that begin with ‘That is the way it is’! To enter a conversation convinced you are right or that your perspective is the only valid one limits the choices available to those who wish to pursue a conversation. Of course this does not mean you have to agree with the perspective on offer! This is taken up in Block 3.

SAQ 8

List the ways the available choices could have been increased in the child support case study. State any other ways of being ethical you would like to apply.

3.4 Reviewing some implications for systems practice

The following anecdote exemplifies one of the main reasons why I think juggling the B ball is important for systems practice. The story relates to two practitioners who were able to connect with the history of organizational complexity ideas. It describes the process they chose to take in response to a highly specific organizational-development tender document couched in traditional ways:

Our first decision was to challenge the tender document.[...] When asked to present our proposals to the tender panel we ignored the presenter/audience structure in which the room had been arranged by drawing chairs up to the table and conversing with the client group. We began a discussion about the way those present were thinking about organizational and cultural change and emphasized the unknowability of the evolution of a complex organization in a complex environment. Instead of offering workshops or programmes we proposed an emergent, one step at a time contract [...] to discover and create opportunities to work with the live issues and tasks that were exercising people formally and informally in the working environment. [...] we were subsequently told that the panel’s decision to appoint us was unanimous. (Shaw, p.10, 2002)

When reflecting on this experience Patricia Shaw made the following comments:

We were told by one of the directors, ‘Everyone else made a presentation based on knowing what to do. You were the only ones who spoke openly about not knowing while still being convincing. It was quite a relief’. Our success in interesting the client group in working with us seemed to be based on:

(a) Making it legitimate in this situation not to be able to specify outcomes and a plan of action in advance, by so doing we made ‘not knowing’ an intelligent response.

(b) Pointing out the contradictions between the messy, emergent nature of our experience of organizational life and the dominant paradigm of how organizations change through the implementation of prior intent.

1 Introduction 83

This approach helped to contain the anxiety of facing the real uncertainties of such a project together. It was an example of contracting for emergent outcomes.

What does this story tell us? It shows that how we think about the world; our theories and models are a result of experience, even if implicit, determine what we do in the world. Our theories predispose us to engage with ‘real world’ situations in particular ways. Unlike the other consultants, Patricia Shaw and her colleague, did not respond to the tender as if it were a problem for which they had the answer. I have experienced Shaw in action, and think she has embodied her conversational theories in her actions.

This approach is potentially able to encompass all of the complexity in the situation. It is also able to bring forth the multiple perspectives through the engagement of all the actors in the situation. They used conversations, interviews and even drama to achieve this. This allows outcomes to emerge from the process rather than being defined in the form of a plan with outcomes specified in advance. Sometimes highly specific plans that are not renegotiated iteratively as the environment changes are called blueprints, and the process called blueprint planning. Shaw and her colleague approached their task as an unfolding process of ‘engaging’ in which all parties were learning or co-constructing new meanings in the situation (Shaw, 2002). Systemic approaches to managing complexity, of which this is an example, are designed to achieve emergent outcomes because they orchestrate a process of learning. These ideas are developed further in Block 4.

You will, of course, recognize that the behaviour of Shaw and her colleague is not appropriate in all contexts, although I think the approach could be used more. In the case of an engineer responding to some specific request that required precise technical specifications another response may have been appropriate.

Being aware or, becoming aware of our being, I argue, increases the repertoire of possible actions available to a systems practitioner. It is the first step on the journey from being to becoming. Being aware, or not, of the issues I have raised in this section creates the initial starting conditions for engaging with complexity, the subject of the next section.

SAQ 9

State the main ways you need to be self-aware as a practitioner. What are the advantages of each awareness, and what are the traps if you do not have each awareness?

Remember to return to the table you developed for Activity 35 in your Learning Album and note down any changes in understanding resulting from your study of this section.

4 Engaging with complexity I have organized the material in this section so that you can follow the activity route shown in Figure 34.

This section is primarily concerned with what can be understood by the term complexity, and how to compare it with the ideas of difficulty and mess you may have encountered in your previous OU study of Systems.

difficulty mess

84 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

To do this, you are first asked to notice your developing understanding of complexity in Section 4.1, and then to enter a deeper engagement with the distinction between difficulties and messes in Section 4.2. The substance of Section 4.3 is an exploration of the conceptual links between complexity and mess. It also alerts you to the many ways the term complexity is used, especially in relation to the new complexity sciences.

articulate how your appreciation of complexity

has changed since beginning the course

Section 4.1

interpret experience of case study in Part 2

in terms of messes and difficulties

Section 4.2

become aware there are different perspectives

on complexity

Appendix C

explore conceptual links between messes and complexity in teaching

provided

Section 4.3

distinguish between complex situations

and complex systems

Section 4.4

appreciate some implications of engaging with a situation

regarded as a mess, difficulty, complex or simple system

Section 4.5

Figure 34 An activity-sequence diagram of the route through this section of Part 3, which is concerned with engaging with complexity

The terms ‘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. Section 4.4 tackles this thorny issue and explores whether, and in what ways, a complex situation can be thought of as a complex system. Finally, the implications of adopting these distinctions are explored in Section 4.5. Your understanding of complexity should have developed quite a bit by the end of this section.

You can return here, and to Figure 34, as you work through Section 4. Doing so will help you maintain your sense of direction as you work through the ideas and arguments in this section.

1 Introduction 85

4.1 Articulating your appreciation of complexity

Initially, I would like you to notice whether and how your appreciation of the phrase ‘managing complexity’ has changed since you started the course. As you work through Section 4 you will encounter a number of ways of thinking about complexity that may be new to you, so it becomes important to record your developing understanding. To help you with this, return to your notes on Activity 2 in Part 1. They should be in your Learning Album. Now complete Activity 40. You should take no more than 20 minutes to complete this activity.

ACTIVITY 40

Articulate your initial appreciation of complexity.

You chose to do a course entitled ‘Managing complexity ...’. Construct a spray diagram around the phrase ‘managing complexity’ by adding descriptions of the different meanings you gave to the phrase when you started the course. To do this you may have to refer to T552 to ensure you are aware of the best way to construct a spray diagram. You will also need to draw on your answer to Activity 2 and, possibly, other activities in Part 2. There may also be other relevant material in your Learning Album. If you are unable to articulate more than one or two meanings for managing complexity do not worry. Complete a spray diagram all the same, because I will be asking you to add to it as you go through this section.

Outline the experiences that led you to attribute the range of meanings to managing complexity shown in your spray diagram. For example, some of the meanings might be ‘I read book x’; ‘I work in this field where complexity means y’. Complete this by writing a paragraph or two.

Articulate changes in your appreciation of complexity

Add to your spray diagram any new meanings for managing complexity that have become apparent to you as you study the course. If you gain new insights into your earlier answers, add another set of branches to existing branches on your diagram. You can use the original diagram and add the additional information in a new colour.

Keep building up your spray diagram using different colours – or a scheme that suits you – as you work through this section of the course. As new meanings and insights become apparent, add them to your spray diagram. You may find at some time that you want to reorganize the diagram because new insights enable you to see ‘managing complexity’ in a different way. Add your diagram to your Learning Album.

4.2 Experiencing complexity as mess or difficulty

In this section, I want to take the ideas of mess and difficulty and explore them in the context of complexity. I want to determine how these ideas are connected, how significant the connections are and what the differences illuminate. I shall draw on the ideas of three writers: Schön, whose central theme is practice (e.g. Schön, 1983; 1987); Ackoff, who explores the characteristics of mess; and Rosenhead, who shows how different approaches to practice may be contrasted in terms that illuminate the distinction between difficulty and mess.

When reflecting on his own professional experience of engaging with complex situations, Donald Schön, author of Educating the Reflective Practitioner (1987) had this to say:

Learning Album

T552

86 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

In the swampy lowland, messy, confusing problems defy technical solution. The irony of this situation is that the problems of the high ground tend to be relatively unimportant to individuals or society at large, however great their technical interest may be, while in the swamp lie the problems of greatest human concern. The practitioner must choose. Shall he [sic] remain on the high ground where he can solve relatively unimportant problems according to prevailing standards of rigour, or shall he descend into the swamp of important problems? (p.28)

The metaphor of the swamp provides some useful images for this section, which is concerned with the problems and opportunities of the swamp. Schön argues that:

all professional practitioners experience a version of the dilemma of rigour and relevance and they respond to it in one of several ways. Some of them choose the swampy lowland, deliberately immersing themselves in confusing but critically important situations. When they are asked to describe their methods of inquiry they speak of experience, trial and error, intuition or muddling through. When teachers, social workers, or planners operate in this vein, they tend to be afflicted with a nagging sense of inferiority in relation to those who present themselves as models of technical rigor. When physicists or engineers do so, they tend to be troubled by the discrepancy between the technical rigor of the ‘hard’ zones of their practice and apparent sloppiness of the ‘soft’ ones. People tend to feel the dilemma of rigor or relevance with particular intensity when they reach the age of about 45. At this point they ask themselves: Am I going to continue to do the thing I was trained for, on which I base my claims to technical rigor and academic respectability? Or am I going to work on the problems – ill formed, vague, and messy – that I have discovered to be real around here? And depending on how people make this choice, their lives unfold differently (1995, p.28).

In my view the argument Schön presents is simple: there are many domains of human activity where professionals fail to take action in situations of uncertainty, complexity, uniqueness and conflict or where past actions have had unintended, sometimes surprising and catastrophic, consequences. It seems to be a common human experience, for example, that a well- meaning attempt to improve a complex and problematic situation has the effect of making the situation worse in quite unexpected ways. Such situations also arise when experience is at odds with intuition about how things should behave or should be. This class of experiences is described as counter-intuitive understanding. The idea is explored further in Box 2.

Box 2 Counter-intuitive understanding – an example

In many parts of the world since the end of the second world war planners and individuals have begun to live with the common sense, and simple view (thanks to the so-called laws of supply and demand) that increasing the supply of something will lessen demand for it, i.e. they are inversely related. However, recent experience shows that increasing the supply – both in number and capacity – of roads creates its own demand, i.e. that increasing supply increases demand. This phenomenon, known as the Pigou-Knight- Downs Paradox, is one in which positive feedback operates, at least until basic resources are totally used up or skyrocketing costs block the positive

1 Introduction 87

feedback. In southeast England it is possible to speculate that the incidence of gridlock, pollution effects and social effects such as road rage, as well as increased fuel costs are beginning to block positive feedback. This provides some explanation for why political parties found it possible in the 1990s to curtail road-building programmes. On the other hand, the car lobby is powerful. They are major employers, contributing to economic growth, as currently measured, and it is in their interests to see the road-building programme continue as this also increases the demand for cars.

In the early 2000s English road building policies have, once more, been adopted as one solution to traffic congestion. Demand for new cars has also increased fuelled by a drop in their relative cost. One possible outcome is that pollution levels per car decrease, as newer cars are far more energy efficient, but that aggregate pollution may stay the same or increase due to the rising number of cars, increased number and duration of journeys – the latter exacerbated by increasing frequency of gridlock. Other forms of controlling demand such as the central London congestion charging have been introduced.

An intervention in a policy process designed to alleviate some critical need or process, may at first seem logical and intuitively correct, but may exacerbate the situation in the future. It is for this reason that representing systems of interest, particularly through some form of modelling which makes modes of thinking, particularly in terms of patterns of influence, or cause and effect, is at the core of most systems approaches for managing complexity.

Given that in many situations, unexpected and potentially disastrous events may occur, it makes 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. The effect of not engaging with Schön’s swamp is to run the risk of unintended consequences of unknown seriousness, even if the intervention seems the right thing to do. We risk doing the wrong things with greater and greater efficiency rather than establishing what is the right thing to be doing. Russell Ackoff (1995) claims that it is better to do the right thing imperfectly than to keep doing the wrong thing better and better.

The experiences that have led to claims that different ways of thinking and acting are required for managing complexity have been derived in many domains. Examples include:

The computer press is littered with examples of [...] information technology fiascos or near disasters. An example is the computer- aided despatch system introduced into the London Ambulance Service in 1992. The £1.5 million system was brought into full use at 07:00 hours on 26 October and almost immediately began to ‘lose’ ambulances.[...] the system reverted to [...] manual methods on 4 November when the system locked up altogether.

(Fortune and Peters, p. 33, 1995)

One of the striking things about public policy [...] is that so many of the most pressing problems are ones that cut across departments, cut across disciplines; issues like social exclusion, the environment, the family. [so ] My fifth point is about thinking systemically. (Geoff Mulgan; ex Demos, Director PIU, UK Cabinet Office)

(Mulgan, 1998)

88 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

... one of the more remarkable aspects of British debate is how little analysis is made in [...] systemic terms. (Will Hutton, journalist and former editor of The Observer, a London Sunday newspaper)

(Hutton, 1995)

I felt that a concern for and systematic study of the social and environmental aspects of technology was essential. Certainly environmental problems were approachable only by means of systemic and interdisciplinary methods and I felt convinced that any Faculty of Technology that did not concern itself with such problems could not claim to be either modern or responsible, whether socially or academically. (Geoff Holister, founding dean, Faculty of Technology, The Open University)

(Holister, 1974, pp.149 –152)

Education for sustainability is the continual refinement of the knowledge and skills that lead to informed citizenry that is committed to responsible individuals and collaborative actions that will result in an ecologically sound, economically prosperous, and equitable society for present and future generations. The principles underlying education for sustainability include, but are not limited to, strong core academics, understanding the relationships between disciplines, systems thinking, lifelong learning, hands-on experiential learning, community-based learning, technology, partnerships, family involvement, and personal responsibility. (President’s Council on Sustainable Development, USA, under the Clinton administration)

(President’s Council on Sustainable Development, 1996)

These quotations are used in relation to at least four different domains. These are situations associated with:

(a) The use of information and communication technology to develop information systems;

(b) Organizational arrangements and associated policies and programmes;

(d) Practice – whether in conducting an analysis or being professional.

You will not be surprised to learn I have deliberately chosen these quotations to match the ‘real world’ situations that you will be asked to engage with through the blocks of this course. I could summarize this as saying the course will engage with managing complexity in:

^ Information systems’ development (Block 2)

^ Organizations (Block 3)

^ Managing sustainable development (Block 4)

^ Your own systems practice (Block 5)

There are a number of responses available to Schön’s invitation to descend into the swamp of messy, confusing problems. Russell Ackoff uses the term messes to refer to the swamp, and difficulties to refer to the high ground. You should already have encountered Ackoff’s terms in your earlier study of Systems.

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SAQ 10

Re-read the section on messes and difficulties in the material you have used to prepare for this course (in, T205 or T551). When you have done this, describe three features a practitioner might use to distinguish a mess from a difficulty. Is any one of these distinguishing features more significant than the others?

Activity 41 should take about 15 minutes.

ACTIVITY 41

Refresh your understanding of messes and difficulties.

Read Ackoff’s points about messes and difficulties in Box 3 below. Relate these points, and your previous understanding of messes and difficulties to the child support case study. From your perspective on the case study, are there aspects that appear to be difficulties and others that appear to be messes?

Make notes on these in your Learning Album.

Box 3 Some features of messes and difficulties

(a) A problem or an opportunity is an ultimate element abstracted from a mess. Ultimate elements are necessarily abstractions that cannot be observed.

(b) Problems, even as abstract mental constructs, do not exist in isolation, although it is possible to isolate them conceptually. The same is true of opportunities. A mess may comprise both problems and opportunities. What is a problem for one person may be an opportunity for another – thus a problem can be an opportunity from another perspective.

(c) The improvement to a mess – whatever it may be – is not the simple sum of the solutions to the problems or opportunities that are or can be extracted from it. No mess can be solved by solving each of its component problems/opportunities independently of the others because no mess can be decomposed into independent components.

(d) Simple situations do exist that can be improved by extracting one problem from them and solving it. These are called difficulties and they are seen as exceptions rather than the norm in terms of decisions that are needed in environmental, organizational and other information- related contexts.

(e) The attempt to deal with a system of problems and opportunities as a system – synthetically, as a whole – is an essential skill of a systems practitioner.

(Following Ackoff, 1974a and 1974b)

Russell Ackoff first coined the term ‘mess’ in 1974. He did so in response to the insights of two eminent American philosophers, William James and John Dewey. These philosophers recognized that problems are taken up by, not given to, decision-makers and that problems are extracted from unstructured states of confusion. Ackoff (1974a; b) argued, in proposing his notion of mess that:

What decision-makers deal with, I maintain, are messes not problems. This is hardly illuminating, however, unless I make more explicit what I mean by a mess. A mess is a set of external conditions that produces dissatisfaction. It can be conceptualized as a system of problems in the same sense in which a physical body can be conceptualized as a system of atoms.

Learning Album

90 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

From this definition of mess, Ackoff recognized a number of features of messes and difficulties (Box 3) that, if one is aware of them, affect the way a practitioner engages with a ‘real world’ situation (see Figure 18 again).

When you have refreshed your understanding of messes and difficulties and re-read Box 3 spend about 15 minutes on the next activity.

ACTIVITY 42

Explain some implications of treating a situation as a difficulty.

You have been asked by the relevant government minister to prepare five quick-fix actions he can take to improve the child support situation. As a systems practitioner you are reluctant to take this approach. Write a few paragraphs briefing the minister about the possible implications of treating the situation as if it were a difficulty rather than a mess.

I find it interesting that Schön and Ackoff both have a professional background in planning. It is not surprising therefore that they have made similar distinctions when describing, or accounting for, their experiences in the messy business of planning. For me, they exemplify the aware practitioner juggling all the balls I described in Figure 19. What these planners have in common is they recognize that if the situation is engaged with as a difficulty there will be an outcome that will be different than if the situation is engaged with as a mess. They also agree that the traditional problem solving methods, which are often associated with fields such as operations (or in the UK, operational) research (OR), or ‘scientific management,’ become useable only after the most important decisions have already been made. In other words, a difficulty is first abstracted from the mess and then the difficulty is treated using a traditional problem-solving approach.

I have summarized some of the characteristics associated with traditional OR in Table 3. Characteristics of an alternative, ideal, approach to OR, envisaged by Rosenhead (1989b, pp.1–20) in the early 1980s, are included

Table 3 Characteristics of doing traditional operations research in comparison to alternatives that were suggested in the early 1980s

Characteristics of traditional OR Alternative characteristics for OR

1 Problems and opportunities are formulated in terms of a single objective that can be optimized. Trade-offs are made by reducing variables to a common scale.

1 Does not seek to optimize. Done by seeking alternative solutions that are acceptable on different dimensions without trade-offs.

2 Has overwhelming data demands, which leads to problems of distortion, data availability and data credibility.

2 Has reduced data demands because of integrating qualitative and quantitative data with social judgements.

3 Subjected to demands of science (scientization), assumed to be depoliticized and that consensus exists.

3 Strives for transparency and simplicity so as to clarify terms of conflict.

4 People are treated as passive objects. 4 People are regarded as active subjects.

5 Assumes a single decision maker with abstract objectives from which concrete actions can be deduced for implementation through a hierarchical chain of command.

5 Facilitates planning from the bottom up.

6 Attempts to abolish future uncertainty and pre-take future decisions.

6 Accepts uncertainty, and aims to keep options open for later resolution.

(Adapted from Rosenhead, 1989b)

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in the table. Surveys had shown a low level of satisfaction on the part of managers with OR and management science projects at the time Rosenhead suggested his alternatives.

One way of interpreting Table 3, is that Rosenhead regarded the traditional OR approach of staying on the high ground, of treating the ‘real world’ situations with which many practitioners engage, as made up of difficulties to be solved rather than messes to be improved. I find many similarities with the ideas in Rosenhead’s table with the following observation attributed to Richard Dawkins (Plsek, 2001):

If I hold a rock, but want it to change, to be over there, I can simply throw it. Knowing the weight of the rock, the speed at which it leaves my hand, and a few other variables, I can reliably predict both the path and the landing place of a rock. But what happens if I substitute a [live] bird? Knowing the weight of a bird and the speed of launch tells me nothing really about where the bird will land. No matter how much analysis I do in developing the launch plan ... the bird will follow the path it chooses and land where it wants.

Which of these metaphors (the rock or the bird) do you think best describes the process of launching change in the Child Support Agency case study?

There are differences as well as similarities in the explanations the two planners (Schön and Ackoff) provide when they reflect on their experiences. Schön in particular, chose to focus on the characteristics of the practitioner. I referred to some of these characteristics in the section above on being a systems practitioner. Schön’s ideas, among others, have already informed the approach taken in Parts 1 and 2 of this block and they will continue to do so throughout the course, particularly in Block 5.

Plsek, a change consultant based in the USA, used the ‘rock-bird’ story in an address to a UK National Health Service (NHS) Conference entitled: ‘Why Won’t the NHS Do As It Is Told?’ The UK NHS is the world’s third biggest employer after the Chinese Red Army and Indian Railways. Understandably many people involved in the NHS experience it as complex. In his presentation Plsek evokes different metaphors as means for the audience to make new distinctions. He contrasts the machine metaphor (as characterized by traditional OR in Table 3 and scientific management) with an alternative metaphor of complex adaptive systems (CAS) as exemplified by the bird in the rock–bird story (CAS is explained in Section 4.4).

Ackoff, in his definition of a mess as a system of problems and opportunities chose systems thinking as his strategy to make sense of the mess of the swamp. His strategy was to look for system within a mess as a means to do something about it. Please note I am not referring here to ‘discovering’ the system or a system but the process of distinguishing one or many systems of interest in a context. The end product of the process of finding system within a mess is called formulating a system of interest. This is the task you were engaged in when you were drawing diagrams, and finding ways of drawing diagrams, in Part 2.

Let me consider now what I think Ackoff was doing in terms of a practitioner juggling the E ball. In my terms, Ackoff was a systems practitioner (Ps) engaging with a ‘real world’ situation that he could choose to recognize as either a mess or a difficulty using a systems approach (As). This leads me to ask a fundamental question: are the

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characteristics of a mess part of the situation or a function of the choice the practitioner makes? I will answer this question by grounding it in my responses to the case study.

If I use everyday speech to describe my initial experience of the child- support issue I say ‘it is a mess’, or ‘it is really complex’, or ‘I find it hard to understand it all’. You will notice I have used the word ‘it’ each time, which suggests the existence of something, an entity, a ‘real world’ situation with which I have engaged. The structures of the language I use tie me into a linguistic trap – the naming of an ‘it’ that is independent of my act of distinction. Getting out of this trap means finding a language that avoids the implication there is a pre-existing ‘it’ waiting to be noticed by me. As someone once said every noun obscures a verb!

The same could be said of thinking that there is a NHS which is a machine or a complex adaptive system. I can get out of this trap by claiming a mess or a difficulty arises in the distinctions that a practitioner makes in a particular situation. If this is the case, a mess or a difficulty is not a property of the situation but arises as a distinction made by a systems practitioner – someone aware of the conceptual distinctions between seeing a mess and experiencing a difficulty – engaging with a particular ‘real world’ situation (see Figure 31).

If, on the other hand, my experience of the child-support issue had led me to say, ‘Oh, I know what the problem is – we just have to do X and that will fix things, then I would be implicitly seeing the issue as comprising a difficulty. This was the approach asked for by the government minister in Activity 42.

If I were charitable, I could imagine the minister was unaware of the distinctions between mess and difficulty (as many decision-makers seem to be in my experience). If I were cynical, I could suggest that the system of interest the minister was forming in his head, which led to the search for quick-fixes, had nothing to do with improving child support but was related instead to political expediency.

Of the two positions, the first seems to make more sense in terms of my experience of the case study. It works better because it suggests ways of avoiding some of the pitfalls of distinguishing individual problems to be solved.

SAQ 11

Which of the following statements conform to the idea of formulating a system of interest?

(a) I am fascinated by the solar system.

(b) When I read the child support case study I was struck by the deficiencies in the system for caring for lone parents.

(c) When I engaged with the child support case study I thought it might be helpful to consider it as a system from a number of perspectives. For example:

(i) As a system to reduce the social security budget;

(ii) As a system to secure the best future for children in lone-parent families;

(iii) As a system to ensure the non-resident parent contributes equitably to the raising of their children.

(d) I am interested in making computer systems function more effectively.

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ACTIVITY 43

Consider your own practices.

Consider your own practices in some recent situation(s) in the light of Figure 31 and the question I posed above:

^ Are the characteristics of a mess [or a difficulty] part of the situation or a function of the choice the practitioner makes?

You might benefit from writing your answer in your Learning Album and returning to it as your own systems practice develops.

4.3 Where is the complexity and what is it?

When I first described some of my experiences of the child-support case study above, I attributed the properties of mess, complex, or hard-to- understand to the situation. So, are mess, complex, and hard-to- understand the same thing? If they are, why is the course called Managing Complexity, rather than, say, Managing Messes? A glib answer is you might not have been attracted to it because of the everyday meaning of mess. Another answer is this course builds on the Systems Group’s experience, since 1984, of teaching the popular OU course T301 Complexity, Management and Change: Applying a Systems Approach .Yet another answer is that complexity is a rich term whose everyday meanings has been further enriched by the so-called new sciences of chaos and complexity (see Appendix C).

Let me try to explore some of this rich set of meanings by examining a cause célèbre in the computer world. The story is described by John Naughton’s (1998) article from The Observer (Box 4). Read this article now and complete the activity that follows it.

Activity 44 should take a little less than 10 minutes.

Box 4 Open versus closed systems of innovation – an example of self-organization?

There is a saying in the computer business that ‘only the paranoid survive’. The man who has taken it most to heart is Microsoft’s Boss of Bosses, Bill Gates. Although he is the richest man alive and his company has a stranglehold on the world’s computer screens, Gates is forever looking over his shoulder, trying to spot the newcomer who will wipe him out.

One can understand his anxiety. The pace of change in the computing industry is such that if you blink you might not spot the threat. Gates himself blinked spectacularly in 1994, when Netscape was founded. He failed to appreciate the looming significance of the Internet, and Netscape had captured a huge slice of the web-browser market before he woke up.

From that moment onwards, Microsoft’s corporate ingenuity was devoted to finding ways of crushing Netscape. Its crass attempts to do so eventually stung the US Department of Justice into launching the anti-trust suit which is currently being decided in an American court. But while the eyes of the media are on the trial, those of the Net community have been focused elsewhere – on a leaked Microsoft internal memorandum which is far more revealing than anything released in court. For it shows that Gates & Co have finally realized where the Next Big Threat is coming from. And it’s nothing to do with Netscape – or browsers. They’re yesterday’s battlegrounds.

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The leaked memo is now all over the Net. It was written by a Microsoft engineer called Vinod Valloppillil last August [1998], but is universally known as the ‘Halloween Memo’ because it was leaked last weekend [November 1998]. Its purpose is to explain to Microsoft bosses the nature and extent of the threat posed by a free operating system called Linux and the ‘Open Source’ software development community that built it.

To appreciate the memo’s significance, you need to remember that Microsoft dominates the world market in operating systems – the complex programs which transform computers from paperweights into machines which can do useful work. The Windows operating system is the jewel in Gates’s crown, and anything that threatens it threatens his company’s dominance. Microsoft’s long-term strategy is to move us all on to a version of it called Windows NT (for ‘new technology’). But NT is in trouble. The release date for the next version has been postponed so often that it has had to be renamed ‘Windows 2000’. And as NT flounders, the world’s attention has increasingly focused on a rival operating system called Linux which offers many of the same facilities as NT, is incredibly stable and reliable – and is free. Anyone can download it, free gratis, from the Net.

Linux is free because it was developed collectively across the Net by skilled programmers working in the Open Source tradition which created the Internet and which holds that software should be freely accessible to the community. The name comes from the fact that ‘source code’ is computer- speak for the original version of a program – as distinct from the version you buy and install on your computer. If you have the source code you can do what you like with it – alter it, damage it, improve it, whatever. Linux is powerful and stable because it was created by clever people working collaboratively on the source code and because it’s been tested to destruction by more programmers than Microsoft could ever muster. The Halloween Memo warns Gates that Linux and its ilk pose a serious threat to Microsoft. It argues that Open Source software is now as good as – if not better than – commercial alternatives, concedes that ‘the ability of the OSS process to collect and harness the collective IQ of thousands of individuals across the Internet is simply amazing’, and concludes that Linux is too diffuse a target to be destroyed by the tactics which have hitherto vaporized Microsoft’s commercial rivals. The people who built Linux cannot be driven out of business, because they’re not ‘in’ business. Henceforth, Microsoft will be fighting not another company, but an idea.

The Halloween Memo provides a chilling glimpse into the Darth Vader mindset of Microsoft. The reason Linux is so powerful, reasons Valloppillil, is that its basic building blocks – its technical protocols – are free, openly distributed and not owned by anyone. The only way to kill it therefore is for Microsoft to capture the protocols by pretending to adopt them and then ‘extending’ them in ways that effectively make them proprietary. The new (Microsoft) revisions will – surprise, surprise! – be incompatible with the ‘free’ versions. Gates calls this process ‘embrace and extend’. In reality it’s ‘copy and corrupt’.

The coming battle, then, will be between two philosophies – closed shop versus Open Source, commercial paranoia versus altruism and trust. The outcome is already predictable. Microsoft’s difficulties with Windows NT show that some software is now too complex for even the richest, smartest company. Instead of trying to suborn Linux, what Gates should do is release the NT code and let the collective IQ of the Net fix it for him. He won’t do it, of course, which is why his company has just peaked. If you have Microsoft shares, prepare to sell them now.

(John Naughton; writing in the Observer, a British Sunday newspaper, November 1998)

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ACTIVITY 44

What form does the complexity take in the situation described in Box 4?

You may have experienced Naughton’s article as complex in itself because of the range of concepts it uses and some of the specialist language, e.g. Internet, web-browser, open-source software, anti-trust suit. Try to put this aside for the moment and focus on how Naughton uses the term complex.

Is Naughton, in your terms, describing a complex situation? Outline your reasons. In what ways was the term ‘complex’ used by Naughton in his article in Box 4?

Please note that you do not require definitions of complexity from other sources to answer this question.

Naughton specifically describes ‘complex programmes’ and software that is ‘too complex’ (e.g. Microsoft’s Windows 2000). It is possible in both instances that Naughton ascribes complexity to the programmes and the software. But he does suggest in the latter use that the ‘closed’ approach Microsoft and its staff pursued led them to experience the task of developing Windows 2000 as highly complex and that this is qualitatively different from the ‘open’ process being followed in the development of Linux. It seems to me he could be attributing several meanings to the word complex.

I do not regard myself as computer literate and I’m not particularly enthusiastic about computers, so when I encounter a story like that told by Naughton I experience the situation it describes as complex. I do so because there are many actors in the situation. The issue has a global span. There is apparent or potential conflict, suggesting a range of perspectives on the situation just as in the Child Support Agency case study. And the outcomes of these different technological trajectories are likely to have profound economic and social implications. When I use complex in this way – and it has been used in this way most of the time in the course so far – I am speaking about perceived complexity.

John Casti (1994) said ‘when we speak of something being complex, what we are doing is making use of everyday language to express a feeling or impression that we dignify with the label complex.’ He also argues that the meaning we give to the word complex is dependent on the context. For Casti, the complexity of a situation or a system is not an intrinsic aspect of the situation or ‘system’ taken in isolation but ‘a property of the interaction between two ‘systems’ where one of these is more often than not an observer and/or controller’ (i.e. a person). So, in this explanation, complexity arises in the relationship between the observer and the observed. This is my response to the question in Figure 17. It is also another way to understand what is happening in Figure 18.

Although the language is different, the process I have just described is the same as the one I described earlier for messes. Perceived complexity arises because of our cognitive limitations as well as characteristics of the situation. Our embodied ways of knowing – individuals and the explanations they accept have different traditions and histories – lead to only seeing aspects of a situation never the whole as discussed in Section 3.

There is no viewpoint or perspective that can appreciate the full variety of a situation. It is from the recognition of these limitations that a range of systems approaches have been developed (see Section 5 of this Part). The notion of perceived complexity addresses one of the ways I experience Naughton using the word complex in Box 4. But are there other ways complexity is currently used? The short answer to this is: Yes, lots.

perceived complexity

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There are in fact many explanations provided for what complexity is or is not. Someone who went to the trouble of counting in the early 1990s claimed to have found 31 different definitions. Five pages, many more than for any other concept, are devoted to aspects of complexity in the International Encyclopaedia of Systems and Cybernetics. This situation has arisen partly because in the 1990s the field of complexity science has emerged, made popular by the activities of the Santa Fe Institute in the USA; partly because of a series of popular books; and the association of complexity with chaos research (Gleick, 1987). Horgan (1996), a sceptic and critic, describes the academic field as ‘chaoplexity’.

A selected range of perspectives on complexity are provided in Appendix C. This appendix is background material if you want to explore the subject matter in more detail. It is not essential reading and can be extended by a search of the World Wide Web. I outline the context in which complexity science is evolving below.

I suggest you browse Appendix C now before moving on. As you read you may like to add to the spray diagramme you began to develop as part of Activity 40.

One of the main driving forces behind the current interest in complexity is the advent of computers and sophisticated non-linear mathematical techniques. Horgan claims these ‘will help modern scientists understand chaotic, complex, emergent phenomena that have resisted analysis by reductionist methods of the past’ (Horgan, 1996, p.192). He uses the following quote to exemplify some of the claims being made:

Through its capacity to process what is too complex for the unaided mind, the computer enables us for the first time to simulate reality, to create models of complex systems like large molecules, chaotic systems, neural nets, the human body and brain, and patterns of evolution and population. (p.193)

In an essay entitled ‘The Lure of Complexity’, Steve Talbott (2002) asks whether claims that the study of complex systems, or complexity is a new scientific revolution are, instead, a ‘retrenchment and strengthening of the most serious limitations of traditional science’. He asks if in the drive toward generality and abstraction complexity theorists have lost the features of a qualitative science that refuses to sacrifice the phenomena to abstraction in the first place? For me, as a member of an Open University group that has been teaching and researching systems approaches to managing complexity for the best part of 30 years, many claims made by complexity theorists appear extravagant (This is taken up in Appendix C.) While I do not wish to deny the potential unleashed by increased computing power and non-linear mathematical techniques, and thus the new questions that are being asked, my preference would be to situate these ideas in a historical context. If this were to happen, and those making these claims were to look into the traditions that give rise to these claims, there would be much to be learned – particularly about the difficulties caused by a multiplicity of meanings embedded in one word as well as a lack of attention to the theory–practice relationship.

Given the wealth of ideas within the notion of complexity, is it possible to be clear what is meant by the terms complex situation and a complex system? Does a historical context illuminate this question? The next section, represented by the second blob on the main spine of Figure 34, explores these issues.

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4.4 Choosing to distinguish between complex situations and complex systems

Within some of the lineages of systems thinking and practice (Figure 22), the idea that system complexity is a property of what is observed about some ‘real world’ system, is known as classical or type 1 complexity. Exploring type 1 complexity, Russell Ackoff (1981, pp.26–33) claimed for a set of elements to be usefully viewed as a system, it was necessary that:

(a) the behaviour of each element of the set should have an effect on the behaviour of the whole set;

(b) the behaviour of the elements, and their effects on the whole set, should be interdependent;

(c) however subgroups of the elements are formed, each subgroup should have the same effect on the behaviour of the whole and none should be completely independent.

Following in the footsteps of Ackoff, and with others, Schoderbeck et al. (1985) described the complexity of what they regarded as a real or physical system as arising from the interaction of:

(a) the number of elements comprising the system, for example, the number of chips on a circuit board;

(b) the attributes of the specified elements of the system, for example, the degree of proficiency of musicians in an orchestra;

(c) the number of interactions among the specified elements of the system, for example, the number of neuronal connections in the brain;

(d) the degree of organization inherent in the system, for example, the social arrangements in a beehive or an ants nest.

They regarded systems as ranging from living organisms to individual families and governments.

Type 1 classification was subsequently regarded as insufficient by other practitioners because it excluded any complexity arising from culture and from human behaviour. Nor did it encompass the complexity arising from the properties of the observer, as discussed in Section 3 (as exemplified by the language used in the list above these authors saw ‘systems’ as real entities existing in the world. Some contemporary authors make the same claims about CAS – this idea is explored in more detail later in this section.)

Systems theorists have in the past had to confront some of the same issues as complexity theorists began to confront during the 1990s. The issues they confronted can be put rather bluntly as a series of questions:

(a) Do systems exist ‘out there’ in the so-called ‘real world’?

(b) Do systems have certain properties, some of which can be described or classified as complex and some as simple?

(c) Are systems distinguished by an observer in a context? Is systemicity, the quality of being a system, a choice made by an observer when they perceive complexity in a ‘real world’ situation?

(d) What can I learn about a situation I experience as complex by engaging with the situation using a process of inquiry that formulates systems of interest?

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These are not questions that have definitive answers. The view I choose to adopt will, however, have implications for my systems thinking and my systems practice. Exploring the implications will assist in deciding what course of action will work best for any particular practitioner.

I have constructed Table 4 from the characteristics Casti (1994) claims are exhibited by simple and complex systems as well as those claimed by Plsek (2001) to characterize complex adaptive systems. The examples are also theirs.

Spend a few minutes reading through the table and then do the activity that follows.

The activity should take no more than about 15 minutes.

Table 4 Characteristics ascribed to simple and complex systems and complex adaptive systems

Simple systems Complex systems Complex adaptive systems

Have predictable behaviour; e.g. a fixed interest bank account.

Generate counterintuitive, seemingly acausal behaviour that is full of surprises; e.g. lower taxes and interest rates leading to higher unemployment.

The elements of a system can change themselves (this relates to notions of autonomy which are taken up in Block 3)

Few interactions and feedback or feed forward loops; e.g. a simple barter economy with few goods and services

A large array of variables with many interactions, lags, feedback loops and feed forward loops, which create the possibility that new, self- organizing behaviours will emerge: e.g. most large organizations, life itself.

Complex outcomes can emerge from a few simple rules (this relates to initial starting conditions and the idea that complicated targets and plans may stifle creative and adaptive ability)

Centralized decision making; e.g. power is concentrated among a few decision makers.

Decentralized decision making – because power is more diffuse, the numerous components generate the actual system behaviour.

Small changes can have big effects and large changes may have no effect – i.e. non-linearity operates (e.g. in the UK a small band of lorry drivers interconnected by mobile phones almost brought the country to a standstill by blocking petrol deliveries to service stations)

Are decomposable because of weak interactions; i.e. it is possible to look at components without losing properties of the whole.

Are irreducible – neglecting any part of the process or severing any of the connections linking its parts usually destroys essential aspects of the system behaviour or structure. There are dynamic changes in the system and the environment.

Thrive on tension and paradox. (It is argued that healthy organizations exist on the edge of chaos – a region of moderate certainty and agreement).

Are embedded within larger complex systems, and are made up of smaller complex systems.

(After Casti, 1994, pp.271–273 and Plsek 2001)

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ACTIVITY 45

What properties are ascribed to an observed system?

In Table 4 above, Casti has ascribed the terms simple and complex to the word systems. Likewise Plsek has ascribed the words ‘complex, adaptive’ to the word system. In what ways do you experience the terms ‘systems’ and ‘complex’ being used by Casti and Plsek?

What implications might these categories have for systems practice?

Are you able to use any of Casti’s or Plsek’s categories to make sense of the Microsoft-Linux story described in Box 4?

How does your attempt at doing this activity alter in any way, if at all, your understandings of the terms ‘complexity’ and ‘systems’?

The questions I posed in Activity 45 are, for me, extremely interesting but at the same time potentially confusing. The word complex is being used by Casti in some cases to mean the same as system, and some of the characteristics of complexity seem to be applied to system. The phrase complex system is common, as you can see in Appendix C, although the meaning attributed to it is often unclear in my experience. For example, it is unclear to me whether Casti is using system in its everyday sense or in the specific way it is used within the study of Systems to mean a system of interest to someone.

When I consider the examples used in Table 4 there is something qualitatively different about a simple barter economy and the phenomenon of lower taxes and interest rates leading to higher unemployment other than whether they can be described as simple or complex. Indeed, I would question whether it would be helpful to consider a barter economy as simple. Considering the quality of relationships and trust that might be necessary to sustain a barter economy it could be perceived as complex. This notion of quality of relationship seems to me an important additional distinction that could be attributed to complexity over that provided in the earlier list of Schoderbeck et al. (1985) which tends to focus only on the quantity of variables or interactions.

In some circles it is now recognized that what some people call complex adaptive systems offer insights into human action by way of analogy or metaphor (e.g. Stacey, Griffin and Shaw, 2000). Stephen Rose (1997, p. 33–4) argues that analogy ‘implies a superficial resemblance between two phenomena, perhaps in terms of the function of a particular structure’. An example is blood circulation in animals and sap flow in plants. Analogies can provide insight but also mislead – Rose (ibid) asks ‘Is it a help or a hindrance to regard the access memory (RAM) in my computer as analogous to memory in chicks or humans or is it merely a metaphor?’ He also distinguishes analogies from homologies which imply a deeper identity that arises from an assumed common evolutionary origin (e.g. the bones in the front feet of a horse may be assumed to be homologous with the bones in the human hand). Each of these distinctions can be drawn into your systems practice if they help in making new distinctions. Each is a choice that can be made. From this perspective one way to engage with the idea of ‘complex adaptive systems’ (CAS) is as a metaphor to trigger new ways of thinking and acting e.g. lets consider the NHS as if it were a CAS.

It is also possible in practice to attribute systemicity to some of the examples in Table 4. It might make sense as part of my systems practice to look at the activity of paying taxes (in a particular context) as if it were a system, or a living organism as if it were a system, or even a complex adaptive system, or a fixed interest bank account as if it were a system. In

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doing this though, it is important to ask who is looking at these situations as if they were systems. In the 1970s and 1980s, this confusion began to be addressed in Systems practice. Unfortunately, some confusion remains even now. So, what is the best way to sort out some of this confusion?

4.5 Appreciating some implications for practice

I think for most people, the CSA case study would be experienced as a complex situation. If so this would be a good example of perceived complexity. Remember though, if you engaged with it as if it were a difficulty, just as the government minister did in Activity 42, you would not describe the situation as one of perceived complexity. I could not call it a complex system unless I had tried to make sense of it using systems thinking and found, or formulated, a system of interest within it. This means I would have to have a stake in the issue – an interest. In systems terminology, I would need a purpose for engaging with the ‘real world’ situation. When I do not have such a purpose in mind, I am using the word system in its everyday sense rather than in its technical, systems practice, sense.

The fundamental choice that faces both systems theorists and complexity theorists is choosing to see system or complexity either:

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

(b) As something we construct, design, or experience in relationship to some thing, event, situation, or issue because of the distinctions – or theories – we embody.

There are profound differences between these two options, as I have tried to depict in Figure 35 (the ideas depicted there are further developed in Block 4).

S = system of interest ss = a subsystem of the system of interest

(a) (b)

Samanufacturing system

ssx ssy ssz

ssa ssb

Figure 35 An iconic diagram of a systems practitioner who (a) sees systems in the world i.e. jumps to the conclusion that this is clearly a ‘manufacturing system’, and (b) one who is open to the complexity of the situation (factory, river, dairying) and sees systems as mental constructs formulated as part of a systemic inquiry

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These epistemological choices depicted in Figure 35 determine the nature of the engagement – the E ball – of a systems practitioner with a ‘real world’ situation. The first choice says a lot about the nature of the thing or situation but says little about the practitioner concerned with the thing or situation. This is the situation where technical rigour, of the type described by Schön in his quote in Section 4.2 above, informs practice. Schön describes this as technical rationality in which there is a radical separation of research – and what is regarded within this epistemology as legitimate knowledge – and practice.

The latter position however, 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. In this situation the systems practitioner is engaged with the complex situation. He or she must construct or design alone, or with other stakeholders, the system of interest and choose to see the situation as complex or simple, mess or difficulty.

Taking responsibility for the choice you make about these two distinctions is an act of being epistemologically aware. The aware systems practitioner recognizes that a system of interest is an epistemological device, a way of creating new ways of knowing. (I return to this in Section 5.) The course is designed to help you develop your skills in being aware as part of your systems practice. At this stage, all you need to do is to note your reaction to my claim about being epistemologically aware. Do you recognize something of what I mean or does it seem quite meaningless and unnecessary? I anticipate both responses, so don’t worry if you fall into the latter category. I have already introduced the basis for my position in this section and I intend to clarify it further in Section 5.

Let me emphasize here, making a choice of one epistemological position or another in a given context is not an act of discarding or deciding against the other position – it is an act of being aware of the choice you made. Both positions offer rich explanations of phenomena in different contexts.

In Part 2 you were moving towards formulating systems of interest by drawing a rich picture; by drawing systems maps and making the necessary boundary judgements; by drawing influence diagrams, and multiple-cause diagrams to look at the dynamics of influence and causation; and by drawing control diagrams to look at the idea of inputs and outputs and transformation processes. You have in fact begun to juggle the E ball yourself. It will require a further judgement on your part, against some criteria, as to whether you recognized your system of interest as a complex system or as a simple system. In doing this you could choose criteria from any of the perspectives on complexity described in Appendix C. In this course we are not greatly concerned with ascribing the adjectives simple and complex to a system, except to the extent that your choice of adjective reflects your capacity to manage complexity. Reflecting on some of the problematic practices in the field of biological science, Stephen Rose (1997) suggests it is due to the ‘cultural difficulty we have in perceiving a world of fields and processes rather than objects and properties’. The same phenomenon seems common in other forms of practice.

The next activity should take you about 10 minutes.

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ACTIVITY 46

Complete and review the additions to the diagram you started in Activity 40.

Add any new understandings, or development of old understandings about the meaning of complexity.

Write a few paragraphs of notes about what has changed and how and, if possible, what triggered the new understandings.

Section 4 may have presented you with more questions than answers. If this is true for you, don’t worry, that was the intention. As I outline in Appendix C, there is no agreed meaning for complexity. For the main part, in this course we shall be referring to perceived complexity unless the author suggests otherwise. The ambiguities implicit in facing questions where the only honest answer is, ‘I don’t know’, need not be troubling, once you get used to them. Living with these ambiguities is actually a powerful way of learning to manage complexity and being a systems practitioner. It might be argued that a lack of certainty can be an advantage in that it provides a space to think about, or reflect on, how your practice might be contextualized to the situation. Contextualization, the C-ball, is the subject of the next section.

SAQ 12

For each of the following situations, decide whether it is best considered as a mess or a difficulty.

(a) The group that runs a local orchestra continually argues about whether they should stick with popular classics or venture into more difficult and less popular pieces.

(b) Joan wants to send a computer file to Ray, but they use incompatible types of computer software.

(c) Although the company started as a software business, it now received most of its revenue from consultancy work. At a board meeting the issue about whether to continue developing and selling software was raised. This is partly due to the increasing cost of programmers, but also because software sales were declining. However, the software is used in all the consultancy work, and some of the projects involve extending the software to new areas.

(d) Jack is buying a new car and his most important criterion for choice is fuel economy.

(e) An environment agency has legislative responsibility for controlling pollution but the fines imposed on polluters are minimal.

Now decide what might be gained by considering each situation as if it were a simple or complex system or as a complex adaptive system.

5 Contextualizing systems approaches In this section, I shall explore the features of the contextualizing (systems- methods) ball – the C ball). I will make a distinction between systemic and systematic thinking and action and I will argue that the aware systems practitioner has more choices than the practitioner who is not aware.

Learning Album

1 Introduction 103

An aware practitioner is able to contextualize a diverse array of methods at their disposal creating an opportunity for a greater range of advantageous changes in the ‘real world’ situation. This section explores how this comes about.

Systems is a subject that provides a language for talking about other subjects. This will be exemplified as you encounter complexity in the domains of ‘information systems’ (Block 2), organizations (Block 3), learning for sustainable development (Block 4), and in your own practice (Block 5). This adaptability has led some to describe Systems as a meta- discipline or trans-discipline. The challenge for the systems practitioner is to be able to engage in double learning – learning about the domain and learning about the approach to the domain as well as juggling the other balls in Figure 19. This is a lot to manage. It’s like trying to learn a language at the same time as trying to learn what is said in the language. Fortunately, there is a rich tradition of systems scholarship to support you in meeting this challenge (Figure 22).You can draw on this as a basis for developing your capacities as a systems practitioner. The more aware you are of this history and the more it becomes part of your own tradition – just as in my example of Smilla and the history of the Inuit people – the greater will be your ability to embody particular Systems distinctions in your practice.

Our focus in this course is on the thinking that enables you to use relevant tools, techniques and methods in the right context for effecting action. In this section, I am first going to describe what I mean by a systems approach and how this relates to purposeful behaviour on the part of the practitioner. Then I will distinguish between tools, techniques, method and methodology. With these distinctions in mind, I am going to provide a brief synopsis of some of the systems approaches you will encounter in this course. I will also refer to some that will not be featured. The process I will use is to ask, ‘What experiences did individuals or groups have that led them to develop particular systems approaches for managing complexity?’

Finally, I want to consider what is involved in contextualizing any approach in a given ‘real world’ situation and to invite you to do the same. To do this I will ask you to keep in mind a number of questions as you work through the section:

^ Is it the method or how it is used that is important?

^ How are learning and action built in?

^ Who is, or could be, involved in the approach?

^ What could be said about the politics of intervention in a ‘real world’ situation?

5.1 What are systems approaches?

An approach is a way of going about taking action in a ‘real world’ situation, as depicted in Figure 18. As I have outlined earlier, an observer has choices that can be made for coping with complexity. Here I am assuming that because this course is about systems approaches, a choice has already been made to approach the world systemically using systems thinking.

Other choices of approach could be made. Think of the everyday ways we use adjectives to describe the word approach. Some that come to mind are

104 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

a scientific approach; a reductionist approach; an empirical approach; a philosophical approach; an experimental approach; a spiritual approach; a practical approach; a critical approach. You can probably think of more.

Some of these approaches to taking action seem to operate at different levels – both Systems and science could be seen as meta-disciplines and different approaches could be taken in both by an aware practitioner.

There are certainly scientists who see themselves as systems biologists, for example, just as there are many scientists who take a reductionist approach and some, such as Teilhard de Chardin who took a more spiritual approach. I have already claimed both a systemic and a systematic approach can be encompassed within a systems approach, by an aware practitioner. Please bear in mind here that I am saying these are choices to be made; I am not commenting on the appropriateness, quality or efficacy of the options nor am I saying they are exclusive options.

The question of choice is a bit like that hackneyed phrase ‘horses for courses’, although in practice it is more subtle than this. The image of juggling seems to say much more than this alternative image. It is not just a question of matching a ‘horse’ – an approach – with a ‘course’– a ‘real- world’ situation. This is because taking a systems approach involves addressing the question of purpose. Let me explain what I mean by this.

Earlier you attempted to interpret some possible purposes a government minister might have had in engaging with the child support case study as if it were a difficulty (Activity 42). I then ascribed a purpose to the imaginary minister’s behaviour. This is something we tend to do all the time. For example, one of my pet hates is people saying ‘you should’ to me – because I experience them as imposing their purpose on to me whenever they use ‘should’. The question of purpose is central to systems practice and the process of contextualizing an approach.

ACTIVITY 47

Attributing a purpose to the Child Support Agency.

Can you identify situations in the child support case study where particular actors appear to have ascribed purpose to particular behaviours? Are you able to identify any particular outcomes that may be attributed to this process?

Did you recognize yourself as having a stake in the child-support issue in Activity 13? If you do not recognize yourself as having a stake in this issue choose one for the purposes of this activity. Having done this, describe from your perspective, and in no more than one or two sentences, the purpose you would attribute to the Child Support Agency. Start your sentence with: ‘The CSA is a system to ...’

When you have completed this sentence you will have formulated a description of a ‘system of interest’.

Churchman has listed nine conditions that he considers necessary for assessing the adequacy of a design for a system of interest. The first of these addresses the question of purpose (Box 5). Read through Box 5 now and make notes about any points you are uncertain about.

1 Introduction 105

Box 5 Conditions for assessing the adequacy of design of any system of interest

Churchman (1971) has identified nine conditions for assessing the adequacy of design of any system of interest. He argues that these conditions must be fulfilled for a system (S) to demonstrate purposefulness. The conditions are reproduced in summary below (adapted from Churchman, 1971, p.43)

1 S is teleological (or ‘purposeful’)

2 S has a measure of performance

3 There is a client whose interests are served by S

4 S has teleological components which co-produce the measure of performance of S

5 S has an environment (both social and ecological)

6 S has a decision maker who can produce changes in the measure of performance of S’s components and hence changes in the measure of performance of S

7 S has a designer who influences the decision maker

8 The designer aims to maximise S’s value to the client

9 There is a built in guarantee that the purpose of S defined by the designer’s notion of the measure of performance can be achieved and secured

Churchman (1979, p.79) later reordered these nine conditions into three groups of three categories; each group corresponding with a particular social role – client, decision maker, and planner. Each category is associated with two allied categories which Werner Ulrich (1983) later termed role specific concerns and key problems. Ulrich also identified each category group with a term reflecting the primary source of influence – motivation, control, and expertise – for client, decision maker, and planner (or ‘designer’) respectively (Ulrich, 1983, p.250). In Table 5 I have reordered the nine conditions to match the three categories Churchman later defined. The numbers refer to the same item in the list above and in the table.

Before moving on examine the system of interest you formulated in Activity 47 and try to identify the three groups of three conditions associated with motivation, control and expertise specified as necessary conditions for the design of any system of interest (Box 5, Table 5). Suggest some possible implications if the system you have described has not satisfied all the conditions for the design of a system of interest that Churchman specified (Box 5).

I will refer back to Box 5 and Table 5 but first I want to distinguish between two different forms of purpose.

5.2 Purposeful and purposive behaviour

It is possible, as observers, to ascribe a purpose to what we or others do, the actions we take. How particular actions, or activities are construed will differ from observer to observer because of their different perspectives, which arise from their traditions of understanding. For example, in Figure 36 the person cutting the stone may ascribe their purpose as cutting stone or building a cathedral. It is for this reason that I will ask you to adopt several different stakeholder perspectives in answering Activity 48.

106 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

Table 5 Categories of ‘involved’ in a purposeful system’s design (adapted from Ulrich, 1983, pp. 245-250 and Banathy, 1996)

Churchman’s 1971 nine conditions for a purposeful system (S)

Churchman’s 1979 three groups of three categories for a purposeful system

Ulrich’s 1983 sources of influence informing a purposeful system

Group 1

3 Are the clients, the stakeholders of S identified people whose interests and values will be served by the system?

social role: client sources of motivation: whose purposes are served?

1 Is S teleological? Does it exist to serve a purpose? (teleology means to have a purpose).

role specific concerns: purpose

2 Does S have a measure of performance? Are expected performances identified and are relevant measurements available, and are they carried out?

key problems: measure of performance

Group 2

6 Does S have identified designers who serve the interest and values of the stakeholders? How are these interests and values known to the designers? Who is involved in validating the design?

social role: decision maker sources of control: who has the power to decide?

4 Does S have teleological components that co-produce the expected performance of the system? Do these components have measures of performance that are related to the performance of S? .

role specific concerns: components

5 Is the system’s environment clearly defined? Is the relationship, the mutual interaction patterns between the system and its environment, defined?

key problems: environment

Group 3

7 Does S have a decision-maker? (The client stakeholders, the designers, and the decision-makers can be the same.)

social role: planner/designer sources of expertise: who has the know-how?

8 Do the designers intend to change S so as to maximize its value to the client/stakeholder? Do they maintain fidelity between the preferred/ideal design and the operationalized design?

role specific concerns: implementation

9 Is there a guarantee that the designers’ intentions are realizable?

key problems: guarantor

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I am cutting stones

I am building a cathedral

Figure 36 An iconic model of ascribing purpose to an action (Espejo et al., 1996)

Even if we do not ascribe purposes to our own actions, another observer may infer our purposes by observing our actions and their outcomes, so that in their eyes we implicitly have a purpose to our actions. Ascribing purpose is an important process in taking a systems approach to managing complexity. It also raises the question as to whether there is any relationship between what an observer can distinguish when he or she wishes to claim an overarching goal, a common purpose, a set of shared values, or a common ethic? When I think about these I see little difference, but each term means different things to different people, and each has a particular history of use in different intellectual traditions.

Within systems thinking, purpose is a contested notion. However purpose is always attributed to a system by someone. Within systems practice the attribution of purpose can be a creative, learning process. I am reminded of Peter Checkland’s story of working to improve prison management and seeing purpose – and thus system – in terms of ‘rehabilitating criminals’; training criminals’; ‘protecting society’; etc. Stafford Beer said: ‘the purpose of a system is what it does’. But for me this is too constraining as it runs the risk of objectifying ‘the system’. I would rather employ the notion of purpose in a process sense, within the process of inquiry. This would lead me to ask: What might we learn about the situation if we were to think of a prison as if it were a system to train criminals?

For me there is also a risk in reducing the notion of purpose to mean an objective or goal that can be achieved, and in some cases optimized. I make this distinction because the important aspect of systemic practice, compared with systematic practice, is exploring or inquiring of a situation: ‘What would I learn from attributing purpose to this situation?’ Alternatively the question might be posed as ‘In reflection what purpose do I attribute to my own actions in this situation?’

Two forms of behaviour in relation to purpose have also been distinguished. One is purposeful behaviour, which Checkland (1993) describes as behaviour that is willed – there is thus some sense of voluntary action. The other is purposive behaviour – behaviour to which an observer can attribute purpose. Thus, in the example of the government

purposeful

purposive

108 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

minister, if I described his purpose as meeting some political imperative, I would be attributing purpose to him and describing purposive behaviour. I might possibly say his intention was to deflect the issue for political reasons. Of course, if I were to talk with him I might find out this was not the case at all. He might have been acting in a purposeful manner which was not evident to me.

SAQ 13

Decide which of the following scenarios best exemplify purposefulness or purposiveness.

(a) A group of friends who drink together regularly at the local pub are enthusiastic about football and decide rather than just watching and talking about it they will form their own team. This they do.

(b) Sophie noticed a group of youths running down the street and immediately thought they were responsible for the vandalized telephone kiosk nearby.

(c) My company has adopted the internationally recognized set of environmental management standards, but after a year of working with them we find they are not helpful in our particular circumstances. However, we feel we have to stick with the international standards to maintain credibility.

(d) We learned our customers were dissatisfied with our after-sales support. As a result, we changed our ways of operating; this has had positive effects right through the business.

ACTIVITY 48

Ascribing purpose and system to your engagement with complexity.

Re-examine your answer to Activity 43. What purpose did you attribute to it?

Can you imagine other purposes that might be attributed to it? Take a number of different stakeholder perspectives and list a possible purpose for the CSA from what you think is their perspective.

Following the logic of the purposeful and purposive distinctions, systems that can be seen to have an imposed purpose that they seek to achieve are called purposive systems and those that can be seen to articulate their own purpose(s) as well as seek them purposeful systems. This reminds me of the story of the rock and the bird used before in relation to the label ‘complex adaptive systems’.

One of the key features attributed to purposeful systems is that the people in them can pursue the same purpose, sometimes called a what, in different environments by pursuing different behaviours, sometimes called a how. Note that I have deliberately not used the term goals, because of the current propensity to see goals as quite narrowly defined objectives. Certainly this was the way they were interpreted in the systems engineering tradition of the 1950s and 1960s and in the traditional OR paradigm (see Tables 3 and 6). Checkland and his co-workers beginning in the late 1960s reacted against the thinking in systems engineering and OR at that time and coined the terms ‘hard and ‘soft’ systems. I will discuss this in more detail later.

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Table 6 The ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ traditions of systems thinking compared

The hard systems thinking tradition The soft systems thinking tradition

oriented to goal seeking oriented to learning

assumes the world contains systems that can be engineered

assumes the world is problematical but can be explored by using system models

assumes system models to be models of the world (ontologies)

assumes system models to be intellectual constructs (epistemologies)

talks the language of ‘problem’ and ‘solutions’

talks the language of ‘issues’ and ‘accommodations’

Advantages Advantages

allows the use of powerful techniques is available to all stakeholders including professional practitioners; keep in touch with the human content of problem situations

Disadvantages Disadvantages

may lose touch with aspects beyond the logic of the problem situation

does not produce the final answers

accepts that inquiry is never-ending

(Adapted from Checkland, 1985)

Some systems practitioners have found the thinking associated with goal- oriented behaviour to be unhelpful when dealing with messes. This has resulted in a move away from goal-oriented thinking towards thinking in terms of learning. Some of these trends are depicted in Table 6.

Peter Senge suggests the key to finding a strategy that energizes and focuses an entire enterprise without constraining imagination lies in a deep sense of purposefulness (Senge, 1998). This, I suggest arises out of a cycle of activity that is described in Figure 37. This is another manifestation of the experiential learning cycle described in Figure 30. If this cycle is completed, the purposeful action can be aimed at intended improvements; improvements that are judged by those who take the action. Those involved in this process learn their way to new understandings of the situation from which decisions about change can be made. Many systems approaches are designed to facilitate this cycle of learning.

If a system is conceptualized as a result of the purposeful behaviour of a group of interested observers, it can be said to emerge out of the conversations and actions of those involved. It is these conversations that produce the purpose, and hence the conceptualization of the system. What it is and what its measures of performance are will be determined by the stakeholders involved. This process has many of the characteristics attributed to self-organizing systems (I shall describe these in the next section).

110 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

Figure 37 An activity-sequence diagram of the experience-action cycle involving purposeful action (Checkland and Scholes, 1990)

Sometimes there is no agreement on what the system of interest is or what purpose it is seen to have. This seems to me to be a common occurrence. For example, there is no shortage of experts, organizations, agencies, governments, and so on engaged in the definition and derivation of targets, principles, indicators and standards against which the achievement of the measures of performance of a supposed system might be evaluated, monitored and audited – but little agreement, or even discussion, about purpose. In the UK this can be related to the failures and unintended consequences of policy built around the achievement of imposed targets. In other words many people have a propensity to pursue purposive behaviour that assumes both purpose and measures of performance rather than engaging stakeholders in a dialogue in which purpose is jointly negotiated. This can have unfortunate consequences.

If you have engaged with this block’s activities, I think you have already taken systems approaches. Therefore, you have developed the potential to manage complexity. I say potential, because in this block you have been participating in a simulation by engaging with the activities. This is a common way to develop practice skills. You have been invited to:

(a) Reflect on your purpose in doing this course (to begin the process of becoming aware of your being);

(b) Engage with a ‘real world’ situation, the case study, which you could choose to perceive as complex, as a mess;

yields

experienced-based knowledge

leads to

purposeful action in relation to our perceived situation

creates new

experience of the world of affairs public and personal

1 Introduction 111

(d) Gain insights into: patterns of structure, interconnection, dynamics, systems and subsystems of interest; the implications of boundary choice; situations where taking control action might be possible by modelling a complex situation;

(e) Identify yourself as a stakeholder in the situation;

(f) Attribute a purpose to some of the interactions in the case-study situation – to regard it as a system to do X – from the perspective of your stake in the child-support issue;

(f) Formulate a description of a system of interest using the phrase: ‘The CSA is a system to ...’

This was a lot to achieve, and if you made some progress on all of these you are off to a good start. You have taken a systems approach. This approach is one that the course team has found from experience works well in the teaching of Systems to undergraduate OU students. It is also the way the Open University’s residential course, called TXR248 Experiencing Systems, starts. There are many ways to refine, develop and add to your skills, and you will have the opportunity to do this as the course progresses.

5.3 Methodology, method, technique, and tools As you engage with systems thinking and practice you will become aware how different authors refer to systems methodologies, methods, techniques, and tools, as well as systems approaches. Having just spent some time explaining what I mean by a systems approach, I now want to distinguish between methodology, method, technique and tool.

Several authors and practitioners have emphasized the significance of the term methodologies rather than methods in relation to Systems. A method is used as a given, much like following a recipe in a recipe book whereas a methodology can be adapted by a particular user in a participatory situation. There is a danger in treating methodologies as reified entities – things in the world – rather than as a practice that arises from what is done in a given situation. A methodology in these terms is both the result of, and the process of, inquiry where neither theory nor practice take precedence (Checkland, 1985).

For me, a methodology involves the conscious braiding of theory and practice in a given context (Ison and Russell, 2000). An aware systems practitioner, aware of a range of systems distinctions (concepts) and having a toolbox of techniques at their disposal (e.g. drawing a systems map) as well as systems methods designed by others, is able to judge what is appropriate for a given context in terms of managing a process. This depends, of course, to a large extent on the nature of the role the systems practitioner is invited to play, or chooses to play. When braiding theory with practice, there are always judgements being made: ‘Is my action coherent with my theory?’ as well as, ‘Is my experience in this situation adequately dealt with by the theory?’ and, ‘Do I have the skills as a practitioner to contribute in this situation?’ There are also emotional feelings – ‘Does it feel right?’

Within systems practice, a tool is usually something abstract, such as a diagram, used in carrying out a pursuit, effecting a purpose, or facilitating an activity. Technique is concerned with both the skill and ability of doing or achieving something and the manner of its execution, such as drawing a diagram in a prescribed manner. An example of technique in this sense might be drawing a systems map to a specified set of conventions.

There is nothing wrong with learning a method and putting it into practice. How it is put into practice will, however, determine whether an

method

methodology

112 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

observer could describe it as methodology or method. If a practitioner engages with a method and follows it, recipe-like, regardless of the situation then it remains method. If the method is not regarded as a formula but as ‘guidelines to process’, and the practitioner takes responsibility for learning from the process, it can become methodology.

In this course you will encounter in some detail the hard systems method (HS-method), the viable systems model (VS-method) and soft systems methodology (SS-method). I will use these abbreviations except when I quote other authors who may refer, for example, to SSM (soft systems methodology) or VSM (viable systems model).

When speaking of SSM, Peter Checkland claims:

One feature never in doubt was the fact that SSM is methodology (the logos of method, the principles of method) rather than technique or method. This means that it will never be independent of the user of it, as is technique.

(Checkland and Scholes, 1990)

From the perspective of this course SS-methodology arises from a particular form of practice using SS-method. The transformation of method into methodology is something to strive for in the process of becoming an aware systems practitioner.

SAQ 14

Describe a circumstance in which each of the following could be classified as either a tool, a technique, a method, or a methodology.

(a) Idea generating (sometimes called ‘brainstorming’)

(b) A systems map of the CSA case study

(d) Adapting the HS-method for a new IT development

(e) Checking personal reactions and investments in situations

SAQ 15

Which of the examples that follow best exemplifies for you the process of contextualizing. Give your reasons. Note, I am asking here about the generic process of contextualizing, not the more specific case of contextualizing a systems approach.

(a) I am preparing a dinner for guests on Saturday. My guests are business associates from the middle east whom I have not met before. I am renowned for my skills in cooking pork-based dishes so I think I will build my menu around this experience.

(b) I am adept at getting people to contribute creative ideas during a brainstorming session. For this reason, I always start my workshops with a brainstorming session.

(c) I have just finished a Systems course at the OU. Most of my colleagues at work are not really interested in these ideas and don’t really understand them but I found a lot of the tools useful in thinking about my own situation. Because of this, I have sometimes suggested using a particular systems diagramming tool when I thought my colleagues would be receptive to the idea.

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5.4 Experiences that motivated the development of systems methods

I have already introduced the systems methods you will encounter in more detail in this course. Behind all of these methods, there has generally been a champion, a promoter aided by countless co-workers, students, etc. To paraphrase the French sociologist of technology, Bruno Latour: we are never confronted with a systems method, but with a gamut of weaker and stronger associations; thus understanding what a method is, is the same task as understanding who the people are.

A method, like any social technology, depends on many people working with it, developing and refining it, using it, taking it up, recommending it, and above all finding it useful. But not all technologies that succeed are the best – it depends on who builds the better networks, particularly of practitioners. As you experience the use of a particular systems method and strive to make it a methodology, reflect on it critically – judge it against criteria meaningful to you but above all judge it in relation to your practice of it. It will be your experience of using an approach in a situation to which it fits that matters.

5.4.1 Developing the Open University hard systems method

When the writers of the course T301 Complexity Management and Change, the predecessor to T306, started in 1982 they had to decide what to include and what to leave out (just as we have). They started with the systems analysis approach of the engineers De Neufville and Stafford (1971), which had been developed in a civil engineering group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). De Neufville and Stafford defined systems analysis as ‘a coordinated set of procedures that addresses the fundamental issue of design and management: that of specifying how men, money, and materials should be combined to achieve a larger purpose’ (p.1). Unlike this course, De Neufville and Stafford had a definition of system much closer to its everyday meaning: any complex, large combination of facilities. They also conceived of a systems analyst, who would use the power of computing to be explicit ‘perhaps as never before, about what is involved in the creation of a design and what goes on while this takes place’ (p.3). They believed a systems analyst would:

^ Be more aware of their objectives because of being forced to make explicit statements about what they were and how they were to be measured;

^ Have mechanisms at their disposal for predicting future demands on a system, which often are not observable in advance but must be determined from an interaction of social and economic factors;

^ Have a procedure for generating a large number of possible solutions and for determining efficient methods to search through them;

^ Use optimization techniques that can pick out favourable alternatives;

^ Be aware of strategies of decision-making that could be used to select among possible alternatives.

De Neufville and Stafford (1971) regarded systems analysis as being consistent with a scientific approach, which they thought followed the process described in Figures 38 and 39. The T301 course team was not fully satisfied with the original method developed by De Neufville and

114 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

Stafford. They developed a new starting sequence for the application of the hard systems approach (HSA) because from experience they knew it was the initial starting conditions that often shaped how the analysis proceeded (something that chaos theory has subsequently made more generally known – see Appendix C).

formulate theory

available observations check

new data no

yes

end

check

yes

predict new observations

Figure 38 A schematic representation of the scientific method (De Neufville and Stafford, 1971) (Reproduced with the permission of the McGraw-Hill Companies)

current observation new observation

objectives analysis selection implementation

alternatives

single analysis phase feedback loop

Figure 39 The dynamic systems analysis approach devised by De Neufville and Stafford (1971) (Reproduced with the permission of the McGraw-Hill Companies)

1 Introduction 115

problem/ opportunity

decision maker choice of route(s) to objectives

implementation

formulating measures of performance identification of

objectives and constraints

‘real-world’ action

reflection intellectual activity

number of stage

7 8

system description

evaluation

generation of routes to objectives

modelling

problem/ opportunity perception

Figure 40 A model of the OU hard systems method (T301, Block 3, Unit 8)

The T301 team saw the starting point as a decision, problem, or opportunity; it got away from the previous focus of starting on just a problem. They did that so that the HS-method could be taught as dealing with aspects of decision making that are designed to prevent problems and messes from occurring and also recognizing opportunities and seizing them in an optimal way (Tait, 1982). With this change in emphasis at the start the academics recognized it was no longer essential to have a client- consultant relationship – the approach was available to every-day decision making. The revised OU HS-method began with describing the system using what was known as the system-description method. The process is described in Figure 40. You will have an opportunity to put this into practice in Block 2, and in your project if you so choose. Joyce Tait, one of the contributors to the development of the OU hard systems method says in reflection:

I think what was innovative at the time was the fairly strong warning about inappropriate application of the HS-method and the inclusion of a soft stage 1, under ‘system description’. The existing ‘method for system description’ was incorporated into this first stage for reasons of consistency in our courses, but I think it was a mistake – not a robust enough method. Thinking back, it would have been a good idea to use the early stages of the soft systems approach (Checkland’s SS-method) as a preliminary to HS-method decisions on ‘what are the objectives’ but we would never have got away with it. Peter Checkland was external assessor and he was against any softening of the HS-method. I think this aspect is still

HS-method

116 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

innovative. There is not much sign, given the huge amount of mis- application of HS-method, particularly in the public sector, e.g. the whole measures of performance industry, that the points we were making in T301 have got through to anybody.

In other words, Joyce Tait believes that generally the systematic HS - method would be better contextualized within a systemic approach. My colleague on T306, Simon Bell, author of Block 2, gives the following example:

In 1996, I worked with an Indian researcher from an Indian agricultural research centre on a project concerned with monitoring the uptake of recommendations about fertilizer use by small farmers in remote regions of southern India. He was in a complete fix about how to do this and had problems scoping the problem.

We started off with SS-method and got a picture of why current monitoring did not work. This boiled down to farmers being busy when monitoring people turned up during the working day and the fear experienced by officers of the local research centre about being spied on by staff from the research centre. When he finished his SS-method and produced an activity plan it indicated the need for some quantitative modelling of the current situation as a base-line survey. He then used the HS-method to identify how such a survey could be conducted and what it should measure.

As with any modelling activity (see T553 Systems Thinking and Practice: Modelling) the cost of measurement and data collection must be taken into account. The HS-method does not take this explicitly into account; nor do most methods whether these are systems approaches or not.

So called hard systems methods attained the dominant position Peter Checkland refers to in Appendix D, because of some powerful organizational pressures. It is argued that they were desperately needed because of the increasing complexity of decision making in organizations. It was considered no longer safe to leave decisions that could affect the whole organization to the hunches and best-guesses of one person, however experienced they might be. As organizations increased in size after World War II and the number of variables to be controlled increased, the levels of risk and uncertainty associated with decisions rose. The environment of organizations also changed rapidly so that the organizations had to become more adaptive, more ready to change, and more aware of the political and social implications of their decisions. In addition to all these other factors, there was a rapid expansion in the domain of knowledge, so that the amount of data that could bear on a particular decision or problem exceeded the scope of one person. An additional factor favouring the development of hard systems methods was their strong emphasis on the supposed logical and scientific nature of the decision-making process (see Figure 38). Stafford Beer (1966), in the preface to Decision and Control: the Meaning of Operational Research and Management Cybernetics, states: ‘This book is about management and the way in which it may invoke the use of science to help solve problems of decision and control’. Given the dominance of the scientific method in our culture, this heavy emphasis on the scientific nature of hard systems thinking helped to give it academic weight and respectability. It is

T553

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interesting to note the same cycle repeating itself with regard to ‘the sciences of complexity’ as evidenced in Horgan (1996) (see also Appendix C).

Many of the early hard systems methods were developed by observing good managers, decision-makers or designers in action and codifying what they did. As defects in these early methods became apparent the methods were modified and changed. The OU hard systems method evolved as a result of teaching the approach to students at summer school and in response to certain criticisms of hard systems methods in general (see Tables 2 and 6).

The OU experience with the predecessor course to T306 was that students, who had to choose a project based on a hard systems, soft systems or systems failures approach, were often unable to appreciate the relationships between approach and context. Often, those students who were predisposed to technological or quantitative approaches finished the course still seeing the world only in hard systems terms. They were unable to make the epistemological distinctions I have outlined as being desirable in my ideal of a systems practitioner. In the process they metaphorically dropped the C-ball!

Unfortunately, the terms hard and soft are now part of the systems tradition. The reasons for this are outlined in more detail in Appendix D. In this course, we do not wish to perpetuate the hard and soft distinctions but prefer the distinctions systemic and systematic (Table 2) used in an holistic way i.e. not either/or but both/and.

5.4.2 Developing a VS method through the viable systems model and Viplan

Anyone familiar with the controversy in the UK about the detention of the former Chilean dictator General Pinochet can make a link with the history of the viable systems model (VS-method) developed by Stafford Beer and with Viplan developed by Raul Espejo. Espejo describes the connection in these terms (Espejo, 1997):

[my] work has focused on improving organizations of all kinds [...] In this work [...] above all I have been influenced by Stafford Beer.

It all started in the early 1970s when, as a young graduate, I was working at the national Development Corporation of Chile. Those were difficult days for the country. The people’s will was for change and to make it happen they had elected Salvadore Allende to the presidency. Stafford Beer was invited to Chile and for two years he supported a very important transformation process [as foreign advisor on the organization of the public sector of the economy]. Though many of us will know the sad end of Allende’s government, naturally [the experience] left many seeds for personal transformation.[...]

When Stafford arrived in Chile he had with him the manuscript of Brain of the Firm, his latest book (Beer, 1972). This was the first of three books in which he developed the viable system model (Beer, 1979; 1985). This is the model underpinning recursive organizations [...] I was captivated by this model [...] and it has held my interest ever since.[...] It is becoming a most powerful paradigm to support the development of fair and effective organizations (p. 1–2).

118 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

Stafford Beer is regarded as the founder of management cybernetics. With his books Cybernetics and Management (1959) and Decision and Control (1966) he laid the foundation for management cybernetics, thereby building on earlier works of Ross Ashby, Warren McCulloch, Norbert Wiener, and Heinz von Foerster.

Spend a few moments referring back to Figure 22 and see how I have located management cybernetics in the various Systems traditions. Beer’s contribution can be gauged from his obituary (Box 6).

Box 6 An obituary for Stafford Beer

World leader in the development of operational research, who combined management systems with cybernetics

Dick Martin and Jonathan Rosenhead

Professor Stafford Beer, who has died aged 75, was a remarkable figure of British operational research (OR) – the study of systems that emerged from deploying newly invented radar in the late 1930s, and has since found extensive management applications.

A charismatic, even flamboyant, character, Beer founded two major pioneering OR groups; wrote some of the best books about it; and was a world leader in the development of systems ideas. He is widely acknowledged as the founder of management cybernetics, which he defined as ‘the science of effective organisation’.

His thinking on how decisions about complex social systems could best be made went through several phases. As an operational researcher he pioneered the idea of interdisciplinary teams to tackle problems in business, government and society. As a systems guru, he was concerned with designing appropriate feedback loops within social systems. More recently, he worked on participative methods to enable large groups to solve their own problems. What united these aspects of his work was his early and consistent commitment to a holistic approach.

He began a degree in philosophy and psychology at University College London, but in 1944 left it incomplete to join the army. He saw service as a company commander and in intelligence in India, and stayed there until 1947, leaving the army with the rank of captain in 1949.

He realised that OR, so successful during wartime, also had immense possibilities in peacetime. Appointed to a management position in a steel company, he soon persuaded it to set up an OR group, which he headed. The group grew to over 70 professionals, carrying out studies across United Steel.

In 1961 he left to launch SIGMA (Science in General Management Ltd), which he ran in partnership with Roger Eddison. This was the first substantial operational research consultancy in the UK. Its staff numbered some 50 before Beer left in 1966 to join the International Publishing Corporation (IPC), which had been a SIGMA client. IPC was then the largest publishing company in the world, and Beer was appointed development director. In this role, he pushed IPC into new technologies, many IT-based. He coined the term ‘data highway’, 30 years before ‘information highway’ came into vogue.

From 1970 he operated as an independent consultant. For over two years, until Chile’s President Allende was overthrown in 1973, Beer worked on a new cybernetics-based control system to be applied to the entire social economy of Chile. This was to be a real-time computerised system, an extremely ambitious project given the technology then available.

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Although the Pinochet coup prevented the full realisation of the system, Beer later undertook commissions for the presidential offices of Mexico, Uruguay and Venezuela, answering directly to the president in the latter two. His recognition was always greater abroad than at home, where the British establishment was uncomfortable with his big vision and radical orientation.

From the publication of his first book, Cybernetics and Management (1959), a systems approach to the management of organisations was his central concern. In this he built on the foundations of cybernetics laid down by Norbert Wiener, Ross Ashby, and his mentor Warren McCulloch. A series of four books based on his Viable System Model were published during the 1970s, of which The Brain Of The Firm is the most celebrated.

In the 1990s he turned his attention to a complementary approach, introduced in his 1994 book Beyond Dispute: The Invention Of Team Syntegrity. Team Syntegrity is a participatory method for enlisting the creativity of substantial groups to develop solutions to shared issues. Non- hierarchical and democratic, it has been widely adopted, with a growing international network.

His impact on the way we think about management and systems was the result both of his magnetic personality, and the power of his writing. His prizewinning 1966 book Decision and Control charms the reader with its style as well as content. In this, as in his other writing, he takes an expansive view of his subject. His approach was always challenging, even subversive to conventional decision-making. Radically then, and unfashionably now, he believed in the benefits of a scientific approach, though he railed against reductionism. Unlike other management writers, he saw science as freeing thought and action, not trapping it in narrow procedures and techniques. It was his constant theme that the greatest possible autonomy of action should be maintained at all levels of the organisation, not just at the top.

Beer was a larger than life character. He was tall, broad, brimful of energy, and, in later years, bearded like an Old Testament prophet. His enthusiasm for life could be over-powering and quite non-Anglo-Saxon. Those who encountered him polarised between the group that was distrustful of what it saw as his showmanship, and those who were converted into permanent admirers. He was deeply loyal and affectionate to his friends.

The Guardian, Wednesday September 4, 2002 and http:// www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,785671,00.html [accessed 22/08/03]

Beer was a member of the group of researchers who generated the fields of systems science, as it was then called, and cybernetics. Many of these researchers were interested in what is now often called the theory of information, but more particularly the notion of control (see Box 7).

Of his experience in Chile, Beer had this to say:

We embarked [...] upon a programme so ambitious as to have had at least a chance of revolutionizing the form of government on a cybernetic basis that would match the revolutionary political intentions of that democracy. [...] I emerged from the experience very much changed. I changed in my awareness of myself, of my fellow men, and of political realities. [...] I changed also as a technologist, in terms of confidence. For I now know that it is possible to do what I have advocated for so many years – things which many used to say, and some still do say, are impossible.

(Beer, 1981b).

Beer’s full account of his experiences in Chile (1971-73) can be found in the second edition of Brain of the Firm (1981a).

120 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

Box 7 An underlying unity between control mechanisms in different disciplines

Biological scientists [...] logicians, engineers, psychiatrists – all these and others, too, were finding roads which led to the same basic topic: the notion of control itself. Gradually some of those concerned began to realize, through the terrible barrier constituted by their different professional languages, that they were talking about the same thing.

This group of scientists originally centred around the dynamic figure of the American mathematician, Norbert Weiner. By 1947, they had decided that their work had indeed uncovered a new field of scientific endeavour, and they named the science cybernetics. A story attributed to Weiner describes how this underlying unity existed in various different sciences.

Two members of the group had been designing a machine to enable the blind to read. It was not a new idea that a photo-cell could be used to scan a line of print, and to produce variable audible tones which would in some way represent the letters and words concerned. If a means could be found of combining the sounds produced in this way into patterns, patterns that would be as easily recognized as the visual shapes on the page, blind people who were not deaf could be taught to read ‘with their ears’. The main difficulty in this idea is that the pattern of sound must be substantially the same for a given pattern of letters, whatever the size of the print. The apparatus proposed by these two men involved selective reading by an automatic scanning process. A schematic diagram of the lay-out of the machine, with its banks of photo-cells and oscillators, was prepared. The diagram, quite unexplained, came, according to Weiner, to the attention of an eminent anatomist who belonged to his group. He asked: ‘Is this a diagram of the fourth layer of the visual cortex of the brain?’

That is an early example of the way in which a theory of control began to arise from the merging of established sciences. Who could fail to be excited by the fact that these two men, who knew little of each other’s professional fields, had the same formal insight into so deep a question? Nor was this synthesis of ideas to prove a futile coincidence. The scientists, stimulated by the incident, produced a theory about the anatomy of the part of the brain dealing with vision, and its physiology, in terms of a mathematical description of a scanning process.

(Beer, 1959, pp.2–3)

What Beer proved to himself in his Chilean experience was that it was possible to create designs for self-organizing systems. This is something of a paradox because a self-organizing system is one upon which, by definition, no organization is imposed. Beer’s detractors, he says, believe his model facilitates the secret manipulation of everything by shadowy figures in high places. He argues this is definitely not the case, and we are too often constrained by our everyday notions of control, which, in cybernetic systems, are very different. I do not have the space to expand on these ideas here; they will be taken up again in Block 3 where two other important concepts in Beer’s work – recursion, and variety will be explained in more detail (see also Ashby’s definitions of hierarchical complexity in Appendix C).

Raul Espejo, as outlined above, built on the work of Beer. This includes the development of a software package called Viplan, which is a process for enacting the viable system model in organizational contexts. This is described and included as part of Block 3. Espejo describes his concerns as being with a paradigm shift from the goal seeking, black box, functionalist approach of early cybernetics (first-order cybernetics in Figure 22), to the ‘meaning creation’ of soft system methodologies, to methodologies based on self-construction and autonomy (1997, p.25). He also argues that it is crucial to clarify the way we see purpose in social systems, particularly the

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capacity for participation and self-construction of purposeful systems. His concern is that most purposes in our social systems are defined from the outside, denying the autonomy of the participants or stakeholders. This is something that will be taken up again in Blocks 3 and 4.

5.4.3 Developing a soft systems method

One of the more widely used systems methods is known by its originators as ‘soft systems methodology’ or SSM. The driving force behind its development and increasing application in the domain of information systems development has been Peter Checkland at the University of Lancaster in the UK (e.g. see Checkland and Holwell, 1997). SSM, or adaptations of it, has been used in many other domains as well. The experiences that have given rise to the development of what in this course I will refer to as SS-method are described in an easy-to-read article in Appendix D.

You should now complete Activity 49, which involves you reading through the article in Appendix D on the development of SS-method (described as SSM in the article). This should take about 1 hour at most.

ACTIVITY 49

Appreciating the experiences that gave rise to the development of SS- method.

Spend up to an hour working through the article on SSM and completing this activity. As you read, try to make a note of the systems concepts Checkland refers to in his address. Jot down any points you find yourself disagreeing with or that accord with your own experience. Record these in your Learning Album.

I want you to read carefully Checkland’s description of SSM as an action research process. Based on your reading of Checkland and your own experience write a paragraph or two in your Learning Album about what action research means to you.

A publication by CCTA (1993), the UK government centre for information systems states ‘SSM provides an approach to solving management problems which requires skill and judgement’. They recommend readers of the book attain a level of competence in SSM before attempting to apply it. They suggest three levels of competence may be expected to be gained through appropriate training and practice:

^ Appreciative beginner

^ Initial practitioner

^ Practitioner

In this course, you have the opportunity to develop all three competencies in the SS- method if you so choose. The course team’s aspiration is that all students are at least initial practitioners by the time they successfully complete this course. If you do a successful project based on SS-method, you will have attained the competence to be a practitioner. Remember, however, methodology arises in the doing, so it is only through doing SS-method in a particular way that you can transform your practice of it into methodology.

In the doing, it will be important for you to appreciate and develop your understanding of action research as the course proceeds, because an aware systems practitioner is also a systemic action researcher.

soft systems methodology

SS-method

Learning Album

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5.4.4 Developing other systems methods

There are many more methods that are regarded as systems approaches for managing complexity (e.g. Rosenhead, 1989(a); Flood and Carson 1988; Flood and Jackson 1991; Mingers and Gill 1997; Francois 1997; Flood, 1999; Jackson 2000). The systems practitioners responsible for developing these come from a varied background, but in the main their experiences are similar to those described for Checkland, Beer, Espejo and the T301 team. All wanted to be able to either take action that stakeholders could agree would be an improvement or to pre-empt breakdown or failure. Both aspirations are responses to managing complexity.

A contention we have as a course team, is that an aware systems practitioner is able to braid their theoretical understandings and practical abilities so as to take purposeful action in any domain of perceived complexity. While this does not preclude you from learning or attempting to learn many of the methods and techniques commonly used by systems practitioners, it does mean you do not have to know them all to become a competent and aware practitioner. Our concern is to equip you with a combination of the theoretical and practical skills needed to make sense of, and use, systems methods as you become aware of them. What is more, many methods use similar tools or techniques. This is the case in the methods used in this course, and we will be drawing this to your attention as you proceed.

Figure 22 provided an overview of the systems traditions from which different systems approaches have been developed. Three other systems methods you should be aware of are described briefly in the rest of this section.

Open University systems failures method

In their most recent book, Learning from Failure, Joyce Fortune and Geoff Peters describe the 20 years of experience, which has produced the systems failures method (SF-method). Their motivation was to discover the ways failures in organizations can best be understood. They observe that one of the best ways people learn is from their mistakes, yet few organizations foster attempts to learn from people’s mistakes. They believe this absence of learning can be attributed to a blame culture and the absence of robust methods for the study of failure. Their aspiration is to enable personnel managers, software engineers, teachers and the like to bring complexity and connectivity to the surface through the application of the SF-method (Figure 41).

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viewpoints/ perspectives purpose

information about situations

pre-analysis systems techniques

identification of significant failures

system selection

system modelling

formal system model

comparison

paradigms

further analysis

synthesis

remedy

design/ redesign agenda for

change

lessons

systems techniques

purpose

Figure 41 The systems failure method (Fortune and Peters, 1995)

SF-method involves a systemic interpretation of a failure and its context (e.g. the CSA in the child support case study), which could lead to learning and action. The process involves engaging with a situation using a variety of diagramming techniques to depict it in a way that improves the initial understanding and enables a system or systems that can be said to lie at the core of the failure to be conceptualized.

This system is then modelled in systems terms and this model of the ‘real world’ situation is compared with an idealized model of a robust system capable of purposeful activity without failure. Insights and strategies to avoid future failure arise through the process of comparing models of the

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‘real world’ situation and the idealized model. The method allows for iteration as shown in Figure 41. Examples of how the method has been used to study failure can be found in Fortune and Peters (1995).

Systems dynamics

In the 1950s, Jay Forrester, a systems engineer at MIT, was commissioned by the US company Sprague Electric to study the extreme oscillations of their sales and establish a means to correct them. From previous experience, Forrester knew the essence of the problem stemmed from the oscillations present in situations that contain inertia effects, or delays and reverse effects, or feedback loops as basic structural characteristics.

Subsequently, in 1961, Forrester published his report on industrial dynamics that marked the beginning of the systems dynamics (SD) technique based on the study and simulation of the behaviour of social systems (Martinez, 1993). The experiences of Forrester that gave rise to the development of SD have been investigated in considerable detail by Brian Bloomfield (1986) as part of his PhD research with the Systems Group at the OU. He describes the SD approach as:

[...] building a computer simulation model to describe the behaviour of any particular system under study, followed by experimentation with the model in order to derive suitable policy options for modifying the behaviour of the real system. (p.viii)

Bloomfield does not regard SD as mere technique, but as a systems philosophy because it embodies a theory about the nature of complex feedback systems. This theory holds that people live in a network of feedback structures, incorporating economic, political and ecological subsystems. The feedback structures determine many of the problems – from famine to overcrowding, from inflation and unemployment to ecological collapse – which have caused considerable public concern in recent times (e.g. Figure 42 models unemployment and profit).

Forrester has been and remains (he was born in 1918) a powerful figure in the SD community, which is regarded by many as somewhat closed.

Forrester, an electrical engineer by initial training, spent the years of World War II at MIT where feedback theory was being developed for the control of military equipment. In 1947, Forrester took charge of the MIT digital computer laboratory, which developed one of the first high-speed digital computers. The second phase of Forrester’s career began in 1956 when he moved into the field of management science at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. At the time, the mathematical approach of operations research was restricted to linear relationships between variables. This was because non-linear relationships could not be solved analytically. In contrast, Forrester advocated a closed-loop approach in which a feedback loop is established between policy output and information input (Bloomfield, 1986, p.4).

Forrester published World Dynamics in 1968 and this served as a basis for the Meadows and Meadows (1972) report to the Club of Rome entitled Limits to Growth. Francois (1997) suggests the report and the extensive controversy it provoked were actually responsible for popularizing systems dynamics. The cultural background as well as some of the methodological assumptions of SD have been heavily criticized (e.g. Flood and Jackson, 1991). Flood (2000), for example, suggests SD-practice is open to criticisms

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of being imprecise because it relies on extant data and the outputs are potentially very sensitive to initial starting conditions, including assumptions. Many however find it useful.

A straight-line view ...

O S

headcount

costs

profits

downsizing

morale

productivity

headcount

revenue

costs profits

downsizing

...vs. a closed-loop view

O O

S O

Key: There are three loops: B1 (a profits loop), R2 (a productivity loop) and R3 (a revenue loop). A ‘B’ loop is balancing feedback that seeks equilibrium. An ‘R’ loop is reinforcing feedback that amplifies change. An ‘S’ signifies a causal link where a change in variable X causes a change in variable Y in the same direction, where X adds to Y. An ‘O’ signifies a causal link where a change in variable X causes a change in variable Y in the opposite direction, where X subtracts from Y. (Richmond, 1998)

Figure 42 The contribution of systems dynamics is exemplified by showing that the inadequate diagram of one-way, straight-line thinking is only part of the story. The closed-loop diagram used in SD modelling raises awareness of unintended consequences. In this case, it suggests the laying off of workers causes demoralization of remaining workers and reduces productivity. (Downsizing is a management term for cutting staff to reduce company costs and raise profits.)

The initial stages in making an SD model involve the description of ‘the system’, identification of elements and relationships followed by the construction of a causal loop diagram (see Figure 42). SD has also developed its own modelling language and symbols, which are shown in Figure 42. It is argued by some that when engaging with complex situations many SD practitioners can enable participants to learn just as much from the process of developing causal loop diagrams (combinations of influence, multiple-cause and sign graphs – see T552 Systems Thinking and Practice: Diagramming) as from the subsequent computer simulations.

Critical systems thinking

Critical systems thinking (CST) is regarded as a systems approach to research and intervention in complex situations. The approach developed from the concerns held initially by C. Wes Churchman and his student Werner Ulrich. Later, Mike Jackson and Bob Flood, who were then professors at the University of Hull in the UK (e.g. Jackson, 1991, 2000; Flood and Jackson, 1991) developed their interpretations of the earlier work. Jackson and Flood were concerned that existing systems methods, including Checkland’s SSM and other ‘soft’ approaches, reinforced rather than challenged relations of power.

T552

126 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

CST continues to be developed in a distinct strand by Werner Ulrich, a Swiss administrator and systems researcher concerned with the provision of public health and social services (Ulrich, 1983). His motivation was to make transparent what was involved in plans developed by experts without consideration of local people and their needs. CST, it is argued, is a debate within the Systems research community around three themes.

1 Critical awareness is a process that involves boundary critique by considering in formalized ways the question of where and by whom boundary judgements around a system of interest are made. This involves examining and re-examining taken-for-granted assumptions, along with the conditions that give rise to them (Midgely, 1996; Midgely, Munlo and Brown, 1998). The motivation is to address issues of marginalization.

2 Improvement – or emancipation, development or desired change – is defined temporarily and locally, taking issues of power into account. It is argued that critical awareness is required to surface different viewpoints in any attempts at purposeful action.

3 Methodological pluralism – uses a variety of systems methods that are flexible, dynamic and locally decidable. The role of the systems practitioner is to work with local stakeholders and to facilitate their capacity to select and use relevant methods, taking issues of power into account.

Midgely (1996), in an article entitled What is this thing called CST?, argues there are no consensually accepted definitions of what it is. He regards CST as an evolving debate around a set of themes that are regarded as important by a significant number of systems practitioners.

5.5 Contextualizing any particular systems approach

The capacity to put any systems approach into context is based on the ability of a practitioner to appreciate their own traditions of understanding and to make connections with the history of particular systems methods or methodologies, or to formulate their own. Above all, there is a need to learn from using them and to achieve outcomes that are agreed by those involved as worthwhile. This is a level of systems practice to which you can aspire.

At the beginning of Section 5 I posed four questions that I asked you to consider as you worked through it:

^ Is it the method or how it is used that is important?

^ How are learning and action built in?

^ Who is, or could be involved in the approach?

^ What could be said about the politics of intervention in a ‘real world’ situation?

Like so much in systems practice, there are no definitive answers to these questions other than ‘it will depend on the context and your own abilities in that context’. What I hope is clear is that an aware systems practitioner does not force a method on to a context, a ‘real world’situation, to which it is not suited.

Your ability to contextualize a systems approach, of juggling the C ball, will be aided if you don’t shoot first and ask questions later! Because most systems practice is carried out in some institutional setting your ability to contextualize an approach will also be helped if you appreciate it is not only people who have epistemologies but institutions as well. All institutions hold conceptions of what counts as legitimate knowledge, which determines how individuals are able to claim what they know. These

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epistemologies are built into institutional structures and practices. Don Schön (1995) cites the example of the typical elementary school that is organized around school knowledge – knowledge contained in the curriculum, the lesson, the module, in the promotion procedures for teachers, the practices of teachers, the organization of rooms and so on. All of these things enter into the idea of ‘school knowledge’.

The remaining blocks of the course and your assessed work provide one context in which further answers to the four questions above can be developed. Answers will also depend on the role a systems practitioner is playing, e.g. problem solver, facilitator, investigator, consultant, expert. Whatever the role, they will be involved in managing, which is the subject of the next section.

6 Managing complexity My focus in this section is on the M ball being juggled by a systems practitioner. My purpose is to enable you to appreciate the diversity of activities that might constitute managing. More specifically, I am concerned with the type of managing a systems practitioner might undertake. When you began Section 4, I asked you to complete an activity (Activity 40) in which you used a spray diagram to record the different meanings you associated with the phrase managing complexity. I wonder: did your answer focus on the managing or the complexity or both?

6.1 Perspectives on managing

Before going on, I want you to engage in a short ideas generating session to develop a list of all the verbs you associate with the word managing. Use Activity 30 in Part 2 as a starting point to trigger your thinking. Spend about five minutes on generating the ideas for the list and another five minutes on the sorting.

ACTIVITY 50

Generate a list of the verbs you associate with managing.

Generate and list all the verbs you associate with the word managing.

Sort through them and develop some categories that help you to group and make sense of your list.

Some of the verbs we (I did this with a colleague) thought of were understanding, surviving, seeing, visioning, allocating, optimizing, communicating, commanding, controlling, helping, defending, leading, supporting, backing, enabling, coping, informing, modelling, facilitating, empowering, encouraging, delegating. I identified three categories that helped me make sense of the list. These were (a) getting by; (b) getting on top of; and (c) creating space for. I make no claim that this list is definitive; my categories are ones that I found useful at the time. Undoubtedly your list and categories will be different. For example, the functions – the verbs – in the Act that led to the establishment of the Child Support Agency were process, trace, investigate, assess, collect and enforce. So these were the activities, presumably that had to be managed. Your attention will be drawn to verbs again in Block 2 because they constitute the modelling language of SS-method.

My concern in this section is with managing in all its manifestations and how these are embodied in a particular manager. I am not concerned with

128 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

management. When I think of a manager, I think of anyone in any context who is engaged in taking purposeful action. That includes you and me. Winter (2002) asks the question ‘Why not think of ‘managing’ in more generic terms?’ and illustrates this in the form of Figure 43a. Later he casts the act of managing in terms of a process of relationship maintaining (Figure 43b)

Why not think of ‘managing’ in more

generic terms?

managing change

managing reputationmanaging

operations

managing people

managing learning

managing suppliers

managing websites

managing projects

managing performance

managing knowledge

managing quality

managing costs

(a) A schema to engage with the question ‘Why not think of ‘managing’ in more generic terms?

‘Managing’ as a process of trying to maintain various relationships in the context of an ever-changing flux

environment (e.g. competitors and regulators)

board members

staff

suppliers

customers

projectsfamily

office

trade association

the business

key: r = relationship

r r

(b) ‘Managing’ as a process of trying to maintain (or break) various relationships (r) in the context of an ever-changing flux of events and ideas

Figure 43 Perspectives on managing (Source: Winter, 2002, p.67 and p.83)

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The frequency with which we perceive mess or complexity is high, so it seems to make sense to envisage a role for the systems practitioner as someone engaged in managing. I do not have a new professional management elite in mind – though this could also exist – but more a citizenry enabled with systems thinking and practice. I am aware, for example, of the millions of people around the world who now engage in local and family history research. It seems many live with a passion for explaining who they are and where they have come from. I would describe all of these people as researchers. So, for me researchers are not just confined to laboratories and universities.

Research in this sense is willed action, done for a purpose, though the purpose may not be clear and involve a mix of emotion and intellect. At this stage of the course, I am going to suggest that taking purposeful action about an issue or situation experienced as complex is at the core of managing complexity.

The enactment of systems thinking in any particular systems approach by a systems practitioner is also an enactment of the experiential learning cycle (Figures 30 and 37). The history of Kolb’s articulation of this cycle can be traced back to the work of Kurt Lewin shortly after the Second World War. Lewin is generally recognized as the originator of the notion of action research. When we connect with this history, it is possible to recognize the experiential learning model as a model for action research as well.

The idea of the systems practitioner as action researcher will be increasingly developed as the course goes on. (It is also described by Checkland in Appendix D). These ideas also provide a conceptual framework to imagine what the life-long learner might be, this idealized person that has become so popular in recent discourse.

An aware practitioner-as-manager, having chosen to take a systems approach, will always face choices. One of the main choices is whether to formulate a system of interest as part of a process of understanding a situation experienced as complex, a systemic process of inquiry, or to see systems as operational parts of a taken for granted ‘real world’. This choice is depicted in Figure 44.

‘I spy systems which I can engineer’

Observer 1

The observer’s perceived real world

system system

system

‘I spy complexity and confusion; but I can organize exploration

of it as a learning system’

Observer 2

The observer’s perceived real world

The world: systemic The process of inquiry: systemic

Ps Ps

Figure 44 Seeing the world as containing systems (being systematic) and seeing the process of inquiry, of engaging with a situation, as systemic (being systemic) (adapted from Checkland, 1999)

130 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

The systemic approach involves using systems thinking to construct an epistemological device as part of an inquiry process through which we can generate fresh and insightful explanations and which trigger new ways of taking purposeful action in the world. This theme is taken up in Block 4.

Based on my experience, the systematic route is inherently conservative and likely to result in first-order change: doing the same thing more effectively or optimally (see Ison and Russell, 2000). This has its place. The systemic route opens up the possibility of second-order change, change that changes the ‘whole system’. An example here is encompassed by asking the following: What is the system to which the Child Support Agency is the answer (the how)? The systemic exploration of this question enables new systems of interest to be formulated, which can be used by those in the situation to arrive at new understandings on which to base their actions.

The same choices face complexity theorists or thinkers (see Appendix C). They may choose to see complexity existing in the world, or they may see complexity thinking as providing the means to formulate an epistemological device that is capable of generating new explanations about the world, as opposed to descriptions of it.

6.2 Modes of managing systemically

Now I want to describe some of the possibilities I see as being available in the repertoire of an aware systems practitioner able to connect with the history of systems thinking and with the new theories of complexity.

David Robertson, in a presentation to the Society for Research into Higher Education in late 1998 entitled ‘What employers really, really want’ reported that: ‘research on employers in a number of English-speaking countries (an elite survey with senior corporate people) showed the traditional skill set doesn’t go far enough if graduates want to be employable internationally’. What’s missing, he claimed are ‘complexity skills’. He said, ‘Graduates must understand that the world is not linear ... They need the ability to manage ambiguity and connectivity and to be comfortable with provisionality – making decisions when you don’t really know what is going to happen, e.g. with e-commerce. They must also be comfortable with emergence’.

An employer’s assessment of graduates’ skills in the English-speaking countries was: communication skills – okay; disciplinary knowledge – okay; interpersonal skills – okay; leadership – adequate; teamwork – okay; information technology skills – okay; but, understanding of the nature of globalization, working with cross-cultural sensitivity and sensitivity to different ethical positions were not okay.

It seems there is recognition of the need for individuals with many of the skills I have attributed to the aware systems practitioner. For example Geoff Mulgan (2001) identified seven factors that increased the relevance of systems thinking to policy making and to the functions of government. These were:

(a) the ubiquity of information flows, especially within government itself;

(b) pressure on social policy to be more holistic;

(d) connectedness of ‘systems’ brings new vulnerabilities;

1 Introduction 131

(e) globalization and the ways in which this integrates previously discrete ‘systems’;

(f) need for ability to cope with ambiguity and non-linearity;

(g) planning and rational strategy often lead to unintended consequences.

He concludes that ‘Out of all these factors has come a common understanding that we live in a world of complexity, of non-linear phenomena, chaotic processes, a world not easily captured by common sense, a world in which positive feedback can play a hugely important role as well as the more familiar negative feedback that we learn in the first term of economics.’ He also recognizes that ‘so far remarkably little use has been made of systems thinking or of the more recent work on complexity’ and that in part this is ‘to do with the huge sunk investment in other disciplines, particularly economics’ (see Chapman 2002).

At the beginning of this section on managing, I wrote of three categories I used to make sense of the brainstormed list of verbs associated with managing. These were ‘getting by’, ‘getting on top of’ and ‘creating the space for’. I interpret ‘getting by’ as managing our being, including our health, humour and emotional state – this is often neglected. ‘Getting on top of’ can have several meanings – the traditional meanings, I would suggest, are to do with control. For me, ‘creating the space for’ is the liberating and encompassing systemic category. Particularly because I associate it with the question: How can I create the space for emergence? I want to address this question in relation to the question of purposefulness and self-organization.

SAQ 16

Classify the following examples into getting by, getting on top of, and creating space for.

(a) Providing the project team freedom to set its own timescale and deliverables for the new project.

(b) Using a standard response letter to queries about what the various products can do.

(d) Negotiating an agreed measure of performance with a team and then delegating resources for it to achieve the performance.

(e) Introducing and maintaining an active and creative mentoring scheme for all employees.

6.2.1 Clarifying purposefulness

Research conducted by Ralph Stacey (1993) shows how business managers often behave in a way contrary to espoused policies and expectations. Rather than adhering to conventions of long-term planning, and accepted orthodoxies and procedures, they actually tend to make a succession of unrelated, adaptive responses to changing situations as the need arises. This is often, and rather disparagingly, labelled muddle-through or crisis management but can result in adaptive action and organization.

In a study of nine companies, Stacey shows attempts to overcome ambiguity through planning, conflict, paradox and uncertainty failed completely except over short time periods. Yet, at least seven of the

132 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

companies made significant shifts in how they operated despite the failure of their attempts to predict and plan. All change emerged unexpectedly and unintentionally. As Stacey observes: ‘The changes occurred, not because we were planning, but because we were learning in a manner provoked by the very ambiguity and conflict we were trying to remove.’ Managers have to strike an appropriate balance between too much and too little control. They have to balance two tendencies within their organizations, programmes, or projects. Too much control and blueprint- based planning leads to an inability to respond to change, or to an unexpected eventual ossification. Too little control, diversification, initiative, empowerment, client orientation, informal communication and so on, leads to fragmentation and disintegration. Success, it is argued, lies somewhere between these extremes.

Stacey’s perspective is not a strategy for avoiding planning. It allows space for creative conflict, negotiation, interaction and learning wherein assumptions may be dashed but the seeds of new perspectives and formulations may be nurtured. Which seeds eventually develop and emerge depends on politics and negotiation and on the skills of those promoting, and inhibiting, the new perspectives. Systemic approaches in the hands of skilled and aware practitioners contribute to the surfacing of all of these issues.

I use these outcomes from Stacey’s research to make clear that when I speak about purposeful behaviour I am not equating it with behaviour normally associated with blueprint planning or other forms of purely rational planning. Purposeful behaviour is willed behaviour and this may be triggered by actions, which on reflection, we regard as rational or emotional.

Another key point from Stacey’s research is that too much control or attempts to intervene according to any pre-conceived view and necessarily partial view, or blueprint plan, stunts the process of self-organization. Change and adaptation in human institutions occur through social interaction. Apparent fixes can inhibit the emergence of organization and relationships that are most appropriate to any particular situation, such that solutions arrived at in this way are likely to be short-lived. It is in this sense that I see creating the space for spontaneous behaviour and emergent phenomena as a key element in managing for self-organization. The Microsoft and Linux case study in Section 4.3 provides an example of this.

6.2.2 Managing for emergence and self-organization

It might be useful to re-read Box 4 before starting this section. In this example, the terms ‘open’ and ‘closed’ were used on several occasions. You have already encountered the term ‘closed system’ in Section 3.3 of Part 2. You were told that human beings are closed systems in terms of inputs to our nervous systems and brain from the external world; effectively our cognitive processes are closed to information. Clearly, in terms of food and energy, humans – and all other organisms – are open systems, the inputs are transformed into some form of output or outputs.

Some systems thinkers have classified all sorts of systems, knowing (most of the time, but not always) that these were useful ways to think about situations in the ‘real world’, rather than descriptions of it. So, in the example of Microsoft, it might be helpful to distinguish two examples of a closed system. These are the in-house mode of innovation used by

1 Introduction 133

Microsoft and the closed-source software product. (Please note I am not saying these are closed systems, I am saying I may gain some insights into the situation by choosing to look at it this way.)

The model of software development employed by Microsoft, and many other firms, is described in Box 4 as ‘the old ‘closed shop’ model of commercial software producers’. This is contrasted with the idea of altruistic programmers, working together across the Net on freely distributed code that is open for everyone’s perusal and tinkering and that is ‘more powerful and reliable software’ than Microsoft’s. Eric Raymond’s commentary on the Halloween document explores this argument:

To put it slightly differently: Linux can win if services are open and protocols are simple, transparent. Microsoft can only win if services are closed and protocols are complex, opaque. To put it even more bluntly: ‘commodity’ services and protocols are good things for customers; they promote competition and choice. Therefore, for Microsoft to win, the customer must lose. The most interesting revelation in this memo is how close to explicitly stating this logic Microsoft is willing to come.

(From website:http://sagan.earthspace.net/esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/)

It is possible to say that Linux emerged through a form of self- organization. Self-organization is the phenomenon associated with a system distinguished by an observer, which is able to construct and change its own behaviour or internal organization. Computer simulations have shown, for example, the behaviour of a flock of flying birds can be understood from a few simple rules, which, if changed, results in the emergence of new patterns of behaviour. When applied to human activity, other features of self-organization require attention. Self-organization is also sometimes considered as the acquisition of variety by a system or the progressive emergence of novelty when removal of constraint or control releases capacity for autonomous action. These features seem to be present in the Linux case. (My colleague John Naughton considers the Internet as a wonderful example of self-organization.)

This perspective, it is claimed, builds on the study of non-linear feedback networks, complex adaptive systems and what Stacey and his colleagues now call complex responsive processes (see Appendix C). Stacey (2002) says:

We seek to understand Complex Responsive Processes of relating... [as a process of personal transformation]. This means, for us, that the relational processes of communication, within which people accomplish joint action, are actively constructing the future as the living present and that [the] future is unknowable in advance. Throughout, the process is characterized by the paradox of the known-unknown and in it emerges the aims people formulate, the goals they set, the intentions they form and the choices they make. What is being expressed here is individual and collective identity at the same time.

An important notion from Stacey’s perspective is that system and environment co-evolve; it is not a case of a system adapting to its environment. So what might managing be in this context? Patricia Shaw (1996) refers to consultants who operate from a complexity perspective; in contrast to what she claims is a traditional perspective (see Table 7).

134 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

Table 7 Contrasting perspectives that consultants may hold in undertaking interventions in an organizational setting

The consultant with a traditional perspective

The consultant with a complexity perspective

Designs and implements an educational strategy to realize planned change intended to improve the organization’s position in its environment

Stimulates conditions of bounded instability in which the organization co-evolves with its environment through self-organization.

Understands organizational change in terms of temporary transitional instability between system-wide stable states.

Understands change dynamics as unfolding in the ongoing tension between stability and instability in which islands of order arise and dissolve.

Contracts to deliver a pre-determined objective or outcome.

Contracts for a step-by-step process of joint learning into an evolving and unknowable future.

Sees large scale project plans and political and ideological control strategies as useful only in circumstances closer to certainty and agreement.

Dissuades managers from using inappropriate forms of control to manage the anxieties raised when operating far from certainty and agreement.

Chooses an effective marginal or boundary position from which to diagnose the state of the system as a whole.

Becomes an active agent in the life of the organization, by participating in its shadow and legitimate systems to engage in complex learning processes.

Tries to create an intended change in people’s shared beliefs, values and attitudes.

Seeks to stimulate and provoke conditions in which people’s mental models are continuously revised in the course of interaction.

Focuses on global, whole system change whether that of groups, individuals or organizations.

Focuses on feedback loops operating at a local level through which activity may be escalated up to system-wide outcomes.

Designs and facilitates off-site meetings to develop strategies and plans and build teams

Intervenes in the ongoing conversational life in organizations in which people co- create and evolve their action-in contexts or contexts in action.

Collects data on generic system variables through surveys, interviews and other instruments to feedback the legitimate system.

Invites an exploration of the relationship between the system’s formal agenda (what the legitimate system says it knows) and the multitude of informal narratives by which the organization is working (what the shadow system knows). These feedback loops generate their own outcomes.

Emphasizes the need for alignment and consensus around clear directions.

Amplifies existing sources of difference, friction and contention, so that complex learning might occur, provided people’s anxiety in the face of such learning is well contained.

(Shaw, 1996, pp.8–10)

ACTIVITY 51

Managing from a complexity perspective.

Look through Table 7 now. The table is here to provide some triggers to thinking. I am not suggesting one or other approach is right. As you read consider whether they are approaches you could take in your context. Do they have to be specific to the role of a consultant?

1 Introduction 135

6.2.3 Where does the systems practitioner stand in relation to a system of interest?

Systems practice may be carried out individually or as part of a team. In doing action research – which is a form of managing – an important question is: On us or with us? (Figure 5). This question seems pertinent to the process that led to the establishment of the Child Support Agency as described in the case study.

The answer to the question, whether the action research is carried out by an individual or a group, leads to different modes of systems practice. In this course, in Blocks 3 and 4, we are going to distinguish modes of systems practice based mainly on the level of awareness of an individual or group as they engage in some action to do something about a situation or issue they experience as complex. These modes of practice are related to the choices the aware systems practitioner has at their disposal (Figure 46).

Figure 45 Managing by doing action research: On us or with us? (Adapted from Wadsworth, 1991)

The mode of practice also relates to whether the systems practitioner attempts to take an objective stance, by standing outside the system of interest, or whether they see themselves as a co-creator of a system of interest with stakeholders. This is portrayed as the aware systems practitioner stepping into the so-called ‘real world’ situation with another stakeholder in Figure 46. The latter is the approach outlined by Patricia Shaw in her intervention from a complexity perspective. It is also the way in which many of the systems approaches described in Section 5.3 can be contextualized. These distinctions will be developed further in subsequent blocks.

One additional challenge you may face in developing your practice is to allow for the emergence of new insights from the use of systems methods in their entirety (i.e. as conceptualised by their developers) as opposed to picking and using parts of them. Based on my own experience I would argue for attempting them in their entirety first and until they begin to feel familiar, or embodied.

136 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

‘real-world’ situation

stepping in

‘real-world’ situation

As1

As2

Figure 46 The choices available to the aware (with switched-on light-bulb) and non- aware (switched-off light-bulb) systems practitioner with the four balls that need to be juggled for effective practice. The non-aware practitioner always acts in the belief that they are outside the so-called ‘real world’ situation. In contrast the aware practitioner acts from an understanding that there is no position external to the ‘real world’ – i.e. they are always in the situation, usually with others. In addition they can also act ‘as if’ it were possible to stand outside the situation in an awareness of the ethics of doing so

SAQ 17

Each of the following scenarios relates to an aspect of being a systems practitioner juggling the B, E, C and M balls. Decide what ball has been dropped by the juggler in each of the scenarios and suggest some possible implications for systems practice.

(a) After meeting with the managing director and the board I felt a strong personal dislike for the policies adopted by the client organization. However, I did not let this trouble me for long and pushed it to the back of my mind because I needed the money.

(b) People at work know I have been doing an OU Systems course. One day, my boss saw by accident a rich picture I had done and asked me to explain it. Because it related to my work I was apprehensive but she was clearly impressed. Later, I was asked by my boss to assist a senior group in my department to draw and compare rich pictures of their situation. Because I had a lot of work at the time and felt really pressurized, I did not do much preparation for the event. It turned out to be a real disaster.

1 Introduction 137

(c) I recently became aware of a really top-class modelling package that I subsequently bought. But I have not had time to use it much since then. I am planning to use it in the consultancy I have next week so that I can use the experience to develop my own skills.

(d) Last year I visited X as a tourist. I was appalled at how unproductive the farming was given the good soil and rainfall. My background is in agriculture, and given that I am now retired, I have decided to join a senior-volunteer programme. I hope I can return to X because I am pretty sure I know how things can be improved.

6.3 Reviewing the juggler through the understandascope

At the beginning of Part 3 I invited you to consider through the lens of the understandascope (Figure 17) an ideal model of a systems practitioner juggling the four balls of being, engaging, contextualizing and managing. By introducing material based on the biology of cognition when considering the B-ball my invitation was to see the fusion of the observer and his or her understandascope into an autonomous unity. Thus is Figure 47 I have depicted the observer and their understandascope as a living system coupled to a medium or environment. The implications are that human beings are both biologically autonomous yet never independent of their context.

Figure 47 The systems practitioner and their understandascope conceptualized as one system coupled to its environment

In terms of an ethics of practice, the advice I offered from Heinz von Foerster was to act to maximize the available choices. My claim was that systems practice was qualitatively different and that an aware practitioner had a greater array of choices at their disposal for managing complexity (Figure 46). By this stage you might be able to make an assessment of how many balls you have in the air, and whether you feel you have more choices at your disposal.

138 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

The metaphor of the juggler being the ideal practitioner is designed to convey concepts that some have found difficult in the past. The learning involved is of the type Isaacs (1993) says addresses the question: ‘What is leading me and others to have a predisposition to learn in this way at all? It is learning that opens enquiry into underlying ‘whys’ and permits insight into the nature of a paradigm itself, not merely an assessment of the paradigm’. The limited literature on this type of learning suggests it is not easy. For example, Salner (1986) reports on the evaluation of a systems theory and methodology course for students in the USA in which otherwise mature and intelligent students could not grasp and apply systems concepts. It was concluded that systems thinking, when it does develop, emerges from a long period of personal experiences and interactions and from the testing of one’s own mental models. Salner (1986) contends new ways of thinking require competence at an epistemic level. As we said at the beginning, we expect this to be a challenging but rewarding course. The blocks that follow are designed to help you meet this challenge.

You might be encouraged to know that research with our former students shows many have benefited from their Systems course in a range of different ways (Maiteny and Ison, 2000). The overriding benefit, generally agreed by those involved in the research, was that systems thinking improves the capacity to recognize the validity of other people’s points of view; to put oneself in their shoes. Further research shows that our students can put their learning into practice. In 2002 people who studied OU systems courses and have used systems thinking in their practice in the UK NHS were interviewed. Those interviewed came from a wide range of work roles in the NHS. Some of the comments included:

I just think the more people that do systems in the NHS the better. We’ll all have a better understanding of what’s going on. (Practice nurse)

Systems thinking helps predict where disasters are going to happen. (Planning patient care)

We had a particularly difficult situation with a patient causing significant managerial problems. So ... we sat down and I described a [systems] model of trying to understand the issues and took my drawing. We still have the problem but what we now have is a management approach to the problem. (Managing patient care)

One of the things I’ve been able to facilitate for them is to ask them questions that makes them think about what it is they’re doing. So they say ‘let’s do streaming’. Well, what do you do you mean by streaming? I’m [using] Soft Systems Methodology ... to get people to think about what’s the mess they’ve got now, what’s the ideal system and how can we bring those two things closer together (Patient journey mapping).

Another respondent said:

If you were trying to equip people for managing who were not managers, like doctors and nurses, how would you do that quickly and effectively? It seems to me that giving them ‘tools for thought’ – systems thinking - is a good way of starting. Giving them that structure and giving them the language is helpful. Because ... you can speed up.

1 Introduction 139

140 Block 1 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity

Part 4 Making sense of your experiences of complexity By now, it is probably apparent that those of us writing this course are enthusiastic about the possibilities for systems thinking and complexity thinking. Our enthusiasm extends beyond just thinking, to applying systems thinking to a situation in the world that we experience as complex for the purpose of doing something about it. Our focus is on improving a situation experienced as problematical or on grasping some opportunity. It is the act of relating systems thinking to action in a given context that is the essence of systems practice.

Don Schön (1995, p.29) has argued that ‘we should think about practice as a setting not only for the application of knowledge but for its generation... Perhaps there is an epistemology of practice that takes fuller account of the competence practitioners sometimes display in situations of uncertainty, complexity, uniqueness and conflict’.

1 Revising your understanding

ACTIVITY 52

Revising your understanding of managing complexity.

Look back at your Learning Album and at the last iteration of your spray diagram that you started in Activity 2. Having now completed this block, check how your appreciation has changed and add these notes, and the altered or new diagram, to your Learning Album. List the new questions that you have, as well as any old questions that you have not found answers for. You can use the FirstClass computer conference to raise these if you wish, or you can take them up with your tutor.

You may be familiar with the Magic Eye calendars and cards of images that computer generation and reproduction have made possible. On the front of one of mine (given to me by students following a Systems residential school) it is described as ‘a new way of looking at the world’. For me, these are a delightful metaphor for the epistemological change, the personal transformation that is required to become a systemic thinker and practitioner. My own experience is that personal space is required and a way of looking that focuses on the background, which ignores the apparent, readily available images. Then there is the possibility of the new images, and the new ways of seeing, emerging. This can be an ‘ah ha’ experience. Or it could be you are already a systems thinker. If so, I hope the course extends your interest and enthusiasm.

1 Revising your understanding 141

SAQ answers

SAQ 1 The main traps you can fall into are:

^ Representing the problem, or your interpretation of the problem, and not the situation;

^ The impoverished picture trap - not including everything that seems important to, or related to, the situation;

^ Including your own analyses, interpretations and structuring in the rich picture;

^ Too many words; they can obscure or diminish the richness of the picture;

^ Assuming the rich picture is the final version.

The rich pictures that follow give an indication of some common traps.

Figure SA1 (opposite) seems to me to fall into several traps. It is certainly impoverished; there are a lot more things that could, and should, have been drawn. In part, this impoverishment is due to the fact that the drawer has chosen to structure the picture in terms of money moving about, so anything that cannot be represented that way has been left out. The rich picture almost looks like a flow diagram for money. The picture also contains some rather superficial analyses by making judgements. The drawer might also have been alerted to this trap by the words that appear; there are quite a lot of them for such a simple picture.

This picture has also broken one of the rich-picture rules; it should have a title. Also, it does not include the drawer.

Figure SA2 (see page 144) also seems to be rather impoverished. Lots of the situation is missing. The picture also seems to be an organizational chart of sorts. The lines seem to suggest it’s a disguised representation of the activities of the CSA. Of course, those activities do need to be included, but to include the lines is an element of structuring that will get in the way of the eventual usefulness of the picture. The picture also suggests, by its central position and the spokes coming out of it, the CSA is somehow the problem, an interpretation that should not be there. The drawer might have spotted this trap as they gave the picture its title. The picture should be about the situation, not just components of it.

Like Figure SA1, the drawer has forgotten to include themselves in the picture.

SAQ 2 Jane may be in the trap of thinking she knows all about it. She is certainly likely to know lots about it from the point of view of someone in her situation but this is not the same as knowing all about it. She may get trapped in her own perspective too. This perspective already seems to include the conclusion that the CSA is ‘no help at all’. She may need to make a conscious effort to include other perspectives as fully as possible and be open to seeing alternative views of the CSA.

Martha may need to make sure she is open to alternative opinions, even ones that could change her mind.

Pete seems to be identifying a single source for the problem. This is a trap. He is also making a judgement about a component in the situation, and that too makes him less open to seeing other perspectives on the problem. He may be right, he may be wrong, but moral judgements of this sort tend to obscure the multiplicity of motivations and issues that make up the situation.

142 Block 1 SAQ Answers

an d it’ s no t ev en

ve ry g oo d at i t

ch ild re n

al l th is mu dd le

ha s co me a bo ut

be ca us e th e

Tr ea su ry w

an ts

to s av e mo ne y

be ne fit s

fa th er s

C SA

mo th er s

ta xe s

(s om et im es )

Tr ea su ry

lot s of e xp en siv e co mp ut er s

fu nd ing a

b ig

bu re au cr ac y

th at do es n!t w

or k

pr op er ly an yw ay t ax es

inc om e ta x

NI c on tri bu tio ns

ro ad t ax

ta xp ay er s

F ig u re S A 1

SAQ Answers 143

ap pe al s

pr oc ed ur e

de du ct io ns

pr iso n

co ur t

or de rs

A ric h pic tu re o f th e C SA

co mp ut er

re co rd s

C SA

tr ac ing

bo o

ho o!

sn ea k

DN A

te st s

re gu la tio ns

pr oc ed ur es

en fo rc em en t

F ig u re S A 2

144 Block 1 SAQ Answers

Liam does have an opinion. It seems to be a strong one too. He’s also a stakeholder, through the tax system. He may find he gets stuck in the trap of feeling disengaged, by being engaged in what seems to be a ‘blame story’ that attributes the whole problem to parents. This is a pre-judgement that will get in the way of thinking clearly and systemically about the situation if he is not aware of it.

SAQ 3 There are several problems in Figure 8(a). The first one that I spotted was the secretary of state is not part of the Child Support Agency. There is some confusion about systems and subsystem here, at the very least. I didn’t think the secretary of state was really a system as such. I was also concerned about whether the White Paper proposals could be regarded as a system-with-purpose; I wasn’t sure they could. In this case, the diagram seems to simply illustrate the structure of the White Paper. It is more like a structure or organization map.

I suspect the diagram would be clearer, and make more sense if the system of interest were relabelled. This idea is confirmed for me by the inclusion of ‘statistical data’, which doesn’t seem to be a proposal, although it was part of the White Paper. The critical responses were certainly not part of the White Paper proposals or the White Paper. It may be they might have a better role in an influence diagram on the outcomes of the White Paper proposals. I then checked back to see what the White Paper proposals were. The establishment of the CSA was the only one mentioned. I wondered why ‘parents’ had been included as a system in the environment, which, by implication, influences the system of interest. If it was really an influence on the White Paper proposals, what about the other influences?

Figure 8(b) seems to have a clearer structure although some subsystems seem to be out of place, missing or inappropriate. I was also concerned about the subsystems that overlap both the main system and its component subsystem. This is very occasionally allowable but almost always is best avoided. While non- resident parents are not part of the enforcement subsystem of the CSA, they may feel its effects.

DNA testing is clearly one of a number of components of the tracing subsystem, mothers are not. You can tell they are not by saying ‘mothers are a system to...’ and then seeing if there is any completion that will contribute to a purpose such that mothers are part of a tracing-non-resident-parents system. There were many other components that belong in the tracing-non-resident-parents subsystem and the ‘mothers’ system seemed to contain many subsystems and sub-subsystems than any other subsystem in the diagram. It has not got a title.

SAQ 4 There are quite a few good points in this diagram. There are also some problems. The diagram is about the right size; which is to say it contains about the right number of elements for the space so it’s easy to read. It has a title – although there are problems with it – and it is easy to follow the train of thought that led to the diagram’s development.

Creating a good diagram takes skill developed through practice. This one has the makings of a good diagram but the following issues need attention.

The title needs to say what type of diagram this is, otherwise it is not possible to attribute any meaning to the arrows. This is intended to be a multiple-cause diagram so the arrows should mean ‘contributes to’, ‘causes’, or ‘leads to’. I can check whether this is what they do mean. I notice, for example, that some logical errors become evident when I apply this test. The survey in 1987 did not lead to an average payment of £27 per week. It was just one of the things it identified. The title also needs to suggest some of the events or effects whose causes the diagram is trying to explore: ‘... in the 1980s’ is rather vague.

SAQ Answers 145

Other logical errors include the connection from ‘parents on income support’ to ‘least likely to receive payment from non-resident parent’. I can’t find a meaningful way to connect these using ‘contributes to’, ‘causes’, or ‘leads to’ – and certainly not in the context of the case study. The same is true of ‘court orders more common for better-off families’ and ‘payments wither in value’. In this instance, It looks as if a time sequence has crept in. There is no arrow-head at all between ‘inflation’ and ‘payments wither in value’ and it may be pointing in the wrong direction between ‘increased cost of benefits and ‘decreased payments by non-resident parent’.

There are several places in the diagram where the arrows cross each other and this effectively disguises the fact there are two quite separate chains of causation in the diagram. (Imagine ‘inflation’ moving to the right and ‘high levels of unemployment moving to the left.) This is an important insight that is likely to be overlooked because the drawer allowed herself to get away with avoidable crossings over.

It’s not altogether clear what is meant by ‘indifference’ without a detailed reading of the text.

Sorting out the crossovers and re-thinking the title would prompt the drawer to think more clearly about what she was trying to explore and perhaps to rearrange the diagram so that there was a more obvious direction of flow. That would make it easier to read.

SAQ 5 The essence of using diagrams is captured in the idea of getting to grips with complexity. Producing a diagram enables you to explore your understanding in a dynamic way and enables you to identify patterns of interconnection. Notice I am attaching considerable importance to the idea of drawing the diagram. This is at least as important as, if not more important than, having the final diagram. The process of producing the diagram can be rather like a dialogue between your understanding and your representation. The diagram itself is like a captured piece of the complexity – captured by your understanding and capable of being interrogated about likely effects of intervening. Diagrams can also be used as the basis for exploring your perspective, perhaps by comparing your diagram with someone else’s.

Rich pictures allow you to have the whole of the situation spread out in front of you. You can see all the components, as well as the events, facts, values, opinions, and emotions expressed by all the stakeholders. It allows you to check back at each stage of your further analyses to ensure you are not unintentionally neglecting important features of the situation.

Multiple-cause diagrams allow you to explore the origins of particular events or effects. This is especially effective where particular effects seem to recur, even when their most obvious causes have been removed. It may be that the immediate causes are reappearing because their causes have not been removed or because there are other, less obvious, causes in place. It also lets you explore unexpected effects such as when a well-intentioned intervention seems to have exactly the opposite effect to what was intended.

Systems maps allow you to structure features of a situation in a number of different ways. They allow you to find simple ways of thinking about multi-faceted situations by ordering features in hierarchies of systems with subsystems embedded in them. It allows you to say things like ‘If I think of this X as being a system to... then this other feature belongs to it as a subsystem whose purpose is ...’.

Control-model diagrams allow you to explore what is needed if a system is to fulfil its purpose. It allows you to explore what transformation takes place in order to fulfil that purpose and what checks and controls are needed to find out whether it is doing that. It allows you to think about the necessary components and about

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the way they are connected. Control-model diagrams are therefore a way of diagnosing a system that appears not to be working or working well, and they can also be used to design ways of making sure a system you are thinking of using will work as well as you hope it will work.

SAQ 6 Smilla’s ability to distinguish different types of snow and ice depend on her history of making distinctions, which I have called a tradition; meaning a pervasive network of understanding out of which, as an individual, she thinks and acts. It comes about because she grew up with the Inuit people and was introduced and socialized into their history of making distinctions about ice and snow. To develop a similar skill you would need to immerse yourself in the context of the Inuit and to make connections with their history, which you could embody in your actions. This would not be easy and would take time, just as learning a new language takes time.

SAQ 7 I think descriptions (a) and (b) exemplify systematic thinking. If I accept (a) for what it is, there is a step-by-step procedure that I know from experience will result in a successful analysis. For me, (b) and (c) exemplify simple cause-and-effect thinking, which in both situations could represent a trap. Description (d) is for me an example of systematic thinking that conceptualizes life as understandable in terms of basic building blocks, which can be understood by studying the properties of the blocks. Example (e) suggests to me someone who is thinking and possibly acting systemically. I say possibly, because I would like to check out the claims from perspectives other than the managing director’s.

SAQ 8 There are many possible answers to this question. I am going to focus my answer on the choices available to the professional staff within the agency. My reading of the case study suggests the initial legislation was tightly drafted and highly prescriptive. This suggests those managing the agency probably felt constrained in allowing staff to make a judgement based on circumstances; a type of case-law approach based on practice.

The prescriptive legislation may have been a product of the ideological position of the party in power together with a perhaps unhelpful perspective on accountability.

At the time of writing this, the decisions I am being asked to make about named- degrees of the Open University seem to be constrained by the capacities of the OU’s computer set up and the data-handling arrangements for the various options. The same may have been the case in the Child Support Agency; the CSA information system may not have been readily adapted to its changing context.

From my perspective, the other ethical principle I want to apply is to encourage maximum stakeholder participation as this has the potential to maximize the choices available.

SAQ 9 The main ways of being an aware practitioner are:

(a) By attempting to surface your traditions of understanding (these could also be called mental models; theories in use; frameworks of ideas) so that you can be aware of the choices you make in pursuing your practice;

(b) By refining (a), you become epistemologically aware, and able to think and act systemically or systematically;

(c) By appreciating the constraints and possibilities of the observer and how this awareness questions the commonly accepted notion of objectivity and replaces it with that of responsibility;

(d) By seeking to embody your systems thinking in practice;

SAQ Answers 147

(e) By adding an ethical dimension to your work, particularly by seeking to increase the choices available to stakeholders.

In Table SA1, I suggest some of the advantages of each awareness and some of the traps.

SAQ 10 The three main features a practitioner might use to distinguish a difficulty from a mess are:

(a) Messes are made up from a network of problems and opportunities that will be described differently by different people engaged in the situation. By contrast a difficulty will be described much the same, even from a diversity of perspectives.

(b) The improvement in a mess is not just the sum of the improvements in its component parts. The improvements in a difficulty are easier to identify and describe and it is easier to identify how they came about.

(c) Because a mess is a set of external conditions that causes dissatisfaction, a judgement about whether or not it has been improved, and by how much, will depend upon the perspective of the observer. The improvement in a difficulty will be generally agreed upon by observers from any perspective.

Table SA1

Way of being aware Advantages Potential traps when missing

surface traditions you know what theory informs your practice; you can actively choose new theoretical frameworks; allows surfacing and questioning of many hidden assumptions

you remain unaware of your own prejudices;

you have theories that are not suited to the context

epistemologically aware increases the choices you have as a practitioner;

alters your approach from one of discovering or describing systems to constructing or designing systems of interest

conflict (including passive aggression) arises when your truth claim (perspective) is asserted over someone else’s

collaborative action is more difficult

appreciate observer avoid mistaken reliance on objectivity

enables a richer appreciation of what is involved in human communication

avoid taking responsibility for actions

avoid being ethical

embody systems thinking you are more readily able to contextualize your practice, you can adapt it to novel situations;

you appreciate the history of the situation in which you are practising

your actions are confined to the theoretical rather than constituting praxis (combining theory and practice)

incorporate ethics is an act of being responsible

can increase the choices available to stakeholders

you take responsibility for others without their agreement

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To deal with messes requires a holistic or systems approach, therefore it makes little sense to distinguish one feature as more important than another. A core concept at the heart of the idea of mess is, however, that of emergence, meaning the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

SAQ 11 Statement (c) best conforms to the idea of formulating a system of interest because it considers systems not as things out there in the ‘real world’ – as in answers (a), (b) and (d) but as a useful way of thinking about – engaging with – complexity from different perspectives. A rephrasing of statement (b) in the form, ‘it might be useful to think about the child support agency case study in terms of a system for caring for lone parents’, would better conform to formulating a system of interest. Statements (a) and (b) have little to say about context therefore it is more difficult to consider how these might be reformulated as systems of interest.

SAQ 12 My answer to this SAQ comes from my own experience, which may lead me to choose different answers to yours, which are based on your experience. Having experienced how much effort is required to work effectively in groups, I regard (a) as a mess. I do so because hidden behind what appears to be a simple choice of musical direction may lie conflict, emotion and a clash of values, which I could recognize as a system of problems. I view (b) as a difficulty based on my belief that a technical and unambiguous solution exists for the problem. If I were to move my boundary around this situation to encompass the generic issue of software platform compatibility, it might better be regarded as a mess. The issue of whether to maintain both PCs and Macs is a complex and emotive issue in the OU for example. I regard (c) as a mess because there are likely to be different perspectives on what constitutes a problem or opportunity. As given, I would regard (d) as a difficulty and (e) as a mess.

In some circumstances it might be helpful to consider (e) as if it were a complex system. I say this because I imagine it involves a large organization – the agency – and large social institutions – Parliament and the law. On the criterion of centralized decision making (see Table 2) I would choose to regard all the other situations as simple systems, but in doing so I feel I have gained nothing helpful for my systems practice.

SAQ 13 Both (a) and (d) exemplify purposefulness because each demonstrate examples of willed action and /or changing behaviour in response to learning. Scenario (b) exemplifies purposiveness – the attribution of purpose by someone outside the context. For me, scenario (c) has elements of both purposefulness and purposiveness. The former is indicated by the phrase, ‘my company has adopted’. Whereas purposiveness is indicated by the way standards are often imposed from the outside in ways that are unhelpful because they are not sensitive to the local situation.

SAQ 14 (a) Idea generating. I do not envisage many situations where I would call idea

generating a method, or where I would recognize its use as methodology, though I recognize it could be a component of both. I regard it as either a tool or technique depending on how I experienced it being used by myself or someone else;

(b) A systems map of the CSA case study. I regard this as a tool. With practice it becomes a technique.

(c) Learning by reflecting on experience. My classification depends on how experienced I was at doing this, including the sophistication of my practice.

SAQ Answers 149

By sophistication, I mean the extent to which I was theoretically and emotionally informed and aware. Depending on my understanding of these factors, it could be technique, method, or methodology.

(d) Adapting the HS-method for a new IT development. If, in the adaptation, I was able to contribute new insights into the theories of HS-method and also improve my use of HS-method and enhance the IT development, I would regard it as methodology.

(e) Checking personal reactions and investments in situations. I only have enough information to class it as a technique. In use, it could be a method or it could become incorporated into a methodology.

SAQ 15 The final example (c) best exemplifies the process of contextualizing. It does so principally because the protagonist understands their own situation – diagramming can be useful for them – but does not seek to impose their latest fad on colleagues. This person is sensitive to their context. In contrast, the protagonists in examples (a) and (b) both impose their experience onto the context. In example (a), this may have disastrous consequences for the dinner party because no allowances appear to have been made for the range of possible diets of the guests.

SAQ 16 From my perspective, (a) is an example of creating space for the project team to operate and be creative; (b) is an example of getting on top of because it is a control action that is relatively insensitive to the context but may be efficient against some measures of performance; (c) is another example of effective control action but which seems qualitatively different to the previous example; (d) is an example that could be interpreted in two ways: creating space for or getting on top of. My uncertainty over (d) relates to how power relations were played out in the process of negotiating measures of performance. For some stakeholders this may be experienced as control, for others the opposite. The final example (e) is a case of getting by, based on the terms I used in the text. It is concerned with how staff feel about themselves and their work.

Clearly, these categories only work up to a point. I expect you will see many limitations, but do not focus on these at the expense of comparing and contrasting my answer with your own.

SAQ 17 (a) I regard this scenario as an example of dropping the B ball. By pushing

concerns to the back of their mind the practitioner may be avoiding an ethical issue that has longer term implications for their practice and business. Because they have not faced up to the issue, the practitioner may also risk carrying a lot of emotional baggage into the project, which affects their performance and, if it is anger, may be conveyed to the clients non-verbally anyway.

(b) The most obvious ball that has been dropped in this scenario is the M ball; the practitioner has not taken responsibility for managing in the situation. Managing might have ranged from declining the offer to negotiating more time to prepare or to raise questions about contextualizing rich pictures – how would it be different from the practitioner’s own prior use of them? Was the new context appropriate? For me this scenario illustrates how part of the managing role is also looking after C, E and B.

(c) This is an example of dropping the C ball: the consultant is concerned with developing their own expertise in using the modelling package regardless, it would seem, of the context. Put another way the consultant is imposing the modelling approach onto the context.

(d) This is an example of dropping the E ball: of superficially engaging with the context (unproductive agriculture in country X) in terms of a difficulty capable of being solved from the perspective of the visitor. It is also an example of

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dropping the B ball because the person is unaware of their own traditions of understanding. I might add I am not saying the person in this case does not have potentially useful experience, but I am questioning how that experience might be used to best effect.

Activity answers Study Note: As outlined in the text I have not provided answers to all Activities. This is for two reasons:

1 For some activities only you can devise the answer and any I gave would be distracting or unhelpful.

2 For others in text answers are given. What follows are answers to some activities in Part 3. They are provided because I feel they may enhance your comprehension of the material.

Activity 31

For the purposes of this exercise I will refer to my practises as a father and as a researcher. I will use the following table to complete my answer.

Practice Measure of performance How do I now if I do it well?

Fathering Nature of communication with my daughter

We talk regularly and usually enjoy our conversations – my daughter gives me feedback and I listen (mostly!)

Emotional quality of our relationship

I feel loved and understand this is reciprocated

Extent of mutual respect Manifest through mutual engagement in each others work/ideas

Extent of trust By my daughter never feeling the need to have my permission to do something and by the lack of actions that betray my trust

Researching Grants obtained Am fully committed with a number of large grants in last three years

Papers published Two per annum is target which I usually meet.

Invitations to talk/participate These continue to arrive.

Extent of personal satisfaction

I enjoy myself when researching – but find admin distracts me

Usefulness to others More difficult – based on feedback and personal judgement

SAQ Answers 151

It was much easier to think of measures of performance in my professional practice than in my personal practice. But on the other hand more is at stake, for me, in my personal practice.

Activity 34

I think the last pair is the most challenging for me and others I encounter – not because I do not accept it on the basis of evidence emerging from over 30 years of cognitive science research, but because it is still difficult to talk about. My experience is that the majority of people take the traditional view so much for granted that the alternative is often dismissed before the conversation can begin. Recently my daughter’s teacher responded in this manner in response to points she raised in an essay for her ‘theory of knowledge subject’ as part of her International Baccalaureate studies.

The second I find most challenging concerns ‘conceptual metaphors’. The research conducted by Lakoff and Johnson and others suggest that through our evolution we have acquired a predisposition to structure the world in certain ways – and one of the most basic ways we do this is when we form categories. Let me exemplify this by referring to what they call the ‘container metaphor’. One needs to think of this in terms of say a child’s development from birth. For these researchers metaphors have an embodied basis, e.g. a child putting things in and out of any container is a basic experience; later this is internalized as in-out action patterns (‘container’ image schema) followed by literal language application of schema, e.g., ‘Out of the box’; ‘In my pocket’; ‘Out of the cup’; ‘In the fridge’. Then there is progressive metaphorical extension, e.g.

‘Go into the house’

‘I’m in bed’

‘I’m in her class’

‘They won’t let me in their group’

‘Keep it in the family’

‘Within the terms of reference’

‘An outsider’

‘Exclusive restaurant’

‘In time’

‘In washing the window, I cracked it.’

‘There are lots of houses in London’

‘In love’

‘Let out your bottled up anger’

‘Fall into a depression’

‘I put a lot of energy into this’

‘Pick out the best theory’

‘I give up – I’m getting out of the race’

‘It finally came out that he had lied to us’

‘My kind of person’

152 Block 1 SAQ Answers

The implication of this explanation is that we do not engage in a process of universal reason which is independent of our biological history.

Activity 35

You will need Figure 23 in front of you to complete this activity. You will also need to return to the activity once you have finished your study of Section 3 of Part 3. The verbs listed in the table come from the blobs in Figure 23.

Verb How I understand these activities now

How my understanding has/has not changed

Become aware of ...

Review ...

Appreciate ...

Distinguish ...

Consider ....

Review ...

Activity 39

I have already referred to the history of quantifying assessment in the course text. This arose as a practice in the 18th century. Another example is the following which has been doing the rounds as an e-mail joke: perhaps you have seen it before but not considered it in the light of my explanation?

Horse’s Ass

The U.S. Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in England, and the U.S. railroads were built by English expatriates.

Why did the English people build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.

Why did ‘they’ use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the old, long distance roads, because that’s the spacing of the old wheel ruts.

So who built these old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

SAQ Answers 153

Thus, we have the answer to the original questions. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification (military specification) for an Imperial Roman army war chariot. Military specifications and bureaucracies live forever. So, the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse’s ass came up with it, you may be exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back-ends of two war horses.

Activity 45

My purpose in writing this activity was to invite you to reflect on what it is that we do when we categorize anything. One way of reading this table is as a set of three categories each containing different category members. The mechanism employed in this categorization is to add an adjective in front of the noun ‘system’. So they are different categories of system. This is another example of the ‘container metaphor’ discussed in my answer to Activity 34 and it is the same process as developing a typology (see Appendix C). Of course this is something we do all the time but I do not think we reflect very often on the implications of this doing! I discuss the implications for systems practice in the text.

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Appendix A

Course team responsibility Let me tell you first how this block – written by Ray Ison and Rosalind Armson, with the case study by Joyce Fortune – came into being. It will help to know who we are and something about how the course team works. It is also important, again for reasons of epistemological consistency, to explain how we attempted to manage our collective and individual responsibilities for what we wrote. I can, perhaps best do this using the example of this block. (Each block goes through a similar process.)

The team spent many months discussing the course: finding out and taking account of views of others within and outside the university about what we should include, and how we should structure it so that you could develop your skills. Eventually, we more-or-less converged on a common understanding.

Ray and I (Rosalind) were asked by the course team to write the first block, with the aims you see at the start of the block. We started talking through how we would achieve the task set us, and when we had a good idea of how we thought it might be done, we discussed our ideas with the team. All sorts of new ideas and suggestions for improvement emerged from these discussions and Ray and I started writing, presenting drafts to the team as we went.

At various stages, it became clear there were some differences in views among the team about how the first block was shaping up. Each of us has our own preferred style, so it is not possible for any of the team to say ‘that’s the right way to do it’. The team had to find ways of negotiating how things were written so that we could each say, something like:

Yes, that’s a good piece of course text – it might not be quite how I’d do it, but I recognize the author’s view is an important one and she has written this responsibly. I’m happy for it to be included because it will support the student’s learning and fits into the agreed style, content and structure of the course. Furthermore, I’ll do all I can to help the author make this as good as possible.

This exemplifies how the team takes collective responsibility for each part of the course.

The same process happens for all the blocks.

Rosalind writes ...

Course team responsibilities 155

Appendix B

Case study Financial support for the children of lone parents by Joyce Fortune

Introduction The following case study looks at the background to child support and the first four years of the UK’s Child Support Agency (CSA). When I was asked to write a case study that would enable you to develop and practise your skills in systems thinking, the CSA came readily into my mind as a possible topic.

As someone with a long-standing interest in the use of systems thinking to investigate failures, I have watched the story of the CSA unfold with a growing sense of wonder. Failures come in all shapes and sizes. They range from the catastrophic, such as the air crash killing all on board that leaves everyone dismayed, to others that are matters for debate, such as the decision to build a by-pass that is hailed as a transport triumph by some and an environmental disaster by others. But it is rare for something to disappoint so many people for so long in the way the CSA has.

The story you are about to read is, in one sense, a partial one. It does not, and could not, tell the whole story of the first four years of the CSA. I have, however, tried to tell the story in an impartial, dispassionate way. I have deliberately restricted my sources of information to material from newspapers, press releases on the Internet, official publications and text books.

Before you start to read the case study, I want to introduce some of the terminology within it. Under the terms used in the UK’s Child Support Act 1991, a qualifying child is one for whom child maintenance is payable under the legislation. This is usually a boy or girl under sixteen years, or between sixteen and eighteen if in full-time education, and who has one or both parents who do not live in the same household. In most official documents, the parent with whom the qualifying child lives is called the ‘parent with care’ and the other parent is called the ‘absent parent’. However, the latter is now often referred to as the ‘non-resident parent’. On the grounds that over 90% of parents with care are mothers, most publications refer to a parent with care as ‘she’ and a non-resident parent as ‘he’ but all the rules governing maintenance payments apply equally regardless of whether the lone parent is a man or woman. I have tried to avoid he and she unless the gender of the person to which reference is made is known.

Before the CSA Act of Parliament and administrative procedures for paying benefit to parents for child support had been in place for many years. However, an increase in the number of lone-parent families brought increased attention to parent responsibility and child maintenance in the late 1980s.

Before writing about the Child Support Agency, I will look at some of the social changes that led to a government White Paper called Children Come First, and then look at the 1991 Child Support Act and plans for its implementation.

Child support in the 1980s

Between 1971 and 1991 the proportion of UK households headed by lone parents grew and grew, reaching the point where they accounted for almost a fifth of all families with dependent children. In addition, by 1991 unmarried mothers had overtaken divorced mothers as the largest category of one-parent

156 Block 1 Appendixes

families in Great Britain. (See Table B1.) Largely because of these demographic changes, benefits expenditure on lone parents increased from £2.4 billion in 1978/79 to £6.6 billion in 1992/93. Between 1980 and 1990 the proportion of lone parent families receiving payments from non-resident parents fell from around 50% to 23%. (In this case study, a billion is 1000 million.)

Under the ‘liable relative’ provisions of the National Assistance Act 1948, the state had the right to recover benefit paid in respect of children from the parents, irrespective of whether those parents were married to each other. But by 1990, the amount the Department of Social Security (DSS) was recouping had fallen to roughly 7% of the cost of providing benefits to lone parent families. This was due in part to high levels of unemployment but it had also come about because recovering the benefit was not regarded as a priority.

For parents with care who were receiving maintenance from non-resident parents the amounts were often small. A survey conducted in 1987 (Edwards and Halpern, 1988) showed the average payment was just under £27 a week, but the most common payment was only £10. The authors of a 1989 survey of the lone parent population (Bradshaw and Millar, 1991) made the following observations:

Only 30% [of lone parents] received anything and [maintenance] payments typically met only a fraction of the cost of providing a basic standard of living for their children. The least advantaged lone parents, those on income support, were least likely to receive maintenance payments. These findings suggested that the existing procedures for recovering contributions from ‘liable relatives’ were ineffective in the majority of cases. Among better-placed lone parents, court orders were more common, but tended to wither in value under the joint effects of inflation and indifference. Whatever compulsion was applied (and men did sometimes go to prison for non-payment) its wider impact was weak.

Table B1 Family type, and marital status of lone mothers in Great Britain: 1971 to 1991

Family type 1971 1975 1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1990 1991

% % % % % % % % % %

married or co-habiting couple

92 90 88 87 86 86 85 83 80 81

lone mother 7 9 10 11 12 12 12 15 18 18

single 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 5 6 6

widowed 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1

divorced 2 3 4 4 5 5 5 6 7 6

separated 2 2 3 2 2 3 2 3 4 4

lone father 1 1 2 2 1 2 1 2 2 1

all lone parents 8 10 12 13 14 14 14 17 20 19

(Government Statistical Service, 1991)

Only families with dependent children are included. Dependent children are persons under 16 or aged-16–18 and in full-time education, in the family unit, and living in the household.

Figures collected by the Department of Social Security for the year 1990/91 (DSS, 1993) showed that after housing costs had been deducted, 60% of lone parent families had incomes that were less than half the national average and only 9% were above the national average. (The figures for couples with children were 60% and 31% respectively.) Another study (Kiernan, 1992) found fewer than half of all single mothers had access to a telephone and only 15% had access to a car.

It was clear to the government the issue had to be tackled.

Case study 157

New legislation

In a speech to the children’s charity, National Children’s Homes, on 17 January 1990 the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, raised the issue in public for the first time:

Nearly four out of five mothers claiming income support receive no maintenance from the fathers. No father should be able to escape from his responsibility and that is why the government is looking at ways of strengthening the system for tracing an absent father and making the arrangements for recovering maintenance more effective.

Six months later, the government’s intention was clear. On 18 July, the prime minister announced to the House of Commons the government would:

... set up a new Child Support Agency which will have access to the information necessary to trace absent parents and make them accept their financial obligations ... [Maintenance will be assessed] through a standard administrative formula which will take account of the parents’ ability to pay, of the cost of bringing up a child – and the right of that child to share in their parents’ rising living standards. Complicated cases may still have to be referred to the courts but the existence of the formula will help in these cases too.

Children Come First

Proposals to set up an administrative agency to assess, collect and enforce child maintenance were set out in the White Paper Children Come First, which was published in October 1990. It gave the same message as that contained in Thatcher’s speech to the National Children’s Homes:

Every child has a right to care from his or her parents. Parents generally have a legal obligation to care for their children until the children are old enough to look after themselves. The parents of a child may separate. In some instances, the parents may not have lived together as a family at all. Although events may change the relationship between the parents – for example, when they divorce – those events cannot in any way change their responsibilities towards their children ...

It is right that other taxpayers should help maintain children when the children’s own parents, despite their own best efforts, do not have enough resources to do so themselves. That will continue to be the case. But it is not right that taxpayers, who include other families, should shoulder that responsibility instead of parents who are able to do it themselves.

The White Paper was in two parts. The first part proposed the setting up of the Child Support Agency under the authority of the secretary of state for Social Security. Its role would be to trace absent parents, investigate parents’ means, assess the amounts of maintenance to be paid by application of a standard formula, and collect and enforce payments. Parents with care who were in receipt of income support or family credit would be obliged to apply for maintenance and to provide the information required unless they had ‘good cause’ to withhold information. (The examples of good cause that were cited were rape and incest.) Those who refused to co-operate without good cause would suffer a benefit penalty. The second part of the White Paper contained the statistical data on which the assertions made in the first part were based.

There were critical responses to the White Paper from interested parties such as the Child Poverty Action Group who described it as ‘narrowly conceived and over- dominated by Treasury considerations’ (Bennett and Chapman, 1990), but the proposals it contained were embodied almost unchanged in the Child Support bill.

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The Child Support Act 1991

The Child Support bill was published on 15 February 1991 as ‘An Act to make provision for the assessment, collection and enforcement of periodical maintenance payable by certain parents with respect to children of theirs who are not in their care; for the collection and enforcement of certain other kinds of maintenance; and for connected purposes.’

It was broadly welcomed by the National Council for One Parent Families though its director was reported as saying: ‘We are very disappointed that government has not reconsidered its intention to remove benefit payments from families in which mothers do not wish to name fathers as we believe this will cause great hardship to vulnerable children’ (The Times, 16 February 1991).

Other groups and organizations were much less sanguine. Those expressing stronger opposition included the Law Society and various voluntary and charitable bodies such as the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, the Child Poverty Action Group, Barnado’s, Church Action on Poverty, the Legal Action Group, MENCAP, the National Children’s Bureaux, the NSPCC, the Save the Children Fund and the Children’s Society.

In addition to concern about the requirement to name the father, the main criticism from organizations was the failure to address the underlying problem of lone parent poverty. Because income support would be reduced pound-for-pound by the amount of maintenance received, many lone parents would receive no financial benefit from the maintenance payments. Many of the organizations argued that parents on income support should be allowed to keep a proportion of the maintenance over and above their benefits in the same way as those receiving family credit or disability working allowance were able to have the first £15 of maintenance disregarded when their entitlement was calculated.

Within Parliament, opposition to the passage of the bill was strongest in the House of Lords. By a majority of 110 votes to 106, the Lords rejected the proposal to exact a benefit penalty for non-co-operation. But this penalty was restored, albeit with a broadening of the grounds for not co-operating, in the House of Commons during the committee stage of the legislative process. Some MPs in the Commons did voice dissent, and the cross-party Social Security Committee called for amendments including one that would prevent the retrospective investigation of people who had reached divorce settlements prior to the legislation. However, the opposition parties did not vote against the Act.

Perhaps surprisingly, media coverage was limited, with the issue of runaway fathers being the only one to attract much interest and five months after its publication the bill received royal assent on 25 July 1991.

Concern has been expressed at the speed at which the legislative process moved. For instance, one district judge wrote:

The Child Support Act 1991 has radically changed the law and procedure as to the determination and recovery of child maintenance throughout the United Kingdom. A remarkable feature of these changes has been the speed with which they have been introduced. The Children Act 1989 was a major piece of legislation which was intended to encompass all necessary provisions relating to children, and, as part of these provisions, contained a lengthy and elaborate schedule dealing with child maintenance. That Act completed its legislative passage in 1989 and was brought into force on 14 October 1991; however, even before it had come into force, the Child Support Act had been introduced, completed all its legislative stages and received Royal Assent. The result is that, even before it came into force, that part of the Children Act which deals with child maintenance was reduced to the status of transitional provision as it related to most children.

(Bird, 1993, p.17)

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A Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) publication (Garnham and Knights, 1994) claimed:

Not only did the haste of the legislative process detract from the quality of scrutiny, but the heavy use of secondary legislation compounded the problem further since there is no possibility of amending the regulations during debate ... CPAG believes ... all the problems [about the working of the Act] could be – and were – predicted from the legislation. The government’s response was simply to keep restating the need for change and the underlying principle at each stage of the debate, without giving much evidence of having seriously reflected on possible consequences.

(Garnham and Knights, 1994, pp.50–51)

Bird (1993, p.27) explains this point about secondary legislation: ‘One of the distinctive features of the Act was the large amount of detail which was left to be determined by regulation. Until these regulations were published it was not possible to predict accurately the overall effect of the provisions of the Act.’ He then goes on to list the nine sets of regulations from the Department of Social Security that were laid before Parliament and eventually made during the second half of 1992. Bird also refers to the various orders dealing with matters such as consent orders and applications for declaration as to parentage that emanated from the Lord Chancellor’s Department.

The provisions of the Act

As its long title states, the Act provides for ‘the assessment, collection and enforcement of periodical maintenance payable by certain parents with respect to children of theirs who are not in their care; for the collection and enforcement of certain other kinds of maintenance; and for connected purposes.’

One of its main cornerstones is the maintenance formula. This prescribes the method of calculating the maintenance payable and was designed to be set in stone. It has four elements:

1 The maintenance requirement defined as ‘the minimum amount necessary for the maintenance of the qualifying child(ren)’;

2 Both parents’ assessable income;

3 The deduction rate that sets the proportion of assessable income to be used for maintenance; a deduction rate of 50% is applied to the combined assessable income of both parents until the maintenance requirement is met;

4 The protected income that is the disposable income the parent must be left with after paying maintenance.

Pages and pages of mathematical formulae and illustrative examples covering all aspects of the calculations were published and the latest revised versions continued to be freely available from the CSA up until this case study was written. Suffice to say, it was estimated the average maintenance payment calculated by applying the formula would be £50 per week; a sum roughly double the amount the courts had usually set when they were responsible for determining maintenance.

Fees were to be charged for using the CSA though the regulations did not specify which parent should pay the fee. An assessment fee of £44 was to be payable on assessment and then annually thereafter and if the collection service was used (payments may be made direct from one parent to the other or the CSA organizes collection and enforcement if requested by at least one of the parents), a further annual charge of £34 would be made. Some categories of person were exempted from these charges, including anyone receiving income support, family credit or disability living allowance.

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Five methods of enforcement were provided:

1 Deduction from earnings orders;

2 Liability orders (only available when a liable person was in default);

3 Seizure and sale of goods, subject to certain exceptions such as clothing and household furniture;

4 County court enforcements using the same procedures as for a county court judgement;

5 Imprisonment.

The fifth of these was only to be available after the first has been considered and rejected as inappropriate or ineffective and after a liability order has been made in a magistrate’s court.

Plans for implementation

It was announced that the provisions of the Child Support Act 1991 would be phased in over a four-year period starting 5 April 1993. The plan, as set out in the Child Support Act 1991 (Commencement No 3 and Transitional Provisions) Order 1992, was that applications from people who were not receiving income support, family credit or disability working allowance, and who had no existing court orders or written child maintenance agreements, would be taken on right from the start. The cases of those who were receiving benefit, and who were thus required by the secretary of state to authourize an application, would be phased in over the period between April 93 and April 96. Those with existing court orders or written child maintenance agreements would be considered after April 1996.

It was estimated by the time the Child Support Agency was fully operational it would be dealing with about two million families and the number of lone parents being paid regular maintenance would increase by about 200 000, which would in turn lead to a fall of 50 000 in the number receiving income support.

The Child Support Unit was set up in 1992 as a forerunner to the CSA. It took over administration of the liable-relatives work from the Benefits Agency and planned the start up of the CSA.

Child Support Agency (CSA) As planned, the CSA started work on 5 April 1993. It operates from six regional centres in Belfast, Falkirk, Birkenhead, Dudley, Plymouth and Hastings. These centres are responsible for the assessment process and their contact with their clients is by post and telephone. Face-to-face contact is made by network of field officers; they are based in Benefits Agency offices.

The first chief executive was Ros Hepplewhite, former director of MIND, a mental health charity. She was appointed in January 1992. Press reports of her expectations were not entirely consistent:

I think we will have very high levels of co-operation. It will be seen as inescapable and to people’s advantage to co-operate with us.

(Sunday Times, 18 October 1992)

We expect some hostility and resistance. Acceptance will require a big cultural change ... No one wants to pay up but there will be no choice.

(The Times, 10 February 1993)

The CSA was the first of the Next Steps agencies to be set up from scratch. Next Steps was a programme begun in 1988 to slim down the civil service by transferring the executive functions of government to people working for semi- autonomous agencies. The consequences of ‘agencyification’ for the staffing

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arrangements of the DSS are shown in Table B2. As Greer and Carter (1995) say, because the CSA was set up from scratch it ‘inherited an Act of Parliament but few extant organizational structures’.

Table B2 Proportions of DSS staff employed in Next Steps agencies

Agency Date established Percentage DSS staff (planned totals 1993/94)

Percentage admin costs (planned totals 1993/94)

Resettlement Agency 1989 0.6 1

ITSA 1990 5.0 14

Benefits Agency 1991 78.1 53

Contributions Agency 1991 10.7 5

Child Support Agency 1993 2.7 3

core department 1.6 3

corporate expenditure 19

(Bellamy, 1995; derived from DSS and HM Treasury, 1993)

Next Steps agencies are supposed to carry out functions that are non-controversial, and many expected the work of the CSA to be just that. But despite the appearance of consensus, there were always tensions underlying the job it was asked to do. Bedingfield points to one of them:

The Conservative government’s decision to place maintenance payments from absent parents on a statutory basis, subject to strict formulae as to the amounts payable, had more to do with the fiscal priorities of the state than helping children in first families. It was felt by the framers of the Act that the time had come for the state to stop subsidizing divorce and remarriage. Henceforth, according to the Act, absent fathers would all pay – and fathers who did not pay would have to answer to the state.

(Bedingfield, 1998, p.85)

Another important aspect of the underlying conflicts in the political agenda was voiced in a report on a study of lone mothers on income support or family credit that was carried out immediately before the legislation was implemented.

The growth of lone parenthood is in danger of becoming one of the central ‘moral panics’ of the 1990s, particularly as a result of ungrounded and judgmental political comment and media coverage. The reality of lone parenthood is far removed from much of this comment. The debates about ‘family values’ and ‘family policy’ now being joined from all parts of the political spectrum, continue to be driven by the assumption that two- parent families are the desired form against which all other family types should be judged (and usually found wanting); and that they are the norm in present-day Britain. Whether or not the first is true is actually a matter of conflicting values and a subject of debate about the implications of different family forms.

The second assumption is, however, not a matter of belief but a matter of fact. It is increasingly the case that two-parent families are not the norm within the UK. Family policy should be constructed as much on the basis of how things are just as much (sic) as how we want them to be. Seen through the eyes of the lone mothers in this study the Child Support Act appears implicitly and explicitly to denigrate the status of lone parents still further beyond that established by existing social security and other

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arrangements for their ‘support’. It is difficult to argue that any of the lone mothers in the study in any way come close to media and political stereotypes of feckless women having babies in order to ‘jump the housing queue’ and settle back into a life of contentment on benefit (perhaps subsidized by undeclared earnings). Most mothers had become mothers in the context of what they had anticipated would be stable and loving relationships. These relationships had ended for a variety of reasons – often extremely difficult and painful ones – but the treatment they now anticipated as a result of that relationship breakdown suggested that they and their children could expect little emotional or financial support in the process of rebuilding their lives. As it stands, the fears (and expectations) of lone parents interviewed in this study are that the Act will take from their lives much more than it will give back.

(Clarke, Craig and Glendinning, 1993, pp.81–2)

CSA year one, 1993/94

The targets of the CSA for its first year of operation were to:

^ Arrange maintenance for 60% of the parents with care making eligible applications

^ Make benefit savings of £530 million

^ Deliver its business plan within a spending budget of £115 million

^ Satisfy 65% of clients

The assessment process required information from two forms: the maintenance application form (MAF) sent to the parent with care; and the maintenance enquiry form (MEF) sent to the non-resident parent. The assessment process for parents with care who are receiving benefit is shown in Figure B1 (overleaf).

It was expected over a million MAFs would be issued during the first year, which, given the 60% target referred to above, would translate into about 600 000 completed assessments. These targets were missed by a wide margin. The actual figures at the end of the second and third quarters of 1993/94 are shown in Table B3.

Table B3 Assessment performance at the end of the second and third quarters of 1993/94

As percentage of MAFs issued (by 30 September 1993)

As percentage of MAFs issued (by 31 December 1993)

MAFs issued 527 000 719 900

MAFs returned 326 700 61 515 700 73

MEFs issued 166 200 32 344 000 48

MEFs returned 79 700 15 208 200 29

assessments made 36 600 7 121 600 17

other completed cases

20 000 4 79 800 11

One reason for the poor response rate was that parents with care who refused to supply the information required by the CSA without a satisfactory reason risked losing 20% of their income support (£8.80 per week) for six months and then 10% for a further twelve months. Guidelines issued to the CSA by the DSS in January 1993 were said to promise ‘sensitive treatment’ to those with genuine reasons, such as a history of violence, for not naming the other parent. But there was a significant level of suspicion and mistrust, and the mechanism for claiming that ‘harm or undue distress’ would result if the CSA pursued a case was not clear.

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MAF sent to parent with care by CSA

MAF completed and returned

refusal to complete and return MAF

exemption claimed on grounds of harm and undue distress

MEF sent to absent parent by CSA

imposition of benefit penalty rejected accepted: nofurther action

MEF completed and returned MEF not returned

child support assessed by CSA

interim maintenance assessment (IMA) made

notification of assessment

sent to both parties possible appeal

parent with care chooses to receive maintenance direct from non-resident parent or via CSA collection service

FC claimants receive benefit

net of maintenance

IS claimants receive benefit in full. CSA retains

maintenance collected

Figure B1 Outline of the assessment process for parents with care who are receiving benefit (Clarke, Craig and Glendinning, 1996)

In response to lobbying on behalf of parents with care who wished to make such a claim, alterations were made to the paperwork. From October 1993, MAFs were sent out with covering letters that allowed parents with care to sign a declaration relating to ‘harm or undue distress’ and return it without completing the MAF. By March 1994, over 65 000 people had made such a declaration, 46 000 of which had been considered and the declaration accepted in 32 000 cases.

Although there had been a high level of support for the legislation, criticism of the practical consequences of the Act and of the way the CSA carried out its responsibilities began to mount almost as soon as the CSA had officially started in April 1993.

This dissatisfaction covered a number of aspects. One concern was that the CSA was not directing its efforts at the cases it was designed to target. CSA documents that were leaked to the press gave support to this allegation:

In order to drive down social security costs, the agency is concentrating upon better-off men and those who are easy to locate because they see their children regularly, rather than truly neglectful fathers who leave their former wives with nothing.

An enquiry into paternal support is now triggered automatically when a single mother makes a fresh claim for income support. But the agency’s staff have been instructed to give priority to ‘good-quality’ cases where

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the father is rich enough to pay up quickly or is already making maintenance payments. ‘The name of the game is maximizing the maintenance yield’, one [leaked] memorandum [dated 25 August 1993 and sent by a divisional manager to his area managers] advised. ‘Don’t waste a lot of time on non-profitable stuff.’

(The Times, 30 September 1993)

It was also revealed that of the more than 200 000 assessments made during the first year only 28 000 concerned parents who were not in touch with their children and whose whereabouts were, or were said to be, unknown to their former partners.

Others denied that the CSA was targeting the wrong people. For example, one MP spoke of ‘extraordinary hypocrisy’ on the part of divorced fathers and described their complaints as the ‘squealing’ of fathers who had been paying too little.

Another allegation accused the CSA of causing widespread financial hardship, and many illustrations of increases in maintenance payments and their consequences appeared in the press. For example:

Father of twins who had been paying £123 was ordered to pay £473 per month;

(The Times, 30 September 1993)

Father of seven-year old who had been paying £65 was ordered to pay £187 per month;

(The Times, 21 October 1993)

Father of two who had been paying £80 was ordered to pay £500 per month.

(The Times, 16 November 1993)

However, the facts are not always as straightforward as they might have appeared at first sight. The second of these cases was also featured on television in the World in Action programme. There, it was stated the father had been told to increase his payment of £65 per month to £258. But, subsequent to the programme, his ex-wife produced paperwork showing the assessment was £193.96 per month, and that he was only required to pay £258 until he had caught up with arrears accrued earlier in the year. Two months later the case was being used again, but with a different slant; it was illustrating a positive story about the workings of the Act.

After intervention from the Child Support Agency, X has received more money from her estranged husband in the past two months than he paid during the whole of the previous year.

X, who has two teenage daughters by a previous marriage, received no money for the first 18 months after the separation, but eventually obtained an interim court order for maintenance of £65 a month. The Child Support Agency took on her case in April last year, just after its launch, and told Y he should pay £190 a month, increased to £260 for the first few months to make up for arrears.

(The Times, 31 January 1994)

The CSA was also blamed for driving people to commit suicide. One such death was reported as follows:

One family yesterday blamed the agency for driving a stately home curator to suicide ... last Saturday a 31-year-old curator killed himself at Lord Byron’s ancestral home after having his maintenance payments trebled ... [to] nearly £300 of his £500 monthly take-home pay. His body was surrounded by documents and letters from the agency with calculations scribbled all over them.

(The Times, 7 December 1993)

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However, the inquest on the man’s death painted a more complex picture; the suicide note did not mention the agency, and his ex-wife said he had often talked about suicide. The coroner was quoted as saying:

It is not for me to apportion blame. From the evidence which I have heard he had worries, and one of the main worries he had was about money. It is clear that the amount of money he was going to have to pay had a tremendous effect upon his mind but whether he thought he couldn’t afford it or couldn’t cope any more, I don’t know.

(The Times, 22 December 1993)

Other men, and their families, were distressed by being wrongly accused of fathering children:

... a bus driver, had to woo his distraught wife back after the agency admitted it had made a mistake about the four-year-old boy for whom it wanted maintenance... The CSA... said someone had keyed in the wrong national insurance number. ‘But why was it not double or triple checked? This sort of thing could ruin people’s lives.’

(The Times, 3 November 1993)

Some were unhappy about the rules to which the CSA was working. In particular, calls were also made for so-called clean-break divorce settlements to be allowed for in the maintenance formula. Alistair Burt, the minister with responsibility for the CSA, was stout in his defence of the current arrangements:

The principle of the clean break applies only to spousal maintenance, not to child maintenance, which can always be reviewed in the interest of the child. The agency’s carefully designed formula, which allows the great majority of absent fathers to keep 70–85 per cent of net income after deduction of child maintenance, provides for the practical results of a settlement by recognizing the likely increase in housing costs to the absent parent.

(Burt, writing in The Times, 1993)

This stance was supported in the High Court in December 1993 when the judge presiding over a test case ruled: ‘While the parties [to a divorce] were free to achieve a clean break as between themselves, it was outside their powers to do so in respect of their child.’

Two underlying causes of the Agency’s shortcomings were identified. One was the lack of flexibility it had in dealing with cases:

The CSA has a formula for absolutely everything. [...] one can’t help feeling that this new agency is the ultimate statist dream: a world where bureaucrats substitute their judgements for that of everyone concerned.

(Amiel, 1993)

The second was administrative incompetence. This was fuelled by stories of the CSA’s ‘blunders’, some of which were written up in dramatic style:

The Child Support Agency was accused last night of hounding a father by threatening court action over an unpaid debt of 1p. The full might of the agency was brought to bear [on X] when he sent a cheque to his former wife for £232.82 rather than £232.83. A two-page letter, posted first- class, was sent by the agency [to X] chastizing him for the error. It stated that interest was being charged on the unpaid debt at 1 per cent higher than the bank base rate. The agency said it was also considering ‘an order taking the debt from his salary’... Alf Morris, the Labour MP for Wythenshawe, has taken up the case and is sending the file to John Major.

(The Times, 22 December 1993)

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Other critics were unhappy with the terminology used by the CSA. For instance, Families Need Fathers, a group founded in 1974 to campaign for the interests of fathers denied access to their children by mothers, took great exception to the CSA’s use of the term absent parent, describing it as ‘gratuitously offensive’.

Against this background of fierce criticism, staff working for the CSA were receiving hate mail and many of them were feeling the strain:

A DSS official told The Times: ‘It is fair to say that the work of the CSA is far more stressful than was ever envisaged. In some cases it can have a traumatic effect. Staff are under relentless pressure from two sides: from the families, who say they cannot and should not have to pay, and from their bosses, who are under enormous pressure from MPs to get things right.

(The Times, 31 January 1994)

Reviews and changes during year one

Changes began to be made. At the beginning of November 1993 the CSA was given more flexibility to take on some of the cases concerning mothers on benefit who were not receiving maintenance and who, under the original plans, were not due to be considered until after April 1996.

The House of Commons Social Security Select Committee announced in October 1993 it would bring forward its plans to look at the operation of the Act. After taking evidence from the minister responsible and the CSA, it issued its first report in December 1993. It recommended that the agency should:

^ Increase protected income from £8 to between £20 and £40 per week

^ Phase in new payments over two years

^ Take account of the cost of caring for stepchildren

^ Reduce payments for children over eleven

^ Subject clean-break settlements to judicial review

^ Require payments to be made from the day the assessment was completed instead of from the day the MEF was issued

^ Deal with appeals within 28 days

^ Reimburse overpayments within five days.

Some of these recommendations were accepted. The government announced that from February 1994 the maintenance formula would be revised in a way that would increase the minimum income retained by non-resident parents. Also new maintenance payments would be phased in over an eighteen-month period and payments for children over eleven would be reduced by a quarter and by a further quarter for children over fourteen. In addition, the £34 annual collection fee would be waived in many cases.

The annual report of the chief child support officer for the year 1993/4 was published in October 1994. It examined 1380 assessments made by the CSA and found 345 (25%) were correct, 548 (39%) were incorrect, and there was insufficient evidence to tell whether the rest were right or wrong. The report recommended better staff training, greater emphasis on collecting evidence and improvements in the calculations on earnings, effective dates, and housing costs.

The CSA’s own first annual report showed it had kept well within its £115 million budget, but it had failed to reach its performance targets. It had been expected to arrange maintenance for 60% of the parents with care making eligible applications but the figure achieved was only 31.5%. At £418 million, benefit savings were well short of the £530 million target. The requirements relating to

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level of service, such as the time taken to process applications and to respond to enquiries, had not been met though an overall client satisfaction score of 61% had been achieved.

The client-satisfaction score is computed from the results of an independent national client satisfaction survey conducted annually and published in full. The basic factors that are thought to influence client-satisfaction-with-service are shown in Figure B2. It is interesting to note the overall result for 1993, based on a sample of 1996 parents with care and 1180 absent parents, comprised a satisfaction score of 66% for parents with care and only 39% for absent parents.

staff

attitude towards basic principle CSA facilities

client satisfaction

attitude towards policy

communication

non-service-related factors

service-related factors

demographics

access to CSA timescales

Figure B2 Factors influencing satisfaction with service (Speed, Crane and Rudat, 1994, p.5)

CSA year two, 1994/95

For the second year of operation, the agency’s budget was increased by £70 million to £184 million. The number of staff was to be increased by 700 and the number of cases it was expected to handle was reduced. A new telephone service with direct computer access was also established to deal with enquiries.

In the summer of 1994, Andersen Consulting was called in to advise the agency on its management structures and procedures. Then, at the beginning of September, Ros Hepplewhite resigned and was replaced by Ann Chant, a career civil servant who moved across from the Contributions Agency.

Further critical reports were published in the autumn of 1994. The National Audit Office reported that over half the assessments it had studied were wrong. In the report of its second inquiry into the operation of the Act and the performance of the CSA, the Social Security Select Committee called for a raft of changes to the way maintenance was assessed and to the way the agency operated.

The government responded by reducing the agency’s workload through the controversial measure of allowing it to ‘clear’ its backlog by postponing, for an unspecified period, 350 000 cases involving parents who had failed to supply the required information despite being sent maintenance enquiry forms more than six

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months previously and parents with care who were receiving income support before April 1993. It was also announced that the next phase of implementation due in April 1996 would be delayed.

According to an article in the Independent, this announcement effectively heralded ‘a two-tier system for child support’ because ‘a key principle of the original Child Support Act – that all parents should eventually have recourse to the Child Support Agency to assess fair child maintenance – was ditched.’ The article went on to say:

The decision was condemned as proof that the real driving force behind the child-support legislation is the Treasury, whose only concern is moving parents with care of the children off income support. For the Treasury would reap no benefit from the estimated 50 000 parents with care who are not on income support and who had written or court agreements before April 1993 who were expected to ask the CSA to assess maintenance in the first year after 1966.

(Waterhouse, writing in the Independent, 1995)

Reaction to these changes varied:

The people who will pay the price are the lone parents who looked to the agency to get the maintenance they so badly need to escape the benefits trap.

Speaker on behalf of The National Council for One Parent Families

[This decision is] the best Christmas present for hundreds of thousands of families.

Speaker on behalf of The Campaign Against The Child Support Act

By the start of 1995, there was some evidence the CSA’s performance against target was improving. Between April 1994 and January 1995, 223 552 maintenance assessments had been completed (this compares with 205 500 for the whole of 1993/94) and £62.8 million new maintenance was raised (£15 million for 1993/94). However, a report by William Reid, the parliamentary commissioner for administration (ombudsman), published in January 1995 was highly critical. It pointed to:

^ Wrong identifications of missing parents

^ Inadequate staff training

^ Poor procedures

^ Failure to answer letters

^ Incorrect or poor advice

^ Long delays

But as well as criticizing the CSA directly the report made it clear that the government was also at fault:

We are in no doubt that the maladministration of the CSA cannot be divorced from the responsibility of ministers for the framework within which it operated. Ministers should have reacted more quickly to the situation as the problems became apparent ...

Maladministration leading to injustice is likely to arise when a new administrative task is not tested first by a pilot project; when new staff, perhaps inadequately trained, form a substantial fraction of the workforce; where procedures and technology supporting them are untried; and where quality of service is subordinated to sheer throughput.

(Parliamentary commissioner for administration, 1995)

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It also said:

In view of the special report I made in 1993 into the Benefits Agency handling of the introduction of disability living allowance (DLA), I have found it extremely disappointing that the Child Support Agency, another Agency of the Department of Social Security, had not been able to avoid some of the systemic failures disclosed in the DLA report.

(Parliamentary commissioner for administration, 1995)

Ann Chant, chief executive of the CSA, in evidence before the Commons Select Committee on the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration, identified a different set of culprits.

She said: ‘I have never in 30 years in social security seen such an orchestrated and organized attempt to avoid legal liability. That was unprecedented and I don’t think it could reasonably have been foreseen.’

Miss Chant claimed that Agency staff were subjected to time-wasting telephone calls and said that meetings to organize opposition to the scheme were organized by people with no direct interest.

(The Times, 2 February 1995)

However, when the committee reported its findings the following month it laid at least some of the blame at the doors of the Secretary of State for Social Security and his junior minister:

We consider that ministers were too easily satisfied with the assurances given by officials ... Ministers should have reacted more quickly to the situation as problems became apparent. They should have sought assurances that, were pressures to arise from other sources, lessons had been learned in relation to backlog, volume of complaints, dealing with correspondence, training of staff. We expect the questioning of officials by ministers to be searching and robust and for ministers to be briefed accordingly. We are in no doubt that maladministration in the CSA cannot be divorced from the responsibility of ministers for the framework within which it operated.

(Parliamentary Ombudsman Select Committee, 1995)

The CSA’s second annual report for the year to April 1995, published in July 1995, showed it had again kept within its budget and had exceeded its £460 million savings in benefits target by £19.05 million.

But it had again failed to reach other important targets. Arrangements should have been made for 50% of parents with care making eligible applications but the percentage achieved was 40.71. By the end of March 1995 no more than 40% of outstanding maintenance applications should have been over 13 weeks old, no more than 15% over 26 weeks old and no more than 1% over 52 weeks old. These targets were missed by a wide margin. Of the outstanding cases, 82% were over 13 weeks old, 70% were over 26 weeks old, and 50% were over 52 weeks old. Customer satisfaction scores also fell far short – 44.2% against a target of 65%.

A report by the Audit Office, published the same day as the CSA’s report, showed only 47% of the assessments it had looked at that had been carried out during 1994/95 were correct. A report by the chief child support officer found even more errors. According to his investigation, the proportion of correct assessments was 44%, though the appropriate guidelines had not been used to reach the final figures in 15% of these cases.

A different perspective on the impact of the CSA’s work during the year to April 1995 was revealed in the answer to a written parliamentary question. This reported that of the 267 500 assessments in place by March, 67 100 were paying nothing, 125 600 were paying £2.30 per week or less, and only 1200 were paying over £100 per week. The average payment for non-resident parents on income support was £0.93 per week and the average for those in work was £37.22.

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CSA year three, 1995/96

Some of the criticisms levelled at the legislation and the CSA were taken on board. From 18 April 1995, the maintenance formula set a ceiling on assessments of current maintenance of 30% of net income, enabled broad brush allowances to be made for pre-April 1993 property or capital transfers, made allowances for travel-to-work costs for those travelling more than 150 miles per week (measured as the crow flies), and removed the requirement for new partners of non-resident parents to contribute to their share of housing costs or those of any step-children.

Other modifications formed the basis of a White Paper, called Improving Child Support, and The Child Support Act 1995 that followed it. The main provisions of this Act, which received royal assent on 19 July 1995, were as follows:

1 To allow assessors to depart from the standard formulae in certain cases when determining the level of payments.

2 With effect from April 1997, to pay a lump-sum child maintenance bonus to parents with care who had been receiving income support or jobseeker’s allowance if they return to work.

3 To compensate parents with care who were getting family credit or Disability Working Allowance if their maintenance fell because of changes in child support legislation.

4 To defer indefinitely the CSA’s involvement in cases where the parent with care was not in receipt of benefit and where a written maintenance agreement or court order was in force before April 1993. For a fee, such parents would be able to use the CSA’s collection service.

5 To enable the CSA to recover DNA testing fees in cases where an alleged absent parent accepts he is the father after taking a test.

6 To reimburse overpaid maintenance if it isn’t possible to adjust current maintenance and, in certain circumstances, to recover the money from the parent with care.

7 To give the CSA discretion to enter a magistrates’ court liability order for arrears of maintenance on the register of county court judgements.

8 To improve review and appeal procedures.

For 1995/96, the CSA’s targets were also changed. Targets for benefit-saving, and for the number of people making eligible applications who should have maintenance arranged, were dropped entirely. New targets relating to speed of payment of maintenance, accuracy, maintenance collection, and reviews were introduced. The targets on clearance times were softened considerably. The new target was 60% of new applications should be cleared within 26 weeks, and no more than 10% of applications should be more than 52 weeks old by 31 March 1996.

The Social Security Select Committee looked once again at the CSA, and in its report published in January 1996, made a total of 20 recommendations for detailed administrative and procedural changes. However, it also gave a qualified welcome to improvements in the performance of the CSA:

The Agency is now on a surer footing and a whole range of indicators suggest that improvements are being made in an attempt to provide an acceptable service. The Agency has been helped by changes to policy and by the growing acceptance that the CSA will be a permanent feature of British life.

(Social Security Committee, 1996, p.xiii)

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Though this was followed by a sting in the tail:

It should be clearly recognized that the service initially provided by the Agency plumbed such depths that even modest improvements in service might seem impressive.

(Social Security Committee, 1996, p.xiii)

One group of people who were singled out for special mention in the report were self-employed absent parents. The concern was that accounting techniques and methods to determine profits and income might be reducing child support liability artificially or even extinguishing it. One member of the committee, the Conservative MP, David Shaw, was quoted in the press as saying:

The bottom line is that there are still a lot of men around who don’t want to pay a penny towards their first family, and they are becoming increasingly sophisticated at beating the system by passing their money to their companies or their new wives.

(Sunday Times, 28 January 1996)

In March 1996 a further raft of changes were announced. The first was the introduction of interest payments in cases where the CSA had collected maintenance but not passed it on to the parent with care within 28 days.

The second was a reduction in the period before compensation could be considered in cases where there had been delays in the issuing of maintenance forms. The time was reduced from three months to one month in situations where no extra enquiries were needed, and two months where further enquiries were necessary. Consolatory payments were also introduced for those who were incorrectly accused of being the parent of a child or children. The annual amounts paid in compensation before and after these changes are shown in Table B4.

The third was a pilot exercise begun on 9 April 1996 at a number of centres in the southeast to test new provisions designed to make the maintenance formula more flexible. Under the scheme, either parent could apply for a departure from the formula on any of the following grounds:

^ High travel to work costs

^ High travel costs for maintaining contact with children

^ Costs arising from disability of the applicant or a dependent of the applicant

^ Debts incurred when the family was together

^ Pre-April 1993 financial commitments from which it is impossible or unreasonable to withdraw

^ Costs of supporting step-children where responsibility for them pre-dated April 1993

^ Pre-April 1993 clean-break property or capital settlements

^ Diversion of income by the non-resident parent

^ Lifestyle inconsistent with income declared to the CSA

^ Possession of assets capable of producing an income or a higher income

Following the pilot exercise the departures scheme was phased in from 2 December 1996 onwards.

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Table B4 Compensatory payments

1993/94 1994/95 1995/96 1996/97

amount paid £100 £10 200 £115 000 £656 000

number of payments made 1 77 186 983

average amount £100 £133 £779 £667

percentage proportion of compensatory payments to total clearances

0.0003 0.01 0.06 0.28

number of maintenance assessments

205 000 251 000 128 000 129 000

(Hansard Written Answers for 22 July 1977)

When the parliamentary commissioner for administration (ombudsman) second report on the CSA was published it was seen that once again he was critical. It pointed out that one in six of all the cases investigated during 1995/96 were complaints about the CSA. Not only had the same mistakes criticized in 1995 been perpetuated but also there were new mistakes.

Further criticisms came from Sir John Bourn, the comptroller and auditor-general. He refused to accept the CSA’s accounts for its third year were accurate (in the official language of the National Audit Office he ‘qualified his audit opinion on the accounts’). He reported that although the proportion of maintenance assessments that were accurate had increased, a third were still being calculated wrongly for reasons such as: insufficient or out-of-date information; arithmetical errors; use of incorrect mortgage rates; or making too much allowance for self-employed parents’ expenses. The amount by which the figures were out varied between under-assessments of £30 per week and over-assessments of £20 per week. Similar findings by the chief child support officer were published in November 1996. Examination of a random sample of 610 maintenance assessments showed: 205 (34%) were correct in all respects; 115 (19%) contained irregularities even though the final figure was correct; and 179 (29%) were wrong.

CSA year four, 1996/97

As the fourth year unfolded, combating benefit fraud was high on the government’s agenda. The number of spurious claims for good-cause exemption was said to be rising fast: in 1995/96 112 000 claims had been made of which 38 000 were accepted; in 1996/97 the number of claims was going to be even higher. So in June 1996 the Social Security minister announced harsher penalties for parents with care who failed to co-operate with the agency without good cause. From October, their income support allowance would be cut by 40% for three years, with the reduction being repeated at the end of each three-year period if the non-co-operation continued. Prior to this change, the reduction was 20% for 26 weeks followed by 10% for a further year.

In August, the post of independent case examiner was advertised. The remit for this job, which was due to begin on 1 April 1997, was to bring an independent element to the way complaints against the CSA were handled. In the words of a Department of Social Security spokesperson:

From April [1997] the independent case examiner will exercise discretion on how complaints about maladministration are dealt with against the need to provide a speedy, impartial, accessible and cost effective complaints service for both absent parents and parents with care.

November 1996 was also the month the CSA lost its second chief executive. Ann Chant resigned. Her successor was announced in March 1997 when it was revealed that Faith Boardman was moving over from the Contributions Agency where she had been chief executive for the last two years.

Case study 173

Within a week of Boardman’s appointment, the latest report from the Social Security Select Committee was released. This pointed to significant improvements in performance and said that ‘whereas the agency was heading for disaster in 1993/94, there is now no danger that this could occur’. There were, however, causes for concern. Only about a third of lone parents on income support and family credit had received an assessment. And at the end of December 1996, the number of applications being processed was 441 784 instead of the 200 000 to 250 000 that was estimated as representing the steady-state level.

When reports of the CSA’s performance during its fourth year appeared it became clearer and clearer that it was still experiencing difficulties. The report from Sir John Bourn at the National Audit Office was particularly damning. He again ‘qualified his opinion on the account’, pointing to the following:

(a) Errors in 85% of the cases examined, with the maintenance assessment being over £1000 per year out in one in every six cases;

(b) No attempt to eliminate errors in existing cases;

(c) 39% of receipts from non-resident parents were for the wrong amount, largely due to mistakes in the underlying assessments;

(d) In aggregate, it was estimated that overpayments amounted to £3.8 million and underpayments amounted to £9.4 million, that is 4.4% and 9.4% of the £215 million collected;

(e) ‘A material level of error’ in the amounts said to be owed by non-resident parents – it was estimated that overstatements amounted to £48 million and understatements amounted to £91 million, that is 9.14% and 17.7% of the £513 million outstanding. (The Agency itself suggested that some £276 million of the £513 million outstanding may be uncollectable.)

Targets in other areas were also missed. For example, Table B5 shows performance against the assessment clearance targets of 60% of new maintenance applications to be cleared within 26 weeks; and no more than 10% of all maintenance applications received to be over 52 weeks old by the end of 1996/97.

Table B5 Performance against maintenance assessment clearance targets

Number of cases being actioned

Assessments cleared within 26 weeks (per cent)

Assessments over 52 weeks old (per cent)

April 1996 422 454 53 15

May 1996 428 244 52 15

June 1996 435 603 51 16

July 1996 440 741 51 15

August 1996 449 852 51 15

September 1996 456 810 51 15

October 1996 456 590 51 15

November 1996 451 608 51 14

December 1996 441 784 51 14

January 1997 432 150 52 13

February 1997 418 369 53 13

(Hansard Written Answers for 21 March 1997)

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On 6 April 1997, just one day after the CSA’s fourth birthday a new piece of bad news hit the headlines in the Sunday Times: ‘CSA to write off computer worth £600 million’ (Leake and Pope, 1997). The story went as follows:

The Child Support Agency has decided to scrap the £600 million computer system at the heart of its operation just four years after it was built. The system, which cost the equivalent of £24 for each UK income- tax payer, has been blamed for bringing misery to thousands of parents.

... The computer system was one of the government’s most expensive and was commissioned through EDS, an American firm, which also provided the software and has a 10-year contract to manage the system. Last week, however, the CSA confirmed it would be introducing a new system within the next two years.

The news coincides with figures released last week which show that the agency has recovered only £500 million since its launch – compared with its running costs of £514 million.

The agency says it has also saved £1.4 billion in social security spending. This saving, however, could be largely wiped out by the cost of the new computer system, which independent experts estimate is likely to exceed £1.1 billion.

Appendix B references Amiel, B. (8 April 1993) ‘Nanny’s security blanket’, London, The Times.

Bedingfield, D. (1998) The Child in Need, Bristol, Family Law.

Bellamy, C. (1995) ‘Managing strategic resources in a Next Steps department: information agenda and information systems in the DSS’ in O’Toole, B.J. and Jordan, G. (eds) Next Steps Improving Management in Government?, Aldershot, Dartmouth.

Bennett, F. and Chapman, V. (1990) The Poverty of Maintenance, CPAG.

Bird, R. (1993) Child Maintenance, 2nd edition, Bristol, Family Law.

Bradshaw, J. and Millar, J. (1991) Lone Parent Families in the UK, London, HMSO.

Burt, A. (16 October 1993) ‘Families need fathers – who pay up’, London, The Times.

Clarke, K. Craig, G. and Glendinning, C. (1993) Children Come First?, Barnardo’s, Children’s Society/NCH/NSPCC/SCF.

Clarke, K. Craig, G. and Glendinning, C. (1996) Small Change: the Impact of the Child Support Act on Lone Mothers and Children, Family Policy Studies Centre.

DSS (1993) Households Below Average Income: A Statistical Analysis 1979 – 1990/91, Government Statistical Service, HMSO.

Edwards, S. and Halpern, A. (1988) ‘Maintenance in 1987: fact or fantasy’, Family Law Journal, pp.117–21.

Garnham, A. and Knights, E. (1994) Putting the Treasury First, London, CPAG.

Greer, P. and Carter, N. (1995) ‘Next Steps and performance measurement’ in O’Toole, B.J. and Jordan, G. (eds) Next Steps Improving Management in Government?, Aldershot, Dartmouth.

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Kiernan, K. (1992) ‘Men and women at work and at home’ in Jowell, R. (ed) British Social Attitudes Ninth Report, London, SCPR.

Leake, J. and Pope, N. (6 April 1997) ‘CSA to write of computer worth £600 million’, London, Sunday Times.

Parliamentary commissioner for administration (1995) Investigation of Complaints Against the Child Support Agency, London, HMSO.

Social Security Committee (1996) The Performance and Operation of the Child Support Agency Second Report, London, HMSO.

Speed, M. Crane, J. and Rudat, K. (1994) Child Support Agency National Client Satisfaction Survey 1993, Department of Social Security Research Report No. 29, London, HMSO.

Waterhouse, R. (24 January 1995) ‘Child agency ditches single parents in work: change of focus aims to cut income support bill’, London, The Independent.

The following update is provided for information only. You do not have to make reference to it in order to answer any of the SAQs or activities based on the CSA case study.

The CSA case study: an update by Joyce Fortune

In 2002 I was asked to provide a short update on what has happened to the Child support Agency since 1997. The first thing I did was to log on to LexisNexis, an on-line repository of national and international newspaper articles, and conduct searches for UK articles on the CSA over the five year period since I wrote the original account. These are the results I obtained

Keywords for search Number of hits

Child Support Agency AND problems 851

Child Support Agency AND failure 307

Child Support Agency AND fiasco 92

Child Support Agency AND crisis 149

Did this mean that the CSA was still experiencing problems? Unfortunately, it did. Although some of them were irrelevant juxtapositions of the keywords the following are typical of many of the hits achieved by the searches:

Financial Times (London), July 2, 1998, Thursday, LONDON EDITION 3, NATIONAL NEWS; Pg. 11, 402 words, CSA under fire for repeating basic mistakes, By Liam Halligan, Political Correspondent The Child Support Agency often repeats basic ...

The Guardian (London), September 14, 1999, Guardian Leader Pages; Pg. 15, 1210 words, To hell in a handbag; David Brindle The child support agency is more than a fiasco – it has turned into a national tragedy ...

The Scotsman, August 3, 2000, Thursday, Pg. 5, 532 words, FRIENDS BLAME CSA FOR SUICIDE OF POLICEMAN, John Woodcock ... cope with crippling payments to the Child Support Agency, an inquest heard ... ... never listened to his financial problems – they just took a ...

The Sentinel (Stoke), November 4, 2001, NEWS; PEOPLE; Clubs/ Groups; Pg. 17-NEWS, 152 words, New support group for single parents

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facing CSA formed, Nick Coligan ... A new support group for parents affected by the Child Support Agency has been formed. CANCSA ... aims to help separated or divorced parents and their families who are having problems with the CSA

Independent on Sunday (London), October 13, 2002, Sunday, NEWS; Pg. 7, 449 words, MOTHERS LOSE POUNDS 500 IN NEW CSA FIASCO, Andy Mcsmith Political Editor ... fiasco in the beleaguered Child Support Agency (CSA).

So what has happened to the Child Support Agency and its clients between 1997 and 2002? Let’s take a very brief look at the key events during that period.

CSA Year 5 1997/98

The CSA’s performance continued to attract strong criticisms in the media and in Parliament. In June the Social Security Secretary spoke of the need for ‘substantial and sustained improvements’ in performance and announced new targets which would mean an extra 500,000 maintenance assessments needing to be completed by the end of the year. The following month the Social Security minister responsible for child support also spoke of the need for ‘substantial and sustained operational improvements’, particularly in relation to ‘getting more maintenance paid, reducing the backlog and improving customer service’.

By the end of the year the agency had outstanding debts of more than £1.1 billion, £869 million of which was considered ‘uncollectable’. Furthermore, looking back at the year after her first full year in office the Independent Case Examiner, appointed to investigate complaints against the CSA, described CSA staff as ‘largely unresponsive’ to grievances.

CSA Year 6 1998/99

July 1998 saw the publication of a Green Paper, Children First: a new approach to child support. This acknowledged the failings of the current arrangements, highlighting a number of problems such as:

^ lack of trust by parents that they will be treated fairly;

^ inaccuracies and long delays in making assessments to the point where a third of child support assessments take more than six months to complete;

^ more than 1.8 million children receiving no support from their non-resident parents;

^ little incentive for parents on income support to co-operate with the scheme.

It summarized the situation thus: ‘The effect is a system that is failing: it is failing children, failing parents and failing the taxpayer.’

The Green Paper made a number of proposals for reform but perhaps the most major was to ‘replace the complications of the current formula with a simpler system aimed at providing an excellent service for all parents who use it.’ The basis for calculating the level of contribution was to be a simple slice of net income such that non-resident parents would pay 15 per cent of their net income for one child, 20 per cent for two, and 25 per cent for three or more children with reductions for those on low earnings and those with a second family. In addition, parents with care on income support were to be allowed to retain up to £10 a week of any maintenance paid.

Meanwhile, the problems with the current arrangements continued. For example, over the 12 month period compensation payments to parents for serious mistakes increased fourfold from £1.1 million to £4.4 million.

Case study 177

CSA Year 7 1999/2000

The White Paper A new contract for welfare: children’s rights and parents’ responsibilities was published in July 1999. This set out a package of measures including new legislation, improved computer systems and changes in the CSA’s working practices. One proposal that had not been part of the Green Paper attracted much criticism: failure to pay maintenance would be made a criminal offence with penalties such as the removal of passports and driving licences and imprisonment for more severe cases.

However, the proposed reforms were not due to come into force until the end of 2001 and even then would only apply to new cases in the first instance. By January 2000 even this timescale was looking optimistic; a Social Security minister admitted that the CSA’s new computer system for handling the simplified formula for calculating maintenance payments would not be completed fully until 2003.

CSA Year 8 2000/01

The new act governing child support received royal assent in August 2000. Although some reservations were expressed, the new arrangements were widely welcomed.

And in some areas at least, the performance of the CSA was improving. For example, it collected 85% more maintenance payments in 2000/01 than in 1997/98. However, the CSA’s own Standards Committee calculated that only 71.6% of the maintenance assessments made during the year were accurate.

CSA Year 9 2001/02

Most of the press stories concerning the CSA in its ninth year can be described as ‘human interest’. By and large they set out a litany of disputed paternity, the effects of unreasonable demands for payment on non-resident parents and the consequences of non-payment for parents with care and their children.

However, just as the year was ending a major story that had been bubbling away in the background broke. On Wednesday 20th March 2002 the Secretary of State, Mr. Alistair Darling, made a statement to the House of Commons about a delay to the introduction of the changes. I shall end this update by reproducing it in full:

As the House will know, the Government are reforming the system of child support and the Child Support Agency itself to ensure that more children see the benefit of regular maintenance.

We consulted widely in 1998 and I announced our proposals in July 1999. I undertook to keep the House informed on progress towards the implementation of these important reforms. I have made it clear on many occasions that we would not implement the reforms until I was confident that the new system would work effectively.

On 1 July 1999, I reminded the House that the present system had collapsed under its own weight in 1993 because the reforms were introduced too quickly and with too little thought. That approach has been endorsed by Members on both sides of the House and by the then departmental Select Committee. Its report of November 1999 recommended ‘that the new child support scheme should not be implemented until the new computer system is fully operational’.

I said then – and it remains the position – that we would not repeat the mistakes made in 1993 when the Child Support Agency was introduced. The timetable then was rushed: the organization was not ready and some key aspects of the information technology system were not finally

178 Block 1 Appendixes

delivered until two months after the start date. So the IT, critical to the system, was simply not there. We know the consequences-the system descended into chaos within weeks.

Let me tell the House what progress has been made since 1999 to reform the existing system. First, we have put in place the necessary legislation. The primary legislation received royal assent in July 2000 and the regulations are in place, with some minor provisions currently before the House.

Secondly, the Child Support Agency has been substantially reorganized to give a far better customer focus. As hon. Members will know, this has already made a difference. Levels of compliance have increased and complaints have fallen considerably.

The third issue, which is fundamental to the delivery of these reforms, is getting the IT right. We face a major task in building a new IT system that can handle upwards of 13 million payments each year. It also needs to link up with other IT systems in the Department, which are based on 1980s technology.

The new child support computer system being built by EDS is near completion. Testing has been under way for some weeks, in advance of the planned start date at the end of April. Those tests are continuing, but they are not yet complete.

I want to see the new system in place as soon as possible. We know that any new IT system will inevitably have teething problems on introduction, but we will proceed only when I am satisfied that it is working to the standards that we expect.

In my view, until the testing process is complete, I will not have the assurance that I need to authorize the start of the new system. I have therefore decided for that reason to defer the planned start date. The new system will be implemented only when the supporting IT is operating effectively.

I have a clear responsibility to Members of this House and the staff who have to operate the new system. Above all, I have a clear duty to parents and children to make sure that the system works effectively.

The delay is frustrating and regrettable. There was a choice: I could have taken a chance, but that would have meant taking a chance on support for children, and for parents. In my judgment, it is better to take the time needed to get it right, rather than repeat the mistakes of 1993.

The new system will continue to be thoroughly tested. I will keep the House updated on progress. I undertake to give the House sufficient notice of the date the new system will start and to confirm how we intend to bring on new and existing cases.

The House will want to know the cost implications of the delay. Inevitably, there are some, but the contract with EDS specified that the Department will not pay for the computer system until it meets the standard required, and that remains the position.

We know about the problems of the past. They arose in part because the rules were too complicated, but also because the decision was taken in the early days to press ahead when there was real doubt about whether all the necessary systems were in place. I will not let that happen again.

This was a difficult decision. I know that many Members and parents are anxious to see the changes introduced as soon as possible, but I judged that the risk of proceeding before testing was complete was unacceptable.

Case study 179

I therefore took the view that it was right to tell the House the current position as soon as possible, and I will continue to report to the House on progress towards implementation of these much needed reforms.

So there we leave it for now. Some improvements compared with five years ago but much less success where more radical changes are concerned. A case, perhaps, of plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose.

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Appendix C

Some perspectives on complexity In making sense of what is a burgeoning literature on complexity, I found it useful to formulate a typology of ways I experience the term complexity being used by different interest groups. I surprised myself somewhat by adopting this approach. In the past, I have been critical of the way typologies have been used. My negativity is triggered whenever I experience someone using a typology to argue ‘this is how things are’. Another way of saying this is that they are reified: this happens when a concept is converted mentally into a real thing or fact. So, this typology is the product of my initial thoughts and later comments by a colleague, Pille Bunnell. However I take responsibility for the final version; you may or may not find it useful. In this typology I make an initial distinction in which there are four main groups. In some groups, I recognize other distinctions, which seem to me to be subsets of the major ones.

My main point is:

Complexity is a term that is contested by different interest groups. As yet we do not have the right language to speak about the range of concepts to which complexity is attributed. There appear to be, however, four main groupings:

1 Complexity is a property of something.

(a) Complexity refers to the condition of the universe, which is too rich and varied for us to understand in simple, common mechanistic or linear ways.

(b) Complex systems.

(d) Complex responsive processes.

2 Complexity is something we experience and thus what is complex will differ depending on who is experiencing – this is sometimes described as perceived complexity.

3 Complexity is an emerging discipline

(a) Complexity is a new science – or at least we are asked to accept that it is. Some claim this includes artificial intelligence, cognitive science, ecology, evolution, game theory, linguistics, social science, artificial life, computer science, economics, genetics, immunology, philosophy (e.g. LGMB, 1996, p.16; and Battram, 1998).

(b) Complexity theory (which among others includes organismic complexity, structural complexity, hierarchic complexity and dynamic complexity and so on).

4 Complexity, or complexity ‘something’ is used to describe a new way of thinking about the world (a trans-discipline, or meta-discipline) or a new paradigm.

(a) Complexity deals with the nature of emergence, innovation, learning and adaptation.

Ray writes ...

Some perspectives on complexity 181

(b) Complexity is an organizing adjective and results in different metaphor clusters or is a source of analogy.

Because this is a course on managing complexity using a systems approach and not on complexity per se, I do not intend to explain all the terms and concepts in my typology and in this appendix. Also, my categories are not exclusive; for example, I suspect researchers developing complexity theory in relation to the management of organizations would reject the notion they were concerned with only metaphor (see below). My category ‘complexity is something that is experienced’ does not in itself preclude providing a scientific explanation for a phenomenon that is experienced. However this takes the discussion into deep epistemological water about doing science and distinctions between ‘experiential science’ (see Maturana and Varela, 1987) and ‘discovery science’ (see Schön, 1995). These matters are not my concern here.

The language of chaos and complexity has also entered the social sciences. The UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), which funds research in the social sciences, commissioned in late 1998 a new research programme into complexity and dynamic processes. The appropriation of concepts from one field and incorporating them into another is common. ‘Particular disciplines tend to adapt the new thinking to their own traditions, and then claim that their version is the pure one and that the others are merely metaphorical and unscientific uses of it’ (Turner, 1997).

For the purposes of this document, it is sufficient for you to be aware of the broad distinctions I make in my typology. And be aware there is no great clarity in the way the term complexity is used, its meaning is contested by different interest groups some of whom are critical and some of whom are enthusiastic. As the course proceeds you will come across the term used in different ways that will be explained at the time. My interest here is with how complexity is being used as a term and how it is related to the concept of system.

The material that follows should be read as a type of annotated bibliography. It is intended as background and no more. It can be supplemented, for those interested, by other text sources or any one of the many websites that deal with this subject. My treatment here is by no means exhaustive in its coverage, nor would the interpretations given be agreed by all. My interpretations arise in two ways: first by my choice of material both in terms of source and then what to select and present from it; second in my interpretation of the subject matter. I have not included material already presented in the teaching text: for example, I do not include the category ‘perceived complexity’ here.

Applied chaos theory – Cambell This perspective is drawn from Cambell (1993). Like many other authors, his conception of complexity ‘involves non-linearity’ and because there are no general solutions to such equations ‘each case [presumably of complexity] must be treated on its merits’ (p.1). It also involves chance. As with many others he recognizes there is no agreed definition of complexity but argues that ‘operational definitions are helpful’ (p.2). Within his framework, Cambell recognizes certain basic characteristics that must be considered:

1 Purpose and function;

2 Size and configuration;

182 Block 1 Appendixes

3 Structure, including composition and makeup.

He recognizes three categories of complexity:

1 Static complexity;

2 Embedded complexity;

3 Dynamic complexity, which includes dynamic processes.

For total complexity to exist all three factors should coexist but not at all times. With many other authors, he often conflates complex situations with complex systems. It is also unclear how he is conceptualizing systems; for example in, ‘complexity can occur in natural and man-made systems, as well as in social structures’, or ‘the system is neither completely deterministic or completely random ...’ (p.3–4). His acknowledged stance is that ‘it is helpful to speak of systems without having to elaborate on all the details’ (p.41); which I do not find particularly illuminating or helpful. He then goes on to define a system as any collection of entities surrounded by a wall!

Cambell states, ‘As a rule, complexity occurs in dynamical systems, namely systems whose internal microscopic or external macroscopic motion is affected by one or more forces’ (p.19). He further states ‘not all complex systems are self-organizing, but all self-organizing systems are complex’ (p.20). Intriguingly his conception for the study of complexity is not one of holism versus reductionism, nor holism or reductionism, but rather reductionism in the context of holism. This is similar to the idea I presented earlier of the systematic being embedded in the systemic.

Structural information processing – Streufert and Swezey In this version of complexity theory the researchers are primarily concerned with the processes that ‘generate the content of managerial and organizational functioning’ (Streufert and Swezey, 1986, p.x and p.2). Their concern is with ‘structure, with managerial information processing, and with the processing of organizational input into output’, and ‘structural information-processing is the central topic of a variety of theories known collectively as complexity theories’. The field of inquiry and action spelt out by these authors concerns the information processing that occurs between input and output. In systems terms this would be labelled as the transformation process.

The Streufert and Swezey book forms part of a series in organizational and occupational psychology; the authors are both from university behavioural science departments in North America. This particular intellectual tradition had its origins in concerns about the cognitive styles individuals employ when they process information. It is based on the earlier work of Kelly (1955) who proposed a psychology of personal constructs as a guide for psychotherapy and client-therapist interaction; however, he did not link his work to complexity, which was coined by later workers. Kelly’s work has subsequently influenced many fields of research and practice. Streufert and Swezey’s work exemplifies the dominant paradigm based on the information processing metaphor for human cognition. Rosch (1992, pp.84–106) recognizes this as the mainstream view in cognitive psychology but there are other paradigms as well that challenge this view. No doubt, others would now contest the claim that this particular tradition is all that constitutes complexity theory.

Some perspectives on complexity 183

Applications in sociology Turner (1997) argues the new sciences of complexity have equipped sociologists with ‘a set of very powerful intellectual tools or concepts to think with’. He divides these tools into six categories:

1 A new use of cause and prediction. The traditional mode of science, which assumes a close dependence between scientific proof and predictions based on this knowledge, may have to be abandoned. This is because there would seem to be inherently unpredictable situations in themselves, and not just by virtue of the limitations of the observer. Turner (p.xiv) argues that if we are spared the labour of trying to predict such situations we can devote our efforts to trying to understand them in different ways – because unpredictable does not mean unintelligible or unable to be known – and that in the process, freedom recovers its meaning as a word. This theme relating to freedom will be picked up in Block 3.

2 A richer understanding of feedback and iteration. In human affairs it is ‘beginning to look as if history and tradition are far more powerful determinants of how a society is organized than the economic and political forces that nineteenth century social theory reduced to social laws.’ Feedback and iteration are seen to give rise to the laws of science as emergent properties of a recursive process.

3 A revolution in the idea of time. The idea is ‘time will not go away’, it is irreducible and irreversible, it can only go in one direction, unlike movement in space. This is why history is so important, including our own. Our life is lived in an ever-unfolding present, which is a product of our history. The past and future are merely different ways of living in the present.

4 An anthology of recognizable structures and shapes. Examples range from fractals to ‘Bucky balls’, the recently discovered new icosahedron form of carbon named after the architect Buckminster Fuller. Fuller began building habitable domes in 1948 that had a structural integrity sustained by the overall network of tensile stresses in the building. Later, Stafford Beer (1994b), drew on the structure and properties of icosahedrons (20 faces + 12 vertices = 30 edges + 2) to design a collaborative process to formulate a system of interest among individuals who have different perspectives. He called this syntegration.

5 The idea of the attractor as a way of dissolving old dualisms. Turner expresses this as not being afraid of irrational numbers, such as pi, with their non-recurring decimals. He argues these stymied the attempts by Greek scholars to eliminate indefinite thinking that did not accord with their attempts at understanding order and harmony. Turner goes on to say ‘the strange attractor ... the fractal form embedded in any non-linear feedback process, is the graphic and undeniable evidence of the life and freedom embodied in physical reality’. (This latter quote shows clearly that he is using fractal as a metaphor and not according to its defined meaning).

6 The technique of (non-linear dynamic) modelling. Instead of creating a hypothesis, testing it on the experimental and observational facts until a counter-example shows its flaw and then trying another, we can now create a facsimile of reality by successive tweakings of the variables and the connections among them. We can run this on the computer as long as we like, check that its behaviour continues to resemble that of

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the reality and then read off what those parameters are. This procedure reverses the top-down, theory-to-phenomena approach of classical science.

Turner, an Oxford graduate, is a professor of arts and humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas. The material I have drawn on comes from the foreword to a multi-authored volume, with contributors having backgrounds in physics, cognition, nursing, medicine, maths and computer science as well as sociology.

The chaoplexity perspective? After writing his mammoth book Out of Control, which, it is claimed on the cover, ‘shatters more paradigms per page than any other text this decade’, Kevin Kelly (1994) lists some of the questions that remained with him after doing the research for his book. Several relate to complexity. He wrote:

And what is ‘complexity’ anyway? I looked forward to the two 1992 science books identically titled Complexity, one by Mitch Waldrop and one by Roger Lewin, because I was hoping one or the other would provide me with a practical measurement of complexity. But both authors wrote books on the subject without hazarding a guess at a useable definition. How do we know one thing or process is more complex than another? Is a cucumber more complex than a Cadillac? Is a meadow more complex than a mammal brain? Is a zebra more complex than a national economy? I am aware of three or four mathematical definitions for complexity, none of them broadly useful in answering the type of questions I have just asked. We are so ignorant of complexity that we haven’t yet asked the right question about what it is.

I might ask whether Kelly himself is asking the right questions. However, as with John Horgan (1996), there are a range of commentators and scientists who adopt this perspective. Horgan’s perspective is summed up in the concluding lines of his chapter on this subject:

So far, chaoplexologists have created some potent metaphors: the butterfly effect, fractals, artificial life, the edge of chaos, self- organized criticality. But they have not told us anything about the world that is both concrete and truly surprising, either in a negative or a positive sense. They have slightly extended the borders of knowledge in certain areas and they have delineated the boundaries of knowledge elsewhere ... Computer simulations represent a kind of meta-reality within which we can play with and even – to a limited degree – test scientific theories, but they are not reality itself (although many aficionados have lost sight of that distinction).

Some perspectives on complexity 185

Relativism and subjectivity

John Horgan (1996), in his chapter on chaoplexity, appears to arrive at the conclusion that ‘complexity can mean anything you want it to’, or is ‘in the eye of the beholder’.

This appears to be problematic for him. I experience Horgan as wanting to nail things down with precise definitions, and in the act of doing this, revealing his wish to see complexity as a property that all could agree exists in a given situation, machine and so on. Because of this, I experience him, and many others, as wanting to hold on to a particular scientific explanation of complexity and to avoid the stigma of being labelled as relativist or subjective at all costs. (Relativism is the label given to a theory not relying on a criterion of truth independent and outside of itself. Subjective often means knowledge particular to the individual; it is contrasted with so-called objective knowledge.) This is an epistemological debate to which systems thinking provides some alternatives as will be demonstrated as the course progresses.

From my perspective those who wish only to have a scientific explanation of complexity, in the manner of Horgan, deny the unique cognitive histories we each have as human beings. None of us share a common experiential world, all we have at our disposal is our ability to communicate about our worlds of experience and, sometimes, a history of living in a common culture over a period of time. The common culture allows us to appreciate the apparent paradox between our individual and unique cognitive histories and our experience that collectively we do not experience the world in relativistic or subjective ways.

A hierarchy of complexity Kenneth Boulding (1956), one of the founders of General Systems Theory, proposed a typology of complexity based on the concept of hierarchy. Francois (1997) says any classification, like Boulding’s, can be questioned but after nearly 40 years it has not been contradicted by any subsequent experimental or theoretical development. The levels he recognized are shown with examples in Table C1.

Checkland (1993) points out this schema is not based on empirical evidence, so as with any schema all we can ask is: Is it convincing and does it help? He claims it is a source of insight because it provides a way of appreciating the history of management science as a discipline, therefore it is of help. Checkland considers Taylorist (or Fordist), scientific management in engineering workshops as examples of level 2 systems; the development of cybernetics with its focus on feedback and control emphasized level 3, and the attempts in the 1970s and 1980s to bring in behavioural science to treat management problems were aimed at levels 7 and 8. Together they span much of the history of management science.

Perhaps more important in this context is Checkland’s observations in response to the question: ‘Is it convincing?’ He says yes it is, but is concerned at the unanimity regarding the ranking in the hierarchy and says: ‘we still have no definition of the nature of the scale of system complexity ... hence we still cannot argue intelligently about the relative size of the gaps between levels ... we have no adequate account of systemic complexity.’ Some may argue it is this gap the new sciences of complexity are attempting to fill.

T551

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Table C1 An informal intuitive hierarchy of complexity

Level Characteristics Examples (concrete or abstract)

Relevant disciplines

structures, frameworks

static crystal structures, bridges

description, verbal or pictorial, in any discipline

clock-works predetermined motion (may exhibit equilibrium)

clocks, machines, the solar system

physics, classical natural sciences

control mechanisms

closed-loop control thermostats, homeostasis mechanisms in organisms

control theory, cybernetics

lower organisms organized whole with functional parts, ‘blue-printed’ growth, reproduction

plants botany

animals a brain to guide total behaviour, ability to learn

birds and beasts zoology

man self-consciousness knowledge of knowledge

symbolic language

socio-cultural systems

roles, communication, transmission of values

families, the boy scouts, drinking clubs, nations

history, sociology, anthropology, behavioural science

transcendental systems

inescapable unknowables

the idea of God ?

(Checkland 1993, following Boulding 1956)

Complexity as heterogeneity Godfrey-Smith (1996), concerned with cognition and the place of mind in nature understands complexity as heterogeneity.

Complexity is changeability, variability. Something is simple when it is all the same. In this sense, complexity is not the same thing as order, and is in fact opposed to order. Heterogeneity is disorder in the sense of uncertainty ... If complexity is understood as heterogeneity or variability, then both an organism and an environment can be said to be complex or simple in the same sense. An environment with a large number of states that come and go over time is a complex environment.

This has implications for systems thinking because it raises the valid perspective that different forms of complexity can be associated with a system and its environment. Remember that specifying a system is shorthand for specifying a system in an environment.

Because Godfrey-Smith is concerned with organisms and mind, he conceptualizes these as systems and goes on to distinguish between internal – within the organism as system – and external – in the environment – complexity. From his perspective, there are many different types of heterogeneity and there is no single measure of complexity. It is not clear to me whether heterogeneity is similar in conception to the variety of Ashby (see below).

Some perspectives on complexity 187

Godfrey-Smith also distinguishes between first-order and higher order properties of complexity using the following example.

Consider two different types of behaviourally variable organism. One is smart in the sense that it can track the state of the world and react to changes in its environment with appropriate behavioural adjustments. But the set of rules or conditionals – if the world is in S1, then do B1 – which determine which behaviour is produced in each situation, is fixed. This organism is behaviourally complex when compared to an organism which does the same thing in every situation, which performs the same action come what may. The organism which adjusts its behaviour to circumstances, but does so in a rigidly, pre-programmed way, has a first-order property of complexity in its behaviour. Such an organism is inflexible in contrast to an organism which is able to modify its behavioural profile in the light of experience, an organism which modifies what behaviour it is that is produced in the presence of a given environmental condition.

The second type of organism is able to change the set of conditionals [elsewhere these might be described as goals] that determine what it does in a given situation. This is learning: the learning organism can learn that it is not good to produce B1 when the world is in S1, and better to produce B2 instead. This is a second-order property of complexity. There is also third-order plasticity, the ability to change the learning rules which are used to determine the list of conditionals ... and so on. [Those familiar with the work of Donald Schön may recognize these categories as single, double and triple loop learning.]

While the language is that of cognitive biology, it is relevant to my conception of the ideal systems practitioner, and a number of the first, second and third order distinctions will recur throughout the T306 course. In this sense I am concerned with what Godfrey-Smith describes as functional complexity – the range of possible behaviours our cognitive capacities will allow. As with this author, my interest is in being able to do lots of different things in different conditions, to expand our behavioural repertoire. For me difference, or diversity, is associated with creativity and our evolutionary possibilities, both in our day-to-day engagements, much as a pair of dancers improvising together, and over the long term in our living together (amongst whom I include other species).

Godfrey mith distinguishes functional complexity, described above, from structural complexity, which he describes as what the system is made up of, e.g. how many different parts there are and how these are connected and interact. This aspect of complexity is also relevant to a systems practitioner. Finally, it is worth noting that the author adopts a realist stance to complexity by arguing ‘complexity properties are real features of environments that exist independently of organisms’, and ‘if an organism is to construct or transform the complexity in its environment it must do this by physical intervention in it’.

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-S

Complexity as variety Variety is considered to be the condition for complexity by Francois (1997). This ‘variety’ is the word used by Ross Ashby in formulating his law of requisite variety, often phrased as ‘only variety can destroy [absorb] variety’ (Ashby, 1956, p.207).

Ashby’s law, while general, establishes in a mathematical form that a system’s regulation is efficient only if it relies on a control system as complex as the system itself. Control systems must have a variety equivalent to the variety of the system itself. Within this framework complexity is the property of a system of being able to adopt a large number of states or behaviours (Espejo et al, 1996). This leads, in the field of management cybernetics, to the notion of variety engineering.

Kelly (1994, p.590) observes ‘there seems to be a ‘‘requisite variety’’ – a minimum complexity or diversity of parts – for such processes as self- organization, evolution, learning and life’. But he is concerned to know ‘what is variety?’ and ‘when enough variety is enough?’ He suggests there is not a good measure for variety. Given the existence of management cybernetics, it is somewhat surprising these questions remain with him. Complexity as variety is a topic that will be taken up again in Block 3.

Taking analogies from complexity science and applying them to in organizations

This is an evolving field as typified by the work of Ralph Stacey and colleagues. In his early work on the subject Stacey’s perspective on complexity is claimed to be building on the study of non-linear feedback networks or complex adaptive systems. This is also described as the science of complexity by Ralph Stacey (1996).

Stacey saw the science of complexity as providing a ‘new frame of reference’ to break out of the trap of thinking of successful organizations as ‘systems tending to states of stable equilibrium adaptation to their market, societal, and political environments’. They are ‘disturbed from such states, or from a consistent journey to such a state, by disturbances in the environment’ (Stacey, n.d.). Within this [old] framework, continuing success is seen as identifying changes as soon as possible and aligning the organization to fit them by taking control action. This argument resonates with the early work of Donald Schön in his book Beyond the Stable State (1971).

Stacey (n.d.) regards a complex adaptive system as a system that:

^ Consists of a large number of agents interrelated in a non-linear way; in a way the action of one agent can provoke more than one response from other agents.

^ Interacts with other complex adaptive systems and together they constitute the environment to which each must respond.

^ Acquires information about the systems constituting its environment and information about the consequences of its own interaction with those systems, meaning complex adaptive systems employ feedback.

^ Identifies regularities in the feedback information it acquires and condenses those regularities into a schema or model, in effect selecting one of a number of competing models that might explain the regularities.

Some perspectives on complexity 189

^ Acts in relation to the systems that are its environment on the basis of the schema it has developed.

^ Observes the responses its actions provoke, as well as the consequences of those responses and uses the information to revise its schema, meaning it employs feedback to learn or adapt; this is rather complex as it involves adjusting both the behaviour and the schema driving the behaviour.

An important notion is that system and environment co-evolve; it is not a case of a system adapting to its environment. This has implications for practice, which are taken up in the course text.

In subsequent work (e.g. Stacey, Griffin and Shaw 2000), characterized by a lack of scholarly engagement with the systems literature, Stacey and colleagues, change the emphasis of their concerns to what they call ‘complex responsive processes’. They do so in part as a reaction to many complexity theorists talking of ‘complex systems as objective realities that scientists can stand outside of and model’ (p.ix). They prefer instead to define a ‘participative perspective’, something which is also a concern of authors in this course (e.g. Block 4).

Increasingly many management and leadership trainers and practitioners argue for a perspective informed by ‘complexity science’. An example is a series of articles published in the British Medical Journal in relation to managing and leading in the UK National Health Service (NHS) (Plsek and Wilson, 2001; Fraser and Greenhalgh, 2001; Wilson and Holt, 2001; Plsek and Greenhalgh, 2001). The main argument they make is that most thinking in organizations is still conditioned by an understanding of organizations as machines, which ‘lets us down badly when no part of the equation is constant, independent or predictable’ (Plsek and Greenhalgh, 2001, p. 625). They argue that new metaphors from the science of complex adaptive systems can help deal with issues in situations like the NHS. Chapman (2002) draws on this material to explore why governments must learn to think differently to avoid ‘system failure’, particularly in processes of public sector reform. What most of these authors do not develop is a notion of what skills are needed to use these metaphors in purposeful action for managing change. T306 is designed to help you develop these skills.

Chaos theory and strange attractors Weather systems are regarded as chaotic systems. They behave in a non- linear way because weather patterns that emerge are highly sensitive to initial starting conditions. This is popularly known as the butterfly effect, a description coined by the meteorologist Edward Lorenze. The description is ‘a means to convey the extreme sensitivity of the systems that emerge; the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings over the Amazon could lead to a hurricane on the other side of the world.’ However, not all non-linear behaviour results from sensitivity to initial starting conditions, nor does such sensitivity always lead to non-linear behaviour.

Chaos theory, fully described by Gleick (1987), was taken up avidly by the media and management consultants and academics in the 1980s. It is a widely held view that ‘it was disappointing’ in its results (LGMB, 1996; and Battram, 1998). It is now considered by some as a subset of complexity theory.

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In its Complexicon, a lexicon of complexity prepared for managers, the Local Government Management Board (LGMB, 1996; Battram, 1998), describes three sorts of ‘attractor’ associated with complexity and chaos theory. These are point, closed loop and strange attractors.

The term ‘attractor’ has been used – mainly for physical phenomena such as water flow, or a pendulum – to describe things in motion being pulled toward a definitive point or region during its cycles or periods. It is as if certain things in motion (I would prefer not to call them systems) have no degrees of freedom in their choice of movement. The position a pendulum swings back to when it comes to ‘rest’ is described as a point attractor. Electrical circuits and economic cycles are considered to oscillate and demonstrate periodic fluctuation (i.e. the cage in which the phenomena occur is slightly larger). The point these return to is called a closed loop attractor. The pattern that results from a non-linear chaotic system is characterized by a line infinitely long, never repeating itself, never crossing itself, never following the same path but drawn in limited space and continuing indefinitely. The pattern that results is called a strange attractor (Meri, 1995).

Meri, (1995) recognizes four types of human behaviour that he relates to understandings from chaos theory and the different forms of attractors:

^ Repeating former behaviour in the same way, e.g. industrial repetitive tasks;

^ Varying behaviour slightly and predictably, e.g. a man shaving his face;

^ Adapting new behaviours that intermix linearity and non-linearity, e.g. immigrating to a new country;

^ Chaotic behaviour leading to a new, more complex mode, e.g. social chaos as in Russia in the 1990s.

Personally, I find it difficult to think of how I might embody these concepts in my systems practice, or what might be gained from doing so. On the other hand, I do experience them as powerful explanations of certain phenomena.

Some perspectives on complexity 191

Appendix D

Soft systems methodology This article is an edited transcript of a talk given by Peter Checkland in 1996 and published in an OU Systems Society newsletter in 1998.

It is required reading for a number of reasons. The primary one is because I consider it to be an excellent example of critical reflection. The essence of the story is of someone trying to make sense of their early experiences of complexity and then setting out to do something about it by using systems thinking within an action-research framework. Checkland’s particular set of experiences provided the main impetus for the development of the systems approach known as soft systems methodology. Professor Checkland formally retired from the University of Lancaster in 1997. This occasion led him to reflect on his involvement in the project to develop SS-methodology, or SSM as he refers to it.

I have been working with these ideas for a long time now and I was pondering as I was getting my slides together that our action research programme at Lancaster, out of which soft systems methodology came, is entering its 27th year [1996]. By now we would have abandoned systems ideas and tried something else if they didn’t work in the area that we are interested in: which is doing something about messy, ill-structured, problematical situations of the kind with which managers, of all kinds, and at all levels, have to cope. I am still an enthusiast for systems ideas. What I was going to do in this talk, is re-live some of the 27 years of the history of that research programme and pull out the basic structures of thinking which led to the creation of soft systems methodology.

I will start by saying something very fundamental about systems thinking itself, and this comes from something which happened spontaneously. Walking through the village of Bolton-le-Sands, where I live, a few years ago, I passed the church in the middle of the village which has, at its entrance, one of these notice boards labelled ‘The Wayside Pulpit’. Posters are displayed from week-to-week on the notice board, which offer improving thoughts to the passing citizens. A poster was displayed which offered me, and the fellow inhabitants of this village, this advice: ‘Tackle the hard task piece by piece’. I was amazed, in the late 20th century in a village in north Lancashire, to see this serious piece of advice being offered. The origin of it is the great Rene Descartes. In 1642, in The Discourse On Method, he was a founding father of the thinking which led to the scientific revolution of the 17th century. This is the characterizing activity of Western civilization, which has made us the kind of people we are, doing the kind of thing we are doing this afternoon. As well as The Discourse On Method, Descartes had written a book called De Mundo – Concerning The World. In that book, he adopted the Copernicus model of the solar system, with the Earth travelling around the Sun. This was counter to the teachings of the most powerful political institution of his day, the church. He was a bit worried about what would happen when he published this and so he decided to collect together a few samples, and wrote a little introduction to the samples which he called The Discourse On Method. That is where the quote in my village church comes from. When faced with complexity, says Descartes, don’t try and take it all on board. Chop it up into bits and tackle the bits, one by one: that is the way to deal with complexity.

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So when I saw that that message had now just reached north Lancashire from 1642, I wished that I was a cruder fellow than I am, because I ought to have pulled out my felt pen, or my spray paint can, and changed the message. I would have urged people not to be reductionist as Descartes was suggesting. The point is that if you read The Discourse On Method carefully, Descartes never realizes that he is taking as given an important assumption, which it is actually worth questioning. His assumption is that you can extract a piece from the whole and study it, and that it will be the same piece when you have extracted it as when it is a part of the whole. This is a dubious assumption, and that was brought home to me by chance some years ago when my younger daughter, who is a doctor now, but was a medical student then, had come home from university one weekend. I happened to say to her: ‘What have you been doing lately Kath?’, and she said, ‘Oh, this last week we have been doing the hand’. ‘Doing the hand,’ I said, ‘how do you do the hand?’ ‘Well,’ she said impatiently, ‘in the lab they had a box full of hands and we all took one, and we have spent several days dissecting the human hand, starting with one that has been removed from a corpse.’ It is obviously the case that you can find out a lot about the human hand, starting with one that has been separated from the body, and it is equally true, is it not, that it isn’t quite the same bit when you have removed it from the body, as when it is a part of the body? It seems to me that systems thinking is simply the body of ideas which takes that thought seriously and tries to develop non- reductionist, more holistic ways of thinking about complexity. That is what we tried to do in the research programme that I am talking about at Lancaster.

I went into university teaching as a second career. I had been in ICI as a manager for 15 years and before that I had been trained as a scientist. Those were for me very interesting transitions, from scientist to technologist and then to manager, before I entered a new career. I learned quite a lot from making those transitions and I certainly have no regrets that I have had that sequence of experiences.

When I was a scientist I was a physical chemist of the most austere and mathematical variety. There I was in the physical chemistry lab in Oxford studying something called the rotational fine structure of the vibration- rotation bands of the high-resolution infrared spectra of small molecules in the gas phase. Descartes would have been really proud of me! You could not get more reductionist than that, and when I was examined on this work, Sir Harry Melville, who was a distinguished British chemist of the day, changed my life. (I don’t know whether you believe that there are moments after which, as a result of chance happenings, the rest of your life is different, but I can think of a few such moments in mine, and Sir Harry Melville created one.) He asked me a question to which I had never given a moments thought. He said, ‘Who will read the paper that comes out of this research?’ This was alarmingly easy to answer because I could literally, at that time and in that field, name 4 or 5 people around the world who might actually read the paper and get past the title on it. That caused me furiously to think and I thought: there must be more to science than this, and I resolved to get away from Oxford as soon as possible.

I went into science-based industry and joined ICI at a time which was really interesting because a new technology was being created. Carothers in the USA had invented some new stuff called nylon and Rex Whinfield at Accrington, not far from here [Manchester, UK], had invented some new stuff called polyester. These polymers melt at about 265 degrees Celsius

Soft systems methodology 193

and if you hold the melt at around 300 degrees Celsius, they can then be pumped through small holes to make man-made fibres. It was the start of that industry, I found it very interesting to be part of it.

After being a technologist in that industry for a number of years, I then became a manager in ICI. But that was more mysterious than the transition from scientist to a technologist, and in those days management education was extremely primitive. Apart from going on a few in-house courses that ICI would announce in the form of ‘come to a two-day course on discounted cash-flow modelling’, there wasn’t any management education. You just made mistakes and learned from those and watched other people and gradually found ways of doing what was reasonable for you. I remember when I made that transition to being a manager I discovered that there was a literature that I was unaware of called ‘management science’, sitting there on the shelves in the library. I thought naively, wow! good. Here am I, an ex-scientist, now a manager, who has a whole literature awaiting me called management science. This must be just what I need. I went eagerly to that literature and found it totally irrelevant to everything that I was doing from day-to-day as a manager at ICI. I really couldn’t understand why, or how, the people who developed this stuff had so managed to pass by the problems which I experienced as a manager. I took that problem with me when I left ICI after 15 years, an experience which I fully enjoyed as a really interesting career.

I took another problem with me from ICI. It has always been a well- managed company and if the rest of British industry had matched the economic performance of ICI since the Second World War, we wouldn’t have had the series of economic crises which this country has been through. On the other hand if you are in it, if you are a member of it, you cannot help but notice that the organization as a whole, as a single entity, often manages to behave in a rather dinosaur-like fashion, as if crashing ponderously through the undergrowth directed by a tiny brain. And yet all the people who make up ICI are on the whole very intelligent people. It seemed to me that that organization – and I think this is a problem for all large organizations – lacked mechanisms for learning corporately. It lacked language for capturing its learning as a single entity, passing on that learning to other people and new generations of people in the organization.

I wondered whether systems ideas didn’t have a role to play in that. I had got interested in systems ideas because a number of times in my ICI career I had found myself a project manager. The project manager in such an industry is responsible for getting some new development technically right, making sure that any inventions involved are protected by patents, making sure the marketing plans are sensibly made, and making sure it looks as if the finances indicate that this will be a wealth generator rather than an overall cost. It was through systems ideas in project management that I got interested in systems ideas, and I then left ICI to join this new department at Lancaster, which called itself ‘Systems Engineering’.

But it wasn’t most people’s idea of systems engineering. There was indeed expertise in that department of chemical engineering, control engineering, and statistics, and some of the first work done in the department would now be thought of as ‘hard’ systems engineering. But Gwilym Jenkins, the statistician who founded this department, always read the word ‘engineering’ in the broad sense of the word. You can engineer a meeting with someone, you can engineer the release of hostages, and it was that

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broad sense of the word engineering that Gwilym intended to drive the work. When I was recruited into that department the research task, which was suggested to me, sounded a good idea. That research task was to find out, in action research in real situations, whether the methods of hard systems engineering, the methods you would use to optimize the output from a petro-chemical complex, could simply be transferred into the human situations which managers try to cope with. That is what we set out to do in the action research programme.

use methodology

take systems engineering as given

define systems

methodology

learn from use

Figure D1 Strategy for systems research at Lancaster

This model makes sense, after the event, of what happened to us. I use this model to try and make sense of the experiences we went through. This model says that if you define how you are going to use the systems ideas in some systems methodology, then you can go and use it. If you are lucky you can learn from that use. In principle that learning could of course be the source of the definition. And as soon as you make that a closed system, it is technically a system in which the elements create the system itself.

When you close that loop, you have created a logical paradox. All systems of this kind are logical paradoxes when written out on paper because the cycle, as I have drawn it, couldn’t ever get going. The definition needs the learning, the learning needs the use, but the use needs the definition. So technically the cycle couldn’t ever operate, it’s a logical paradox. But of course, in real life you don’t let a logical paradox hold you up. You just kick the door down.

So what we did was to break into that cycle by saying: ‘We will take hard systems engineering as our approach. We will try to use it in management problem situations, and we will see what happens.’ What happened was that the methodology came apart in our hands. We found ourselves unable to use it, we found ourselves making a complete hash of it. But we tried to pick ourselves up and learn from what was happening to us, and we found ourselves re-defining the systems engineering that we had started from. The re-definition was sufficiently radical that the approach came to be called something different, namely soft systems methodology (see Figure D2). Then in the last 10–15 years we have learnt again, not having thought it out in advance, that the kind of models that we build there are an excellent way into work on information systems, where much of the emphasis of our work has been in recent years.

Soft systems methodology 195

fails

yields

soft systems methodology

leads to work in

information systems

systems engineering

define systems

methodology

learn from use

use methodology

Figure D2 The outcome of systems research at Lancaster

I’ll describe very briefly the kind of experiences we were having when we tried to use systems engineering in management problem situations, and failed to do so. One of the first experiences I had at Lancaster came about when David Farrah, who was a director of the British Aircraft Corporation, said to us: ‘the Concorde project is a mess’. Everybody knew that because it was a big issue in the newspapers at the time and successive British governments in the 1970s were very serious about cancelling it. In which case, the French said they would sue for more millions than it would cost to carry on with it. David Farrah said: ‘Just come into the project with your systems engineering approach and see what useful advice you can give to us’.

Dave Thomas, the chap I was working with on this, was a 34-year-old engineer who had been working in Canada, as I remember, and was doing a masters course as a way of getting back into employment on this side of the Atlantic. Dave Thomas and I went to Filton and found that what was happening at that stage in Concorde was that the French had aircraft 001 in Toulouse and the Brits had 002 in Filton in Bristol. These were the pre- production aircraft, which hadn’t flown yet. But in the big shed in which they were building it at Filton, it looked like a complete aircraft. It was years late, and it had already cost millions more than anticipated.

Dave Thomas and I thought this was pretty straightforward. Thinking like systems engineers we said: what is the system of concern? It is the creation of this aircraft. What are its objectives? The objectives of that system are to create that aircraft within a certain time, at a certain cost, meeting a particular detailed technical specification under at least a couple of constraints: one, that it doesn’t damage the environment unacceptably, and two, that it has to get the air worthiness certificate from the Civil Aviation Authority or else the public won’t be allowed to fly in it. So we thought we could quite explicitly define the objectives of the Concorde project in those terms, and we sketched out what we would have to do in some rudimentary models if that was the system that you were wishing to operate in the real world.

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It took us some time to appreciate that we just couldn’t get anywhere with those kinds of models. We couldn’t engage the attention of the engineers actually involved with the Concorde project with that sort of model. It was after the first few weeks down at Filton when we came to realize the major significance of the fact that this was the Anglo-French Concorde project and was created at a time when President De Gaulle of France was vetoing British entry into the Common Market; and one of the motivations behind the project from the British side was to try and convince the French that perfidious Albion could be reasonable partners in a major technological enterprise which was going to prevent the Americans being the world leaders in at least one advanced technology. The politics of the Concorde project were an integral part of it. You couldn’t separate those out and just think about it as an engineering project because the politics affected everything that was going on in the project.

We realized how difficult it is to formulate objectives in human situations. In the technically-defined problems for which systems engineering was developed, then of course objective-defining is part of the game; and if your job is to optimize a plant’s output then you can very precisely define the objectives for such a plant. In any human situation this is a very difficult thing to do, where multiple overlapping objectives are the norm.

Another example, at a very different scale, is from near here [Manchester]. Here was a small carpet manufacturer run by the managing director. The organization was sufficiently small that he knew all about the technology, all about the marketing, all about the finances. It was his show, and he said to us: ‘I know that I ought to be thinking ahead, thinking strategically, whatever that means, and I don’t. I just live from day to day; so I want you to make me a plan’. We first started to look at his production processes to think about production planning, rather more professionally than he did. But we found that every step of the way, whatever we tried to do, he was resisting us, he was fighting us. We eventually made sense of the situation we were in there by seeing that this chap had a real fear when asking us to come and look at his company. That fear was that his company might become more successful and more profitable, and we gradually realized the significance of the fact that he disappeared three afternoons a week to play golf. He saw this little firm as a way to preserve a particular lifestyle which he was perfectly satisfied with. He didn’t want to take more money out of the business and he was smart enough to see that if the company was more successful and grew, it would change its nature and that would change his life. He was content to hang on to his life as it was. So in a sense when he said, ‘I want you to make me plan’, what he really meant was: ‘I want to plan this company so that nothing ever happens, and that it just goes on exactly the same as it is because I am perfectly satisfied with it.’ Again we were realizing that just thinking about this as a manufacturing operation and a marketing operation and so on wasn’t actually going to get to grips with the complexity of that human situation.

A further example from the public sector. At the back of Lime Street Station in Liverpool was a poor part of the world: grotty housing, high unemployment, low educational standards, a drugs culture; a real rough part of the world. In the middle of that community was the Bronte Centre, a community centre that was funded by John Moores, the Liverpool millionaire. He was putting £40 000 a year into the Bronte Centre. And there we were, approached by three young lads with degrees in social science, who were running the Bronte Centre and who had lost all sense of

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what they were trying to do there in that community. They asked us to help them re-think what the role of the Bronte Centre could be. When we got immersed in that we realized that we had to think not only about these three young lads who were running the Bronte Centre, we had to think: ‘Well, how does it look from John Moores’ perspective’ – he doesn’t want to throw away his £40 000 a year. ‘How does it look from the perspective of the Liverpool City social services department?’ – whose work often interacts and overlaps with what the Bronte Centre was trying to do. What does the world look like if you are born and brought up in that community? What might your aspirations be in the midst of this community? That was another example in which the simple starting point in hard systems thinking – what is the system of concern and what are its objectives, what kinds of techniques are available to engineer the system to meet the objectives – was not enough. That just didn’t have a suitable relevant subtlety and complexity to cope with the actual subtlety and complexity of human affairs as managers deal with them.

I came across a good example recently of just how difficult it is to formulate objectives in human affairs. This example came from a conference I attended to set up a European Evaluation Society. (There is a growth industry in evaluation as an academic area these days.) This conference in the Hague was addressed by Piet Dankert, a Dutch politician with much experience of the EEC. He declared that it was absolutely vital for Brussels, in the context of the Common Market, to formulate good methodology for evaluating all of the things that they do. His example of just how difficult it is to set objectives is in fact something we have all heard about – the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the EEC. He pointed out to us that if you go back to the Treaty of Rome and see what it says about the CAP, then the objective of the CAP is to increase agricultural productivity, which is a perfectly clear, unequivocal objective. But carry on reading the Treaty of Rome and it adds that its objective is also to safeguard jobs in the industry. Carry on reading another paragraph of the Treaty of Rome and its objective is also to obtain the best possible deal for consumers. It is obvious why the CAP is such a mess in the EEC: progress on any of these will make it more difficult to achieve progress on any of the others. The Treaty of Rome says that there are three equal objectives for the Common Agricultural Policy. I thought this a nice example of how incredibly difficult clear objective setting is in human affairs.

So: when we were finding that the thinking we started from didn’t work in real situations, we had to do some fundamental rethinking of systems ideas. We went back and tried to understand the systems literature, and, as was being discussed when I arrived just before lunch today, Systems is a funny subject because it turns up in everybody else’s literature. There are systems thinking geographers these days, lots of them, and other geographers who don’t use the systems language. There are systems thinking economists and systems thinking sociologists and psychologists and so on. It is a language that can be used within anybody else’s area, which means that it is virtually impossible for anybody to keep up with the totality of the systems literature, since it is there as a meta-language for use in any other area whatsoever.

If you absorb as much as you can of this literature, and especially the literature that is about systems as such, then I think you will find that there is a single core image at the centre of it, which is that of the adaptive whole. It seemed to me useful to ask what language you need to talk

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about an adaptive whole, the system S, which can adapt and survive within a changing environment which is delivering shocks to it. In order to talk about that metaphor or image you have to have, in terms of this entity S, firstly, processes of communication and control so that it can find out what is happening to it both from the environment and internally, and you need available control action in order to adapt if the environment is changing. And any observer of this entity, S, observes that it may well have a layered structure in that the system may contain other subsystems which may contain sub-subsystems and so on. Or, this system may only be regarded as a subsystem of a larger system and so on. And finally, you have got to be able to talk about the entity, the adaptive whole as a whole, and it must have properties as a whole that are meaningless in terms of parts which make up the whole. That is the core systems image and this rich idea has been developed by lots of different people in different fields.

Ecologists are interested in the kind of whole entities which nature creates; if they can develop the concept of a natural system, a whole created by nature, then that may be relevant to understanding what goes on in swamps and forests and the biosphere of the planet. Engineers work with the idea that they can create wholes which have emergent properties, and designed systems can be either physical or abstract. Thus, these simple few words cover huge areas of human activity in which systems ideas have been seriously developed.

When we were thinking through this in terms of why can’t we use hard systems engineering in management problem situations, we thought: ‘Well, this is all very interesting but it hasn’t got much to do with the price of eggs as we are experiencing it in the kind of situations that we are in’. Though I cannot exactly, in hindsight, recover the moment (if there was a moment) in which there occurred to us the thought which got our thinking moving ahead, that idea was a very clear one: ‘Well, whether it is in the Concorde project or the carpet manufacturer or the Bronte Centre in Liverpool, all of these management problem situations do at least have one thing in common. All of them contain people trying to take purposeful action’. And trying to act purposefully rather than by instinct or randomly thrashing about (though there will never be any shortage of that in human affairs) is a key characteristic of being human. So we said: ‘Let’s take purposeful activity as a systems concept. Let’s imagine a set of activities joined together to constitute a purposeful whole which we called a human activity system. If we can develop that system idea in the way that ecologists develop concepts of the kind of whole which nature creates, then maybe we can use that to understand what goes on in the real world in companies, government departments, the NHS, sports clubs, drinking clubs, in fact in any area of human affairs characterised by purposeful activity.’

So in this sequence of our history of doing this work, that was the first of what, with hindsight, I can pull out and identify as four, for us, big thoughts, ‘big’ because they are thoughts that got us moving, got our thinking going and left us feeling that we were making progress. But then we quickly realized that we had to do some more thinking, which was to understand how seriously human beings always take purposeful activity. Acting purposefully is one of the things that makes us human. If you and your partner were cuckoos instead of being human, but still had human attributes, next spring you would probably say to your partner: ‘Hey, this is getting boring being cuckoos; this spring for a change let’s see what it is like to build a nest and raise young cuckoos’. No cuckoo has ever been

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Four ‘big’ thoughts for us

1 Treat linked activities as a purposeful system

2 Declare worldviews which make purposeful models meaningful (there will be many)

3 Enact SSM as a learning system, finding accommodations enabling action to be taken

4 Use models of activity systems as a base for work on information systems

Figure D3 Four thoughts which moved the research forward

observed doing that, cuckoos are apparently programmed to do what cuckoos do, to follow cuckoo-like behaviour. We appear to have the chance of deciding to do things and then changing our mind and doing something else instead. We can act purposefully in a willed way, and I think that that is very central to what makes us human and that that is why human beings take purposeful activity so seriously. So whenever you get people to describe purposeful activity, they never give you a basic, neutral, simple account of it. They will always give elaborate interpretations of it.

The example which I always use for this comes from work we did for the Home Office on prisons. This was to do with answering the question, ‘What information systems do you need in the management of a prison?’ But of course the answer to that question depends on what do you mean by a prison, since the information systems are going to serve that purposeful institution; and you cannot design a system which serves unless you know what it is you are going to serve. So you have got to answer the question: what do we mean by a prison? This is a good example because it is such a dramatic one. As soon as someone says ‘it’s a punishment system’, someone else says ‘no, it’s a re-education system’ and the next person may look at it from the other way around and say ‘it’s a system to protect society’. When Douglas Hurd was home secretary [a UK government minister] he understood all the research which showed that a prison doesn’t work, and he used it to make an excellent speech, in which he used to say that what we do in this country is we catch the incompetent thieves and we send them to jail; they learn a hell of a lot while they are inside and they come out as more competent thieves. Though we didn’t intend it, the minister used to say, our prisons are wonderful universities of crime. Well, all of these are plausible ways of saying what is a prison, and different people will be more inclined to one view than another. But of course any actual prison represents a complete complex mix of these and other concepts, unfolding through time.

When we went to Gartree maximum-security prison, in Leicestershire, and talked to prison officers, they were more or less in dismay. Given the crisis in the penal system, they saw the prison as a potential riot. They saw their management activity as reduced to making sure that the situation didn’t blow up next week with the prisoners up on the roof throwing the tiles off, waving banners to the TV and generally breaking up the place, as they did at Strangeways, Manchester a few years ago. Of course, that is interesting from the information systems project point of view because the kind of information systems that they were seeking were essentially intelligence gathering systems so that they really would know what is going on inside this prison and could think ahead and make sure there wasn’t a riot there

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next week. So the list of concepts is never-ending depending on the range of people that you talk to. What you never get though is anybody who says ‘it’s a human warehouse’, which is probably the most basic account. If researchers from Mars, who didn’t know human culture, wanted to know what was going on in this building called ‘a prison’ and sat outside long enough, they would observe people being taken in and they would eventually see those same people being let out and they would say ‘this is some kind of human storage system’.

So what we had learnt is that we couldn’t ever build a model of a prison, the complexity was way beyond us. What you have to do is build a number of models each from a declared worldview. That was the second of the four big thoughts. Furthermore, these models wouldn’t be pretending to be models of a bit of the real world as systems engineers’ models do. They would simply be devices which encapsulate, as a logical machine for acting purposefully, a particular way of seeing this particular activity. It seems to me that from that thought flowed the shape which the approach we then took – we couldn’t have done anything else. Here we were, going into problem situations, thinking of some purposeful activity models that might be relevant. We found ourselves with a set of such models, using them in the so-called comparison stage, to question the real world. And that questioning of the real world using these models would set up a structured debate, the purpose of which emerged as finding the accommodations in that situation which would enable action to improve the situation to be taken. The whole thing is a learning system.

By then, we had realized that the models were quite different to the kind of models which management scientists make. If you are an operational researcher, if you want to improve the productivity of a particular machine, then you make a model of the processes of that machine and it is a model of that bit of the real world. You then use various techniques to optimize that model and hopefully translate the results of that back into real life. Here our models are merely devices and we have realized in recent years that the language commonly used is completely unhelpful to us. We try at Lancaster now not to keep thinking of them as systems. You see that for us the word system is completely, totally, spoilt from its use in everyday language. In everyday language we use the word ‘system’ all the time. We talk about the legal system, the health care system, the education system and so on, as if system is a label for something in the world, and that is indeed the assumption of the systems engineer. The systems engineer says that the world can be seen as a set of systems, some of which don’t work very well, and that the systems engineer can come along and make them work better. We were moving radically away from that and we really ought to give up the word ‘system’. I have been trying to promote a number of alternatives that have been suggested in the systems literature. The one that has actually caught on a little bit is the one I have used most: Arthur Koestler’s word – holon. In his book about the built-in self- destructive tendency in human beings (The Ghost in the Machine), Arthur Koestler has an appendix in which he develops the notion of a holon as a whole entity which is at the same time both in principle autonomous in its own right but also capable of playing a role in a larger entity. So in Koestler’s terms a word is a holon which is autonomous in its own right, carrying a meaning as a word, but can also have a part to play in a larger holon which is a sentence. We ought to refer to our models as ‘holons’ because the word systems always invokes in peoples heads the notion of something out there in the world. I think it was very unfortunate, in fact

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(you can say this with hindsight), that one of the very first OU Systems courses ever to be developed was Systems Behaviour which looked at air- traffic control systems, etc, but used the everyday language sense of the word system. And similarly with all the OU work on systems failures, as soon as you start talking about systems failures, you are making the ‘hard’ assumption that the world contains systems. That makes for interesting problems for OU Systems students, it seems to me!

D1 .

So, we had learned that our models were merely devices to enable us to structure a debate in which we are looking for the accommodations between conflicting views which enable actions to improve the situation to be taken; and the whole process is in principle a never ending one.

The other aspect of soft systems methodology that many people get wrong is that they say the purpose of this debate is to find consensus. Now our experience is that true consensus is very rare in human affairs, and that what you actually have to work with in human affairs are the accommodations which enable the situation to move forward. The accommodations are the arrangements you make with your brother to live together in the same family even though you don’t see eye-to-eye sometimes. The accommodations are the things that managers have to find in their organization to enable it to undertake corporate action. I have been trying to emphasize this in recent years, and have found a lot of people find the notion quite tricky. The example I use to illustrate it on a macro-scale is a political example from macro-politics and it is from what happened just after the end of the Second World War in Europe, when Berlin was in the middle of the Russian zone as it then was and the city itself was divided into the American zone, the British zone, the French zone and the Russian zone. The Russians did not like this, they did not like the West being in part of Berlin in the middle of the eastern zone of Germany. But they had agreed to it at the end of the Second World War and they had allowed certain routes down the motorways by which the Western sectors of Berlin could be supplied. In 1947, the Russians decided to put the screws on by saying they were closing all the autobahn routes to Berlin and this placed the West in a terrible dilemma. The response, famously, was the development of the Berlin airlift. This was a triumph for management science I should say, since the logistics of supplying a whole major city by air were very complex and it was a terrific achievement to do it. At the height of the Berlin airlift, there were aeroplanes landing at Templehof airport every minute or so and that was the rate at which the planes had to fly in to keep Berlin supplied. Now there is a situation which is a titanic struggle between what was then the Eastern Bloc and the Western Bloc at the height of the cold war. It was by definition a fight; it was actually also a political accommodation in the sense that in the West, the Western military planners considered, and thank God rejected, the idea of mounting an armoured column and fighting their way down the autobahn to Berlin. The Russians, for their part, could easily have shot down the planes in the airlift, which they never attempted to do.

So here is a situation which is by definition a conflict, but also contained an accommodation in that neither East nor West were prepared to make that situation in Berlin the pretext for a Third World War which could see the end of human life on this planet. So that to me, on a very dramatic and very stark scale, is an illustration of the situation that we all of us have to manage in everyday life, both in our families and in our

D1 To avoid the trap Checkland refers to, we employ in this course ‘system of interest’ rather than ‘holon’.

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professional lives as managers. We have to find the accommodations which don’t eliminate the conflicts but which contain them in a way that enables action to be taken. It would probably be a very bad thing for any organization which found itself with a consensus. You need conflicts to make sure that the thinking is alive and that the possibility of change is always being regenerated.

What we now have, then, is a process which is a learning process, and ‘the system’, in soft systems methodology is the whole cycle of learning in which we use the models to structure the debate about change.

structured debate about change, finding accommodations

action to improve

real-world problem situation

’relevant’ models of purposeful

activity systems, as concepts

Figure D4 Soft systems methodology as a learning system

And then, although I won’t dwell on it here, we have the fourth big idea, that activity models are a very good route to work on information systems. This is because for any purposeful model you can ask: if someone were to do this, if these activities were to be done in the real world, what kind of information would the doers have to have. And if they did them, what information would be generated and who else would find that information useful? So you can turn activity models into information models and the comparison can then be at that level within work on information systems.

So those are the four ‘big’ thoughts, thoughts which over this long period of time in the action research programme moved the thinking on again when we were stuck.

As for big thought number five, I don’t yet know what it is, that is why it is blank in the diagram. This is just to indicate that there will be a big thought number five and I hope I haven’t retired before I can fill it in; then there will be a big idea number six. Research is a never-ending learning process.

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So that is the overall shape of our research; although much of our work is now done in the information systems field, I still see it as a special case of using soft systems methodology. I see the methodology as a broad approach to tackling real-world problematical situations, and I am therefore being very careful in the use of language. We always talk about problematical situations rather than problems. There is a whole sub- literature within management science which directly looks at problem- solving. When you examine that literature it is in fact a sub-set of the hard systems thinking literature and is always based on tightly defining ‘the problem’ at the start. But for managers that is what is difficult. What we were finding in those experiences of the kind I described at the beginning of the talk is that you can’t easily answer the question, ‘what are the objectives?’. This makes for managers a problematical situation. It is only in the occasional, technically-defined problem situation, such as, ‘how can we optimize the output of this nitric-acid plant?’, that naming the system and its objectives and engineering it to achieve them becomes possible. The general case is that you have to explore the many different perceptions of the world. Soft systems methodology is a coherent process which enables you to do that.

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Acknowledgements

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material within this book:

Text

Naughton, J. (1998) ‘Arts: Internet: It’s free and it works. No wonder Bill Gates hates it’, Observer, 8 November 1998, # Observer 1998; Wilkins, E. (1994) ‘Rescued from £1 a day for girl’s upkeep’, The Times, 31 January 1994. Copyright # Times Newspapers Ltd 1994; ‘Agency demands 1p from father’, The Times, 22 December 1993. Copyright # Times Newspapers Ltd 1993; Pierce, A. (1994) ‘Outcry over CSA drives pilloried staff to quit’, The Times, 31 January 1994. Copyright # Times Newspapers Ltd 1994; Leathley, A. (1995) ‘MP’s told agency reforms will lead to rougher justice’, The Times, 2 February 1995. Copyright # Times Newspapers Ltd 1995; Edited version of a talk given by Peter Checkland to the OUSys Annual Conference 1997, reproduced by permission of Peter Checkland; Box 6: Martin, D. and Rosenhead, J. ‘Stafford Beer: World leader in the development of operational research, who combined management systems with cybernetics’, The Guardian, 4 September, 2002. # Dick Martin and Jonathan Rosenhead

Figures

Figure 3: Carter, R. (1998) Mapping the Mind, Weidenfeld and Nicolson; Figure 17: Leunig, M. (1990) Ramming the Shears: A Collection of Drawings by Michael Leunig, Penguin Books Australia Ltd; Figure 27: Hayward, J. W. (1992) ‘Scientific method and validation’, in Hayward, J. W. and Varela, F. J. (eds) Gentle Bridges: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on the Sciences of Mind, Shambhala Publications, Inc; Figure 28: Rosch, E. (1992) ‘Cognitive psychology’, in Hayward, J. W. and Varela, F. J. (eds) Gentle Bridges: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on the Sciences of Mind, Shambhala Publications, Inc; Figure 29: O’Brien, B. (1990) Con-Sequences, Wakefield Press; Figure 30: Kolb, D. A., Rubin, I. M. and Osland, J. (1984) Organizational Behaviour: An Experiential Approach, 4th ed, Prentice-Hall, Inc; Figure 35: Espejo, R. et al (1996) Organizational Transformation and Learning: a Cybernetic Approach to Management. Copyright # 1996 John Wiley and Sons Ltd. Reproduced with permission; Figure 37: Checkland, P. B. and Scholes, J. (1990) Soft Systems Methodology in Action. Copyright # 1990 by John Wiley and Sons Ltd. Reprinted by permission of John Wiley and Sons Ltd; Figures 38 and 39: De Neufville, R. and Stafford, J. H. (1971) Systems Analysis for Engineers and Managers, McGraw-Hill, Inc. By permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies; Figure 41: Fortune, J. and Peters, G. (1995) Learning from Failure: The Systems Approach. Copyright # 1995 John Wiley and Sons Ltd. Reproduced with permission; Figure 46: Richmond, B. (1998) ‘Closed loop thinking’, The Systems Thinker, 9, (4), Pegasus Communications, Inc, Figures 43 and 44: Winter, M. (2002) PHD Thesis: Management, Managing and Projects: Towards an extended soft systems methodology Figure B1: Clarke, K., Craig, G. and Glendinning, C. (1996) Small Change: The Impact of the Child Support Act on Lone Mothers and Children, Family Policy Studies Centre, # FPSC/JRF;

Acknowledgements 211

Figure B2: Speed, M., Crane, J. and Rudat, K. (1994) Child Support Agency National Client Satisfaction Survey 1993, Department of Social Security Research Department Report No 29. # Crown Copyright is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.

Tables

Table 1: Adapted from Rosenhead, J. (1989) Rational Analysis for a Problematic World: Problem Structuring Methods for Complexity, Uncertainty and Conflict. Copyright # by 1989 John Wiley and Sons Ltd. Adapted with permission; Table 4: Checkland, P. B. (1985) ‘From optimizing to learning: A development of systems thinking for the 1990’s’, Journal of the Operational Research Society, 36, Macmillan Publishers Ltd; Table 5: Shaw, P. (1996) ‘Intervening in the shadow systems of organisations: Consulting from a complexity perspective’, Complexity and Management Papers No 4, Complexity and Management Centre, University of Hertfordshire; Table B1: Office of Population, Censuses and Surveys (1991) 1991 General Household Survey, Series GHS no 22. # Crown Copyright is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office; Table B2: Bellamy, C. (1995) ‘Managing strategic resources in a next steps department: Information agendas and information systems in the DSS’, in O’Toole, B. J. and Jordan, G. (eds) Next Steps: Improving Management in Government? Dartmouth Publishing Company; Table C1: Checkland, P. B. (1993) Systems Thinking, Systems Practice. Copyright # 1993 John Wiley and Sons Ltd. Reproduced with permission.

212 BLOCK 1 Acknowledgements

Course team Rosalind Armson, author

Joyce Fortune, case study author

Ray Ison, author

Martin Reynolds, course chair

Laurence Newman, course manager

Mike Aiken, critical reader

Mandy Anton, graphic designer

Simon Bell, critical reader

Victor Bignell, critical reader

Chris Blackmore, critical reader

Jake Chapman, critical reader

Tony Duggan, project controller (Technology)

Pip Harris, compositor

Mike Haynes, critical reader

Caryl Hunter-Brown, subject information specialist

Andy Lane, critical reader

Jane Moore, editor

Graham Paton, critical reader

Peter Roberts, critical reader

Pat Shah, course secretary

John Taylor, graphic artist

Robert Wood, editor

Bob Zimmer, critical reader

External assessor

Olov Forsgren, associate professor, Department of Informatics, Umeå University, Sweden

Acknowledgements 213