Transduction — leading transformation — Issue #123
This week:
- Upcoming Events
- Systems and Complexity in Organisation
- Cybernetics
- Local Government
Upcoming Events:
SE Stakeholder Engagement — Productive Conversations (0.5d)
This training programme could equally be called ‘honest conversations’, ‘difficult conversations’, ‘constructive conversations’, or ‘challenging conversations’.
Fundamental to the success and flavour of organisational life — and systems practice interventions — are the quality of conversations we are able to have. If we can develop an honest and shared attempt to get at shared understanding — shared ‘truth’ if you like — or at least to fully appreciate each others’ understanding — then we can make true progress.
This interactive session will:
- Discuss different types of feedback / difficult conversation
- Understand how the brain rationalises and protect us
- Increase awareness of our own habits and perceptions
- Prepare and plan for a difficult conversation
- Have effective performance conversations
- Learn how to respond / look after yourself in the moment
And help you to have productive conversations even when it seems most unlikely. You will need to bring a record of an ‘unproductive’ conversation you have had, or fear having, and be prepared to work with others around it and other examples. You will end the session with the ability to surface more productive conversations even when it is difficult.
Trainer
These courses are delivered by Benjamin P Taylor, an expert in systems, cybernetics, and complexity in service transformation.
Pricing Info
£250 +VAT
To enquire please go on this link: https://www.systemspractice.org/courses/ise-stakeholder-engagement-productive-conversations-05d
ILG Large Group Interventions (1.0d)
In a classic 2005 article, ‘Techniques to Match our Values’, Weisbord set out the ‘learning curve’, with a movement from ‘experts solve problems’ to ‘’everybody’ solves problems’ to ‘experts improve whole systems’ to ‘’everybody’ improves whole systems’. Inherent in the development of systems practice from the start has been recognition of ‘the whole’, which comes in various forms from group dynamics to organisational viability.
This programme will give an overview of intervention approaches which ‘bring whole systems into the room’ rather than have a few experts work on individual issues. We will look at some of the history and the wide range of interventions that have been developed, and provide an overview of some of the most interesting.
We will compare and contrast these approaches and provide ‘ways in’ to consider when, and which, large group intervention might be an appropriate part of a systems practice intervention.
Trainer
These courses are delivered by Benjamin P Taylor, an expert in systems, cybernetics, and complexity in service transformation.
Pricing Info
£500 +VAT
To enquire please go on this link: https://www.systemspractice.org/courses/ilg-large-group-interventions-10d
ICS3 Workshop Design (0.5d)
This module provides learners with an understanding of the design of workshops and relevant considerations, taking into account the potentially very different contexts and definitions of what a ‘workshop’ is. It introduces a range of tools and approaches for workshop design, building on the facilitation module. It gives tools to consider evaluation and learning about workshop design, and compares various approaches, enabling learners to better select and apply appropriate workshop design approaches to their context.
A workshop can be distinguished from a meeting (though the boundaries may be blurry at times), by some of the following indicators:
- intensive discussion and activity, designed to progress thinking and planning
- intentionally designed activities (rather than simply an agenda), or flow
- an impact focus, usually above and beyond just a discussion or decision — some kind of output taking an intervention or initiative forward
An alternative use of the work, to workshop (something), refers to taking a product or idea into a period of intense focused experimentation and development, often bringing in fresh or different perspectives than the original developers of the product or idea. This is of course closely related, but implies some partly-developed ‘content’ as the workshop focus, as opposed to simply a product or idea. In either case, some input is expected to a workshop, whether process, content, or both.
The learning will cover:
- What a workshop is
- Where and when we might use a workshop
- A range of tools and approaches
- How to appropriately select an approach, and design a workshop to fit the requirements in context
- The importance of reflection and how to evaluate and build a learning loop
- Workshop design tools, core and conceptual
This is a very practical, hands-on course based on you creating an initial workshop design from your context, using sources offered, and sharing and discussing it in the session.
This course complements the course on Facilitation for systems practice interventions, though they can be done independently or in any order.
Trainer
These courses are delivered by Benjamin P Taylor, an expert in systems, cybernetics, and complexity in service transformation.
Pricing Info
£250 +VAT
To enquire please go on this link: https://www.systemspractice.org/courses/ics3-workshop-design-05d
ICS2 Facilitation Skills for Systems Practice Interventions (0.5d)
This course provides learners with an understanding of the facilitation relationship in the context of systems intervention itself, and of the challenges it brings. It introduces a range of tools and practices for facilitation and provides guidance on workshop planning. Finally, it compares various approaches to facilitation, enabling learners to develop a stronger sense of the kind of facilitator they want to be.
Topics covered include:
- The facilitraining rainbow — where do you stand?
- Divergence, emergence, convergence;
- Differentiation and integration method;
- Adaptive change;
- Facilitation for ‘robust systems’;
- Session planning and session flow;
- The perceptual positions;
- Ground rules for workshops and ways into partnership;
- Maintaining your authenticity;
- Peter Block’s ‘six conversations that matter’;
- Chris Corrigan’s ‘seven little helpers’;
- Hosting and guiding and/or customer services;
- Context cues;
- History and three futures;
- Power tools and making concrete — Naming The Thing.
Trainer
These courses are delivered by Benjamin P Taylor, an expert in systems, cybernetics, and complexity in service transformation.
Pricing Info
£250 +VAT
To enquire please go on this link: https://www.systemspractice.org/courses/ics2-facilitation-skills-systems-practice-interventions-05d
ICS1b Consulting for Systems Practice Interventions — (b) Core (0.5d)
This course provides learners with a deeper understanding of:
- Discovery and research into the client system;
- Power questions, layers of analysis, and objectifying ‘the system’;
- Research and action-based approaches;
- Third-party and whole systems approaches;
- Maintaining the balance of responsibility for deep engagement;
- Structuring analysis and feedback, developing commitment;
- Choosing dirty or clean consulting.
To maximise your chances of being effective in achieving positive change, you should combine a sound understanding of systems approaches with well-developed intervention skills.
This in turn requires a clear conception of the role of the systems practitioner as ‘consultant’, of their relationships with stakeholders, especially the ‘client’, and the nature of the practitioner’s influence on the organisations they seek to transform.
Drawing on Flawless Consulting, Barry Oshry’s Organic Systems Framework, and more, Consulting for Systems Practice Interventions emphasises a collaborative approach and equal responsibility between the intervention practitioner and the client, navigating a path between the twin traps of ‘consultant as boss’ and ‘consultant as servant’.
These courses are relevant to anyone — consultant or not! — who is engaging in organisational change.
Trainer
These courses are delivered by Benjamin P Taylor, an expert in systems, cybernetics, and complexity in service transformation.
Pricing Info
£250 +VAT
To enquire please go on this link: https://www.systemspractice.org/courses/ics1b-consulting-systems-practice-interventions-b-core-05d
ICS1a Consulting for Systems Practice Interventions — (a) Foundation (0.5d)
This course will provide learners with key principles and a structure for interventions. Topics covered include:
- The five phases of the consultative process;
- ‘Techniques are not enough’: relationships in consulting;
- Dealing with ‘the space of service’;
- Setting up a clear ‘contract’ for interventions — including triangular and rectangular contracting;
- Authenticity and setting your assumptions;
- The client behind the client and the problem behind the problem;
To maximise your chances of being effective in achieving positive change, you should combine a sound understanding of systems approaches with well-developed intervention skills.
This in turn requires a clear conception of the role of the systems practitioner as ‘consultant’, of their relationships with stakeholders, especially the ‘client’, and the nature of the practitioner’s influence on the organisations they seek to transform.
Drawing on Flawless Consulting, Barry Oshry’s Organic Systems Framework, and more, Consulting for Systems Practice Interventions emphasises a collaborative approach and equal responsibility between the intervention practitioner and the client, navigating a path between the twin traps of ‘consultant as boss’ and ‘consultant as servant’.
These courses are relevant to anyone — consultant or not! — who is engaging in organisational change.
Trainer
These courses are delivered by Benjamin P Taylor, an expert in systems, cybernetics, and complexity in service transformation.
Pricing Info
£250 +VAT
To enquire please go on this link: https://www.systemspractice.org/courses/ics1a-consulting-systems-practice-interventions-foundation-05d
Link Collection:
My Weekly Blog post:
We are dedicated to transforming public services and ourselves, guided by three core principles. Firstly, we prioritize social and environmental justice, believing that public services should enhance citizen and community outcomes through equality, diversity, and inclusion. Despite minimal change, the demand for justice intensifies, urging collective responsibility.
Our methods center on impactful, sustainable, and progressive interventions, driven by several beliefs. We value digital innovation, embrace agility, navigate complexity with systems leadership, prioritize community outcomes, and aim to empower clients through capability-building.
Moreover, our success stems from experienced, authentic delivery, fostering adult-to-adult relationships and collaboration. We offer skilled, outcome-focused professionals committed to making a difference. Through teamwork, transparency, and adaptability, we exceed client expectations and maintain authenticity.
After 15 years, our approach resonates, evidenced by client loyalty and a talented team, despite challenges in UK public services. Our success lies in these principles, which prioritize justice, innovation, collaboration, and authenticity.
SCiO UK Face-to-Face Open Meeting — 18 March 2024, London UK
SCiO UK Face-to-Face Open Meeting — March 2024
Are you a practicing systems thinker?
Would you like to meet up, network and learn at the same time?
The first 2024 face-to-face SCiO Open Day is happening very soon in London,
18th March,
9:30am-5:00pm
at the Conway Hall, London, WC1R 4RL
so why not come along!
About this Event
SCiO organises Open Meetings to provide opportunities for practitioners to learn and develop new practice, to build relationships, networks hear about skills, tools, practice and experiences. This all-day session will be held in central London at the Conway Hall.
09:30 — Introduction to Systemic Intervention (pre-event) — Simon MacCormac
10:00 — Welcome, SCiO notices and community exercise
10:45 — What’s Stopping Us Stopping Climate Change? — Ed Straw
11:45 — Break
12:15 — Viability of Alternative Food Systems — Lesley Rowan & Tony Korycki
13:15- Lunch Break
14:30 — How to transform organisations by Managing Tensions not People — Russ Lewis
15:30 — Break
16:00 — Modelling Business Ecosystems — Patrick Hoverstadt
17:00 — Later in the Bar social
Details
What’s Stopping Us Stopping Climate Change? — a Systems Thinking answerThe operations of the world are dominated by two artificial human creations: corporations and states. Corporations mostly operate according to the precepts of the global monetary system and neoliberal economics, where money is all and the environment an externality. States attempt regulation for the latter, but are neutered by the system of preferential lobbying.
Despite wetter and hotter warnings, these systems continue on a classic reinforcing loop. COPs are copouts with the artefacts of targets, pledges and PR, alongside the hope actions of EVs, renewables and recycling.
These systems have to be reinvented but within the context of the absolute of the biosphere. It is the ultimate boundary condition. This talk will propose the second order systems of governing changes to break out of the loopHow to Transform Organisations by Managing Tensions, not People
Russ presents the findings from his doctoral research into managers as agents of change across large organisations. Essentially, the five behaviours that update the role of the manager from guardian of a resource (project, team, or department) to transformer of the system. How would their bosses measure that, you may ask. The answer is ‘ambidexterity’ — being good at both exploring new knowledge andrunning the business as usual (BAU). Historically separated (think R&D vs Production), these activities are more likely to coexist today since output is digital or knowledge-based and changes very quickly. By focusing on the tensions in their context, managers are achieving the seemingly impossible — adaptable efficiency and efficient adaptability.
The Viability of ‘Alternative’ Systems
Forming alternatives to established economic, technological or political systems, whatever their composition of organisations or institutions, can be difficult, and such alternatives can be susceptible or vulnerable to the ‘establishment’. This presentation explores how we can use the Viable System Model as a diagnostic, from data gathered about a number of outsider organisations through dialogue, insider research, or remote research, to evaluate the survivability of an alternative ‘system of interest’ in its direct or wider environment.
Lesley Rowan Tony Korycki
Patrick Hoverstadt will talk about modelling business ecosystems. There is a lot of talk about Business Ecosystems, but much of the theory and practice is actually just a reworking and renaming of old supply chain models. We’ll argue that business ecosystems are very like biological ecosystems with the full range of predators, prey, food chains, parasitic behaviour, keystone actors etc. The talk will cover some techniques we have used for modelling eco-systems, some of the uses these model have and walk through some cases from past projects.
‘The Handbook of Systems Thinking’ — Journal of Systems Thinking (Cabrera Research Lab)
[I’d say this is a bit of a curate’s egg. It’s extensive, and free, and brings in several highly rated systems authors to give approachable, light summaries of their methods and approaches. You can see the editorial team here: https://www.scienceopen.com/collection/91ba7261-ecaf-4e92-ab55-2e9cfce483d0 under ‘about the journal’, and under ‘open peer review’ can see their ‘unusual’ peer review process]
They say:
This Handbook details the theory and practice of Systems Thinking in the areas of social systems, management, and policy. The contributing chapters from numerous authors show the diversity of the field, and this first chapter seeks to identify patterns in that diversity to demonstrate an underlying unity among the plurality of methods, approaches and interventions throughout the field.
Publications — The Handbook of Systems Thinking — ScienceOpen
[A relatively off-the-cuff podcast and although ostensibly for ‘safety professionals’, I think the discussion of ‘graceful extensibility’ and its balanced with ‘prevention’ and ‘control’ is valuable for everyone]
Gregory Bateson — From Versalles to Cybernetics (1966) — recording on YouTube
Gregory Bateson — From Versalles to Cybernetics (1966) — YouTube
On Facebook, Nora Bateson shared:
From Versailles to Cybernetics (in English with English subtitles)
On this Sunday, while it is not quite spring yet, if you have a little time to listen, check this lecture out.
You may remember it as a chapter from Steps To and Ecology of Mind. I found this version on youtube. This talk by my dad is one of the most important for the present times, when selling out everyone and everything is justified by the right of profit. The pain of loss of trustworthiness in communication has historical shadows that run long. As the honor of communication erodes, the logic of manipulation and zero sum games becomes normalized as “how life is.”
The aftermath of deception since the fateful Treaty of Versalles is an illustration of systemic ripples into the future of communication since then. Did you know….?
Communication is Sacred. It matters.
Fernando E. Rosas, Bernhard C. Geiger, Andrea I Luppi, Anil K. Seth, Daniel Polani, Michael Gastpar, Pedro A.M. Mediano
Introducing a New Saturday Series: The Prophets — Marshall McLuhan — Carlson (2024)
Meet the messengers from the past who saw the future and explain our world today. First up: Marshall McLuhan.
By Benjamin Carlson March 2, 2024
Introducing a New Saturday Series: The ProphetsMeet the messengers from the past who saw the future and explain our world today. First up: Marshall McLuhan.By Benjamin CarlsonMarch 2, 2024
Introducing a New Saturday Series: The Prophets | The Free Press
Social Systems Theory from a Cognitive and Physicalist Perspective — (Challoner, 2024)
Social Systems Theory from a Cognitive and Physicalist PerspectivePost authorBy John A ChallonerPost dateFebruary 28, 2024
Social Systems Theory from a Cognitive and Physicalist Perspective — Rational-Understanding.com
ADVANCING DEMOCRATIC PRACTICES
IN WORKPLACES AND COMMUNITIES
Differentiation and Integration: How to Use Weisbord & Janoff’s Good Work
Go Deep to Benefit from Differences: Differentiation and Integration
