systems thinking

Systems thinking, complexity, and systems science

Thinking Developmentally About Social Issues

education & learning, innovation, systems thinking / By

Thinking developmentally means attenuating oneself to nuance, punctuated learning, ongoing feedback, and inconsistent behaviour. I don’t blame people for wanting to impose a simple cause-and-effect narrative on the world, but doing so doesn’t mean its useful. As I’ve argued elsewhere, unless we consider changing our thinking we may continue to spend time devising ways to do what systems thinker and management leader Russell Ackoff called “the wrong things, righter”.

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The Momentum Problem in Developmental Design and Evaluation

design, evaluation, innovation, systems thinking / By

The very complexity of many programs require more not less attention when doing evaluation lest we become simple storytellers. We offer more than that. But to do that well requires a sustained level of attention to the dynamics and what we might call paying attention to the silences to glean lessons from non-action that might have significant impact on our programs. This also requires not “filling the time” when things are quiet, but remaining active. Anyone who practices mindfulness meditation knows that non-doing requires a lot of work!

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Trying to Innovate? Try Empathy

health, innovation, systems thinking / By

Find and build a tribe of people who you trust and like and spend time with them, get to know them, and invite new people in whenever possible to mix things up. If that is the case, then the way we work in the health and wellness sector is surely in trouble where we don’t curate information and customize our knowledge for others, and we don’t support the kind of relationship building that equates to robust knowledge translation.

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Creative Intelligence or Design Thinking?

design, evaluation, innovation, systems thinking / By

I welcome more discussion on CQ and believe anytime creativity is bared for people to explore and nurture society benefits. But the risks of abandoning one idea without science to create a new one is that design’s influence itself might wind up the victim. Creativity is an old concept and many disciplines hold it as part of its central tenets and design risks losing the good in design thinking while reaching too far into creativity unless it has the science to back it up

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Thinking Different Requires Different Thinking

design, education & learning, health, systems thinking / By

Understanding not only what we think about, but how we think about it in relation to the issues we face is important if we are derive strategies that take the complexity of human systems into account. Teaching for thinking and not for knowledge in itself requires different thinking and acting. The question is: Are we ready and willing to do this? Most people love change so long as they don’t have to do anything different. Hopefully, our health and research systems are different. And if not, how can we inspire the thinking to make them so?

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The Know-Do Gap in Knowledge Translation Human Resources

evaluation, health, systems thinking / By

Health content needs systems in place to do support its integration into practice. These are human systems and those are built on relationships. We are starting to pay more attention to the way in which content is created now it is time to pay as much attention to how it is translated in real human terms and create the same kinds of supports for people that we try to do for content.

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What the Slutwalk, Marshall McLuhan and Rebecca Black Have in Common

systems thinking / By

Poverty, racism, access to health services, mental health and wellness, and education are all issues that are complex. They cannot or will not allow themselves to be understood in simple terms, yet are issues that speak to the wellbeing of society. Slutwalk was about rights and freedoms for more than one half of our population. It was about respecting people for who they are, honouring their sexuality, and educating everyone about the prevalence, consequences and risks associated with unwanted sexual advancement and assault. When it becomes a Rebecca Black Friday issue, it is about things like the salacious use of risque’ language and when it is a McLuhan issue, it takes a library to understand it.

Surely with our amazing tools we can find some middle ground to make the complex accessible, and the simple more sophisticated.

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