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Thinking about Systems
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For those who are passionate about systems thinking.
Curated by
Steve Wilhite
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How to sustain our world for future generations has perplexed us for centuries. We have reached a crossroads: we may choose the rocky path of responsibility or continue on the paved road of excess that promises hardship for our progeny. Independent efforts to resolve isolated issues are inadequate. Different from these efforts and from other books on the topic, this book uses systems thinking to understand the dominant forces that are shaping our hope for sustainability. It first describes a mental model - the bubble that holds our beliefs - that emerges from preponderant world views and explains current global trends. The model emphasizes economic growth and drives behavior toward short-term and self-motivated outcomes that thwart sustainability. The book then weaves statistical trends into a system diagram and shows how the economic, environmental, and societal contributors of sustainability interact. From this holistic perspective, it finds leverage points where actions can be most effective and combines eight areas of intervention into an integrated plan. By emphasizing both individual and collective actions, it addresses the conundrum of how to blend human nature with sustainability. 
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Human systems dynamics teaches us to stand in inquiry, but there are some things we know for sure. As we listen to and engage in conversations about sexual harassment, certainties rise to the surface and need to be voiced. Here are some things we know for sure about sexual harassment.
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Diego Galar, Luleå University of Technology, explores some key points concerning the use of IoT and big data in the rail sector. A ‘SYSTEMS THINKING’ approach is an effective way to understand complex rail environments by defining system characteristics, the boundaries and components, and by defining the interactions between the components. As opposed to focusing on individual items or occurrences, the bigger picture – i.e. the system as a whole – should be identified. From a technological point-of-view, railways consist of several physical objects that involve rolling stock and infrastructure interacting with each other. Operational environments, usage requirements and weather conditions are all examples of variables that affect the technical systems of a railway and their overall performance.
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From
medium
Clearly, the design of sustainable communities and sustainable cities will be the outwardly mate- rial expression of this civilizational transformation, while the psychological (spiritual) metadesign changes in worldview, value systems, meaning making, and intentionality will ultimately result in a widespread change towards more sustainable lifestyles. The creation of sustainable communities and cities has to take place within the immaterial realms of human consciousness, awareness, psychology, ethics, spirituality, and culture, as well as within the scale-linked complexity of material culture and nature.
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From
medium
Both human societies and the ecosystems they inhabit can be studied as complex dynamic systems in their own right. In doing so we have to be aware that we have introduced a high level of theoretical…
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Via Complexity Digest, june holley
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Complex change is messy. It doesn’t jump from one stable state to another. An organization doesn’t change culture overnight. Every phase shift—cognitive, cultural, social,
physical—goes through a confusing state where past and future exist side by side. The technical name for this process is hysteresis. Hysteresis helps us explain some of the most frustrating and perplexing aspects of change in human systems.
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From
medium
I recently returned from offering a two day workshop on Swarm Leadership in Israel, for the Institute of Democratic Education. Both for me and the participants very enlightening. In addition to…
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In an earlier post, “Adapting Your Recruiting Process – It’s all about the View,” we suggested that system-wide patterns generated by an organization’s Ecosystem Dimensions offer a different view of a recruiting strategy. Deciding how to proceed in light of that new perspective can be perplexing. Navigating an organization’s existing procedures and processes is similar to opening a map, figuring out where you are and where you deciding where you want to go. We think thatMore
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About the Course: In this re-offering of our popular introductory course, you'll learn about the tools used by scientists to understand complex systems. The topics you'll learn about include dynamics, chaos, fractals, information theory, self-organization, agent-based modeling, and networks. You’ll also get a sense of how these topics fit together to help explain how complexity arises and evolves in nature, society, and technology. There are no prerequisites. You don't need a science or math background to take this introductory course; it simply requires an interest in the field and the willingness to participate in a hands-on approach to the subject.
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Developed and produced by Paul Brown, 'A Brief Introduction to Change Management' is the first of a management series and delivers a concise and very accessible intro to Change Management. The message is simple: "Change is pervasive in our society and a fact of life in organizations. Change management is about modifying or transforming organizations in order to maintain or improve their effectiveness". Quoting a myriad of Change pioneers, Darwin, a hint of popular philosophy and many groundbreaking theories, Brown succeeded to put the Change Management concept across in a succinct and somehow entertaining way, and as result, sets the bar high for forthcoming works.
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The field of philanthropy is exploring what it takes to achieve impact in complex environments. The terms “adaptive” and “emergent” are beginning to be used, often interchangeably, to describe strategies by which funders can tackle complexity. This article proposes distinguishing between the two and explores more deeply how the research into complexity can inform philanthropic practice.
Gary J. Hubbell's curator insight,
February 20, 2020 11:26 AM
Part of my learning practice is purposefully circling back 5-10 years to see what thinking was being lifted up and considering the extent to which it may still have value today. Such is the case with this excellent article, published in Foundation Review. Because much of my work in philanthropy has historically been with organizations involved in fund raising rather than fund granting, I found much in this article that resonates with me and could be valuable to those on that side of the exchange.
I'll just lift up three points that struck me.
1. The authors point to University of Michigan (Go Blue!!) research on core elements common to complex adaptive systems. They point to the research findings that "The more often individual agents interact, the faster the whole system adapts." I think this is a strong rationale for what a couple of my mentors call "campaigns of one" and, in general, most gifts of significance programs. Whereas so much development work (un)consciously involves "batching" actions taken with large groups of benefactors, the ability to get and stay in close conversation with an emerging major donor (i.e., "individual agents interacting") greatly increases and expands the shared exploration of possibilities and impact.
2. The authors suggest that by expanding "agency" (the self-perceived ability and authority to act), the speed of adaptation increases. When I work with clients doing philanthropy program planning I like to encourage a "whole stakeholder system" of involvement for this very reason. Highly interactive planning summits--laced with questions that illuminate the core conditions of past success--are great ways of building agency and ownership among the same folks you'd like to financially support the resulting initiatives.
3. The third observation the authors make is that we tend to conflate the "what" and the "how," often from our unconscious hold on power dynamics (aka, control). Greater attention (and co-creation) of the "why" and the "what" yields a far elevated scaffolding for most gift discussions. The "how" can be important, but not if it becomes the first or dominant point of discussion early on. Let it evolve appropriately. Then, allow many hands to hold the more tactical "how." Use the discussion of the "how" to test commitment around the "what" and the "why." |
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Until recently everyday objects were shaped by their technology. The design of a telephone was basically a hull around a machine. The task of the designers was to make technology look pretty. Highly sophisticated systems work flawlessly, as long as things go as expected. When a problem occurs which hasn’t been anticipated by the designers, those systems are prone to fail. The more complex the systems are, the higher are the chances that things go wrong. They are less resilient.
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Amazon.com: Systems Thinking, Third Edition: Managing Chaos and Complexity: A Platform for Designing Business Architecture (8601410368739): Jamshid Gharajedaghi: Books
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The title says it all: "Systems Thinking: The New Frontier- Discovering Simplicity in an Age of Complexity." Finally there is a book that is a wonderful primer about exploring the inner frontier of the mind, about how to think, not just what to think. It is about navigating it more effectively using Systems Thinking and its many universal applications to work and life. It takes a unique look at our thought processes, focusing on how we think, rather than what we think. Divided into three main sections, Systems Thinking: The New Frontier carries the reader through foundational Systems Thinking research, offers many simplicity tools and applications for the layperson and for leaders as well. It explains how our world got so complex—and how we can use Systems Thinking to more effectively think-plan-act in all aspects of their lives to achieve better clarity, simplicity and speed and results.
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In this course you'll gain an introduction to the modern study of dynamical systems, the interdisciplinary field of applied mathematics that studies systems that change over time.
Topics to be covered include: phase space, bifurcations, chaos, the butterfly effect, strange attractors, and pattern formation. The course will focus on some of the realizations from the study of dynamical systems that are of particular relevance to complex systems:
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The complex nature of organizational culture challenges our ability to infer its underlying dynamics from observational studies. Recent computational studies have adopted a distinctly different view, where plausible mechanisms are proposed to describe a wide range of social phenomena, including the onset and evolution of organizational culture. In this spirit, this work introduces an empirically-grounded, agent-based model which relaxes a set of assumptions that describes past work–(a) omittance of an individual’s strive for achieving cognitive coherence; (b) limited integration of important contextual factors—by utilizing networks of beliefs and incorporating social rank into the dynamics. As a result, we illustrate that: (i) an organization may appear to be increasingly coherent in terms of its organizational culture, yet be composed of individuals with reduced levels of coherence; (ii) the components of social conformity—peer-pressure and social rank—are influential at different aggregation levels.
Ellinas C, Allan N, Johansson A (2017) Dynamics of organizational culture: Individual beliefs vs. social conformity. PLoS ONE 12(6): e0180193. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0180193 Via Complexity Digest, june holley
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Reading Jake Chapman’s nice little book “System Failure” on systems thinking (you can download a free version of the first edition), I noticed a
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Time to head over to the Introduction to Complexity MOOC if you haven't already. The course is now live with over 1600 students enrolled. This course is perfect to give you an exciting overview of what Complexity is, and to prepare you to launch into our many other courses and tutorials. It's free, and you can start any time, but if you want a certificate you will need to complete by the end of June
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An expert explains how the conventional wisdom about decision making can get us into trouble--and why experience can’t be replaced by rules, procedures, or analytical methods.
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Major changes in today's world have made renowned authors recognize that the existing strategic models are not providing adequate solutions to deal with society's changing problems. The present research effort aims to understand the strategic problem and develop a concise study of the internal and external aspects of strategic problem dynamics, taking as a starting point the approaches inherent in complexity theory. As a result, it was found that organizations are the products of couplings between two or more separate systems; they couple to the socio-human system, and these, to the rest of the planetary dynamics. As a last analysis, this configuration is strongly analogous to the dynamics based on symbiosis, found recently in biology. This latter approach suggests that it is an inspiring, important and useful metaphor for the improvement of theoretical frameworks in management
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That’s why I don’t presume to predict — history is a lesson in complexity not predictability — but what I do feel I’ve learned to understand, thanks to my studies, are the mechanisms of historical change, the how of history’s dynamism rather than the what next. So, in the middle of so many discussions of the causes of this year’s events (economics, backlash, media, the not-so-sleeping dragon bigotry), and of how to respond to them (petitions, debate, fundraising, art, despair) I hope people will find it useful to zoom out with me, to talk about the causes of historical events and change in general.
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In an extract from his new book, Duncan Green explores how change actually occurs - and what that means
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