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Miguel - I’ve had to split some of the content, so this new page has been created. If you could write a sentence or two to lead into it that would be great. We also need a title for the section.Activity 3 Your experience of change
Describe, perhaps in a list or a diagram, some situations of change, either intended or not, that you have experienced and that may have motivated you to study this course. As you do so, you may find it useful to review the diagramming resources presented at the beginning of this course Author does this apply fully? ‘diagramming resources at the beginning of this course’. You can use any kind of diagram you want for this exercise but rich picture diagrams and system maps may be specially useful and are widely used for systems thinking in practice. (Once again, you may find it useful to revisit the Guide to diagrams.)
Choose situations where you have, or could have, some agency and enthusiasm to take action. Explain whether you or others around you (your colleagues, your community) have been able to effect or not effect change in any of these situations. Based on these situations and your capacity to affect change or not, what do you feel able to say about general aspects of change?
I’ve moved some of the text that was further down the page into the ‘discussion’ text. Please review and edit/add anything that you feel it might need.Discussion
There are numerous ways of framing change. The OECD programme called ‘Working with Change. Systems approaches to public sector challenges’ (OECD, 2017) says about change:
‘Complexity and uncertainty are now the norm—they are contexts—not just risks. The world seems to operate by a new set of rules that are difficult to observe directly… called… the VUCA1 world, which originally described the Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity left behind by the end of the ordering function provided by the Cold War. Today, technology, decentralization, the rise of non-state actors and other factors have accelerated the rise of VUCA in every domain.’
This course argues that for beneficial change to take place in situations of high volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, the people who are attempting it need to have a systemic sensibility, systems literacy and STiP capability. It is a course about engaging in – doing – change and learning. There is a strong relationship between learning and change, and managing change can be conceptualised as learning. Bringing about change in high VUCA situations requires collective inquiry and collective action. This is because VUCA Have we said what ‘VUCA’ is previously? If not, maybe we need a short sentence to explain. situations and messy problems are too complex for a single person to understand and too big for a single person to change single-handedly. Systemic change requires collaboration or negotiation among individuals – interactions of a particular kind. In the way it is expressed in this course, managing change is almost invariably a process of finding out through inquiry action – in an active, socially-embedded learning process.
Activity 4 Finding systemic failure
This course introduces ideas about managing change in ways that strive to avoid systemic failure and associated unintended consequences through developing your STiP capabilities. Numerous examples may be quoted of systemic failure that has impacts on people, or the environment. There are many possible perspectives on systemic failure depending on how other people perceive ‘the system’.
Do an online search for news articles and academic articles where the term ‘systemic failure’ is used to describe a situation. At the time of writing, recent examples in the United Kingdom include the ‘Horizon IT scandal’ and the crisis of funding for the National Health Service (NHS). The ongoing climate crisis provides a more global example of systemic failure. Choose one of these examples or a different one relevant to you in a personal or professional capacity.
What seem to be the features of your chosen example that led the commentators to describe it as a systemic or ‘system-wide’ failure?
Miguel - maybe discussion//feedback text need for this one too?Systemic failure often happens as a result of inaction as established ways of thinking and acting become unsuitable in rapidly changing world. Change that is managed purposefully can also lead to systemic failure unless certain things happen. Some of the things that often seem to be missing include:
- Paying attention to the interconnections and dynamics of a situation.
- Recognising that when there are multiple actors in a situation there is a need to find a way of taking responsibility as problems emerge – this is of course complex, as it isn’t a single solution, a single-point-person for all problems Not sure I understand what ‘a single point person for all problems’ means? Can you explain.
- Taking advantage of the information collected and the knowledge available.
- Recognising the limits of understanding of the systemic effects of taking particular actions.
- Piecing information together and discerning a web of connections between the various pieces of information
- Creating clearer pictures of situations.
- Joining up (‘connecting the dots’) of human and technological processes/procedures.
- Following/adherence to own rules or procedures.
It would seem that ‘systemic failure’ involves some sort of breakdown in the connectedness between people (probably in different organisations or parts of organisations) and between people and machines (particularly ‘information systems’) but connectedness of a particular type, which when in place gives rise to effective action in complex and uncertain situations.
It is also suggested that systemic failure results from some limitations in thinking and practices. Avoidance of systemic failure in complex and uncertain situations cannot be guaranteed, but it can, with the right thinking and practice, be minimised or the unintended consequences limited. Approaches to practice are thus needed to break out of the trap of single perspective reporting and framing.