Managing Complexity: A Systems Approach
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## Contents

- Introduction
- Learning outcomes
- 1 Managing complex systems
  - 1.1 Thinking about expectations
    - 1.1.1 Learning by experience
- 2 Preparing to tackle this unit
  - 2.1 The nature of systems thinking and systems practice
  - 2.2 Taking responsibility for your own learning
  - 2.3 Appreciating epistemological issues
  - 2.4 Review
- 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity
  - 3.1 Introduction
  - 3.2 Making sense of the metaphor
- 4 Systems practice – unpacking the juggler metaphor
- 5 Being a systems practitioner
  - 5.1 The state of ‘Being’
  - 5.2 Being aware of the constraints and possibilities of the observer
  - 5.3 Appreciating your basis for understanding
  - 5.4 Experience – making distinctions based on a tradition and constructing a history
  - 5.5 Distinctions about systems practice
  - 5.6 Learning and effective action
  - 5.7 Being ethical
  - 5.8 Reviewing some implications for systems practice
- 6 Engaging with complexity
  - 6.1 Articulating your appreciation of complexity
  - 6.2 Experiencing complexity as mess or difficulty
  - 6.3 Where is the complexity and what is it?
  - 6.4 Choosing to distinguish between complex situations and complex systems
  - 6.5 Appreciating some implications for practice
- Activity answers
- Conclusion
- Keep on learning
- References
- Acknowledgements

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