Go for the good of the whole

 It is too easy to dive into the detail of one tiny sub-section of this thesis - particularly during this end stage of tidying up and connecting the literature research with the primary research and the conclusions.   Connecting two small dots leads easily to hours of (fascinating) reading but I need to remember that I'm not doing a PhD and the delivery deadline is only six weeks away.

Meadows said:

"spend part of your time from a vantage point that lets you see the whole system"

"don't maximize parts of systems or subsystems while ignoring the whole"

So with the first quote firmly in mind I'm going to take a couple of days off to find a vantage point from which I can see the whole thesis.

Changing the lens

Expand thought horizons 

Meadows said .. put people together from different backgrounds and disciplines ... learn from others and penetrate their jargons ... see through other lenses ... 

During the interviews with colleagues (who don't have a systems background) I have had many conversations about social learning and what it means. I've often described it as learning by osmosis rather than formal learning from a training course.   This caught my eye this morning on my Instagram feed and really resonated as a way of describing the difference between teaching and learning.

Thanks to Systems Thinking Daily (@systemsthinkingdaily) for the different lens

Stay humble. Stay a learner.

Donella Meadows said that systems thinking had taught her to trust her intuition more and her rationality less but still be prepared for surprises.  She reminds us that our mental models are incomplete; that the world is complex and how much we don't know.

Having just completed the first interview for my thesis this really rings true at the moment.  

Was I surprised?  Yes.  Is my mental model incomplete? Yes  Is the system more complex than I assumed?  Yes.

Which is ridiculous.  As an action researcher who is 'in the system' I had already identified (and written down) that there is a risk that I might let my worldview dominate; I might assume an understanding of the system and let these influence the analysis.  The intent is to manage this risk through reflexive practice - specifically by using Meadow's Systems Wisdoms.  I had expected the interviewees to have different views to me but had anticipated that these views would relate to an aspect of the system I was aware of.  What I hadn't honestly anticipated was that I would be surprised in the very first interview by a colleague expressing a view of an aspect of the system which I was unaware of and had never considered.

What did I learn and what will I do differently next time:

• my zoom only does automatic transcription if you record to the cloud so next time I won't save the recording to my desktop 😞
• In a semi-structured interview have one clear opening question then go with the flow - the additional questions I had as prompts really didn't help the flow of the conversation
• Have some specific points to check - it will make analysis easier if you specifically check these points
• Consider how to help the interviewee follow the flow of the interview - the chat function can provide a visual (written) prompt

It’s the social element

Last week I went into the office for a couple of days. It's the third time this year I've been in the office but unlike the previous visits this one wasn't for a pre-arranged event or workshop. This time I was going into the office to sit at a desk and work - just like I used to do what seems like a lifetime ago pre pandemic.

It really wasn't what it used to be like though. The main difference this time is that although Westminster has removed restrictions our team hasn't flocked back to the office and it felt like a ghost office. There are a number of contributory factors:

• Holiday season. Even though travel is still challenging it's school holidays, it's been a long year and many of my colleagues are taking time off work 
• I have many Italian colleagues and you just don't work in August .... 
• different rules in different places eg the Scottish government still have 'work from home if you can' in place 

These are all factual reasons but I wonder how much of the lack of presence in the office is due to the social system resisting a change and that what we have built over the last 16 months works and that we are now settled and comfortable in remote working. It certainly does feel unusual and worthy of remark when you meet colleagues in the flesh. Particularly when you've been working with them for a year and only even seen them on a computer screen in that time.

One person who was in the office, and is routinely in the office is a new team member who joined two weeks ago. With us she has never established the routine of remote working but started immediately into a hybrid model. She really enjoys being in the office and doesn't want to work completely remotely but does appreciate the ability to work from home a couple of days a week (mainly as it avoids the need to commute on the tube). In the office she particularly enjoys what she describes as the 'social element' of meeting people in person and chatting, getting to know people and building relationships on a personal level. These are spontaneous interactions - not planned or booked in advance for a specific purpose as happens on video. For her it is a really important element of working in the office and something she would be very reluctant to give up.

Donella Meadows talks about finding the appropriate point / lever to intervene in a system to effect change. I wonder how much our new team member will be a lever?

Get with the beat

 Early in my MSc I was introduced to Donella Meadows and was captivated by her paper on Dancing with Systems.   One of the objectives in my thesis is to increase my capability for reflexive practice and have decided to see if I can use her systems wisdoms to provide a framework for this practice.

The first system wisdom is to:

 Get with the Beat 

She recommends watching the system work to see how it behaves.  Ask people who have been around about what has happened and learn its history.  She also says to make a time graph to illustrate the behaviour of the system using actual data as memories are not always reliable.

So thinking about the social system that I'm studying and about how that system has been impacted by events since its inception - both events arising from activity in the system itself but also external events which have impacted on the system I have plotted a time graph.  This shows how I perceived the level of perturbation in the system over a period of 20 months through set up, formal start, production of initial outputs and the impact of various Covid-19 restrictions.

In this newly established social system I perceive that there is an ongoing base level of perturbation generated from people learning how to produce outputs and understand how the system works.  In this initial period there has been a relatively high level of turnover of people all of whom need time to understand and learn how the system works.  Turnover has been high partly due to the project nature of the work but also because of the time to recruit and use of temporary staff covering roles while recruitment is in progress.

I perceived the impact of the original lockdown in March20 as high but having drawn the timeline its noticeable that subsequent lockdowns didn't have the same level of impact - potentially as these, in effect, extended what had become normal.  What did impact on the system was the creation of outputs and the prospect of the final easing of restrictions meaning another substantive change to ways of working as offices open up.

Surprisingly normal

 Last week I attended a workshop.  

It has been nearly a year since I sat in the same room as my work colleagues and while some of us have ventured into the office occasionally over the last month this was the first time we had purposefully come together with a shared agenda.  The event nearly didn't happen when the easing of lockdown in England was delayed to 19July but with careful consideration of appropriate social distancing measures (including 2 colleagues on video who were unable to travel) we did manage to meet.

Reflecting on the event:

• it was lovely to get out of the house and see different views
• I'd forgotten how tall some of my colleagues were
• it was so good to be in a room where multiple conversations were able to happen simultaneously - the digital enforcement of bilateral conversation was not missed!
• Being able to overhear many different conversations meant I could glean gems of information to add to the breadth of understanding
• it was lovely to return to the familiarity (security?) of my own home office desk

What did my colleagues observe:

• it felt surprisingly normal
• you have to be present at all times (and can't sit hidden by the screen and do your emails)
• really appreciated the opportunity to sit and chat with colleagues (and watch the football together) - the social element is so important and has been missing over the last year in spite of efforts to run social events on video

Broken or changed?

Donald Schon said that social systems resist change with an energy which is roughly proportional to the radicalness of the change that is being threatened

Last March (2019) the UK Government declared a national lockdown (Covid-19) and my workplace closed with immediate effect.  In fact from the internal announcement to the office being emptied only took a couple of hours.  There was no resistance - only a desire to get out and get home as quickly as possible.  So an extremely radical change happened (in effect) instantaneously with no resistance from the social system impacted.

Which could disprove what Donald Schon said.  But ...

• change wasn't 'threatened' so was it that the system didn't have time to react? (ie there wasn't time for a feedback loop from the 'change' to the 'system') - which would mean Schon's statement hold
• or did what happened break the social system? - which would mean Schon's statement holds

Thoughts?