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