System Thinking about a Situation of Concern: Practical example

Defining a system as a set of interacting components integrated in a whole, with structure that are related (directly or indirectly) to each other, behaviour and interconnectivity in which part or processes are connected, and any changes affect the whole, we can see how our SoC with management focus on the profitability and employees with a focus in professional development and learning are competing situations.

At the same time and due to the different divisions of each company departments , we have different goals each part. The situations where we have competing situations have been described by adjectives such as “messy” or “wicked” in the literature (Ison, 2010)

The situations with several complex elements interdependent which each other, in which an internal modification of either an element or connection will result in an uncertain outcome, and where conflict is present, due to the different goal of the elements of the situation and the different background (understood as history and perspective) of the stakeholders, can benefit of a systems thinking approach, and therefore we can introduce the concept of systemic inquiry as a meta-platform or process for project or program managing as discussed in Chapter 10 of (Ison, 2010).

We should note that engaging in situations with a systemic inquiry has the side effect of more time required for investigation and implementation, as several iterations are required and the difficulty to estimate an end date to the task.

The juggle metaphor

Throughout chapter 4 to 8, (Ison, 2010) introduces a framework for system inquiry. The main idea of the framework is the metaphor of a juggler playing with four balls. The metaphor tries to emphasise the need to involve all the components or “balls” in the cycle of the system inquiry, as all parts are interdependent and the involvement in each “ball” considered as a separated entity, will affect the rest of the balls, showing the relational dynamic of the juggler.

The juggle metaphor is composed of four distinct balls:

B-Ball:

The first ball, being, focus on the relationship of the practitioner and the ideas. We, as human beings, are born in a culture, and during our development, we acquire knowledge via school, friends and parents. Once we, as practitioners, engage with situations, we tried to frame the situations with our previous conceptualisation of the world. We should be aware of this limitation and consider the situations from other perspectives.

In the SoC of this paper, the author focus is on the acquisition of new set of skills for his own professional practice, while a solution cannot focus only on the author goal, but instead trying to stand in the position of several people involved: owners of the company with a focus on profits or employees that see the position as a means to attend to their own financial needs.

The being-ball, besides reflecting on our own bias, constraints and possibilities, also incorporates an ethical component into our decision-making process while making the system’s inquiry.

We can conclude that our proposed system to solve the SoC should meet three conditions: Being economically feasible, being able to promote the acquisition of new skills and knowledge and being optional and flexible regarding the time committed from each member of the team.

E-Ball:

This ball of Chapter 6 of (Ison, 2010) refers to how we choose to engage with the situations. This is how the practitioner chooses to relate to the situation. A main consideration while engaging, with a situation is the framing or naming of that situation. In our case, we have described our SoC as “wicked” or “mess” due to the interdependent and competing sub-systems. The naming of the situation does not resolve the problem, but we should note that thanks to this framing we have avoided to use classical techniques to project management, which could have failed to engage successfully with the SoC.

C-Ball:

The inquiry of the C-Ball refers to contextualising or adopting an approach to tackle the SoC. This does not mean to choose a “recipe” and follow it blindly but instead to “look” into the “bag of tools” and try to formulate a recipe to tackle the SoC. The practitioner “bag of tools” can include several project management techniques, methodologies and previous knowledge acquired while dealing with previous cases.

In our SoC, we might note that our members of the team can be described as computer literate, which makes the adoption of tools such as online forums and online meetings feasible and something easy to add to our proposed solution, but making it more difficult to apply to not IT literate communities without the application of extra steps. While engaging with the B-Ball, we noted the need to meet the needs of the board of directors for profitability and the needs for professional development of the employees. While engaging with the C-Ball we see that an added benefit of contextualising the SoC is that an exchange of ideas or improvement of communication with result on knowledge transfer, resulting in a natural way to reuse components, increasing the profits, and at the same time providing new knowledge to the employees and increasing their satisfaction.

M-Ball:

The last ball, M-Ball, was introduced by (Ison, 2010) in chapter 8 and relates how the practitioner adapts and engages with the real world, resulting in the desired changed. In our SoC, the goal of the board of directors is to decrease the turnover ratio of the organisation.

During the discussion of (Ison, 2010), three perspectives are presented: (1) ‘Getting by’, (2) ‘Getting on top’ and (3) ‘Creating space for’. We can note that the current strategy of the organisation is in ‘Getting by’, trying to increase employee satisfaction with short-term rewards such a small holidays, sweets and free beverages on Fridays, but without considering the issue of lack of professional development. In the author experience, some corporations try to provide professional development via standardised training which has the risk of becoming obsolete in the fast-paced world of engineering and programming.

The author, alongside with (Ison, 2010) considers that the best solutions are in self-arrange systems that are framed in the third perspective: ‘Creating space for’.

Based on the discussion of the juggler balls and our SoC and paying attention to the self-arranged systems, we will introduce the communities of practice as a way forward to exchange ideas and build a self-maintained training programme for the organisation.

Communities of Practice

Etienne Wenger as cited by (Blackmore, 2010) defines a community of practice (CoP) as a group of people who share a craft or a profession, which can evolve naturally because of the members’ shared interest in a particular domain or area, or that can be created deliberately with the goal of gaining knowledge related to a specific field. Wenger adds that through the process of sharing information and experiences with the group that members learn from each other, and have an opportunity to develop personally and professionally.

The automotive company Chrysler has adopted the concept of CoP successfully as discussed in Chapter 7 (Blackmore, 2010). Therefore is the opinion of the author that an organization could benefit from the application of the concept of Social Learning Systems, which englobes the CoP, to share knowledge, train and provide personal growth.

Most of the engineers working in the company share a common interest for big data in the aerospace sector and a background of either Aerospace Engineering or Physics, a cross-departmental system to share ideas can benefit the company and the people working on it. This is generalised in Churchman studies cited by (Blackmore, 2010) establishing that social learning can accommodate the complex interrelationship of beliefs and worldviews

To implement a Community of Practice, we should initiate a set of brainstorming meetings in order to identify some common and specific interest. Once identified a small list of topics, some “leaders” should be appointed. The leadership role is not static, and their part will be to manage and arrange the space to exchange ideas.

In parallel, an online tool should be implemented to provide a space for communication. The main requirement of this space is to provide a place for asynchronous communication, for example, a forum.

After the first iteration of workshops, seminars and conversations in the forum, it is expected that the community will select its own leaders and that the list of interest will mutate, showing its dynamic nature. The mutation of the list can be grouped into two categories attending to the source of the influence: (1) internal and (2) external.

• (1) Internal changes of the list are caused because of consensus on the community of practise and represent the interest of the members

• (2) External changes can be understood as innovations in the domain of interest. The innovation is brought into the community via the sensing capabilities of the brokers.

Please note that both, the initial designation of “leaders” and “topics” are to initiate the system of social learning, but over time, both leaders and topics will mutate to the desired and agree state reached inside the system, making it self-sustained.

Last, it is essential to match the activities of the CoP with the benefit of the company, creating feedback between the two subsystems: the profitability of the company and our community of practice. A failure in linking both systems will destroy the CoP overtime due to the lack of funding for the practice activities.

We can discuss that the strengths of a community of practice are to provide a framework of ideas regarding the “how” to organise a system in which members can share ideas and develop themselves to proficient professionals. For example, the role of the business developers could exercise in the community of practice as brokers of ideas and information is based on Wenger’s model as cited in (Blackmore, 2010).

A possible downside of the proposed system is that even though the idea of a dynamic community of practice, in which once the domain grows, a new community of practice could emerge is discussed, the framework does not provide with clear guidelines of what is really a new domain, with the risk of new CoPs being born only because of internal conflicts and point of views of the senior members, in which a power struggle appears to satisfy the need of personal importance, what is commonly known by the expression “big fish in a small pond” Conclusion

The introduction of the juggling metaphor allows for balancing the different aspects to be considered while making a systemic inquiry, which should be understood as a mechanism to allow the consideration of complex situations, rather than a ‘recipe’ to be followed blindly to reach an end.

At the same time, while we have not discussed the influence of the CoP in the financial side of the business, we noted that the CoP can translate in profit in an indirect approach, via employee satisfaction and reducing turnover rates of the company.

We could also argue that the CoP does not provide a clear path of implementation like classical approaches to project management, but as explaining at the beginning of the briefing paper, the problems classified as “wicked” or “messy” cannot be solved with a “recipe” approach. In this context, CoPs are a framework providing ideas on how to develop a system to tackle complex situations.

Last, the possible conflict or tension that could arise between members recognised as “leaders” inside the CoP but with a lesser role inside a working team of the company was omitted. During the research, the author found nothing regarding this possible tension in the cases provided in the literature of (Blackmore, 2010).

A reader could be tempted to translate the role or position inside the CoP into the organisation, but we should note that the recognition as a technical expert inside a CoP may not include other skills such as accountability and management techniques that are deemed of sheer importance in a leadership role inside an organisation.