Creating the conditions for change is as important as the change itself. I have developed the ‘Creating the Conditions for Change’ workshop from my experiences of putting systems thinking into practice in complex situations over a number of years. Not only have I drawn on sound systems theory, concepts and approaches, I have also tried them out and used my insights and learning to create my materials.

Workshop

In my Creating the Conditions for Change workshops, I take people through questions such as the following:

• How might you engage in peer to peer collaborations?
• How might you instigate and implement change yourself, within the span of your autonomy;
• How can you strengthen community, develop networks, collaborate and work together with people outside of your own team on an ongoing basis;
• How can you contribute to internal system coherence;
• How can you bring humanity and balance back into the work;
• How do you make joint decisions, decide upon joint goals and decide what level of performance is reasonable;
• How do you ensure effective system characteristics;
• How do you create congruence between the system and its vision;
• How do you build external relationships and gather intelligence about the world around you;
• How do you ‘pivot’ and change quickly enough;
• And how do you get that small element of joint vision, meaning, purpose and identity, whilst still allowing and accepting difference?

These are some of the starting questions I use to help those who are trying to create the conditions for  change. I use my Systems Thinking Change Wheel to highlight and explore these questions and bring in a set of over 100 Action Cards to help people take the thinking and make it into a reality. We use a case study example in the workshop to practice on and I also give a sense of the practical and emotional investment required to work in a systems and complexity informed way.

In your organisation/ place/ service/ department etc

I also use the ‘Creating the Conditions for Change’ approach when working on site with organisations. I don’t ‘do change to’ people, I help them think about the situation themselves and create their own options for improvements, using the wheel and action cards as a basis for creating the conditions for the change they require.

Creating the conditions for change is down to you and I can help you to start thinking about how you might do this.

Please get in touch if you are interested in running a workshop for your organisation or ‘place’ or if you are interested in using this approach to understand your range of improvement options for an organisation/ area/ place/ service/ department etc.

pauline@systemspractitioner.com

Please note that the Systems Thinking Change Wheel and associated text and materials do not fall under the creative commons licence for this website, but are separately protected by UK Copyright.