Standing on a vast expanse of coastline with no other people around is one of the most liberating feelings I know. It is made even more special by the feeling of the wind. There is nothing quite like the wind from the across the sea. It is fresh and clear and makes me feel alive. When I am further inland, I miss the wind. I miss how it makes my skin tingle and my lungs expand. How it brings me in touch with our natural world, rather than the stale stagnation of our offices and buildings, swimming with an electronics induced atmosphere, shielding us from our natural environment.
You can choose the type of wind that flows through your systems practice and subsequently your work environment. The gale that disrupts, the breeze that calms, the gust that displaces the negative and replaces it with a refreshing positive. It can be the bringer of worrisome illness or the displacer of workplace disease. It can unleash upon others the chaotic, whipping them up into its gale force gusts or wash over them a serotonin inducing calm.
Your wind can share energy and information, it can bring warmth and awareness or it can bring a soothing coolness when things get hot. The wind of your practice can sculpt the next stage of your journey, perhaps blowing you to places you never expected. Without wind it is easy to experience a stagnant stillness, sucking out your life and replacing it with stale emptiness, making you feel disheartened.
This often invisible but undeniably powerful force – the wind of your practice – is a creator. A workplace circulatory system in motion. A shaper and bringer of new life. You can choose the wind of your practice, it is part of you, and of course, it will change often, just like our weather system does.
It is the wind you create that defines the conditions for flourishing and change. It is the same wind that creates the conditions for your existence in that place. The conditions that welcome the wind, in whatever strength or patterns required for ongoing orientation and survival in your environment. There is, of course, the option to resist the wind and retain in place the stagnant air that brings tiredness and demotivation.
I call the picture above the ‘pathway to heaven’. I don’t believe in such a place but if it was real, then for me it would look like this. This is a pathway to a massive expanse of coastline where I hear nothing but the roar of the sea, the gushing of the wind and the delicate birdsong penetrating through both. It reminds me that our systems practice can be the bringer of such life or the destroyer of such life. Which do you aspire to be – the creator of the conditions for our humanness to flourish or the destroyer of our natural ways?
I would like to give newer practitioners some advice about protecting your own original ideas and work. You are surrounded by people who can benefit from your ideas, so you need to be as savvy as them about the value your work holds.
As a practitioner, it is entirely feasible for you to independently create original work. In the world of academia, people would be worried about someone taking the ideas and publishing them first, therefore taking away the claim of originality. As a practitioner, you must also consider this. Practitioners are generally not affiliated with a university. Therefore, publishing your ideas is more difficult, particularly if you want them to be open access. This can have huge costs which render this option not feasible. Therefore, it is entirely possible for you to create original work and ideas, share them (because you want people to benefit from them) and then someone write up a version of them academically. The barrier to writing up officially for practitioners is something I had not contemplated when I first started out, so this is something practitioners should be aware of.
Sharing your ideas
So, does this mean that we should not share our ideas? No, it doesn’t mean that. It just means that you need to be careful if you want to protect your work. As stated in the blog above, ‘You can’t protect an idea under copyright law – you can only protect a form it takes’ (Mewburn, 2022). Even if you write your idea down, it doesn’t stop others from taking it and running with it themselves, but it can help you to evidence copying if you need to do that at any stage.
What if you want to take your ideas into an academic context – i.e. a doctorate?
As stated in the blog, if you have over shared, it would be difficult to then shift your work into a more formal academic form (i.e. a peer reviewed journal) (Mewburn, 2022). As a practitioner, if you do not immediately go down an academic route, prepare to have your ideas used and written up by anyone. Of course, we can choose to share our work openly and ask people to develop our ideas but there is one precaution – many practitioners have asked me about becoming a consultant, as I have. To do this, it is your original ideas that give you your unique selling point. You have to market them but once you have, they are open for anyone to run with. The answer – do not over share. Give only that which is required to spark interest and keep the more developed things to yourself if you aim to use them in consultancy or if you want your ideas recognised. In the past, I have ‘thought out loud’ far too often because I did not know the pitfalls.. Yes, you are stuck in a bind: you want your work to be recognised, so you share, and then you risk losing control of it. Make your choices wisely.
Collaborating with others
Again, as the blog states, in academia there are rules around collaboration so that the creator of the work is recognised as such (Mewburn, 2022). As practitioners, we have no such protection. One of the ways people can be exposed to your work is by claiming to want to collaborate with you (or they want you to do a talk about your work). Once you have let your ideas out, your competitive advantage disappears, especially if others have larger work networks than you. My advice to practitioners is to ‘beware the love bombers!’. When you are a new practitioner, you want to be seen, so are likely to be more willing to fall for the requests for collaboration or for talks and sharing. If you share, do so wisely. Not everyone is your friend.
Summary
This is the start of work I am doing to bring awareness to systems thinking practitioners about the pitfalls of creating original ideas and work. I have made the mistakes so that you do not have to. In short:
Write you work up. I took my blogs and turned them into a self-published book to secure my ideas into one place.
If you think you want to make money from your ideas, copyright them. In reality, it is unlikely to stop others taking them but it does give you an evidence trail if you should ever need it.
Don’t over share. If it is valuable, be wise about who you share it with.
If you think you might want to go down an academic route, do so sooner rather than later. Learn about the idea of ‘original work’ and take any precautions you might need to take.
Beware of collaborations where the power dynamic is imbalanced. If you cannot keep control of how your own work is used in the collaboration, then the power dynamic is imbalanced.
Systems thinking practitioners can be leaders in the field but we need to be savvy about the pitfalls that can harm us.
In May 2023, I released my book, ‘Crossing the bridge: A practitioner’s learning journey into systems thinking and Creating the Conditions for Change’. It is a clear, non-technical and practical guide to how to start applying systems thinking ideas in an organisational setting, which I self-published through Kindle Direct Publishing.
Putting systems thinking into practice can be like crossing a precarious bridge. We never quite know when it is going to collapse below us. Even our best efforts can see us come up against unexpected challenges and obstacles. We need to practise, iterate, and practise again. It is often a jaunt into the unknown and part of our systems thinking practitioner skillset is to have trust in the journey. On this occasion, the journey I had to trust was the journey towards writing a book. I would like to encourage other practitioners to get their stories heard. As such, I’m going to summarise some insights from the process that might be useful to you.
Why did I decide to write the book?
This is an easy one to answer. I was acutely aware that the extent of my systems practice experience was valuable. My blogs were being viewed by thousands of people across the world. However, not having a PhD meant I had no affiliation with a university (despite working for one) and therefore, no ‘official’ way to share my insights. I was also contacted by someone who alerted me to attempts being made to dampen my voice. They gave me some wise advice which I immediately put into practice. I contemplated that anyone trying to keep me quiet was clearly scared. That meant not only did I have something to say but that it was potentially powerful. Instead of getting angry about what I heard, I decided instead to channel my energy into making sure the story of my deep learning journey was recorded. Hence, I wrote the book. Those who tried to harm me were the catalyst for the energy it took to engage in the writing process. This is my first point for you – writing a book takes sustained energy. If you have passion, use it creatively to encourage yourself to embark on the journey.
Getting started
What are you passionate about? What do you want to say? This is where I started. I was passionate because I was not about to let anyone erase my story or the link between certain insights and my learning. I knew what I wanted to say and immediately made a note of the key messages I wanted to share. I also considered how I wanted people to feel when they read the book. I made a note of the key ethos of the book and the style of writing I wanted to engage in.
Theory/ practice/ story? What is your book?
This was quite hard to pin down and took a few iterations. I knew I wanted an engaging story. I also wanted people to see where my insights had come from and with that, to experience the learning journey that I had been on. I wrote a short description of the book, then a longer paragraph, then what I wanted it achieve, who my target audience were, what questions I sought to answer and the style and tone I would use.
Giving your book structure
Once I had the key ethos of the book, I started to decide on the structure. I had it in my mind like three acts of a play. Within each act were a series of chapters. I penned out the acts, the chapters, what messages I wanted to give in each chapter. I then decided which stories about my learning journey would give the key messages I wanted to share. Then came the number of pages and wordcount, so I could gauge whether I had enough content.
Using previous writing in the book
If you are self-publishing, as I did, you are in control so you can use what you want. I used a lot of my past blogs. Blogs can give valuable insights away and yet rarely do they get attributed to the author. I wanted to put mine together in a more formalised way. I also included some new content, for those who follow me and would be looking for something new/ additional. Don’t let your thoughts or writing go to waste – turn them into something.
Use an editor/ copywriter/ all-round advisor
I was extremely lucky in this respect. A good friend and ex colleague was now offering this service. We had worked together. She was part of my journey. There really was no better person to guide me. I would advise that even if you are self-publishing, this role is critical. Choose wisely. I got advice on style, making messages clearer, structure and most importantly….where I did not make sense to outside eyes and ears! It is easy to get so wrapped up in your writing that it only makes sense to you. The money this element costs is worth every penny and I would never embark on writing another book without this support.
Getting others to read your work
I also got friends to read the draft book. Friends who were not in my world of work. I didn’t tell them much about the book before they read it. I wanted to know what came across to them. Reconciling their feedback with what I had intended the key insights to be was crucial.
It is a long process
Writing your book is the easy part. Organising it, formatting it, getting it reviewed, making changes, tweaking, changing, repeating the formatting is a long process. You have to be dedicated and not be afraid to deal with the details. I always knew I could write the book (I have been writing short stories for years and love to write). I never thought I could understand the requirements of the self-publishing process. This was where my editor and advisor was an absolute gem. She helped me locate materials to guide me through the process.
Will people buy your book?
Don’t expect huge sales if you self-publish, especially if you are aiming at a specialist market, as I was. I got an early influx of sales and then it tailed off to a steady trickle. I don’t think I need to say here that you do not benefit from the full price of the book but instead receive a royalty. Unless you are a well known writer selling thousands of books, it isn’t going to make you money. It is better to be doing your writing for other reasons.
Was it worth it?
100% yes. I felt myself develop and grow during the process in two different ways. Firstly, my systems practice grew and developed as I went through the reflective process and recognised how far I had travelled. Secondly, writing a book itself was new to me and so I develop new skills along the way. For me, it was a life changing experience that I enjoyed and when I have the time and space, further books will emerge.
Why is it important that systems practitioners write books
I believe practitioners are the ones with the great systems thinking insights and in some cases, I know this for sure. They do not, however, have enough recognised outlets to share them. Without an affiliation to a university, academic publishing can be difficult. It is not acceptable, in my perspective, to believe that it is only academics who create, have insights or lead in the field. This is not always the case. They just have more outlets (journals etc) to make it look like the case. In my work and experiences, practitioners are at the cutting edge of systems practice. They are insightful, creative and moving things forwards. They just need the outlets to put their stuff out into the world. Self-publishing was, for me, one of the easiest ways to do it.
My final message
This is a short and direct message: If you are at all interested in writing, do it. Don’t hesitate and enjoy every minute of it.
Visionary thinking and creative insight does not always come from being an academic. I have spoken and written many times about the creativity and insight of those applying systems thinking in their everyday work. They generally aren’t sat at computers writing journal articles, paying for them to be published or going through grueling peer review processes. They aren’t always the ones spending hours writing books or even blogs like this one. They are just getting on with things and generating incredible insights along the way. They are not just the thinkers or the creators. They are the ones who can turn abstract ideas into reality, a skill in its own league, the significance of which is often overlooked.
Sadly, no matter how much experience you have, how good you are at your craft, how many qualifications you have, if you do not enter into the archaic labyrinth that is academic publishing, you generally don’t exist and nor will you ever. You will never be quoted, referenced or referred to because it isn’t the done thing in academia to make reference to the work of a ‘non-academic’. So, as a practitioner what do you do? Keep your insights to yourself? Just use them for personal use and don’t share? I guess that would be the easy way but I do not think it is the right way. I think all of the systems practitioners out there who do not sit in an academic context need to have their insights, creativity and wise and sometimes daring application showcased.
I would love to see a ‘festival of systems practice’ that was not devised, designed, engineered, hosted or controlled by people with an academic or even a consultancy background. Consultants often collaborate with academics, which I discuss in the book ‘Crossing the Bridge’ (2023). Together they have dominance in the field. A festival of practice for internal agents is what is on my mind – those using systems thinking in the work place, usually without the title of ‘systems thinking practitioner’ and/ or without projects specifically badged as systems thinking. A festival that demonstrates their embodiment of systems thinking concepts and ideas. I can, however, already envisage the unintended consequences of showcasing such creative brilliance. I would, however, like to see it not just happen, but become the established norm with a new system of recognising new insights generated by the systems practitioner. Insights which do not have to be written up in an antiquated, cumbersome process of academic publishing.
Reference:
Roberts, P (2023) ‘Crossing the Bridge: A practitioner’s learning journey into systems thinking and Creating the Conditions for Change’ UK: Kindle direct publishing
This is my 100th blog on being a systems thinking practitioner and the insights the application and my journey have created.
Whilst I am in the midst of family bereavement at the moment, I have also managed to embrace an exciting and invigorating week that has reawakened in me the joy of creating. Creating insight expressed in writing. Creating new and different ways of looking at things, of putting them together and making them useful. Creating and producing something that is uniquely me.
I have explored the head, the heart, consciousness and how we learn. I have undertaken exercises in reframing – particularly reframing the word ‘jealousy’ to ‘following and admiring’. If you ever thought someone was acting out of jealousy towards you, reframe it to them admiring and following you or wanting to be you and you see their actions very differently as you call your power back to you.
Reframing is a particular skill for a systems practitioner. It is part of our practice of boundary critique and it can shift situations significantly and open up new and unexpected avenues for development, change, improvement and/ or a new direction.
I have met with academics and talked about reflexivity, metaphor and storytelling. I have discussed bridging the gap between theory and practice.
The creators will always be at the forefront. It does not feel comfortable sometimes, as I talk about in the book ‘Crossing the Bridge’. The journey of a systems practitioner can be a lonely one. We are mavericks, square pegs in round holes, ‘different’. We will, however, always have the joy of creating.
Provided that the systems thinking practitioner has been appropriately trained and/ or educated in the field and has a degree of experiential learning, the value they bring to your workplace can be significant.
That value can be threefold
Value in helping you move towards your goal. They get stuff done.
Value generated in the way the systems thinking practitioner works with you. Their perspective and ways of thinking can open up value you never expected and take you to places you never contemplated.
Value for each individual and value generated in the relationships that are formed. Their thinking, the framings they use and the perspective they engage with generates value for them and for you. It also generates value in forming relationships as they reveal their authentic selves and encourage others to do the same.
Part of that value is in supporting you to achieve triple loop learning, ensuring that you consider efficacy, efficiency and effectiveness.
Single loop learning
Single loop learning is linked to efficacy and efficiency – this is where they help you to get things done. But, how do you know you are doing the right things?
Double loop learning
Double loop learning is linked to effectiveness. Systems thinking practitioners have a keen focus on effectiveness, so that you are not just achieving something, you have a greater chance of achieving the right thing. Systems thinking practitioners, however, go even further than this.
Triple loop learning
They help you to enter into triple loop learning. They are skilled in considering why you believe it to be the right thing. They question motivations, judgements and legitimacy and bring in a variety of perspectives to challenge mindsets, framings and decision making.
Despite popular belief, systems thinking practitioners are not all business consultants with fancy approaches and buzz words for you to jump on board with. Many are members of staff, working in organisations, often going largely unrecognised.
Systems thinking is a way of thinking about situations. It is the way of thinking that generates the value.
It is not written in a technical or academic way, but in a way that I think will appeal to those who are interested in a practitioner’s journey. I cover what it has been like to venture into the world of work as a systems thinking practitioner – how systems thinking was received or wasn’t as the case might have been. I discuss the often talked about, but rarely written down, aspects of the journey.
It is a book of four distinct parts:
The first part is about the formative years of my systems practice and how I started to embed systems thinking concepts and habits into my practice. It is written in the style of a memoir of my experiences.
Part three is specifically about the practitioner’s journey. This is where I discuss some of the common things that systems thinking practitioners have to contend with. They are the things that people ask me about the most. The things people find difficult to deal with and the things that can put some people off practicing. Hopefully, by sharing stories about these things, it will encourage others to keep going with their own journey.
The final part is about the things I am contemplating now that I am on the next stage of my systems thinking and practice journey. What appeals to me as I am moving forward into a new place in my learning?
The book aims to give insights into the real on the ground experiences of a systems thinking practitioner. It is also aimed at encouraging others not only to continue with their own journey, but to find ways to share it. Some of the greatest value that systems thinking practitioners can bring to a situation is often not talked about. Some of it is exposed in the book as I celebrate my learning journey and the wisdom of those I have engaged with along the way.
Crossing the Bridge – coming soon on Amazon. Exact launch date to be confirmed.
I was inspired by the writings of Angela Espinosa and Jon Walker in their book, ‘A Complexity Approach to Sustainability, theory and application’. It made me feel like I wasn’t going mad when, in my work, I believed that VSM and CAS were complimentary to each other.
Espinosa and Walker explain that complex adaptive systems are open systems whose elements interact dynamically and nonlinearly. They exhibit unpredictable behaviours, are affected by positive and negative feedback loops and co-evolve with their environment. They demonstrate ‘path dependence’ i.e. they have a history, an emergent structure, they self-organise when they are far from equilibrium, or at the edge of chaos. As a result of self-organisation, these systems exhibit emergent properties. They have learning networks, which are able to co-operate to manage their resources and develop adaptive behaviours. This co-operation emerges in the course of reciprocation strategies, rather than evolving from some sort of central control.
As I said in my blog in 2018, those versed in management cybernetics and the viable system model might say that whilst ‘cybernetics is about how systems regulate themselves, evolve and learn and its high spot is the question of how they organise themselves’ (Espinosa and Walker, 2011, p11) aren’t they closed systems? A ‘closed system’ being one which has coherent, closed networks of relationships?’ So how can the VSM be useful in a situation that has the hallmarks of, and appears to be behaving somewhat like an open system?
Espinosa and Walker explain the beautifully complimentary view of the complex adaptive system and viable system frameworks working in harmony together. Viable systems are open to energy and information and co-evolve with their environment. However, they are organisationally closed. Their organisational patterns and evolution are self-referential, self-organising and self-regulated. However, when we observe from a cybernetic perspective, we can consider the viable system model but then we can extend our understanding by considering its dynamic interaction with the environment in which it sits and therefore the viable system’s characteristics as a complex adaptive system. ‘The CAS and the VSM are complimentary frameworks that explain issues of complexity management (VSM) and complex evolving behaviours (CAS)’ (Espinosa and Walker, 2011. p15).
Think about that for a moment………. If groups like integrated teams and those working on systems change etc get this right, manipulating their reciprocation strategies (which features heavily in my Creating the Conditions for Change approach) may form a structural coupling that allows the organisations involved to induce change in a complimentary way.
Working with these insights helped me to create the workshop materials for Creating the Conditions for Change. I was already heavily working with the VSM. However, I had tipped early on from a point in my VSM work where I was considering management principles to where I was considering leadership and how the same principles apply to human beings and systems change, which was ongoing work from 2011. What is it the people need in complex situations? I started to consider the attenuation of fear and anxiety and the amplification of confidence and curiosity. I remembered the exceptional peer to peer support my work in pharmaceutical specials included. I remembered the self-organising and relationship building in my managerial roles. I remembered how, in my NHS work that when the relationships and interaction between teams was poor, everything suffered.
I believed back then, and I still believe now, that CAS and VSM are complimentary frameworks. I believe this because I got to where I am in my work via the viable system model and yet I work successfully in complex situations. Those who don’t know my work with the VSM often immediately assume I come from a world of CAS and living systems. That wasn’t where I started nor, indeed, where I start now.
What amazes me is the infighting between those who focus on VSM and those who focus on CAS. In my opinion, their quest to be seen as the best and their argument about what came first, systems thinking or complexity science misses the point. What is it that emerges when these two frameworks are used together? Something quite powerful, in my opinion.
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We’re tired, aren’t we? All of us. Exhausted, some of us. We live our lives at a pace that barely gives us time to stop and think. Barely gives us time to consider our own health and wellness. Barely gives us time to contemplate saying, ‘no’. The work I have been doing in systems change exemplifies this. People are tired. Exhausted. They want and need rest. There is little work-life balance. 9-5 Monday to Friday has become excruciatingly punishing. Tempers are fraught. Mental health is suffering. People are tired. When we are in this state, our energy is depleted by even the simplest of daily tasks. Our cognitive abilities are muted, and our enthusiasm and motivations dulled.
Over the years I have worked with Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model. I have applied it in a wide range of complex situations and the insights it gives me into the world of work, and indeed our lives, are never ending. From his neurocybernetic model of an enterprise, management principles emerged. From my academic learning and application of these principles, insights into change and systems change emerged. Inquiring into the complex situations I was faced with by exploring boundaries and purposes as conceptual constructs became the norm. Considering the perceptions of the observers of the systems in which I was embedded and observing became the norm and my insights grew.
Where Stafford Beer highlights to us that manipulation of complexity should be the task of the manager, I contemplated, ‘But what are the tasks of the leader? The system leader? The system changer?’ It was deep in contemplation about this when the insights from the viable system and wider work by Stafford Beer and the work of Ross Ashby started to come to light. In our management systems if we need to attenuate complexity, what is it we have to attenuate (and amplify) for the people in the system? For them to work without becoming burnt-out?
Fear! for starters. We need to attenuate fear. And anxiety, stress, fatigue, panic, anger, jealousy, sadness, lack of confidence and our ability to tumble into imposter syndrome. Only when we attenuate the negative elements of these emotions and reactions will we have enough energy to be able to effectively manipulate the possibilities of the environment around us to our benefit. Of course, not all fear is bad. Not all anxiety is bad. Not all anger and jealousy is bad. But it does become bad for us if it is overwhelmingly caused by our working conditions and by those who we interact with on a daily basis, who are in the same stage of depleted energy as ourselves.
It is not just the working environment we need to optimise. It is ourselves and our own health and wellness. It is these conditions that support us, nurture us and enable us to embrace our own humanness, that we need to optimise. It is the kindness we seek and want to give to others that we need to optimise. Only then will we have amplified our energy levels to be able to have effective energy exchanges with others and with the environment around us. We are a major part of our work situations. The same principles I would apply to any other elements of the work are what I would apply to people. For me, those insights came from systems thinking in general and very largely cybernetics and the work of people like Stafford Beer and Ross Ashby. They existed in a different time and in a different context, but the same principles apply and are useful to us now in our systems change work.
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