Systems Community of Inquiry

With the lectures of February 4 and the reference cluster 1 and cluster 2 filling up your plates, I’m looking forward to the thoughts, comments and questions arising from reflection.

Since most everybody should now be used to blogging, let’s see if we can get more thinking and comments on the references. Read first, write second!

@olli Thanks for continuing the momentum from the October class with your thoughts on finding a sustainable world view. Appreciating that unpredictability in a potential intervention can not be avoided, you raise the question as to when planning becomes overplanning.

On applying SSM and acknowledging multiple worldviews, there’s a slight distinction between the finding a workable (i.e. mostly satisfying) solution as a planner / designer / facilitator, and the common worldview that you cite from writings by @gmetcalf (originally generative dialogue from Bela H. Banathy). In the community approach (last October) in which generative dialogues take place, we tend to think of every participant (including the facilitator) as equal. In this course in February, we step up so that the planner / designer has special expertise or knowledge that the layman would not. The challenge comes when the planner / designer thinks he or she knows best, and thus imposes his or her worldview on the rest.

Your observation on focusing on the process and not just the output is spot on, and we’ll cover that more in coming lectures. The research that you couldn’t quite recall was from Elinor Ostrom on common pool resources. Bringing those ideas into sustainable urban design is a little outside of the original research domain, and a good stretch for you.

We’ll have more discussions about uncertainty towards the end of this course. Your pointer to Richard Florida’s 3 T’s, focusing on tolerance, can lead to a discussion about emergence (especially from variety), which isn’t completely certain. Tolerance could be necessary but not sufficient (as in the point of the story about coproduction, acorns and oak trees).

@malinb Your thoughts on Day One followed the thread of thinking not just of systems, but service systems as described by @spohrer .

I like the parallels that you’re drawing between service innovation and social innovation. I would agree that there’s a lot of overlap, and we might think if there are cases where social innovations that doesn’t serve, as they both are related to human systems.

We’ll have some more discussion about human capabilities with and without technology in the lectures coming up. In many cases, the human parts of systems don’t receive enough attention. In other cases, technology serves to extend human capabilities, so we’ll have to be open to watching out for both.

Hi David!
…here is the link to my post on the readings of day 1.

http://systemic-thinking.blogspot.com/2011/02/day-1-universitieseducation.html

Hi David,

Here is my post for day one – http://goo.gl/LICi5

Regards
Sujil

@mikkoahlstrom I was glad to see that you were able to bridge from a Canadian model of government programs and services to a Finnish context. Your citing the interfaces of accountability, procurement, collaboration and services supports a conclusion that issues with programs aren’t just a Canadian phenomenon, but happen in a variety of contexts internationlly.

The failure of information systems development projects is relatively high, so SSM has become one of the methods tried to improve the success rate, at least in the UK. You point out that methods such user-centered design, usability, project management, etc. should be known. I don’t underestimate the the possibility for reductiveness within implementation projects, so the ties to overall purpose of the initiative can get lost in the myriad of activities. In Interactive Planning, after the Idealized Design (Ends Planning I), Ackoff prescribes the Design of the Management System (Ends Planning II). That might have been a methodological reflection that got lost in the development project.

I appreciate your reading of Zexian and Xuhui, that both soft and hard methodologies can be appropriate in different situations. It’s relatively common for casual systems thinkers to only know one method (e.g. SSM as a soft method, or an information systems design waterfall approach as a hard method), and only see the world in one way. Generally, this results in hard system bigots and soft systems bigots, so crossing the bounds appropriately requires an appreciation and understanding from multiple perspectives.

@gabuabdo Your reflection in education as a service system, particularly from a South American perspective is a strong criticism of the industrial age attitude, and the lag in adopting new technologies. Thanks for sweeping in the lecture by Sir Ken Robinson at the RSA.

If you’re interested in furthering your thread, education is one of the larger service systems in the world that needs transformation. From a systems thinking perspective, Russell Ackoff was a strong critic of the way education is conducted. making the differentiation between teaching and learning.

To give you a small hint on your blogging (and final report) …. I can tell that you’ve read the references and appreciate the perspective that they bring. You’ve only made an explicit connection to one of the three references you cite, in the body of your writing. It you took an extra few minutes to add a sentence to each of paragraph strengthening the connections between your ideas and references, the presentation will look more scholarly in following the academic style.

@haleh85 By wrapping in Bergman and Luckman with service innovation, the municipal reference model and action research, you’ve taken a strong methological bent to systems thinking.

Your sweeping in social constructivism (from Berger and Luckman) in a tie with action research suggests a practical bent that you may find in additional readings in Systemic Practice and Action Research, when you’re making your reading selections in the future.

Your correctly point out that action research in the science of service systems is an area of opportunity. Flexibility (e.g. for project managers) would be an admirable feature in their practice. You mention “predicting possible outcomes” that might be rephrased (given the lecture on Interactive Planning that occurred after your writing) as “coproducing possible outcomes”.

On a minor stylistic note, you’ve listed a direct reference to Berger and Luckman, but didn’t list the references from the course reading list. You wrote out the sources in the body of the blog post, and would be more consistent if all were clustered together at the bottom of the page, following the scholarly convention.