Transduction — leading transformation — Issue #123
This week:
Upcoming Events:
SE Stakeholder Engagement – Productive Conversations (0.5d)
This training programme could equally be called ‘honest conversations’, ‘difficult conversations’, ‘constructive conversations’, or ‘challenging conversations’.
Fundamental to the success and flavour of organisational life – and systems practice interventions – are the quality of conversations we are able to have. If we can develop an honest and shared attempt to get at shared understanding – shared ‘truth’ if you like – or at least to fully appreciate each others’ understanding – then we can make true progress.
This interactive session will:
And help you to have productive conversations even when it seems most unlikely. You will need to bring a record of an ‘unproductive’ conversation you have had, or fear having, and be prepared to work with others around it and other examples. You will end the session with the ability to surface more productive conversations even when it is difficult.
Trainer These courses are delivered by?Benjamin P Taylor, an expert in systems, cybernetics, and complexity in service transformation.
Pricing Info
￡250 +VAT
To enquire please go on this link:?https://www.systemspractice.org/courses/ise-stakeholder-engagement-productive-conversations-05d
ILG Large Group Interventions (1.0d)
In a classic 2005 article, ‘Techniques to Match our Values’, Weisbord set out the ‘learning curve’, with a movement from ‘experts solve problems’ to ‘’everybody’ solves problems’ to ‘experts improve whole systems’ to ‘’everybody’ improves whole systems’. Inherent in the development of systems practice from the start has been recognition of ‘the whole’, which comes in various forms from group dynamics to organisational viability.
This programme will give an overview of intervention approaches which ‘bring whole systems into the room’ rather than have a few experts work on individual issues. We will look at some of the history and the wide range of interventions that have been developed, and provide an overview of some of the most interesting.
We will compare and contrast these approaches and provide ‘ways in’ to consider when, and which, large group intervention might be an appropriate part of a systems practice intervention.
Trainer These courses are delivered by?Benjamin P Taylor, an expert in systems, cybernetics, and complexity in service transformation.
Pricing Info
￡500 +VAT
To enquire please go on this link:?https://www.systemspractice.org/courses/ilg-large-group-interventions-10d
ICS3 Workshop Design (0.5d)
This module provides learners with an understanding of the design of workshops and relevant considerations, taking into account the potentially very different contexts and definitions of what a ‘workshop’ is. It introduces a range of tools and approaches for workshop design, building on the facilitation module. It gives tools to consider evaluation and learning about workshop design, and compares various approaches, enabling learners to better select and apply appropriate workshop design approaches to their context.
A workshop can be distinguished from a meeting (though the boundaries may be blurry at times), by some of the following indicators:
An alternative use of the work,?to workshop (something), refers to taking a product or idea into a period of intense focused experimentation and development, often bringing in fresh or different perspectives than the original developers of the product or idea. This is of course closely related, but implies some partly-developed ‘content’ as the workshop focus, as opposed to simply a product or idea. In either case, some input is expected to a workshop, whether process, content, or both.
The learning will cover:
This is a very practical, hands-on course based on you creating an initial workshop design from your context, using sources offered, and?sharing and discussing it in the session.
This course complements the course on Facilitation for systems practice interventions, though they can be done independently or in any order.
Trainer These courses are delivered by?Benjamin P Taylor, an expert in systems, cybernetics, and complexity in service transformation.
Pricing Info
￡250 +VAT
To enquire please go on this link:?https://www.systemspractice.org/courses/ics3-workshop-design-05d
ICS2 Facilitation Skills for Systems Practice Interventions (0.5d)
This course provides learners with an understanding of the facilitation relationship in the context of systems intervention itself, and of the challenges it brings. It introduces a range of tools and practices for facilitation and provides guidance on workshop planning. Finally, it compares various approaches to facilitation, enabling learners to develop a stronger sense of the kind of facilitator they want to be.
Topics covered include:
Trainer These courses are delivered by?Benjamin P Taylor, an expert in systems, cybernetics, and complexity in service transformation.
Pricing Info
￡250 +VAT
To enquire please go on this link:?https://www.systemspractice.org/courses/ics2-facilitation-skills-systems-practice-interventions-05d
ICS1b Consulting for Systems Practice Interventions – (b) Core (0.5d)
This course provides learners with a deeper understanding of:
To maximise your chances of being effective in achieving positive change, you should combine a sound understanding of systems approaches with well-developed intervention skills.
This in turn requires a clear conception of the role of the systems practitioner as ‘consultant’, of their relationships with stakeholders, especially the ‘client’, and the nature of the practitioner’s influence on the organisations they seek to transform.
Drawing on Flawless Consulting, Barry Oshry’s Organic Systems Framework, and more,?Consulting for Systems Practice Interventions?emphasises a collaborative approach and equal responsibility between the intervention practitioner and the client, navigating a path between the twin traps of ‘consultant as boss’ and ‘consultant as servant’.
These courses are relevant to anyone – consultant or not! – who is engaging in organisational change.
Trainer These courses are delivered by?Benjamin P Taylor, an expert in systems, cybernetics, and complexity in service transformation.
Pricing Info
￡250 +VAT
To enquire please go on this link:?https://www.systemspractice.org/courses/ics1b-consulting-systems-practice-interventions-b-core-05d
ICS1a Consulting for Systems Practice Interventions – (a) Foundation (0.5d)
This course will provide learners with key principles and a structure for interventions. Topics covered include:
To maximise your chances of being effective in achieving positive change, you should combine a sound understanding of systems approaches with well-developed intervention skills.
This in turn requires a clear conception of the role of the systems practitioner as ‘consultant’, of their relationships with stakeholders, especially the ‘client’, and the nature of the practitioner’s influence on the organisations they seek to transform.
Drawing on Flawless Consulting, Barry Oshry’s Organic Systems Framework, and more,?Consulting for Systems Practice Interventions?emphasises a collaborative approach and equal responsibility between the intervention practitioner and the client, navigating a path between the twin traps of ‘consultant as boss’ and ‘consultant as servant’.
These courses are relevant to anyone – consultant or not! – who is engaging in organisational change.
Trainer These courses are delivered by?Benjamin P Taylor, an expert in systems, cybernetics, and complexity in service transformation.
Pricing Info
￡250 +VAT
To enquire please go on this link:?https://www.systemspractice.org/courses/ics1a-consulting-systems-practice-interventions-foundation-05d
Link Collection:
My Weekly Blog?post:
We are dedicated to transforming public services and ourselves, guided by three core principles. Firstly, we prioritize social and environmental justice, believing that public services should enhance citizen and community outcomes through equality, diversity, and inclusion. Despite minimal change, the demand for justice intensifies, urging collective responsibility.
Our methods center on impactful, sustainable, and progressive interventions, driven by several beliefs. We value digital innovation, embrace agility, navigate complexity with systems leadership, prioritize community outcomes, and aim to empower clients through capability-building.
Moreover, our success stems from experienced, authentic delivery, fostering adult-to-adult relationships and collaboration. We offer skilled, outcome-focused professionals committed to making a difference. Through teamwork, transparency, and adaptability, we exceed client expectations and maintain authenticity.
After 15 years, our approach resonates, evidenced by client loyalty and a talented team, despite challenges in UK public services. Our success lies in these principles, which prioritize justice, innovation, collaboration, and authenticity.
[I’d say this is a bit of a curate’s egg. It’s extensive, and free, and brings in several highly rated systems authors to give approachable, light summaries of their methods and approaches. You can see the editorial team here: https://www.scienceopen.com/collection/91ba7261-ecaf-4e92-ab55-2e9cfce483d0 under ‘about the journal’, and under ‘open peer review’ can see their ‘unusual’ peer review process]
They say:
This Handbook details the theory and practice of Systems Thinking in the areas of social systems, management, and policy. The contributing chapters from numerous authors show the diversity of the field, and this first chapter seeks to identify patterns in that diversity to demonstrate an underlying unity among the plurality of methods, approaches and interventions throughout the field.
February 26, 2024by?MattLloyd
领英推荐
[A relatively off-the-cuff podcast and although ostensibly for ‘safety professionals’, I think the discussion of ‘graceful extensibility’ and its balanced with ‘prevention’ and ‘control’ is valuable for everyone]
On Facebook, Nora Bateson shared:
From Versailles to Cybernetics (in English with English subtitles)
On this Sunday, while it is not quite spring yet, if you have a little time to listen, check this lecture out.
You may remember it as a chapter from Steps To and Ecology of Mind. I found this version on youtube. This talk by my dad is one of the most important for the present times, when selling out everyone and everything is justified by the right of profit. The pain of loss of trustworthiness in communication has historical shadows that run long. As the honor of communication erodes, the logic of manipulation and zero sum games becomes normalized as “how life is.”
The aftermath of deception since the fateful Treaty of Versalles is an illustration of systemic ripples into the future of communication since then. Did you know….?
Communication is Sacred. It matters.
Fernando E. Rosas, Bernhard C. Geiger, Andrea I Luppi, Anil K. Seth, Daniel Polani, Michael Gastpar, Pedro A.M. Mediano
Meet the messengers from the past who saw the future and explain our world today. First up: Marshall McLuhan.
By?Benjamin Carlson March 2, 2024
Introducing a New Saturday Series: The ProphetsMeet the messengers from the past who saw the future and explain our world today. First up: Marshall McLuhan.By Benjamin CarlsonMarch 2, 2024
Social Systems Theory from a Cognitive and Physicalist?PerspectivePost authorBy John A ChallonerPost dateFebruary 28, 2024
ADVANCING DEMOCRATIC PRACTICES IN WORKPLACES AND COMMUNITIES
Differentiation and Integration: How to Use Weisbord & Janoff’s Good Work
Go Deep to Benefit from Differences: Differentiation and Integration
NOEMA A Single Small Map Is Enough For A Lifetime | NOEMA What if this bog-standard corner of England is actually full of adventure, nature, wildness, surprises, silence, perspective — if only I bothered to go out and look?
Bill Bryson-like writing. For the dog lovers. Chicken Lore https://bit.ly/3TccIfU
Tumblr Chicken Lore The boys! This pic alone took ten minutes and balancing a pretzel on my head to get them both in the frame and in focus.
Making rights make sense · 4d Lifestyle media & popular culture are crucial vehicles for changing public thinking on social care The starting point of #SocialCareFuture’s work on narrative and storytelling involved two parallel pieces of work. One involved working with members of our movement to answer the question …
Missing Numbers - By the Centre for Public Data · Feb 28 What are the questions MPs ask that don't get answered? Data gaps are under-reported, because it’s hard to write about data that doesn’t exist. As we've written about before, newspapers publish endless stories on house prices, where there's lots of data - but few on rental costs, even though millions of people rent. That’s partly because the
The Guardian · 5d ‘Parents didn’t want their kids to be here’: inside the troubled London school that stopped excluding pupils and restored calm By Anna Fazackerley
Civil Service World · Feb 27 Chisholm admits in-house Crown Consultancy project was 'too difficult' But Cabinet Office perm sec insists new arrangements to cut consultancy spending are working
UCL IIPP Blog · 6d Public sector capacity matters, but what is it? - UCL IIPP Blog - Medium By UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose
Metamoderna · Feb 27 Why Are So Many Metamodernists So Miserable? And What Can We Do about it? - Metamoderna Since I ventured into this crazy space of metamodern hackers, hipsters and hippies more than a decade ago, I’ve met an abundance of extraordinarily talented people; wonderful and kind individuals with great courage and fierce determination to make the world a better place—and with what can only fairly be described as correspondingly chaotic personal lives. […]
geoffmulgan · Feb 29 THE INSIDE OUT AND UPSIDE DOWN GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT: A MODEST PROPOSAL The traditional government department or ministry is organised as a pyramid made up of blocks.? At the top sit the ministers and the top officials. Below them are a series of divisions, and units, cascading downwards and outwards.? Multiple organograms show this structure clearly. What then flows down and out from the departments are emanations of power: rules, laws, directives, funding programmes and regulations of all kinds.? These then land on the people doing the action in the world: teacher
The effect of health-care privatisation on the quality of care https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/
LGiU The State of Local Government Finance in England 2024 This report, the 11th annual state of local government finance survey in England, tells a story that is at once both familiar and distinctive.It is a familiar story of councils struggling to deliv
The Guardian · Feb 28 The Guardian view on local government finance: a crisis that corrodes democracy By Editorial