Zooming in and zooming out – participating in a HSD course

In our human rights programme at Tchibo, we often search for new solutions to deeply rooted, complex challenges. When we work on improving working conditions or addressing social inequalities, uncertainty is high. There is hence a great need for simple, but impactful methods to drive change – and that is what the Human Systems Dynamics (short HSD) approach offers to me.?

What’s the difference that made the difference?

At the beginning of September, I found myself in a beautiful British landscape, learning about how to get unstuck when faced with a challenge you know is super complex and you have no total control over: Don’t try to solve the problem. Rather look for patterns that you can shift – by one adaptive action after the other. This is one of the essences of Human Systems Dynamics (HSD), an inquiry-based approach to make decisions and take actions in complex systems.

How did I get there?

Being part of the WE community for many years, I got to know one of the HSD fundamentals, the What? So What? Now What?- approach. Back then it already made so much sense to me: Collect what you know or what you can know about the situation. Reflect and make sense of this and ask questions. And finally, decide what your next concrete action will be, based on what you learned so far - to see if you get closer to where you want to be. And then start the circle again.

What I liked about this way of approaching tricky situations is that it combines a data-driven or fact-based approach with a (collective) sensemaking where all your experience and intuition can nurture the process. And especially important is that you then DO something with your insights. This doing does not have to be the perfect solution to the problem. In fact, HSD is never about the intention to completely solve a complex problem. (Don’t we all know already that we will never be able to just ‘solve’ our sticky global challenges, like climate change, social inequality, or racism – not by ourselves anyway?) Instead, it is about shifting patterns that will, all together, contribute to the change we want to see in our world.

And then just a couple of weeks ago, Lily Martens from the WE community forwarded a mail informing us that Glenda Eoyang , founder of the HSD concept, would do a training in the UK. I was very interested in learning more about the theory behind What? So What? Now What? and other useful tools to manage complex change. So I subscribed to a 5-day course at Roffey Park, followed by four months of virtual learning and practicing HSD-models. Being enrolled in this course has definitely been my next wise action.

What am I taking with me so far?

Being part of a learning community and internalizing new input through a collective learning process is a truly beautiful experience. After participating in many online meetings, I enjoyed being in the same room with 13 other participants and 4 experienced HSD-practitioners. All with the desire to learn and unlearn, posing questions that brought everyone a step further in their personal learning experience. There were a lot of Aha-moments that shaped the vibe in the room, somewhere in this beautiful British landscape. And as the learning continues online until the end of this year, we are still in this process to help each other translate the theory into applicable methods for our real-life challenges, like improving the education system or creating more diversity at work.

Please contact if you want to find out more.