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Month: November 2023

Weeknote 45/2023

Posted on by Doug Belshaw
Plant with berries climbing over a brick wall

It’s not often I take a photo specifically to include with my weeknotes, but that’s what I did with the one above.

There’s a (presumably) ancient little lane that cuts through from where we’re currently renting to the road where we used to live. I’ve been going to and fro over the last week as we currently only have a parking permit for our old house. It’s been a pleasure to see those berries getting redder over the course of the last few days!

It’s been a busy week. This has been the first full one in the rental property, and I’m not entirely sure where everything is. Partly this is because we have so much stuff in boxes in the cellar, but it’s also because I’m not used to the layout of the new place.

Virgin Media have been laying full fibre both on our old street and where we’re currently living. I’m going to look into it, but my assumption is that we’ll need to take at least a 12 month contract. Given that we’re planning to be renting for only half of that time, we’ll either just have to take the hit in terms of cost of the full contract, or gamble that the place we move to means we can take the contract with us.

Right now, we’re using a 4G/5G router plugged into my mesh network. I was concerned that it wasn’t going to be good enough for Hannah and I to work from home on video calls as it seemed really slow on Monday morning. However, we discovered later in the day that our son had been downloading gigabytes worth of games to the PC we’re now allowing him in his bedroom. Once that situation had been rectified, everything is (kinda) fine.

On the work front, I’ve been:

  • Onboarding myself (via reading and user research interviews) to the Digital Credential Consortium (DCC) project we started recently.
  • Running an ORE community call, which included a breakout room for the Open Recognition Toolkit which we’re planning to get (a version) ready for ePIC 2023 next month.
  • Helping plan, and then participating in the third Community Conversations session that WAO ran in conjunction with Participate. This one covered the two loops model and convening systems.
  • Joining an onboarding call for WAO to potentially join Patio, a network of international tech cooperatives.
  • Having virtual coffees with a few different people. I always enjoy doing this, and my calendar is here.
  • Recording the sixth and final episode of Season 8 of The Tao of WAO podcast. The whole season has been focused on the future of media and information literacy, as part of a submission that Ian O’Byrne, Laura Hilliger, and I have made to a special edition of the Journal of Media Literacy (JML).
  • Participating in a Future Trends Forum session with Laura and Ian that was hosted by Bryan Alexander. This was a great conversation and you can find the recording here.
  • Meeting with Aamirah Patel and John Bevan to discuss ongoing community work we’re helping with, including a new discussion platform, for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance.
  • Scoping out new potential work with Badgecraft who have big plans for the next five years. More on that soon!

Despite carving out Wednesday and Friday morning to work on my MSc in Systems Thinking in Practice, I managed to work about the same number of hours as normal.

Moving onto my MSc, then, and I had a little bit of catching up to do as the rest of my cohort had got some stuff done last week while I was moving house. I not only managed to get caught up, but wrote blog posts about most of it. Working in the open is my default, and given that we’re meant to be doing this as reflective practitioners, it’s also encouraged.

I had a great tutorial on Monday night, and then worked in the library at Morpeth Leisure Centre on Wednesday and Friday. Going in my gym stuff meant I could go straight from studying to working out, which was great.

Here’s what I’ve been doing. The module number, TB872, is prepended to the title of each of these blog posts when you click through:

I’ve found it really interesting so far. Long may that continue!

Next week, I’ll be continuing with most of the work mentioned above. Hannah is away for work, meaning that I’ve got the kids by myself; they’re a lot easier to manage these days, though. My daughter’s got a County football match quite a distance away on Monday afternoon, so I’ll be finishing work early for that. I should be able to fit everything in, including Thought Shrapnel. Just.

TB872: The nature of change

Posted on by Doug Belshaw

Note: this is a post reflecting on one of the modules of my MSc in Systems Thinking in Practice. You can see all of the related posts in this category.

Image created by DALL-E 3 with prompt: "An abstract expressionist painting featuring a central fiery orb with chaotic, harmonious strokes radiating outward, illustrating the ripple effect of change in systems. Silhouette figures converge towards the core, navigating the complexities of change within STiP, capturing movement and transformation."

The last thing for me to do in Week 1 is to look at definitions of ‘change’. The activity weaves in a nice introduction to using the libraries resources and posting to the student forums.

The module guide emphasises the extent to which all learning involves change, but it is not given that all changes involve learning. Also, managing change is by definition social and situational:

For us, change is related to learning and development. Managing change can be conceptualised as learning. There is a strong relationship between learning and change. All learning involves change – in learners, in situations, and between the two. But change does not always involve learning. In this module we are concerned with change of a systemic and systematic nature – at the level of a whole system of interest or concern – not just with change in individual elements or processes of that system. We are also concerned primarily with human activity systems. One individual alone can rarely affect a situation that they are part of, in ways that bring about improvements. This is partly because of the unpredictable way in which human activity systems function, which cannot be anticipated, and partly because bringing about such improvements often requires collaboration or negotiation among individuals – interactions of a particular kind. There is always much that is not known as we begin a process of managing any situation. Managing change in the way it is expressed in this module is almost invariably a process of finding out through inquiry action – in an active, socially-embedded learning process.

Using Oxford Reference, the task is to look at definitions of ‘change’ across all of the dictionaries, and pull out those most relevant to Systems Thinking in Practice (STiP). There are a lot of definitions, with the most obvious demarcation being between ‘change’ as a verb and as a noun. For example, “technology and the internet have dramatically changed the way we communicate” uses ‘change’ as a verb, whereas “the change from a nomadic to an agricultural society” uses ‘change’ as a noun.

‘Change’ in the context of STiP is both verb-based and noun-based. That is because within Systems Thinking, we’re interested in both the organisation and the structure. The most relevant definitions are therefore:

  • Make (someone or something) different; alter or modify — STiP often involves understanding and implementing change within a system to alter outcomes or processes. It entails a strategic and informed approach to implementing change within a system to improve or correct outcomes and processes. This involves adjusting system components, dynamics, and interactions based on a thorough understanding of the system’s structure and functions, using data and models to guide changes and anticipate outcomes.
  • Replace (something) with something else, especially something of the same kind that is newer or better; substitute one thing for (another) — in the context of STiP, this definition can be directly related to the iterative process of improvement within systems. It suggests the replacement of a system component with a newer or more effective version to improve the overall functionality or efficiency of the system. This could involve updating technology, processes, or even organisational structures to better achieve the system’s goals.
  • An act or process through which something becomes different — This is at the core of STiP and focuses transformation process itself. Systems thinking is not just about the endpoint but also about understanding and managing the process of change. It involves seeing how parts of the system interact over time, leading to change, and how these changes affect the overall outcomes.

Reference:

Note: we’re advised to use Cite Them Right in Harvard style, but it’s a whole lot easier just to use zoterobib.

TB872: Institutions, structures, and power

Posted on by Doug Belshaw

Note: this is a post reflecting on one of the modules of my MSc in Systems Thinking in Practice. You can see all of the related posts in this category.

An image divided into two halves, each depicting the same forest but with different focuses. The left half illustrates the forest as a vibrant ecosystem, symbolizing the organisation, while the right half focuses on the physical layout of the forest, representing the structure. This image captures the idea of how an organisation maintains its essence despite changes in its structure.

One of the useful things about this module so far is the clarity around terminology. For example, take the following around the difference between ‘organisation’ and ‘structure’:

Many accounts say organisations are the product of acts of organising. This implies human agency and design. The term is, however, common in biology, thus reflecting what might be described as evolutionary ‘organising’ through drift and natural selection. We will say that organisations (the noun) are products of the action or process of organising, ordering, or putting into systemic form; the arrangement and coordination of parts into a systemic whole. Organisations thus contain processes, elements (often institutions) and structures.

Structures are not the same as organisations, as one can change without affecting the other, for example the cells in our body parts. While we live their organisation (the relations between the parts) is conserved. For example, in the post-COVID-19 world, have nation states begun to change organisations, structures, both or neither?

Organisations can pursue a purpose which might be understood as an emergent property of both relationships between elements (i.e. patterns of organisation) and elements, including institutions and structures. It is thus feasible, in theory at least, to agree some discernible purpose for organisations like a ministry, a finance department, a company, a mutual or the Roman Catholic Church. Many organisations, of course, lose track of their purpose or pursue purposes that may no longer be viable or useful to a society.

(adapted from Ison and Straw, 2020, as cited in the module guide)

I had a bit of a conversation with ChatGPT about this to think about different metaphors. Of the different options (music, theatre, gardens) I preferred the forest analogy, and asked it to create an image using DALL-E which I included at the top of this post. The left half of the image shows the forest as a vibrant ecosystem, symbolizing the organisation, while the right half focuses on the physical layout of the forest, representing the structure. The idea is that the image captures the idea of how an organisation maintains its essence despite changes in its structure.

Therefore:

  • Organisation can be thought of as the forest ecosystem as a whole, including all of the trees, plants, animals, as well as the interactions between them. Not only that, but the forest ecosystem as ‘organisation’ can be thought of as the overall system: its health, diversity, and functionality. The organisation/ecosystem’s balance and survival depend on these relationships and processes.
  • Structure is like the physical layout of the forest. Trees are planted, paths are laid out, and different areas of the forest are segmented (e.g. dense planting vs clearings). This ‘structure’ can change over time by new paths being made, areas cleared, or trees planted, without fundamentally altering the forest as an ecosystem. This is similar to how, in an organisation, the ‘structure’ refers to how various parts are arranged (e.g. departments, teams) which can change without altering the core purpose and identity of the organisation.

The module guide suggests that systems thinkers need to understand whether they’re trying to change the organisation or the structure (and whether it’s structure or organisation that is getting in the way of change). For me, this is really interesting, as ‘organisational structure’ usually conflates these two aspects.

New leadership in a company or institution with a hierarchical approach usually leads to changes in structure, when actually perhaps what they need is a change in organisation. Lots to think about here.

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