situation of interest – Open Thinkering

TB871: Nominating an area of practice

Posted on May 17, 2024May 17, 2024 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.

In my last post, I realised that I might be quite interested in focusing on library provision as my area of practice. The module materials give the following guidance:

interest – the area must invite your own personal interest, which may usefully be an existing or aspiring professional area of practice, but may alternatively be an area of more general interest

practice – the area must have an associated central element of practical change, signalled by an adverb associated with some practical activity such as control, regulation, management or reduction

scope – don’t deﬁne an area of practice too narrowly (perhaps use ‘immigration control’ rather than ‘checking passports’), and try to include different hierarchical levels (the practice may have local, national or international ramiﬁcations, or may include elements of policy planning, management planning and operational planning)

perspectives – the area of practice should invite different viewpoints and associated meanings

uncertainty – there should be signiﬁcant possibilities of unforeseen change.

(Open University, 2020)

I have a personal interest due to using the library (I am right now!) and improving use of the library is a management issue. The scope is sufficiently wide, I think, even though I’m tempted only to focus on my local library. There are different perspectives on this issue, as evidenced by the group I was part of that dealt with the problem in the workshop earlier this week. And there is plenty of uncertainty with cuts to council budgets, changing demographics, and an upcoming General Election.

Term	Example	Definition
Area of Practice	Library Provision	Generalised role or area of responsibility, identifying generic types of concerns in library services.
Situation of Interest	Current concerns about use of public libraries in Northumberland	More specific area of concern, situation or event that is perceived by someone as calling for some kind of intervention.
System of Interest	System to increase uptake of libraries in Northumberland	Particular arrangement of activities associated with a situation designed to achieve a particular purpose of boosting library usage.

I’m going to share this idea in the student forums (Activity 1.14) along with the diagram below which I created with Whimsical with a bit of help by prompting GPT-4 (Activity 1.15).

Concept map detailing aspects of Northumberland Library Services, with branches discussing key interrelationships, contrasting perspectives, and possible tensions related to technology, funding, community engagement, and digital versus traditional services.

Given a bit more time, which I’ll probably spend when we get to the first assessment, I could spend some time linking and renaming things. But I think this is enough to go on for now.

References

The Open University (2020) ‘1.3.4 Nominating an area of practice’, TB872 Block 1 Systems and Strategy [Online]. Available at https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=2261477&section=4.4 (Accessed 17 May 2024).

TB872: Rich picture for my systemic inquiry (S1)

Posted on January 5, 2024May 1, 2024 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.

Rich picture showing past, present, and anticipated future STiP

I managed to double my workload for this activity, after not reading the instructions properly 🤦

See my previous post for a description of rich pictures. This one represents my past, present, and anticipated future systems thinking in practice (STiP).

The section to the top-left entitled ‘Past’ shows my tendency to think that everything had a ‘solution’ and that it was my job to find the right jigsaw piece. However, as the saying goes, when all you’ve got is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Other people (colleagues, etc.) are looking on while I try and show what I know and can do. I’m trying to fix things.

The middle section entitled ‘Present’ shows my current ability to reflect on my past as well as look to the future, hence the Janus-like figure. The thought bubble shows me and others looking at a situation through different lenses, which are reflected by the different ‘blob’ islands we’re standing on. Notice that we’re not talking to each other very much. I still like to think that my way is the best way, and see trying to understand a situation properly as a personal challenge.

The section to the bottom-right entitled ‘Future’ shows my anticipated new superpower to be talking to other people about their traditions of practice, frameworks, and methodologies. I’m within the dotted circle being part of the conversation, coming to a shared agreement about the approach to use with a given situation. But I’m also outside the situation, reflecting on what’s happening.

Finally, I’ve included ‘progress’ and ‘regression’ arrows because, as I’ve found with all kinds of things in my life, just because I make progress, doesn’t mean that I can’t regress back to a previous approach.