Tag: systems practice

TB872: The juggler isophor for systems practice

Posted on January 10, 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.

A person in the centre of the frame against a blurred background, juggling four brightly coloured, slightly squishy balls in red (labelled 'B'), green ('E'), yellow ('C'), and blue ('M').

An ‘isophor’ is different to a metaphor. Coined by Humberto Maturana, the idea is that instead of sparking the imagination, it focuses our attention:

The notion of metaphor invites understanding something by proposing an evocative image of a different process in a different domain (e.g., politics as war). With the metaphor you liberate the imagination of the listener by inviting him or her to go to a different domain and follow his or her emotioning. When I proposed the notion of isophor… I wanted it to refer to a proposition that takes you to another case of the same kind (in terms of relational dynamics) in another domain. So, with an isophor you would not liberate the imagination of the listener but you would focus his or her attention on the configuration of processes or relations that you want to grasp. In these circumstances, the fact that a juggler puts his or her attention on the locality of the movement of one ball as he or she plays with them, knowing how to move at every instant in relation to all the other balls, shows that the whole matrix of relations and movements of the constellation of balls is accessible to him or her all the time. So, juggling is an isophor of the vision that one must have of the operational-relational matrix in which something occurs to be able to honestly claim that one understands it. That is, juggling is an isophor of the vision that one wants to have to claim that one understands, for example, a biological or a cultural happening (such as effective system practice)
Maturana, H. quoted in Ison, R. (2017) Systems practice: how to act. London: Springer. p.61. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-7351-9.

So to summarise:

Metaphors — help us understand one thing by comparing it to something quite different (e.g. “politics is war”). Involve the use of imagination to think about things in a new way.
Isophors — compare two things that are similar in how they relate or work, but are in different areas. Focus our attention on understanding the patterns and relationships involved.

The example given in Chapter 4 of Ison’s book Systems Practice: How to Act is of a juggler who is juggling four balls:

The isophor of a juggler keeping the four balls in the air is a way to think about what I do when I try to be effective in my own practice. It matches with my experience: it takes concentration and skills to do it well. But all isophors, just like metaphors, conceal or obscure some features of experience, while calling other features to attention. The juggler isophor obscures that the four elements of effective practice are related. I cannot juggle them as if they were independent of each other. I can imagine them interacting with each other through gravitational attraction even when they are up in the air. Further, the juggler can juggle them differently, for example tossing the E ball with the left hand and the B ball with the right hand. These visualisations allow me to say that, in effective practice, the movements of the balls are not only interdependent but also dependent on my actions. Also, when juggling you really only touch one ball at a time, give it a suitable trajectory so that you will be able to return to it while you touch another ball. So it’s the way attention has to go among the various domains, a responsible moment of involvement that creates the conditions for continuance of practice.
Ison, R. ibid. p.60.

Those four balls, as illustrated in the image at the top of this post, are:

Being (B-ball): concerns the practitioner’s self-awareness and ethics. Involves understanding one’s background, experiences, and prejudices (so awareness of self in relation to the task and context is crucial).
Engaging (E-ball): concerns engaging with real-world situations. Involves the practitioner’s choices in orientation and approach, affecting how the situation is experienced.
Context (C-ball): concerns how systems practitioners contextualise specific approaches in real-world situations. Involves understanding the relationship between a systems approach and its application, going beyond merely choosing a method.
Managing (M-ball): concerns the overall performance of juggling and effecting desired change. Involves co-managing oneself and the situation, adapting over time to changes in the situation, approach, and the practitioner’s own development.

Thinking about the isophor of juggling in relation to my own life and practice is quite illuminating. It’s certainly relevant to parenting, where everything always seems to be a trade-off, but as I promised to focus mainly on professional situations in my reflections for this module, I’ll instead relate this to my work through WAO.

🔴 Being (B-ball)

At our co-op, we believe in living our values and in approaches such as nonviolent communication. Some of this is captured on this wiki page. As an individual member of WAO, I need to understand why I act (and interact) in a particular way in different contexts. This relates to my colleagues, clients, and members of networks of which I’m part.

We also need to think about the way that we as an organisation interact with one another and with other individuals and organisations. We’re interested in responsible and sustainable approaches, so ethics are particularly important to us. (A good example of this is the recent Substack drama.)

🟢 Engaging (E-ball)

There is always a choice in terms of how to engage with a situation, and every client is different. There are plenty of individual consultants and agencies who take a templated, one-size-fits-none approach to situations. But while we learn from our experiences and previous projects, we try to engage based on the specific context.

Client environments can be complex, as there are all kind of pressures and interactions of which we are not always aware. For example, a CEO being under pressure from their board, or an employee being at risk of redundancy can massively change their behaviour. Having tried and failed to change something previously can lead to cynicism or malaise.

Equally, finding the right ‘leverage points’ within an organisation or network can be incredibly fruitful. Success tends to breed success (in terms of validation) and changes most people’s conceptualisation of the situation.

🟡 Context (C-ball)

A lot of ‘systems thinking’ approaches that I see on LinkedIn are simply people taking templates and trying to apply them to a particular situation. While this is part of systems thinking, contextualisation means deploying one or more of a range of techniques.

Some of this involves crafting approaches which resonate with the client’s culture and objectives. For example, there are ‘messy’ clients, ones that thrive in a slightly chaotic environment. They prize relationships over things looking shiny. Conversely, there are those where every slide deck must look polished and interactions are more formal.

What I remind myself (and others that I work with) is that when we’re working for a client, we’re often working for their boss. That is to say, unless we’re working directly with the person who signs off the budget, we need to produce things that fit with how the person holding the purse strings sees the organisation. That perception can change over time, but it can’t be done immediately. Sometimes there has to be an element of smoke-and-mirrors to give space to get the real work done under the guise of something else.

🔵 Managing (M-ball)

Situations change over time. Particularly when working with longer-term clients, it’s important to take a moment and ensure that the strategies we’re using mesh with current realities. For example, as Heraclitus famously said, we can’t step into the same river twice. The way that I understand this enigmatic quotation is that this is because the river has changed and we have changed.

This is why retrospectives and planning sessions are important. Simply allowing a project to float along without them means that the dynamics of the project aren’t being addressed from either our side or the client side. This can include everything from increasing our day rates due to the cost of living going up, to the client pivoting their strategy and neglecting to tell us.

Sometimes, this might mean bringing in different skills, approaches, or expertise to the project. After all, meaningful and sustainable change doesn’t happen simply by doing the same things on repeat. To bring it back to parenting, we don’t treat kids the same way as teenagers as they are as toddlers.

This isophor of the juggler underpins a lot of the rest of Ison’s book, and will inform the next assessment I do as part of this module. So you’ll be coming across it again in future posts!

Image: DALL-E 3

TB872: Systems: epistemologies or ontologies?

Posted on January 3, 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.

As I’ve already written, Ray Ison includes his own ‘systems lineages’ diagram in his book Systems Thinking: How to Act. The version I included in that initial post, while colourful, didn’t include some important information that the greyscale version below does include:

This diagram visually organises various academic disciplines and influential thinkers into categories that feed into contemporary systems approaches. On the left, disciplines like Biology, Mathematics, Economics, and Philosophy funnel into General Systems Theory, Operations Research (OR), Interdisciplinary Studies, Complexity Sciences, and Cybernetics, shown in the center. These central streams then lead into specific contemporary cyber-systemic approaches on the right, such as Systems Analysis, Systems Dynamics, and Educational Cybernetics, among others. The diagram uses curved arrows to indicate the flow of influence from historical disciplines and theorists to modern practices, highlighting a web of interconnected knowledge across time and fields. — *Ison, R. (2017) Systems practice: how to act. London: Springer. p.32. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-7351-9.*

The important part for this post is on the far right hand side where the thinkers in the grey box are put on a spectrum from those who see systems as ‘epistemologies’ to those who see systems as ‘ontologies’.

These terms are familiar to me from my previous studies, but to situate them in terms of this module and course:

Systems as Epistemologies — epistemology refers to what we can know or understand about the world, including how we understand it. If systems are considered as epistemologies, then they are seen as conceptual tools or frameworks of understanding. This helps us construct knowledge and learn, interpret, and engage in the world. An epistemological approach helps us understand that how a system operates is shaped by our beliefs and perceptions, as well as the methods we use to acquire information.

Systems as Ontologies — ontology refers to the nature of being or the structure of ‘reality’. As I mentioned in a previous post about ‘projectification’, seeing systems as ontologies means that they are considered to be ‘real’ entities or phenomena that exist in the world. That is to say they are independent of our understanding or perception. An ontological approach assumes that reality is structured, and therefore can be modeled, analysed, and understood through study and observation.

As you can probably tell by the way that I wrote the above, I seem systems more as epistemologies than ontologies. That puts me more in alignment with thinkers towards the bottom of the grey box (Ulrich, Midgely) than the top (RAND Corporation, Mesarovic).

In practice, as STiP practitioners we probably need to move between these perspectives to help our approaches to problem-solving, decision-making, and the strategies we employ for managing change.

TB872: Systems, situations, and systemic praxis

Posted on December 29, 2023May 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.

11 years ago I gave a TEDx talk on digital literacies. Around the 12 minute mark, I mentioned that it’s useful to consider literacies as developing in terms of ‘progressive encoding’ rather than ‘sequential encoding’. This is a bit of a geeky analogy from the early days of internet when images could take a while to download.

In other words, as the slide below shows, the development of literacies happens by progressively adding detail to our understanding. It is not best developed through a course where (to use a gaming analogy) a ‘fog of war’ prevents you from knowing what comes next.

Slide showing two images of Hokusai's famous 'Great Wave' print. In the first, which is accompanied by a cross indicating it is incorrect, only the top of the wave can be seen. The rest has not been loaded.

In the second, the image has a check mark ('tick') next to it showing that it is correct. It is blurry, as it is loading 'progressively' - i.e. adding more detail as the image loads.

I mention this as at the start of Chapter 2 of Systems Practice: How to Act by Ray Ison, he talks about how people move from having a systemic sensibility, through to having a form of systems literacy, and then on to systems thinking in practice (STiP) capability. I see this spectrum as being similar to the holistic approach I was advocating for in that TEDx talk.

Engaging with Systems is perhaps like learning a new language — I could refer to it as learning ‘systems talking’, where ‘talking’ involves thinking and doing, i.e. practice. It is the sort of learning that can challenge our sense of identity. It is as if ‘systems talk’ is ‘talk that undermines the boundaries between our categories of things in the world, [and thus] undermines “us,” the stability of the kinds of beings we take ourselves to be.’
Ison, R. (2017) Systems practice: how to act. London: Springer. pp.19-20. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-7351-9.

If systems thinking is like learning a new language, then it can be challenging to talk using a new vocabulary and grammar to people who do not understand it. Ison gives words to something I’ve come up against in my work; it can seem ‘reasonable’ to want evidence and examples and proof but… the world doesn’t work like that?

Those who do not think systemically usually require explanations of what ‘it’ is and justification or evidence that ‘it works’ or that there is a ‘value proposition’ for engaging with it. There is also a tendency to require explanations of effectiveness in causal terms of the form: ‘using systems thinking can cause X to happen’ i.e., using a framework of linear causality in which a systemic view is lost because one cannot understand circularity by making it linear.
Ison, R. ibid. p.20.

I totally get having a ‘theory of change’ and working backwards from a desired future state. But to require evidence that a new approach will work, or that one that has worked elsewhere will work in a different context, is to essentially ask us to get out a crystal ball. As Ison notes, it’s an attempt to turn something holistic and systemic into something which is linear and systematic.

One of the things that a background in Philosophy allows you to do, I think, is to be more comfortable with ambiguity. Or it may be simply that my own studies have led to me being interested in, and therefore more comfortable with it. Either way, Ison believe ‘abandoning certainty’ to be a good way to provide the conditions to start thinking and acting systemically (Ison, ibid. p.21). He also talks about being ‘open to your circumstances’ which I’ve discussed elsewhere as cultivating a larger serendipity surface.

The interesting thing here is that, while the world (and especially the corporate world) is set up to remove emotion from our working environments as much as possible, abandoning certainty and being open to your circumstances requires an emotional response. To use a flamboyant metaphor: instead of trying to reduce us to a monochrome grey, it allows us to interact with one another’s rainbow colours.

I have a lot in common with what I’ve read of Ison’s work. For example, he refuses to give a definition of systems thinking or systems practice. In my doctoral thesis and subsequent ebook, I did likewise, calling for people to come up with their own definitions based on eight essential elements of digital literacies I identified.

In my experience definitions are constraining because (1) they are abstractions and thus a limited one dimensional snapshot of a complicated dynamic and (2) we do not appreciate how definitions blind us to what we do when we employ a definition.
Ison, R. ibid. p.22.

As a Pragmatist, I’m not so against definitions as Ison seems to be, as I think they can be ‘useful in the way of belief’ for a community of inquirers. In fact, I’d argue that the discussion that leads to the definition is what’s important. The trouble comes when a definition becomes what Richard Rorty would call a ‘dead metaphor’, no longer doing any work. That’s why we need to continually return to and reassess our assumptions, using the Sigmoid Curve.

To relate another concept of Ison’s to my own work, in a footnote on p.25 he quotes John Shotter (1993) as saying “why do we fell that our language works primarily by us using it accurately to represent and refer to things and states of affairs in the circumstances surrounding us, rather than by using it to influence each other’s and our own behaviour?” I see this as similar to my discussion of voodoo categorisation based on the work of Clay Shirky. We create a model that (we believe to) perfectly represent the world, says Shirky, then manipulate the model and are surprised when the world does not change as a result.

I don’t often read books in any way other than from start to finish, but Ison, as the author of this book, has instructed us to read this one in a bit of a topsy-turvy way. For example, I’ve already read Chapter 9, 10, and 13, and now I’m on Chapter 2.

As a result, I’ve come across concepts and phrases for which I haven’t had a clear definition. I was therefore pleased, to come across this explanation of the link between systems thinking and practice:

The terms systems thinking and systems practice are different ways of being in the same situation. This can be understood as a recursive dynamic much like the relationship between the chicken and egg — they are linked recursively and bring each other forth — speaking metaphorically they can be seen as mirror images of each other. Understood as a recursive dynamic systems thinking and practice can also be described as systems praxis — theory informed practical action.
Ison, R. ibid. p.30.

Doing systems thinking with systems practice is a bit like spending time coming up with a privacy policy and then not acting in a way which would be in accordance with it. In other words, it’s useful, but it’s not praxis; it makes little difference to the world.

Finally, as I come to the end of Chapter 2, what is the difference between a ‘situation’ and a ‘system’?

A situation is the context in which things happen. A real-world setting such as an office, or a family household, or a natural habitat. Situations are usually complex, messy, and characterised by both uncertainty and multiple perspectives. For example, the boss has a different perspective to the cleaner; the parent has a different perspective to the child; the biologist has a different perspective to the economist. Situations are the starting point for any STiP process.

A system, on the other hand, is a construct, a mental model used to make sense of some aspects of a situation. It’s an abstract representation which helps us understand the situation’s dynamics, for example by identifying patterns, structures, and behaviours that might not be immediately apparent. For example, a system might be a company’s project management system, or a family’s meal planning system (including recipes, shopping lists, cooking rota, budgets, etc.), or a wildlife monitoring and management system (including methods for tracking animal populations, habitats, the impact of human activities, conservation strategies, etc.)

So the situation represents the broader context with all its complexities and dynamics, while the system represents a more focused, structured approach to understanding and managing specific aspects of that situation.