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These briefing papers are offered as a resource to people who are interested in the history of a concept, concepts that have been adopted within the vocabulary of health care organisations. They are straightforward and informative rather than brief and easy. They are more likely to be of interest to those teaching or consulting in these areas than to health care practitioners. The first two briefing papers are on Systems Thinking and on Organisational Learning. Briefing Paper One: Systems thinkingThis briefing paper gives: the origins of systems thinking, a definition of systems thinking and of a system, the history of systems thinking and its major tenets, some of the major systems approaches, problems with systems thinking, insights afforded by systems thinking, and references. Origins Systems thinking originated in the 1920s within several disciplines, notably biology and engineering, out of the observation that there were many aspects which scientific analysis could not explore. Whereas the scientific method (summarised by Popper as the three Rs: reduction, repeatability and refutation) increases our knowledge and understanding by breaking things down into their constituent parts and exploring the properties of these parts, systems thinking explores the properties which exist once the parts have been combined into a whole. The expectation of the systems thinkers of the 40s and 50s was that the scientific method would one day have two components: analytical thinking and systems thinking. What is Systems Thinking? Its essence is seeing inter-relationships rather than linear cause-and-effect chains, and in seeing processes of change rather than snapshots (Senge). Systems thinking is a way of interpreting the universe as a series of interconnected and inter-related wholes. It is a way of identifying the inherent organisation within a complex situation and has been called organised complexity. Systems thinkers contrast dynamic complexity (the relationships between things) with detail complexity (details about things). It is an approach, a set of general principles and specific tools and techniques, rather than a subject area in its own right; it can be applied within many different fields and is therefore described as a meta-discipline. What is a system? A system is a set of elements, connected together, which form a whole; this showing properties which are properties of the whole rather than of its component parts.(Checkland,). There are four fundamental types of systems: The last is seen as crucially different from the former three (Checkland) in that while the others can be described objectively and can be no other than they are human activity systems are understood differently by the various ‘human actors’ involved in them, who attribute different meanings to what they perceive. As long as each is logically consistent it is valid for the person making it and is therefore not right or wrong. Here objectivity has been described (Ackoff) as the social product of the open interaction of a wide variety of individual subjectivities. History Aristotle noted that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts but this concept became lost in the revolution in the scientific approach spearheaded by Newton in the 17th century. In the 1920s biologists noted organised complexity in the organisms they were studying. They observed a hierarchy of levels of organisation, each more complex than the one below it, with properties that emerge only at that level and do not exist (or have any meaning) at lower levels (Broad 1923, Smuts 1924 cited in Checkland). Von Bertalanffy, in 1940, distinguished between open and closed systems; closed being completely autonomous and having no relationship with their environment; open exchanging with their environment materials, energy, and information. Closed systems are only to be found in the designed abstract class of systems, almost all of the systems that are of concern to health care professionals and managers will be open ones. Also in the ’40s, Wiener and Bigelow, drawing on principles from control engineering and control theory and on their way to developing the field of cybernetics, realised the importance and ubiquity of feedback ; activity within a system is the result of the influence of one element on another, that influence being called feedback. They identified positive and negative feedback; positive has since been called amplifying or reinforcing feedback and negative has been termed balancing feedback. An example of positive/amplifying feedback could be the interaction of two new work colleagues. I behave in a an open and pleasant way towards you and you respond in a similar fashion. I become more open and begin to share work with you, and soon we are collaborating in a constructive way. If I had started by treating you with a distant smile and keeping all my thoughts to myself you would have chosen to cultivate a different colleague and my behaviour would have become more and more distant. For an example of negative/balancing feedback look at any kind of thermostat, man made or biological. In the ’50s a group of individuals from different fields came together to found the Society for the Advancement of General Systems Theory, and systems thinking became an academic subject, amassing a body of knowledge, an academic status, and the usual subdivision due to specialisation, Systems Engineering developed in the 1950s, aimed at designing or changing (so that sense of engineering) systems. Originally the province of engineers working with designed physical systems, it soon became applied to human activity systems also. The process of systems engineering involves:
At about the same time Systems Analysis was developed by the RanD Corporation in the States, drawing on the Operational Research expertise that had blossomed in military settings in WW2. This was at root a form of cost-benefit analysis and requires:
Both of these methods assume that there is an important class of real world problems that can be formulated as: There is a desired state S1 and a current state S0, and alternative ways of getting from S0 to S1. In other words it is assumed that the objective of the system is a given and that the role of the systems analyst or engineer is to work out how it can best be achieved. (Checkland) When these methods were applied in social systems (for example to the public sector in the state of California in the early 1960s) the results were disappointing. These methods, which all required the naming of the system and a defining of its objectives (Checkland), and in which the engineer or analyst stands outside the system intervening in it to try and reach a desired end, became known as Hard Systems. During the 1970s, with the influential work of Ackoff, there became an increasing realisation that in human activity systems the system often cannot be ‘named’ convincingly, and that its objectives are frequently multiple and often conflicting. Ackoff introduced the term mess into the management science of the time: a puzzle is a conundrum to which there is an answer if you can only find it He suggested that much of management is about dealing with messes. In the 1980s Checkland developed a methodology for working with Soft Systems, those where the problem does not lend itself to being quantified; in complex problem situations, messy, ill-defined, ill structured, not independent of people and where there may be no agreement about appropriate objectives (Daellenbach). During the 1970s and 1980s much attention was paid to the modelling of systems, sometimes applying the notation developed in hard systems to soft systems, sometimes generating new ways of describing complex relationships. They all involve the following processes:
At the same period attention was paid to formulating the mess, in which the modelling of the system was only the first of three phases. Phase two is a mapping exercise in which the large number of factors obstructing achievement of the purpose of the system are categorised into a small number of classes. Phase three is ‘telling the story’ (Pourdehnad 1992) and involves ‘telling a believable and compelling story that reveals the undesirable future implicit in the current state… and leads to a desire for change’. System Design also originated in the 1970s and has been developed further since. It is based on the observation (e.g. by Churchman, 1971) that the best way to learn a system is to design it. The process requires that it be assumed that the system to be redesigned has been destroyed overnight, but everything in its environment remains the same. The challenge is to design it from scratch such that:
In the 1980s and 1990s systems thinking was popularised (i.e. made more accessible to practising managers and others) largely by Peter Senge of MIT. It was incorporated into a wider field of study about individual and organisational learning, heavily influenced by the work of Chris Argyris and David Bohm. One of the major contributions of this work has been the identification of systems archetypes i.e. influence patterns that can be found in many different systems. The two most widely known of these are the Limits to Growth archetype, and the Shifting the Burden archetype. They are well described in The Fifth Discipline. More recently still the combination of using large group interventions with applying some of the insights of systems thinking has led to a field of activity known as Whole Systems. In the UK Plamping, Pratt and Gordon have worked with Whole Systems principles in intractable problems that involve health and health care. The systems they have explored involve many stakeholders, e.g. health and other statutory agencies, users, communities and voluntary organisations. Along the way the term whole systems has become misapplied, and is now commonly used instead of the term system-wide.This is a loss, as the richness of the original usage is often not understood or used. Problems with Systems Thinking The development of Chaos Theory has demonstrated that the early systems thinkers were over ambitious in their belief that the dynamics of a system could be completely analysed. We now know that complex, dynamic systems can be extremely sensitive to initial starting conditions, (the butterfly wing over the pacific), and we realise that a such a system is unlikely to yield to analysis in this way. This does not mean that systems thinking is no longer useful, nor that it has been superseded by complexity theory. Systems thinking is a crucial component of complexity theory and many of the insights that are now labelled ‘complexity’ are classic systems concepts. Indeed since we are usually trying to consider how to intervene in a system ( a human activity system) rather than to define it with complete accuracy, the insights afforded by soft systems thinking are often as useful as any. Insights afforded by Systems Thinking.
References Ackoff RL, 1970 Redesigning the Future. A Systems Approach to Societal Problems. New York, Wiley. Briefing Paper Two: Organisational Learning and Learning OrganisationsAgain this is a lengthy account likely to be of greater interest to those teaching and consulting in this field than to health care practitioners. For a shorter more succinct account please see case study three of Developing Change Management Skills. Organisational learning (OL) is a term introduced in the 1970s by Chris Argyris and Donald Schön. It draws on, among others, John Dewey’s Experience and Education (1938), one of the most influential texts on adult education, and Kurt Lewin’s (1946) development of action research. It is an academic field of study with a solid research base. The Learning Organisation is a term that derives in part from OL, and includes a wide range of practical approaches advocated by consultants and practitioners, drawing on the fields of sociotechnical systems; organisational strategy; production; economic development; systems dynamics; human resources; and organisational culture. These approaches do not have the same rigour of research associated with them as do the core concepts of OL. The three central concepts of OL:
Theory of action and theory-in-use Argyris and Schön (1996) observed that within an organisational context individuals tend to promote one set of behaviours, and use another set. In explaining this disparity, Argyris and Schön defined two kinds of theory of action: espoused theories and theories-in-use. A theory of action has the following generic format: In situation S, if you want to achieve outcome O do activity A. A theory of action includes the values we attribute to O that make us see it as desirable, as well as causal assumptions we bring that lead us to believe that A will lead to O. Argyris and Schön suggest that we use espoused theories to explain or justify our actions. In practice, however, and especially when there is any risk of embarrassment or threat, we use a theory-in-use which is at variance with the espoused one. Model I and Model II Almost everyone participating in Argyris and Schön’s original research, when at risk of embarrassment or threat, could be seen as having adopted a theory-in-use that Argyris and Schön term Model I. This is a form of behaviours learnt early on in life and which is supported by a set of virtues widely held within society and within organisations. These virtues include:
Behaviours associated with Model I include:
We apply Model I automatically because we become skilled at it from an early age. Because we are skilled at it, and the better at it we become the more averse to learning we are, Argyris and Schön call this skilled incompetence. If we are operating in Model I and are asked why we behaved in such-and-such a way, we tend to justify our actions by referring to our good intentions: the desire not to hurt other people’s feelings, the wish to advocate a position in accord with our values, and so on. If probed more deeply we will blame the situation we are in on other people, attributing to them negative attributes and motives, for example, their inability to handle the truth or readiness to play political games. Although hidden from us, the disparity between our theories-in-use and our theories of action tend to be apparent to those we interact with. Do they draw our attention to this? Generally speaking, no. This is because they too have adopted a Model I theory-in-use: they too wish to avoid hurting our feelings and want us to save face. They in turn attribute to us an inability to handle honest feedback or a lack of willingness to work cooperatively with them. In this situation both participants engage in what Argyris and Schön call bypass and cover up. Moreover, they make the bypass undiscussable, and they make that undiscussability itself undiscussable. This set of activities is known as an organisational defensive routine (ODR). Because ODRs are pervasive, individuals tend either not to notice them or to feel powerless to change them. They can see that they inhibit organisational effectiveness, yet challenging them requires the courage to risk making the situation more uncomfortable. Unchallenged ODRs lead to further fancy footwork, as Argyris and Schön call it, as people get to know the ‘way we do things round here’ and find ways around this. This in turn leads to what they call a state of organisational malaise whose general symptoms include hopelessness, cynicism, distancing and blaming others. Specific symptoms are:
The following overall sequence: skilled incompetence, ODRs of bypass and cover up,fancy footwork, organisational malaise, mediocre performance is called an organisational defensive pattern (ODP), and the reasoning at its heart is known as defensive reasoning. Argyris and Schön contrast this with productive reasoning, a way of thinking and talking which enables us to test the validity of our own and others’ theories. To engage in productive reasoning we need to adopt a new theory-in-use, called Model II. Model II is not the converse of Model I, since we still need to be able to draw on the behaviours and virtues of Model I. We simply need to choose more judiciously and awarely when to use or be guided by them. As with Model I, there is a set of corresponding virtues that support Model II behaviours:
Model II behaviours include:
To be able to implement Model II we usually need to slow down our reasoning and increase our capacity for analysis and reflection, otherwise we unwittingly revert to Model I. One way of doing this is to use the approach introduced by Argyris and Schön, known as the Left hand column. Think of a work situation you are concerned about. Think of a conversation you either have had, or would like to have, with a colleague or someone else involved in that situation – someone you perceive as contributing to the problem. Divide a piece of paper into two columns. In the right hand column write down what you actually said or did (or would like to say and do). In the left hand column write all the things you would be thinking in response to what the other person was (or would be) saying. Review the left hand column entries to see how often you fell into Model I thinking. For example, consider asking yourself the following questions:
Model II leads us to be able to reason productively rather than defensively and to:
Single loop and double loop learning Sometimes the kind of learning that is needed in an organisation, as discovered through an organisational inquiry, is simple. If something has gone wrong and we put it right that is single loop learning . If we look deeper we may find that what went wrong did so because of the way systems were designed, and if we change the systems we can prevent it happening again, and this is double loop learning . If we reflect further still, about what prevented us from seeing that the systems needed changing, before something went wrong, we call this deutero learning. A Model I theory-in-use is often appropriate where single loop learning will suffice. But for double loop learning Model II is necessary. A learning organisation is one in which there is a lot of double loop and deutero learning going on at individual and organisational level. The view of Learning Organisation practitioners from the field of Organisational Learning Argyris argues that most advice from academic researchers, management consultants and executive development programmes, including those advising on Learning Organisations reinforces ODRs, and indeed that these advisors are often guilty of defensive routines themselves. In order to minimise the risk of advisors exacerbating the situation he suggests that if advice is to be implementable it must have three essential parts:
He points out that even when people know what they should do there are often situations in which they are unable to and suggests that everyone is warned that ‘it is unlikely that you will be able to produce this advice when you are dealing with issues that contain components of embarrassment or threat. You are likely to be unaware of this fact while you are implementing this advice. Or if you are aware you will tend to blame factors other than yourself’. The Learning Organisation As we have seen, the Learning Organisation (LO) is a term often used to encompass a variety of approaches. These include the Learning Company (Pedler et al., 1991), ‘learning systems’ (Nevis et al., 1995) and ‘learning organisations’ (plural) (Davies and Nutly, 2000). One aim these approaches have in common is to show how organisations should be designed and managed to promote effective learning. Several approaches build upon the work of Argyris and Schön discussed above as well as other, related concepts such as ‘defensive’ and ‘offensive’ adjustment (Hedberg, 1981). As well as texts that address specifically the learning organisation there are many that take a holistic approach to the design of organisations and these can be just as useful in considering how to promote learning. The seven S framework, for example, introduced by Tom Peters et al, can be used for just this purpose. Perhaps the most widely known of the books on Learning Organisations is Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline (1990). Senge draws on the work of Argyris and Schön as well as the work of Jay Forrester and other systems scientists. In it he describes a LO as one ‘where people continually expand their capacities to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together’. Senge suggests that learning is a journey which has no final destination; learning is never-ending and it is the journey of discovery itself which counts. Moreover, the more we learn, the more we become aware of our ignorance. He also asserts that the ability to learn faster than competitors may be the ‘only sustainable competitive advantage’ . However, he does not explain why this would be any more sustainable than other competitive advantages that involve new disciplines or technologies, and the overall tone of his work is inspirational and optimistic, in contrast to the more measured and sceptical tone of Argyris and Schön. For instance, Argyris and Schön point out that Model II theory-in-use is an ideal and have conceded that they are unaware of any organisation that has fully implemented a double loop learning system. A similar caveat needs to be given with claims made for LOs. For practising managers, therefore, Senge’s messages are likely to prove valuable when combined with a thorough understanding of the work of Argyris and Schön. Senge lists five disciplines which he suggests will lead to the kind of LO defined above. These are: Systems thinking – seeing processes rather than events, wholes rather than parts, dynamic rather than detail complexity Personal mastery – the discipline of personal growth and learning, continually striving to clarify what is important, to be clear aboutthe vision we are aiming for, and at the same time being ruthlessly clear about the current reality Mental models – the tacit models we use to interpret and interact with the world. This directly refers to Argyris and Schön’s Model I theory-in-use, skilled incompetence and ODRs Shared vision – the vision that encompasses the personal visions of all those working within the organisation Team learning – the process of aligning the personal visions and developing the capacity of the team to work together to achieve the results they are after. Here Senge promotes the virtues of Model II. Key messages arising out of the five disciplines include: Systems thinking Personal mastery People with a high sense of personal mastery, says Senge, have a clear purpose, see current reality as an ally, feel connected to others and never arrive on their learning-in-progress journey. They see failure as an opportunity for learning, for example, about inaccurate pictures of reality, strategies which did not yield the results expected, and clarity of vision. They do not see failure as a sign of unworthiness or powerlessness. Above all, people with high personal mastery have a commitment to truth, to reality, to really understanding situations, including their own behaviour. Mental models To challenge mental models Senge draws on Argyris and Schön to recommend the use of the left hand column exercise referred to above and the ladder of inference, to recognise leaps of abstraction which often lead us to jump from initial data to the wrong conclusions. He similarly describes using reflection and inquiry skills to identify ODRs. Shared vision Senge indicates that without a shared vision it is not possible to have a learning organisation. This claim is probably aspirational. Visions of the people at the top of organisations are, he says, usually just that, they may not be shared except at the top. Senge argues that to foster a learning climate in which individuals are encouraged to have personal visions means not imposing one top down. He also suggests that there must be a shared appreciation of the current reality, and of the gap between the vision and the reality and the work needed to reduce the gap. Team learning Team learning is a process of aligning the individual within the team and developing the capacity of the team to achieve the results it is seeking. To facilitate team learning Senge advocates distinguishing between dialogue and discussion, and moving awarely from one to the other to explore different topics. His description of dialogue coincides with Argyris and Schön’s Model II. He also describes it as being a free, creative exploration of complex and subtle issues which involves deep listening, suspending one’s own views, being aware of one’s own thinking processes and of others’. Discussion is the presenting of views and defending them in a search for the best argument. This will usually be appropriate for more straightforward issues. Unless the decision to use one rather than the other is explicit, Senge suggests, the result will be an ineffective amalgam. Dialogue, he observes, will probably always need the involvement of a facilitator of some sort. Introducing organisational learning Argyris and Schon have found that defensive routines are alterable, indeed that given a commitment to change these defensive routines then change can be made relatively easily. Furthermore this change of this kind is realistic and not utopian. They suggest that it is not necessary to think in terms of massive change programmes – that you can start small, especially if you start at the top. Also that you don’t need advisors who are highly skilled in changing defensive routines before they start, they can learn as they go along. They do say that people aiming to tackle these defensive routines should be able to:
They will be able to be effective before they are completely skilled themselves, if they work with a professional who is more skilled than they are in a ‘supervisory’ (as in clinical supervision) capacity. Argyris’ methods for teaching Model two all involve action and he suggests that this is why there is no forgetting curve, why people who have become familiar, through practice, with Model two will continue to use it in the same way that people who have learned to can always ride a bicycle. A programme for encouraging organisational learning As people’s theories-in-use are tacit, hidden from the person using them, they cannot be ascertained by interview or reflection, they can only be constructed through observation. Therefore, the first step is observation by a skilled outsider, able to draw up a map of the theories-in-use, the values that seem to be governing them, the action strategies that people are adopting, and the consequences of these. Often there are first-, second- and third-order consequences (the first set lead to the second and so on). This map is then fed back to the participants who then discuss all the elements and the feedback and feed-through processes within it, with the observer and each other. The aim of the discussion is that everyone agrees that these ODRs exist, and that they want to tackle them. According to Argyris and Schön people most usually do recognise ODRs, and are keen to address something they have felt powerless to change. They stress that this ‘aha’ is not sufficient, that skilled incompetence is so great, and the interventions below are necessary. These can be thought of as four main phases, as follows.
The work can then be expanded to the rest of the organisation in a similar way. If an organisation is serious about doing so, Argyris and Schön report some success with thedevelopment of a cadre of internal change agents and educators who foster a particular expertise in working with Model II thinking, in addition to their day jobs. References Chris Argyris and Donald Schon, Organisational Learning II, Theory, Method and Practice, 1996, Addison Wesley OD series |
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