Applied SustainabilityClass 8: Systems & Org Learning

P. Brian Fisher

Spring 2013

RE-AMP’s Collective Network – Key Principles to Systems Problem Solving

1. Understand the System you are trying to change

2. Involve Diversity of stakeholders

3. Design Network (not an organization) and invest in collective infrastructure

4. Cultivate Leadership at many levels

5. Create multiple ops to connect and communicate

6. Remain Adaptive and Emergent committed to long-term vision

Chapter 3

: why

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ems work

so

well

Thinking in

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Functionality of Systems Highly functional systems: resilience, self-organization, or hierarchy

Resilience: measure of a system’s ability to survive and persist within a variable environment Ability to bounce back or elasticity arises from a rich structure of many feedback loops that can work in different ways to restore a system even after a large perturbation.

Self-Organization: capacity for a system to create its own structure feedback loops that can learn, create, design, and evolve ever more complex restorative structures.

Hierarchy: In the process of creating new structures and increasing complexity, one thing that a self-organizing system often generates is hierarchy a set of subsystems that aggregate into larger systems

Systems need to be managed not only for productivity or stability, they also need to be managed for resilience.

Like resilience, self-organization is often sacrificed for purposes of short-term productivity and stability.

Leverage Points to Change System

So, how do we change the structure of systems to produce more of what we want and less of that which is undesirable? where in the system can we create a small change that can lead to a large shift in the system?

Leverage Points = Points of Power

12. Numbers—Constants and parameters such as subsidies, taxes, standards Meadows.

11. Buffers—The sizes of stabilizing stocks relative to their flows

10. Stock-and-Flow Structures—Physical systems and their nodes of intersection

9. Delays—The lengths of time relative to the rates of system changes

8. Balancing Feedback Loops—The strength of the feedbacks relative to the impacts they are trying to correct.

7. Reinforcing Feedback Loops—The strength of the gain of driving loops

6. Information Flows—The structure of who does and does not have access to information

5. Rules—Incentives, punishments, constraints

4. Self-Organization—The power to add, change, or evolve system structure

3. Goals—The purpose or function of the system

2. Paradigms—The mind-set out of which the system—its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters—arises

1. Transcending Paradigms – No paradigm is “true” keep unattached “let go into not-knowing, into what Buddhists call enlightenment

**The higher the leverage point, the more the system will resist changing it—that’s why societies often rub out truly enlightened beings.

Living in a world of Systems “Self-organizing, nonlinear, feedback systems are inherently

unpredictable. They are not controllable. They are understandable only in the most general way. The goal of foreseeing the future exactly and preparing for it perfectly is unrealizable. The idea of making a complex system do just what you want it to do can be achieved only temporarily, at best. We can never fully understand our world, not in the way our reductionist science has led us to expect. Our science itself, from quantum theory to the mathematics of chaos, leads us into irreducible uncertainty. For any objective other than the most trivial, we can’t optimize; we don’t even know what to optimize. We can’t keep track of everything. We can’t find a proper, sustainable relationship to nature, each other, or the institutions we create, if we try to do it from the role of the omniscient conqueror.”

Insights from Systems thinking 1. Systems thinking often leads to more questions than answers

2. We need a different sort of “doing.” The future can’t be predicted, but it can be envisioned and brought lovingly into being. Systems can’t be controlled, but they can be designed and redesigned.

3. Before you disturb a system, watch how it behaves – Get the Beat of the System

4. Expose your Mental Models and Assumptions (for others to examine) make rigorous systems models

5. Honor, Respect, and Distribute Information Info is power Need more complete, timely and accurate information

6. Use Language with Care and Enrich It with Systems Concepts Avoid language pollution, while expanding our language to handle complexity

7. Pay Attention to What Is Important, Not Just What Is Quantifiable Set goals around what’s important, not measureable

8. Make Feedback Policies for Feedback Systems best policies not only contain feedback loops, but meta-feedback loops—loops that alter, correct, and expand loops

9. Go for the Good of the Whole Don’t maximize parts or subsystems aim: to enhance total systems properties, such as growth, stability, diversity, resilience, and sustainability

Insights (con’t) 10. Listen to the Wisdom of the System encourage the forces and structures that help the system

run itself.

11. Locate Responsibility in the System looking for the ways the system creates its own behavior

12. Stay Humble— Stay a Learner Don’t charge forward with unbending directives need to learn primarily through trial and error “error-embracing” enhances learning

13. Celebrate Complexity universe is messy. It is nonlinear, turbulent, and dynamic Celebrate and embrace this

14. Expand Time Horizons Phenomena at different time-scales are nested within each other. Actions taken now have some immediate effects and some that radiate out for decades to come

15. Defy the Disciplines Follow systems, and it will definitely cross traditional disciplines more than interdisciplinary

16. Expand the Boundary of Caring The real system is interconnected. No part of the human race is separate either from other human beings or from the global ecosystem

17. Don’t Erode the Goal of Goodness “drift to low performance” is the process by which modern industrial culture has eroded the goal of morality

Fifth DisciplinePeter Senge

Core of Book: Fifth DisciplineSystems thinking to transform orgs into “learning

organizations” Good orgs are ALWAYS learning

Good managers are always thinking of the “big picture” (and the relationships)

The five disciplines represent approaches (theories and methods) for developing three core learning capabilities: fostering aspiration, developing reflective conversation, and understanding complexity

5 Core Capabilities

1. Personal Mastery: continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively (p7)

2. Mental Modes: deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures of images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action (p8)

3. Shared Vision: practice of unearthing shared pictures of the future that foster genuine commitment and enrollment rather than compliance (P9)

4. Team Learning: dialogue, the capacity of members of a team to suspend assumptions and enter into genuine thinking together (p10)

5. Systems Thinking: The Fifth Discipline that integrates the other 4

Bringing it together "Systems thinking also needs the disciplines of building shared

vision, mental models, team learning, and personal mastery to realize its potential. Building shared vision fosters a commitment to the long term. Mental models focus on the openness needed to unearth shortcomings in our present ways of seeing the world. Team learning develops the skills of groups of people to look for the larger picture beyond individual perspectives. And personal mastery fosters the personal motivation to continually learn how our actions affect our world." (p. 12)

The “Lever” A learning org is a place where people are continually discovering how they create their reality; and how they change it.

Metanoia – A Shift of Mind “a fundamental shift”

“Real learning get to the heart of what it means to be human. Through learning we recreate ourselves. Through learning we become able to do something we never were able to do. Through learning we re-perceive the world and our relationship to it. Through learning we extend our capacity to create, to be part of the generative process of life” (p13-4)

“learning organization” is therefore “an org that is continually expanding its capacity to create its future.”

Learning org = adaptive learning + generative learning

Putting ideas into PRACTICE

Learning Disabilities1. I am my position: People fail to recognize their purpose as a part of the enterprise. Instead, they see

themselves as an inconsequential part of a system over which they have little influence, leading them to limit themselves to the jobs they must perform at their own positions. This makes it hard to pinpoint the reason an enterprise is failing, with so many hidden 'loose screws' around.

2. The enemy out there: propensity to blame someone or something outside ourselves. This disability makes it almost impossible to detect the leverage we have on problems that straddle the boundary between us and "out there.”

3. The Illusion of Taking Charge: All too often, proactiveness is reactiveness in disguise. Whether in business or politics, if we simply become more aggressive fighting the "enemy out there," we are reacting -- regardless of what we call it. True proactiveness comes from seeing how we contribute to our own problems. It is a product of our way of thinking, not our emotional state.

4. The Fixation of Events: Focusing on events distract us from seeing the longer-term patterns of change that lie behind the event and from understanding the cause of those patterns. The tendency to see things as results of short-term events undermines our ability to see things on a grander scale…the biggest threats we face are rarely sudden events, but slow, gradual processes, such as environmental changes.

5. Boiling Frog: We are adept at responding to sudden changes in our environment. We are terrible at assessing slow, gradual changes, even when they threaten our survival.

6. The Delusion of Learning from Experience: Practice makes permanent, rather than perfect

7. The Myth of the Management Team: silos and self interest dominate and team breaks down under pressure

Beer GameSimulation of beer distrib from a factory to customers through

distrib, wholesaler and retailer

Ex of non-systemic form of thinking that many orgs use

Highlights the importance of understanding interrelationships in companies to understand big picture

Cause and effect are not always closely related in time and space

Prisoners of the Systems 1. Structure (key interrelationships) influences behavior

When placed in the same system, people, however different, tend to produce similar results

2. Structure in Human Systems is Subtle Not external constraints on the indiv—BUT rather in complex

living systems, it means the basic interrelationships that control behavior HOW people make decisions (or op procedures) where we translate perceptions, goals, rules and norms into action.

3. Leverage often comes from New Ways of Thinking People often miss leverage because they focus on themselves

not on how their decision affects others.

11 Laws of the Fifth Discipline1. Today's problems come from yesterday's "solutions."2. The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back.3. Behavior grows better before it grows worse.4. The easy way out usually leads back in.5. The cure can be worse than the disease.6. Faster is slower.7. Cause and effect are not closely related in time and space.8. Small changes can produce big results...but the areas of highest

leverage are often the least obvious.9. You can have your cake and eat it too—but not at once 10. Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants.11. There is no blame

** The cure lies in your relationship to your enemy

A Shift in Mind (ch 5) Systems thinking is the fifth discipline

Way to see things holistically and gives living systems their unique character

Cornerstone of how learning orgs think

Means any reciprocal flow of thinking

Every influence is BOTH cause and effect

Starts with feedback and builds to learning to recognize types of “structures”

We see things as linear, as opposed to systems—which is cyclical

Personal Mastery (ch 8)Orgs learn through people who learn

Involves living life through “creative” viewpt rather than a reactive one

Requires continual clarification of our own “personal vision” (what we want) and learning to see our current reality more clearly

Total development of people leads to employee personal success

Happy, fulfilled, innovative employees lead to corp success

People with high levels of personal mastery are more committed, take more initiative and have a deeper sense of responsibility

Shared Vision (ch 10)Shared visions are not an idea, but a Q asking “what do

we want to create?”

Vital for learning orgs to provide focus and energy

Can’t learn without them

Both intrinsic and extrinsic. Extrinsic: focus on achieving something relating to outside Intrinsic: focus on uplifting a person’s aspirations

Team Learning

Process of aligning and developing capacity of a team to create the results its members desire

Alignment is necessary condition before empowerment

3 critical elements of Team LearningThink insightfully about complex issuesNeed for innovative coordinated actionRole of team members on other teams

Leaders and Citizens (ch 15/16)

Producing change necessary to creating a learning org requires true leadership

Need creative tension mutual appreciation that one is capable of obtaining a vision regardless of difference Leaders as designers Leaders as teachers Leaders as stewards

Citizens: Every org lies within a larger system Network of mutuality Learning to ID systems we have formed, which in turn impact us Social and environmental awareness

conclusion

“nature is not made of parts within wholes. It is made of wholes within wholes”

Continuous improvement and learning

To do this, shed our traditional way of thinking

The 5 disciplines will maximize the potential of any org