Recently I caught up with Andrew Gaines - a practitioner who supports creative processes and psychotherapy beyond the standard options outlined in the graph above.
Andrew suggests, perhaps the most influential book on systems thinking is Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline. He shows how to model positive and negative feedback loops. His approach has a bit of a technical feel, but management consultants are enthusiastic about it.
Learn more about Peter here and about The Fifth Discipline here
Donella Meadows is another great figure in the world of systems thinking. I have attached an excellent article on places to intervene in a system.
Download the article here
Andrew takes systems thinking as meaning working out how things fit together - moving beyond silo thinking and seeing relevant patterns of connection. All astute practitioners do this, at least intuitively if not analytically. It enables them to identify root causes of problems, and to come up with highly effective points of intervention, some of which may be quite unexpected.
Andrew has been doing applied systems thinking for about 30 years as a Feldenkrais practitioner and psychotherapist. The goal is not just analysis, but improvement. He finds this gives really different insights into social and responsible change that produces effective results...
Andrew breaks down the methods he has for teaching natural systems thinking.
Graphically mapping the system
This approach is very different than making a mind map, because it is functional. We map how a given system works operationally. E.g. this influences that, this flows into that sort of thing. Developing a common map creates a shared context for thinking about strategy and tactics. We no longer have to play the equivalent of mental chess with other people's ideas (which most people and groups do incredibly poorly); we get the key ideas visibly on the board in a systemic context.
Mapping the system with bottle caps
This approach does the same thing as graphically mapping the system, but it is a bit more flexible. We let bottle caps of different sorts represent our goal, the key players, the obstacles, the resources… and we can play around with them on the table. Leadership consultant Peter Rennie likes this approach and taught Andrew.
Metaphors
Most people's thinking is fragmented. But all living plants and animals, as well as well-designed human artefacts, are integrated. Andrew has a way of teaching people how to generate metaphors that enable them to see the situation in an integrated way.
Feldenkrais
Skilled body use is integrated. When we see it, we call it graceful. This is the equivalent of elegance in computer programming and mathematics. Feldenkrais group lessons (Awareness Through Movement), done on the floor a la yoga, enable people to sense how different parts of the body are connected in movement. When they get off the floor they always feel better - lighter, more aware, more alive.
Andrew believes that doing Feldenkrais ATM lessons produce a kind of neurological template for systems thinking, so that the mind tends to look for patterns of connection, and is not satisfied with silver bullet single solution explanations. The world is complex; doing Feldenkrais lessons increases our ability to integrate the complexity.
Teaching an advanced Tai Chi push
Andrew teaches a group how to do advanced Tai Chi push in about 45 minutes using the Feldenkrais approach. Ordinarily it takes people two years to discover how to do this through traditional practice. He starts the learning by giving the group a test - pushing your partner backwards without effort while they resist - and observing how each person organises their body. Specifically, Andrew is looking for how they make it hard for themselves.
Then Andrew helps them discover the specific thing(s) they need to know (different for each person) in order to accomplish the push with ease.
Effectiveness depends on two things: proper body organisation, and using your senses to connect with your partner. The idea of "connecting" in this way is brand-new to most people; it is the secret that makes this martial arts technique work. Andrew shows its application to ordinary life by teaching the mnemonic RELAX > CONNECT > EXPRESS.
In workshops Andrew often ask participants if they have an interpersonal situation where they would like to be able to communicate more effectively. We role-play the situation; Andrew takes the role of the person they are talking to. He quickly identifies what they are doing that doesn't work, and draw their attention to this. When he ask what could you do differently the person often gets a faraway look in their eyes - a sign of brain scanning - and then comes up with an application of the RELAX > CONNECT > EXPRESS principles that works for them. Andrew does not coach them as to what the solution will be - that comes from inside them - and he is often quite surprised by what they do.
Some people have made remarkable applications.
- "I now speak up in our staff meetings, instead of playing the mediation."
- "I listened before fighting."
- "I went home and made the most tender love to my wife that I had in 15 years."
- "I lift my child (who has cerebral palsy) with far greater ease."
There are some more general, and important, takeaways here.
- Often, the difficulty we experience is the result of the way we organise ourselves; it is not just due to the resistance of the outside world.
- If we can discover how we can contribute to a problem, we can work out what to change to make things work better for is.
- This is a kind of natural systems analysis; we can apply it to organisation as well as to our own thinking and behaviour.
- If we understand how somebody else thinks, we may be able to help them improve their thinking as well.
Creative thinking skills
Andrew developed a series of improvisation games that get people out of silo thinking. The point of the games is to teach playful thinking skills that he observes innovators use. By playing the games you develop the skills. The skills become integrated into your neurological repertoire with no conscious thought required, and can be used spontaneously in other situations. These are in his book Creative Conversations - Where ideas spark fresh ideas and exciting new insights emerge - see here.
The improvisation games, because they require close attention and collaboration, are also an approach to teaching partnership/relating skills - the psychological foundation, Andrew believes, of evolving a healthy society.
A mental framework for whole system change
One final aspect of systems thinking. Today the relevant system for all businesses extends beyond the company gates, supply chains, customers and competitors. It includes the near-term and long-term implications of global warming. The Black Saturday bushfires and recent shift in rainfall patterns from South Australia to the Southern Ocean are evident symptoms of climate change. Less recognised is that with the Arctic Ocean now releasing methane from formerly frozen deep gas hydrates, we are now - at our current temperature - at the beginning of uncontrollable self escalated global warming.
View an article here
Since this methane has just begun accumulating the atmosphere (much of it dissolves before it breaks the surface), we may yet have time to put the stopper back in the bottle by going on an emergency program to both reduce CO2 emissions and withdrawal CO2 from the atmosphere. There are advanced techniques of organic farming that can contribute substantially to this.
Arctic methane release, along with soil depletion, reducing fish stocks and so forth, is the 'system' that business and all of us must come to terms with. If this system packs in - its current trajectory - then the conditions of business itself no longer apply, just as they did not apply when the Roman Empire unravelled.
So Andrew's final systems offering is an approach to helping senior business people develop a mental framework for making sense of the big picture, so that they can position themselves responsibly.
Conclusion
Andrew presumes that committing to the healthy whole system change we need for things to come right will have positive effects on senior leaders’ own psychology, as well as that of their staff. Will it support the bottom line? Usually we fare far better by proactively anticipating change than by denying it and being surprised.
Systems thinking, expanding what we take account of, being more accurate and realistic in our perceptions, creativity and innovation -are all interrelated. In terms of our larger agenda of evolving an ecologically sustainable and socially healthy society, any training in this area is simultaneously a contribution to healthy social evolution.
To make contact with Andrew contact us
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