Growing Wings On The Way: Systems Thinking for Messy Situations

You may be: • trying to fix the healthcare system in your country... • dealing with family break-up... • exploring change - and making it happen - in your organisation... • worrying about how to look after your elderly parents... In any case, you'll know that with some problems it's hard to know where to start - we can't define them, we get in a muddle thinking about them, we may try to ignore some aspect/s of them and - when we finally do something - they usually get worse. These problems are so entangled they become 'messy situations' and our first mistake is to try and fix them as we would fix a simple problem. But Systems Thinking offers a range of good ways of approaching these situations and unravelling them. Rosalind Armson is one of the world's foremost teachers and practitioners of Systems Thinking, and her remarkable book explains how these messes happen and what to do about them. Specifically, she sets out a series of sophisticated and challenging - but practical and easily learned - skills and techniques for thinking better when you're'in a mess'. Whether you're new to Systems Thinking or have long experience, the book invites you to develop your skills through working with your own messy situations. It's written for managers, project managers, team leaders, 'change leaders', strategists,policy makers and concerned citizens as well as university students from a broad set of disciplines. Organisations and readers in education, healthcare, environmental management, IT planning and social care are just a few of those likely to find it helpful.

Rosalind Armson is a systems practitioner, scholar and teacher, having worked for many years as Senior Lecturer in Systems at the Open University in Milton Keynes (UK). She has extensive experience of using systems ideas to support individuals and organisations facing complex and uncertain situations. She also supports students and others in learning Systems Thinking. Rose started her career as an engineer working in the power-plant construction industry. Her increasing concerns about nuclear-power policy led her to research energy policy at the Open University. She completed a PhD modelling the outcomes for various energy supply scenarios. She taught Engineering before moving to the Open University Systems Group. Rose and her colleagues designed and delivered Systems Thinking courses to thousands of Open University students. Her big motivation in teaching is students' excitement when they 'get it' and are able to see the world in a richer way. She has a long-standing interest in how our thinking both enables and limits the opportunities we can see and take. She has worked with individuals, organisations and institutions seeking to survive and thrive in a world that presents enormous challenges. She is an independent consultant using her systems-thinking skills to enable others to work out what to do and how to do it. This has brought her into contact with development agencies, banks, governments, businesses, health-care practitioners, the voluntary sector, ethical monitoring agencies, energy providers and many others facing radical change. She aims to 'leave the skills behind' at the end of each consultancy engagement by building managers' systems-thinking capability. Rose has delivered systems-thinking workshops in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UAE, and South Africa and in Europe. In her workshops, she draws on ideas, stories, images and her own extensive experience as a systems practitioner to provide lively and challenging learning experiences. Many of the ideas draw on the world-leading work of the UK Open University Systems Group.