In this capstone project class, you analyze a real-world case provided by N2Growth, a global firm that helps clients create a culture of leadership through practice areas like strategy, cultural transformation and organizational design. Based on the N2Growth case, you are expected to identify and diagnose organizational issues, select a senior leader and make recommendations in a culminating PowerPoint or Prezi presentation.
Systems Thinking Frame
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Culture-Driven Team Building Capstone
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从本节课中
Week 2
与讲师见面
Derek Newberry, Ph.D.Lecturer
Organizational Dynamics
Dr. Aviva LegattAffiliated Faculty
Organizational Dynamics
Well, I guess we've spent a lot of time talking about framing and reframing, and
I think that's been pretty clear.
But let's get back to that systems frame because that is a frame that we don't
always use.
I think it's available to us but we don't.
We all have our responsibilities, we all have our job,
the reason we're invited to the meeting to think about a particular set of issues.
And one of the most important thing for us,
is certainly represent that frame of mind, that point of view.
But it's also essential that we adopt and listen and take on other frames.
And systems thinking is all about that.
Systems thinking, as opposed to our analytical framing and
thinking that we're all taught in schools and rewarded for,
in terms of education and analytical thinking or analysis,
we take something and we take it into parts.
We try to understand the parts and
we assemble that into an understanding of the whole.
Well, and that works very well.
It certainly is something that children do, they take things apart and
try to figure out how they work.
And then, of course, they have trouble putting it back together, but
they're trying to figure it out, how it works.
Systems thinking asks us to do something else.
Rather than analysis first and breaking things into parts,
we want to take the thing to be explained and we want to see how that
is a part of a containing whole, a larger whole, a larger system.
Think of concentric circles, if you will.
Rather than break this into pieces, we want to understand how this
thing to be explained is part of something else, something larger.
There are some good examples of this.
I think if you were looking at an automobile and
you wanted to look at that automobile and
understand how it worked you could take it apart, break it into parts.
There's the chassis and there's the compartment where the people sit,
there's the drivetrain, there's the engine, there's the wheels, and the axles.
You can understand the functions of all those parts.
You can take that car apart, from now until eternity and
you will never figure out why it is the size it is,
why the size of vehicles has changed in the 1950s and
60s from six passenger vehicles to four passenger vehicles.
That has to do with the size of the families that people had,
who's being carried in the car.
That's seeing how the car,
as a transportation mode for, not an individual, but the family, and
you don't understand that by taking the car apart.
You only understand that by understanding the car's role in society and
who's using it.
So, there's clearly one example of a systems perspective and
how it makes sense to do that.
So, if you really want to understand the why questions then I think you need to do
this synthesis.
Take something to be explained, see it in it's containing whole.
Some of the work done by Russell Ackoff would always talk about the education
system.
Why do class schools and classes looked the way they do?
Why do they have one teacher and why do they have 20 to 25 to 30 students?
What's that all about?
Well, you can take it apart and you can understand how the education system works.
But understanding how the school system works in society or the university or
the college works in society, you'd have to use systems thinking.
What is this preparing them to do?
What is being taught?
What role does that play?
And perhaps we need to do a better job of that in terms of the educational system of
our country and other countries.
But this question of understanding the how things work versus why they work,
and what purpose they have.
When we want to get the purpose we need the system's thinking piece.
>> Those are great examples and makes me think of,
in organizations often of times there is a problem going on and
we try to figure out what it is in that division.
And it usually is connected to other things that are going on in
the organization.
So I think it's such an important reminder.
>> And it's just struck in hearing your response there as well.
When we do focus on the problems, we often times know what we don't like.
And if we work to get rid of what we don't want,
it's not necessarily the same thing as getting what you want.
So fixing the problems or removing the problems,
as opposed to really idealizing and understanding what it is we would do
if we could do anything we want sort of constraint free and
really thinking about possibilities, leads to different solutions.
And it's much the same with this positive framing that Ramia talked about earlier.
>> So, the question is, when I'm getting all the systemic components or
I'm looking at a whole, one of the fears that I have,
isn't that too much information to consider?
Wouldn't it lead to paralysis because I have so much to comprehend?
>> Well, I guess there's always that question of sort of overload.
But it's a different set of questions that we're asking.
And the important thing I think here is that if you're really trying to understand
purpose and possibility, that's a different space.
You'd need a different workspace to do that.
When we're trying to fine tune the production system, or the delivery
system of our products and services and make sure things are efficient,
that's production mode, that's what we do very well.
But in organizations, we also need this, I will call it, discovery space.
When it's not about solving problems or fixing things or
getting rid of problems but understanding possibilities,
formulating the problems in a way that involves different ways of thinking.
We need that five year in our meeting to talked about the playful ways to thinking
about things.
And the more we do that and expand our thinking using systems thinking the more
we can see possibilities that normally were obstructed from us.
We don't have the budget for that.
Back in the George Washington Bridge story, long ago-
>> I was just thinking of that, yes.
>> The maintenance department didn't have money to do those things.
That was beyond its budget so it's going to be constrained.
If we start thinking about the resources we have, then our designs are always going
to be constrained by real time, money, talent, issues.
But if we can open these things up and talk about possibilities,
then we can begin to set a goal or a purpose and plan backwards from that,
really begin to think about well, we may not be able to so
that all in one step but we have a target, and we can begin to approach that.
And we'll have, in a sense, more degrees of freedom,
more chance to accomplish that than if we just focus on our resource constraints.
>> That's interesting.
That would mean that we have many roots to the same solution and
not just one way or the highway.
Usually in a meeting it's like that, my way or the highway, if I'm the loudest.
>> Right, and as I'm listening to you,
we are talking about very important concepts here in systems thinking.
You're talking about analysis and synthesis, right.
As I was listening to you, Dana,
I thought of an example that came from work back at me.
So, I was working at this organization a couple of years earlier, and
there was a time when there were a lot of people leaving a particular group.
And more often than not, we were told that compensation was the problem.
People are leaving because they are not getting enough monetary compensation or
because of the competition from the market.
So analysis or an analytical way of thinking is to break down compensation and
think about what are the various components of compensation,
what's the take home, how can we better what we already have.
But a systemic or a synthetic thinking would be look at compensation from
the context of the largest system, as the context of the reward system available in
the organization not just this compensation,
but what are the various monetary and non-monetary rewards.
So that becomes my largest system.
And then they're on in the organization.
So when you start looking at it in the larger context, and in this particular
case, we discovered that it was not always the compensation that was the problem.
It was the way that employees perceive how they were recognized,
not just in monetary ways but also in non-monetary ways.
It can be training, just a pat on the back from your supervisor, periodic feedback.
So there were a lot of things that we were able to really identify and
reframe the problem than just looking at it as compensation as a main problem.
>> It's interesting you said that because Dana, I was discussing with you the other
day how when I as a coach and a consultant get called, and we had parallel notes,
that usually it's a person.
Fix the person and all the problems would go away.
>> Right.
>> This relates to how we began this class as well.
We wanted to emphasize and talk about the system rather than individualizing things.
So I think that's a good segue into wrapping up this first class.
>> Yeah, my last word on this is that, it comes across even the,
in the experiential exercise when we went out and
tried to look at something familiar through unfamiliar eyes.
I think the take home for me is that we often in our meetings and groups and
organizations end up with sort of win-lose struggles, zero-sum game.
Well, if I'm going to give more to you, where am I taking it away from?
And this win-lose game and
frame is something we oftentimes find ourselves enmeshed in.
Breaking that frame into win-win solutions,
that, yeah, we can do that and we can do this, if we reconceptualize this.
Systems thinking helps us to do that.
Reframing helps us to do that.
Win-win solutions are all about adopting that framework.
>> My takeaway, and then picking up the thread from you,
I loved how learned about the discovery frames.
I loved the stories that you shared.
I loved the way we were able to look at how different frames influences the way we
perceive a situation and we also think about a certain problem or a challenge.
So for me, a big part is the permission to myself to try on different frames,
experiment with it.
And as I experiment also be aware of the reactions I'm getting from
the environment.
So that's been my biggest take away from this discussion.
>> And when I think of it, as I reflect on how we started this discussion about
the module in the first place, I think in our very own small
way we are also going through that continuous learning phase in teams.
Because when we started designing this module, what did we do?
We broke it down into parts.
What are the parts that we need to cover in this module?
That's how our initial conversations were.
>> Absolutely.
>> And as we moved along, as we took these conversations to the next level,
all of the sudden you're not looking at the part.
You're looking at, okay so what's the overall message that we want to convey?
What are the things that we want to in there?
What's the bigger picture?
So for me, our discussions that are happening through our journey together
is like a mini subset of what we are talking about.
>> Real time. >> Embodying real time continuous learning
in our little team.
>> Absolutely.
