Systems Thinking Clinics

Leading change effectively across complex systems is both an art and a science. It requires a mix of sensitive listening and (small p) political and leadership skills, and a strong appreciation of how systems work: what makes them tick, what changes their performance and behaviour, and how to make logical sense of what you are seeing when you investigate and change them.

We have commissioned a series of system working clinics for people who are leading or directly involved in change which extends across more than one organisational boundary.

The clinics will be led by two highly experienced systems practitioners with a breadth of experience in understanding and improving systems, and in developing critical system working skills in others.

The clinics’ focus and topics will be shaped by the participants’ situations; the tutors will explore these with you, and will bring to life relevant principles, methods, tools, tactics and tips for:

• Setting up a system intervention;
• Working productively with differing views;
• Sifting ‘signal’ from ‘noise’ in the system, and knowing what to pay attention to;
• Overcoming resistance – from the system and the people within it;
• Making meaningful change happen;
• Predicting and preventing ‘unintended consequences’;
• Gathering evidence and measuring performance;
• Reaching agreement and moving forward as a system, in collaboration with others.

The clinics will be run along the lines of an action learning session.  As such they are limited to 6 participants. Each of the participants will have an opportunity to present their issue/ challenge /area of work and explore with the system experts new approaches, solutions, tips and advice about how to proceed to make their change programme work more effectively. All the participants in the clinic will benefit from exploring their own issues and also listening to the issues and dialogue about other system challenges.

Please email  [email protected]  if you would like to clarify any details about these clinics.

Please only book if you are confident that you can attend; we need all six participants for the clinic to be an effective learning environment.

Prior to the session, you will be asked to complete a short pre-course reflection to inform the content of the clinic. This piece of work should take no longer than 30 minutes.