#SysPrac26 – Day 1
About 10 days ago, I discovered that SCiO's annual conference was happening this week down in Cranfield. After checking that I had air cover from my better half, I booked my place and so I find myself down here after a ~4 hour drive from Northumberland.
I'm so glad I did. To be honest, I feared a male, pale, stale academic conference but thankfully it's far from that. Despite what you can see in the photos I took, it's much more diverse than I expected, and there's a wonderful mix of public and private sectors, academic and "non-academic".
Having suffered university catering on a number of occasions, I'm delighted to say that not only was it very easy for me as a vegetarian and annatto-avoider, but it was really tasty. The cakes were 👌
The opening panel discussion was entitled "from nothing to something" and featured three panellists. The organisers, keen to ensure an egalitarian vibe, not only eschewed keynotes, but also put out a couple of chairs for those who felt that they had something to add to the panel.
I would have put good money on no-one coming forward, but I was wrong! Several people did, and their contributions were valuable. The community is both intellectual and emotionally intelligent, which is a rare combination. Not since my teaching days have I come across such a group of people who are so enthusiastic about their subject and welcoming to newcomers.
One of the additions to the panel, Louis Klein, gave some advice from his 20 years of experience:
- Learn one systems model really well so that you know both what it can do, but also its limits. He likened this to martial arts.
- Successful management and successful leadership is always systemic, even practitioners don't use the language of systems thinking.
After that opening panel discussion to a plenary audience, I chose two sessions. The first was De-Misting Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH) with Tony Korycki, who I came across as part of my postgraduate studies. I mentioned CSH recently in a post where I was pondering consequentialist approaches, and it's a great approach to use in conjunction with the Viable System Model (VSM) which I used to model FIELD STATION recently.
Tony made lots of great points and I tried to scribble some notes down. Something which he mentioned which was emphasised in the later session I attended was the difference between purposeful and purposive systems. I've got a blog post about this in my archive.
What I like about CSH is that, like VSM, you can use it both as a diagnostic as a planning tool. In other words, you can use it to shine a light on what the current system is doing, and then what it should do. The difficulty, of course, is in reconciling the gap.
As well as CSH, Tony used a bit of Strategic Options and Development Analysis (SODA), against something I have a blog post about in my archive. I wasn't the biggest fan of SODA when I was studying, but I can see how it could be used effectively in addition to CSH.
In fact, combining methodologies was very much a theme of the day, with the second session I chose run by Simon McCormac and Patrick Hoverstadt entitled simply Multi-Methodology. Before giving the tables an exercise to test the flexibility of our systems thinking muscles, each took it in turn to go through the theory and practice of using multiple methodologies in practice.
I drew a few diagrams based on the slides, so I should come back to this note and add either images from the slides when they're shared, or a tidied up version of my feeble efforts.
Patrick discussed combining approach can happen in four ways:
- Sequential (i.e. A after B)
- Complementary (A alongside B)
- Nesting (model A within B)
- Overlays (A enriches B)
I also captured something that Patrick mentioned in passing that must be a phrase that Simon uses often:
Putting things in categories is itself a category error.
I like that.
Knowing my own energy levels and limits, having been sociable since 08:30, I bailed on the last session and went back to my room, got changed, went for a walk in the sunshine (see photo below), and then wrote this. I'm looking forward to heading to the conference dinner later.
