New events in 2005

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... We live in a period of unprecedented connectivity. Processes of change affect all aspects of our lives - from globalisation to modernisation and personal transformation. We experience both possibility and deep unease. Within this context many commentators claim that we need to be more systemic, yet the activities of the SPMC network have revealed little awareness of the role that systems thinking and practice might play, nor the benefits that might accrue. Many people are not even aware of their own capacities to think and act systemically.

This three-day event was the culmination of nearly three years of work within the SPMC network. SPMC comprises individuals involved in managing from the private, public, and not-for profit or NGO sectors - and practising consultants. This conference was designed for anyone concerned with using systems thinking and practice for managing change and complexity.

Participants could choose to attend any or all of the following days:

15th July - 'Introducing different Systems traditions' - workshops that could stand alone or be a preparation for day 2.
16th July - 'Making sense of systems practice for managing change' -a series of presentations by international scholars and practitioners on conference themes
17th July - 'Advancing your systems practice' - a day for experienced practitioners to work with systems luminaries.

Conference themes

We have shown that Systems practice is a 'silent practice' for most of those people whomake use of it. That is, the systems thinking which underpins their actions is not made explicit with clients (by consultants) or those involved in managing in everyday contexts. This leads to a paradox. STSP (systems thinking, systems practice) is claimed to be an effective form of practice (for managing complexity) yet it has no way of building institutional capital so long as it remains a silent practice. In this conference we explored the extent that this is a failure of communication - or more specifically our communication about communication.

Within the network we have exposed difficulties in building a community of conversation for practice around STSP from scratch. We have learned that one of the best ways to start is to build on participants' own experience. But this raises deeper theoretical and practical issues related to our ways of 'knowing' - our epistemologies: outdated conceptions of 'control' abound in the UK modernisation arena, for example. There is also no evolving praxis for 'joined up thinking and acting' or enacting the 'third way'. Can systems practice play this role? Presentations made in the network have suggested that the purpose of systems practice is to undertake a process of systemic inquiry which shifts peoples ''mental furniture' but how can we foster epistemic communities of conversation? These are themes that were addressed during days two and three..

Tuesday 15th July - Introducing different Systems traditions - both for newcomers to systems practice and those wanting to brush up their systems skills

This first day was intended for those who want to know more about systems practice. It was designed to serve as a stand alone introduction to systems thinking and practice - , but could also be used as a day of preparation for those who wanted to attend the main conference on day two but were not sure they had the relevant background knowledge or experience. Participants on day one were sent pre-readings to help them to make the most of the sessions. The Workshops were introduced with a presentation by Ray Ison (pdf).

The titles of the workshops were:

• An introduction to Soft Systems methodology (pdf)
• The Open University approach to Systems
• The Natural Step - a systems approach to managing sustainability (pdf)
• Tools for Information Systems Development (pdf)
• Viable systems (pdf)
• Critical Systems Approaches (pdf)

Wednesday 16th July -Presentations: Making sense of systems practice for managing change

This series of presentations led by international scholars and practitioners was as follows:

• Opening plenary (pdf)
• Professor Richard Bawden (ppt)
• Professor Klaus Krippendorff (pdf)
• Tom Bentley (director of DEMOS) (pdf)
• Final plenary (pdf)

Thursday 17th July - Advancing your systems practice

The opportunity for experienced systems practitioners to take part in a specialist workshop with one of three experienced Systems scholars, Klaus Krippendorff, Richard Bawden and Peter Checkland.

Main speakers

Klaus Krippendorff PhD
is the Gregory Bateson Term Professor for Cybernetics, Language, and Culture at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication. He has published widely on cybernetics and systems theory, on methodology in the social sciences, and on human communication theory. Among his books are Information Theory, Content Analysis (translated into Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and Hungarian), A Dictionary of Cybernetics, Communication and Control in Society (Ed.), and The Analysis of Communication Content (Co. Ed.). He initiated work on "Product Semantics" as a new approach to industrial design centred on meanings. Recent publications have focused on second-order cybernetics, constructivist epistemology, theory of conversation and discourse, critical (emancipatory) theory, and on how social reality is constructed in human communication.

He has been consulting with various scholarly projects and business applications of content analysis. He furnished the ideas of computer-aided text analysis software, and created a reliability statistic, known as Krippendorff alpha. As a designer, he has collaborated in the development of future scenarios of technical and social systems. Current concerns include exploring ways that language participates in the social construction of reality, the construction of selves, others, various institutions, and particularly of future worlds.

Prof Richard Bawden AM PhD FRSA
Richard Bawden has experiences working with the strategic development of organizations and communities that extend over more than two decades. For much of that time he was a Senior Academic and Administrator at the University of Western Sydney in Australia. During this period he led a series of initiatives concerned with the innovative integration of experiential learning with systems theories, philosophies and practices. The essential focus of this work was on the inter-relationships between the learning capabilities of individuals and the systemic developmental strategies of the organizations, institutions and communities with which they were involved.

He was appointed foundation Professor of Systemic Development at the University of Western Sydney, and in 1995, as the foundation Director of the Centre for Systemic Development at the same institution. In 1999, he was appointed Visiting Distinguished University Professor at Michigan State University in the USA. He has also been a consultant to strategic development projects in more than a dozen countries across five continents working with such international development agencies as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the United Nations Development Fund, UNESCO, and the Ford and Kellogg Development Foundations. Richard is also a director of the Global Business Network (Australia).

In 2000 Professor Bawden was appointed to Membership of the Order of Australia (AM) in recognition of his work nationally, in that country, and internationally.

Peter Checkland
Peter Checkland is Professor Emeritus in the School of Management at the University of Lancaster. He is known internationally for his development over a 30 year period of Soft Systems Methodology which is increasingly used as an approach in Information Systems development and other domains where purposeful action is planned. Peter came to academia after 15 years in industry firstly as an industrial chemist and then as a manager of a 100-strong R&D group in ICI.

Tom Bentley
Tom Bentley has been Director of Demos since 1999. A former adviser to David Blunkett MP - then Secretary of State for Education - he writes and speaks on a range of subjects including democracy, education, institutional change and innovation. He has been described as 'one of Britain's leading policy entrepreneurs', and as 'among the most intelligent critics of New Labour' by the London Evening Standard.

His recent publications include Letting go: complexity, individualism and the left (Renewal, 2002), Monarchies (ed. Demos, 2002), The Moral Universe (ed. Demos, 2002), It's democracy stupid (Demos, 2001), The Creative Age: knowledge and skills for a new economy (Demos, 1999), The Real Deal: what young people really think about government, politics and social exclusion (Demos, 1999) and Learning beyond the classroom: education for a changing world (Routledge, 1998), described as 'one of the key education books of the decade' by the Times Educational Supplement.

He was born and educated in East London and studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at the University of Oxford. He is a trustee of the Roundhouse and the Community Action Network, and chairs the steering group of the Centres for Curiosity and Imagination project.