You will be able to identify barriers to working together effectively across agencies and disciplines and ways to overcome them You will be able to describe and apply some basic concepts from systemic thinking in your work You will experience and be able to implement a group consultation method based on reflective enquiry

The problem is an evolving set of interlocking issues and constraints – there is no definitive statement of the problem There are many stakeholders and this makes the problem solving process fundamentally complex – getting the right answer may be less important than having stakeholders accept the emerging solution Constraints on the solution – limited resources, political ramifications, change over time Since there is no definitive problem there can be no definitive solution Conklin and Weil (1997) Wicked Problems: Naming the pain in organisations

Change is constant and stakeholders need to be adaptable and flexible – the notion of moving from one stable state to another as a result of planned change is seen as inherently flawed. Complex adaptive systems exist at ‘the edge of chaos’ (Langton 1989) where uncertainty and insufficient agreement can obscure the choice of the next step though there is not so much disagreement and uncertainty that the system is thrown into chaos. Here is potential for spontaneous self organisation and innovation. Langton (1989) Artificial Life: Studies in the Science of Complexity Vol. 6 Redwood City, CA: Addison Wesley

Context InputsOutputs Context Work – activity within a boundary

Purpose is more than a goal or objective. It’s the reason why a team or other system exists. Purpose is a systemic concept. It can only be understood with respect to a group or institution’s active engagement with its context. Purpose describes the final outcome of the process through which that active engagement takes place.

A team, group or organisation which fails to satisfactorily define and pursue its primary task or purpose (and coherently communicate this in an ongoing way) will experience: conflict internally and/or externally possible atrophy possible dismemberment and/or the emergence of some other primary task / anti task

An analysis of the discrepancies between what people State they are doing (formal message to the outside world) Say and believe they are doing (and experience on the ground) Are doing (and may well be unaware of) can be illustrative and highlight why there might be difficulties in communications between different team members within teams or between teams and between agencies.

If purpose is poorly defined, confused or multiple – staff will be confused as to what they have to do, and may feel inadequate, guilty, negligent, seek to blame one another or feel blamed. Task completion maybe impossible, leading to reduced job satisfaction and frustration There is likely to be role conflict and a competition between roles and ideas. People will tend to relate through relationships and not roles/role relatedness – differences will become personalised.

Organisations have both a manifest conscious life and latent unconscious life The conscious life of a team could be considered to be the way it rationally chooses to manage its primary task, set goals and objectives, the structures and mechanisms it puts in place to achieve these and the management of its boundaries to achieve this end and both survive and develop. Reed & Armstrong (1998) have called this ‘purposive systems thinking’.

The same authors also identify ‘containing systems thinking’ which takes into account the fact that any human system involves people, their beliefs, values, fears, relationships, habits, rituals, unconscious motivations. These are more or less visibly incorporated into the system of a team or organisation from its outset.

Social systems and defences against anxiety relate to the way in which individuals, groups of individuals and professional groups use the culture, social structure, working practices and boundaries of any given group or organisation in a defensive way to ward off anxiety.

Social defences at work frequently create a distorted relationship and distorted communications between the group and its wider environment, that is its service users or clients and other agencies These systematic distortions relieve the group of some of its anxiety. The ‘outside’ is scape-goated or devalued in order to preserve the ‘inside’ from anxiety

“Conflict is one of the most exciting free resources that exist in any team. Conflict occurs naturally; we do not have to do anything to get it; it is present wherever human beings interact and try to reach agreement as to how they can collectively move forward with a task. This means we need to re-frame the way we think about conflict, to stop seeing it as something to be avoided and to embrace it as an untapped resource waiting to be harnessed. Conflict can then be understood as something which is representative of the differences that people express in their belief about the most appropriate way forward in a particular situation. It challenges individuals to remain curious rather than being angry because someone holds a different view”. Irvine and Catchpole (2004): Grubb Institute and YoungMinds

What is the dominant throughput, what is the core technology & what is the primary task? What is the intended or desired different state of the material we/I am working on? How do I, the group, the team, the dept., the organisation intend to bring this about? How does our/my way of working relate to the task? If it does not what am I/we behaving as if we are doing – the ‘as if task’.

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