I recently finished an awesome book called “The Essentials of Theory U” which drew its inspiration from systems thinking and advocates that the leverage point of systemic change within the system starts by getting leaders to develop mechanisms to co-sense the system and use the sense-making results to co-create the future to the present. It argues that unless our perception of the system changes and translates into transformative actions, the system will reinforce the existing behaviour thus “imprisoning” the leaders within.
Here are some extracts from the book that I thought really tease out this essence of applying systems thinking to drive transformative change in the system …
“Organisation works the way human beings create them.
Yet people inside the system thinks that it is the system that causes the problem.
It is always something external. Something that imposes itself on them.
The reality may be that thoughts create organisation and then organisation holds human beings prisoners.
It is like what the quantum physicist David Bohm used to say “Thoughts create the world and then said “I didn’t do it””
To me, here is what the essence of systems thinking is about … people begin to consciously discover and account for how their own patterns of thoughts and interactions manifest on a large scale and create the very forces by which the organisation is doing it to them. And then they complete that feedback loop.
The most profound thing I experienced about consulting is when people suddenly said to themselves that holy cow look at what we are doing to ourselves or given the way we operate no wonder we can’t win. What is always significant for me is the we. Not you, not them but we.
A true system philosophy closes the feedback loop between human beings, their experiences of reality and their sense of participation in the whole cycle of awareness and enactment.
At its core, the essence of systems thinking is to help people to close the feedback loop between the enactment of the system at the behaviour level and the source (human consciousness) at the level of awareness and thought.”
The holiday is coming …
I want to wish each and every one of my learners a happy holiday! 🌻🥳
I also want to take this opportunity to thank every one of you for being a part of my life journey of learning and for your willingness to listen to and exchange thoughts with me after my sharing. Your interactions with me have been most enriching to me as an educator. 🙇🏻♂️
May you continue to find deep fulfilment through the cycle of learning and may your coddiwompling through life be a joyous and purposeful one in 2025.
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