Systems Thinking Frame

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Del curso dictado por University of Pennsylvania

Creating a Team Culture of Continuous Learning

54 calificaciones

University of Pennsylvania

Creating a Team Culture of Continuous Learning

54 calificaciones

Curso 4 de 5 en SpecializationCulture-Driven Team Building

There is mounting concern that organizational groups and teams often fail to learn from their past experiences. It’s pertinent to address this issue as groups and teams are often the main ways that work gets done in organizations. In this course, we examine the main reasons that groups and teams are often ineffective, which include: • The lack of organizational structures and support for teams and groups • The lack of understanding and emphasis on learning • Misaligned reward structures So, what can be done to create an enabling learning culture in teams? This course emphasizes practical and impactful ways to begin to address this state of affairs. Through the use of stories, scenarios with actors simulating different team issues, examples and dialogue, you learn how to: • Understand teams in their larger organizational context • Diagnose the learning strengths and barriers to learning on teams • Identify ways to develop a team and group that continually learns and impacts the larger organization positively • Create an organizational environment that encourages learning and innovation

De la lección

Week 1: Introduction to Framing & Systems Thinking

Thank you for joining us. In this module you will learn to step back and re-frame your point of view, and apply systems thinking in everyday situations in order to help your team to be creative and innovative. Our goal is to enable you to learn through real-life stories, practical scenarios illustrated by actors, on-going conversations, suggested readings and links rather than lectures and instructions. So, come join us at the table, bring your own experiences with you, and be part of the conversation! Check out this NY Times story before you begin: (https://www.nytimes.com/video/business/100000004807604/the-power-of-outsiders.html?smid=fb-share) This story illustrates many of the important points of this course: the importance of thinking about the whole system, the value of including different, outside perspectives (not just experts), and - even when you and your team come up with a breakthrough idea - accepting that it is a difficult challenge to spread the idea and make change happen.

Meet the team and learn more about this course5:35

Framing, Reframing & Systems Thinking - The Story of George Washington Bridge13:11

Frames - Defined and Illustrated3:43

Scenario - Computer Manufacturing Company4:59

Debrief - Scenario8:08

Strength Based Approaches to Organizations5:05

Debrief - Experiential Activity10:38

Systems Thinking Frame12:26

Next Module - Focus on Diagnostic Learning1:14

Conoce a los instructores

Alan Barstow, Ph.D.
Director and Senior Scholar
Organizational Dynamics
Dana Kaminstein, Ph.D.
Affiliated Faculty
Organizational Dynamics
Ramya Kumar, MSOD, PGDHRM, SHRM-SCP
Senior Consultant - Organizational Learning, Development & Change
Organizational Dynamics
Amrita V. Subramanian
Executive Coach & Senior Consultant, Doctoral candidate (Ph.D. 2019)
Organizational Dynamics

I just would spend a lot of time talking about framing and reframing, and

I think that's been pretty clear.

But let's get back to that systems frame

because that is a frame that we don't always use.

I think it's available to us but we don't.

We all have our responsibilities, we all have our job.

The reason we're invited to the meeting to think about a particular set of issues.

And one of the most important thing for

us is certainly to represent that frame of mind, that point of view.

But it's also essential that we adopt and listen, and take on other frames.

And system's thinking is all about that.

Systems thinking as opposed to our analytical framing and

thinking that we're all taught in schools and rewarded for in terms of education.

In analytical thinking or analysis, we take something and

we take into parts, we try to understand the parts and

we assemble that into an understanding of the whole.

Well, and that works very well.

It's certainly is something that children do.

They take things apart and try to figure out how they work.

And then of course, they have trouble putting it back together,

but they're trying to figure it out how it works.

Systems thinking us such to do something else,

rather than analysis first that breaking things into parts.

We want to take the thing to be explained.

And we want to see how that is a part of a containing hole,

a larger hole, a larger system.

Think of concentric circles, if you will.

Rather than break this into pieces, we want to understand how this thing to be

explained is part of something else, something larger.

There are some good examples of this.

I think, if we looked, if you were looking at an automobile, and

you wanted to look at that automobile,

understand how it worked, you could take it apart, break it into parts.

There's the chassis and there's the compartment where the people sit.

There's the drive train, there's the engine, there's the wheels and the axles.

You can understand the functions of all those parts.

You can take that car apart from now til eternity,

and you will never figure out why it is the size it is.

Why the size of vehicles has changed in the 1950s and

60s from six-passenger vehicles to four-passenger vehicles?

That has to do with the size of the families that people had.

Who's being carried in the car?

That's seeing how the car as a transportation mode for

not an individual, but the family.

And you don't understand that by taking the car apart.

You only understand that by understanding the car's role in society and

who's using it.

So there is clearly one example of a systems perspective and

how it make sense to do that.

So if you really want to understand the why questions.

Then I think you need to do this synthesis.

Take something to be explained, see it in its containing whole.

Some of the work done by Russell Ackoff would always talk about

the education system.

Why do schools and classes look the way they do?

Why do they have one teacher, and

why do they have 20, 25 to 30 students?

What's that all about?

Well, you can take it apart and you can understand how the education system works.

But understanding how the school system works in society, or the university or

the college works in society, you'll have to use systems thinking.

What is this preparing them to do?

What is being taught?

What role does that play?

And perhaps we need to do a better job of that in terms of the educational system of

our country and other countries.

But this question of understanding the how things work versus why they work and

what purpose they have.

When we want to get the purpose, we need the systems thinking piece.

>> Those are great examples.

And it makes me think of in organizations, often times there's a problem going on and

we try to figure out what it is in that division.

And it usually is connected to other things that are going on in

the organization.

So I think it's such an important reminder.

>> And it's just struck in hearing your response there as well.

When we do focus on the problems, we oftentimes know what we don't like.

And if we work to get rid of what we don't want,

it's not necessarily get the same thing as getting what you want.

So, fixing the problems or removing the problems as opposed to really

idealizing and understanding what it is we would do if we could do anything we want.

Sort of constraint free and really thinking about possibilities,

leads to different solutions.

And it's much the same with this positive framing that Rami had talked about

earlier.

So the question is, when I'm getting all the systemic components in, or

I'm looking at a whole, one of the fears that I have is,

isn't that too much information to consider?

Wouldn't it lead to paralysis because I have so much to comprehend?

>> Well, I guess there's always that question of sort of overload, but

it's a different set of questions that we're asking.

And the important thing I think here is that,

if you really try to understand purpose and possibility,

that’s a different space, you need a different workspace to do that.

When we're trying to fine tune the production system or the delivery

system of our products and services and make sure things are efficient.

That's production mode.

That's what we do very well.

But in organizations, we also need this, I will call it discovery space.

When it's not about solving problems or fixing things, or getting rid of problems.

But understanding possibilities,

formulating the problems in a way that involves different ways of thinking.

We need that five-year-old in our meetings to talk about the playful ways of thinking

about things.

And the more we do that and expand our thinking using systems thinking,

the more we can see possibilities that normally, we're obstructed from.

We don't have the budget for that.

Back in the George Washington bridge story, long ago-

>> Just thinking of that, yes.

>> Yeah.

>> The maintenance department didn't have money to do those things,

that was beyond its budget.

So it's like going, it's going to be constrained.

If we start thinking about the resources we have, then our designs

are always going to be constrained by real time, money, talent issues.

But if we can open these things up and talk about possibilities,

then we can begin to set a goal or a purpose and plan backwards from that.

Really begin to think about, well, we may not be able to that all in one step but

where, we have a target and we can begin to approach that.

And we'll have, in a sense, more degrees of freedom,

more chance to accomplish that than if we just focus on our resource constraints.

>> That's interesting that we think that we have many roots to the same solution,

and not just one way or the highway.

Usually, in the meeting, it's like that.

My way or the highway if I'm the loudest.

>> Right. >> Right.

And as I'm listening to you.

We are talking about very important concepts here in systems thinking.

You're talking about analysis and synthesis, right?

So that kind of, as I was listening to you, Dana.

I thought of an example that came from work back at me.

So I was working in this organization a couple of years earlier.

And there was a time when there were a lot of people leaving a particular group.

And more often than not, we were told that compensation was the problem.

People are leaving because they are not getting enough monetary compensation, or

because of the competition from the market.

So analysis, or an analytical way of thinking is to break down compensation.

And think about what are the various components of compensation,

what's the take home, how can we better what we already have?

But a systemic or synthetic thinking would be to look at compensation from

the context of the larger system.

As the context of the reward system available in the organization,

not just as compensation, but what are the various monetary and non monetary rewards?

So that becomes a larger system.

And then thereon in the organization.

So when you start looking at it in the larger context, and in this particular

case, we discovered that it was not always the compensation that was the problem.

It was the way that employees perceived how they were recognized.

Not just in monetary ways, but also non-monetary ways.

It can be training.

Just a pat on the back from your supervisor, periodic feedback.

So there are a lot of things that we were able to really identify and

reframe the problem than just looking at it as compensation as a main problem.

>> It's interesting, you said that because Dana,

I was discussing with you the other day how, when I was a couch and

a consultant get called and we have parallel notes.

But usually it's a person, fix the person and all the problems would go away.

>> Right.

>> This relates to how we began this class as well.

That we wanted to emphasize and

talk about the system rather than individualizing things.

So I think that's a good segue into wrapping up this first class.

>> Yeah, my last word on this is that it comes across even

in the experiential exercise when we went out and

tried to look at something familiar through unfamiliar eyes.

That I think the take-home for me is that, we often,

in our meetings and groups and organizations,

end up with sort of win-lose struggles, a zero-sum game.

Well, if I'm going to give more to you, where am I taking it away from?

And this win-lose game and

frame is something we oftentimes find ourselves enmeshed in.

Braking that frame into win-win solutions that, yeah, we can do that and

we can do this if we reconceptualize this.

Systems thinking helps us to do that, reframing helps us to do that.

Win-win solutions are all about adopting that framework.

>> My take away and I'm picking up the thread from you,

I loved how we learned about the discovery frames.

I loved the stories that you shared.

I loved the way we were able to look at

how different frames influences the way we perceive a situation.

And we also think about a certain problem or a challenge.

So for me, a big part is the permission to myself

to try on different frames, experiment with it.

And as I experiment,

also be aware of the reactions that I'm getting from the environment.

So that's been my biggest takeaway from this discussion.

>> And when I think of it as a reflect on how we started this discussion

about the module in the first place, I think in our very own small way,

we are also going to that continuous learning phase and themes.

Because when we started designing this module, what did we do?

We broke it down into parts.

What are the parts that we need to cover in this module?

That's how our initial conversations were.

And as we moved along, as we took these conversations to the next level,

all of a sudden, we're not looking at the part.

We're looking at okay, so what's the overall message that we want to come in,

what are the things that we want to do in here, what's the bigger picture?

So for me, our discussions that are happening through our journey

together is like a mini-subset of what we are talking about.

>> Real time.

>> Like embodying real time continuous learning in our little team.

>> Absolutely.

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