E090: Systems Theory and Complexity

now on to this episode.

Hello. This is James, and this is Jane, and here we are again with another episode of a world of a world of work podcast. What are we speaking about today?

Jay, well, today we are talking all about human systems dynamics and the related systems theory and complexity theory. And I'm really excited, because this is, I know I'm always excited, but for me, I think this starts to get into the real like difficulties of science versus taking it into the workplace. So I'm super excited. Yeah,

there's some great stuff in here. We've got a fantastic guest. We're speaking to Glenda Oh young, and we're going to be delving into all the stuff that Jane mentioned there and really exploring what this means in the workplace. So let's get into the episode. Okay, so here we are in the main body of this podcast, and today, we're really pleased to be joined by Glenda, oh Yang, and we're going to be exploring systems theory and complexity and the sort of background between these behind these subjects and their relevance in the modern workplace. Before we get into that, though, I guess Glenda, would you be able to take a minute to introduce yourself and say a little bit about your work and your background, so if the audience can know a little bit more about you,

sure, so I'm Glenda. Oh young. I'm really happy to be with you. Thanks for the invitation. I help people cope with chaos, and that's partly because I've had a good bit of my own I studied the history and philosophy of science, and then I taught school, and then I was an entrepreneur, and then I got stuck, and since the late 1980s I've been helping people deal with wicked issues. Currently, I'm the executive director of the human systems dynamics Institute in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I'm a researcher and consultant and trainer and leader of an international network of people who also tame wicked issues.

That's a great background. And I love that sort of idea of getting stuck at various points and having a lot of complexity in your own life as well. I think that's a great founding. And you've got decades of experience in this, which is, which is a real privilege for us to to get to explore, if we start off at the very beginning of all this stuff, when we're talking about sort of solving wicked issues, and for worlds that we operate in, the phrase systems is used quite a bit. What exactly is systems? Or what are systems and what is systems theory?

Well, there are lots of ways to talk about systems and systems theory, but they all have one thing in common. They all look at things where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. So where there are lots of parts, they're interacting, and what emerges is greater than what we began with. So there are many different ways to map them and to talk about them and think about them, but the best way is to use an example. So if you think about a team, you can think about a team as being one person and then another and another and another. But when they come together, the team is greater than the parts. And so we can think about them as a system, who they are, how they are, how they're interacted, and how they are as a whole. So systems theory looks at wholes that are made up of parts,

right? And when you're looking at that whole that's made up of parts, is it fair to say that you know, understanding how the different parts affect each other is important.

Indeed, those interrelationships are almost as important as the things themselves in systems theory,

right? Okay, and I think we'll probably come on and explore that a little bit more later on. The other area that you touched on in the introduction, and that I know you're particularly interested in, is this concept of complexity and sort of complexity theory. Could you say a little bit more about

that? I can. There are lots of ways to think and talk about systems, systems dynamics and soft systems in many different ways. One of them is called complexity theory. And complexity theory is important because it deals with systems that are unbounded, lots of different parts, lots of interactions, and they're unpredictable. So in the way that a team might be bounded, and you know who's inside it, that's one kind of system. But if you're thinking about a community where you don't really know who belongs, there are lots of things that the community is good for, and the relationships are really complex and interrelated. Complexity theory is particularly good for that kind of system. Understanding. An intervention, great.

So it feels like a lot of sort of the ways that we work at a societal level and in groups, when we come together to achieve goals or even just to coexist, feel like they're probably quite complex in that they can have difficult boundaries, or sort of permeable boundaries, and lots of difficulty and understanding impacts within them. Is that fair? Is that the type of thing that you look at within human dynamics? It is

indeed, and many of us are experts in the work that we do. We're accustomed to seeing things in simple terms, being able to bound them, see what moves a to b. So there are lots of things, ways that we simplify the complexity to be able to be effective working in them. But there's some things that when you simplify them, it's not very useful. And so it's that whole world of questions and issues that cannot be simplified that we have to deal with complexity take something like climate change or the current pandemic. So one of the one of the reasons that the pandemic is such a challenge is that everything is involved, everything's interrelated. You make a change here and it affects over there, and so the pandemic can't be solved, like most problems can be solved, and that's when you need a science, a systems thinking approach, like complexity.

Yeah, it reminds me of, you know, the butterfly flaps its wings in Jamaica, and there's the hurricane in Japan, or those types of stories.

That is one of the it's one of the characteristics of a complex system. They're also very unpredictable, so you can't know ahead of time what's going to happen. In a complex system, you can make guesses, and you can kind of see patterns, but you can't predict, and so you're in a space of uncertainty.

In my old job, I think I've mentioned before, I used to work in financial services, and in this sort of large corporate space, there was often a demand on me and many others to put it on a page. You know, make one PowerPoint slide on this, condense it down to something like that, which always felt so unhelpful and reductive, like in those types of work environment and more broadly in the world. Why do you think it's important to bring a systems approach to what we're

doing? So we like to talk about finding what is both true and useful. So sometimes that one screen, that one PowerPoint slide, that one spreadsheet, can be useful, but it's not completely true. You have to leave out a lot of things to make that sometimes you need something that's more true in order to be useful, then it gets more complex. So what I found in my own leadership roles over the last 10 years is my world has gotten much more complex that something that is useful, my spreadsheet, my budget, my project plan that can be very useful, but in reality, other things are going on, and if I can't step outside that simple picture and anticipate or respond to what happens, then I get really stuck. So it's important to have simple things so you can move forward quickly, but you also have to have your peripheral vision on so you can see the broader system at the same time,

and when you see teams, leadership teams or management teams, begin to understand that, do you see a change in the way that they begin to act and behave as leadership or management teams? Yes,

it's very interesting. Well, the first thing is that they become inquirers. They become curious. They start asking questions, because one of the things that happens in a complex system is you may have an answer, but it doesn't last very long, maybe a good answer here and now, but it may not be right someplace else or at a different time. So they become much better at asking questions. The second thing Jane That really surprised me when we started doing this work is people found hope. Because very often, if they expect the world to be simple and they expect themselves to be able to solve problems, they feel great stress, and when they realize that there are some problems that are simply beyond solution, that what they can do is influence but not solve, then suddenly they relax and find hope in the inquiry that they have in a complex system, they don't feel the stress of having to solve something that's insolvable,

that's that's a really lovely and unexpected thing to discover about introducing, sort of the the concept, or the that's the field to a group, because I think that happens all too often in teams that I've worked with, certainly, and one of the things that occurs to me is that so much of where I've seen that period of friction or that period of stress has been when they're embarking on or about to or knee deep in change projects, so when they're trying. Trying to, I guess, control the uncontrollable in some senses, is this, is this an area where it's really helpful to understand and if so, how do you what sort of things would you do with the team to help them use what they're learning to apply to sort of the way that they manage change projects?

That's a great question. And it is definitely a place where this is most useful, is in times of change. The most important thing, Jane, is that we think of change quite differently. So historically, when you think about simple change, when we think about simple things, we think about having answers and moving forward, and that the change goes from point A to point be in a fairly small, small and simple line. We think about change differently. We think that change is like an avalanche, that the system looks like it's not changing, and you put energy into it, and you work at it, and you work at looks like it's not changing, and then at some point, all of a sudden, the system shifts, and a change happens like the butterfly effect. And you can think about it in terms of innovation. So you can write lots of rules about innovation. You can have a step wise process for innovation. But in fact, an innovation happens after lots of other conditions have been set, lots of tension, lots of curiosity, lots of new information, and then all of a sudden, there's a breakthrough. And so when we work with change in human systems, we try to think about what are the conditions that we can set to prepare the system for that moment when it's ready to change. And so we think about and work with change very differently. So what it means is that it's not your job to push the system toward change. Your job is to set the conditions so the system can change. It's a very different way of interacting with teams and groups and organizations and communities.

It's completely unlike anything really that certainly in my experience of the practical side of change management, rather than some of the academic it's nothing that I ever see the it feels like a little bit. Are you saying that if you can ready the pieces or the ingredients or the resources that you have, whether those are people, and have them in the place such that they can exploit an opportunity as things change or respond to the appropriate stimulus, then they will be better able to capitalize and move with it, rather than some kind of controlled, staged process that gets to an end point that may not be the end point you need by the time you start moving the pieces

exactly. And even though this is not what is talked about in management theory, and it's not what people do usually in organizations, it's not unfamiliar in the world of practice. So if you think about as a parent, what do you do? What do you do with a two year old? You set conditions so that that two year old can be and do what they need to be and do now. It looks different when they're teenagers, but you're still not forcing the change if you're going to have a healthy, happy kid, what you're doing is setting conditions, building their skills, building their capacity, so that when they are challenged, they can meet the challenge and move to this so even though this isn't like business practice, it's not unfamiliar to those of us who work or people who are in a creative effort. For people who are artists, they so understand this process of getting everything in place, making clear, being inquiring, and then taking advantage of the moment when it emerges. And so that's the way we help institutions and organizations and teams and people work with change

that's so interesting. I mean, when we when we think about change, and when we speak to many people about change in organizations, it's very directional. A lot of the changes that people are aspiring to achieve are specific. And you know, specific outcomes with this more sort of complex, systemic approach to change, is it still possible to guide towards a specific outcome, or do you need to create space and see what emerges? Yeah,

James, that's a great question. It's a both. And so sometimes you're working on something that's relatively simple, and you can say this is the end point we're going to and how we're going to get there. Sometimes you're working on something that isn't predictable, and you have to have a different way to approach it. So for example, we were working with a hospital once in Canada, and they were building a new hospital, and they wanted to build a hospital and change the culture at the same time. So they had a three year project to do both of those things, and at the end of three years, the building was finished. Because it's building, a building, it's construction. It's simple and predictable. And structured, but the culture hadn't changed, and they were really frustrated because they had had the same plan for the culture change, but it didn't happen. And so they had to be able to do both, to set conditions for a culture to emerge and evolve over time with the people who were there. But it's a very different change process than a project that's structured toward an end goal having a building. So one of the first questions a leader has to ask is, what kind of change is this? Is this one that should go to an end point, or is this one that needs to emerge and grow and adapt over time? And you deal with the two of them quite differently. A good leader has to be able to do both and to know when to do which.

It's a really interesting distinction. And I think certainly in a world where everything is measured and quartered and has extensive KPIs around it, I think there is a real discomfort around this idea of change being an ongoing state, or indeed, that change being a forever evolving state, like culture, and particularly, I think culture is a great example of where you're not ending. You're not You're not working towards an end point where you take a snapshot and say, look, we've done it. You're looking it's an ongoing state, right? And it's an it's I talk, I talk to I talk a lot with leaders about why good people make bad decisions all the time, and it's practice. It's hard work, and I guess that that brings me on to just want to go back to something you mentioned that's really stuck with me. You mentioned a comparison to artists, and I've had a couple of really interesting conversations with organizational behaviorists around whether management is an art or a science when you're actually a practitioner. And I think there's something really interesting in this idea that you just keep building your tools, and every time you craft a new picture or a new team or a new working practice, you are you are just using the skills you have and are responding to the stimulus that you've got in your people or your team. Or the challenge is that, do you, do you ever think, obviously, you know, it's a very scientific study, and systems theory is rooted in, you know, good science, but do you think there's room for artistry in good management and good leadership?

Oh, I think not only is there room, but it's necessary, especially in these days, when I first started doing this work, in the early 90s, generally, business problems were finite games. There were end points, the conditions were clear. You could do the same thing over and over. We call them finite games like football, where there are clear boundaries, you know who the opponent is, the rules stay the same. There's one way to measure outcomes a finite game, and almost everything that my clients and colleagues ran into were like that. Over time, though, we have found more and more situations where the important questions are unbounded. There are lots of players. The rules keep changing all the time, and so we have to be in that space. We have to be artists. So you may think about the finite game, predictable and structured as being the science and open possibility, the adaptation, the creativity as being art. Now the blessing that we get from complexity science is that it covers both, so it allows us to think about a different kind of science. But it's still science in this unpredictable world, and especially since mid March, when we in the US began to deal with the pandemic. And earlier that than that, of course, for you guys, there were many times where the rules changed, kept changing, adjusting and adapting, creating possibility, finding out how people could live at home and work at home and adjust as they needed to. We're still having rules change forward and backward. And so that ability to see what's happening in this moment, to create a good, productive response, and then to be willing to step into something else in the next moment, that's a kind of dance. It's art. It isn't predictable, structured science, and so we're finding more and more. Those are the muscles, those are the skills that leaders and people in communities need in order to thrive in this kind of transforming moment.

There's some great visuals in there as well. I just two weeks ago, got myself a book, finite and infinite games by James car. So that's my reading list at the minute. So it's fun to hear hear about stuff pop up. Um, I have a question for you as well. We spoke to somebody a couple weeks ago. I was still on this theme of change, and we were speaking about the role of storytelling and change. Um. I just wanted to wonder and ask a question, do you when you're looking at change, what role do you see for stories in change, in human systems,

a very important part. So we think of change that's unpredictable, if you're going to engage with it, we have a three step process. The first one is, what's going on, what? And then the second step is, so what? So once you see something, once you're aware of it, you have to make sense of it. You have to be able to understand how it fits with the past, how it leads into the future, how different people see it at the same time. And stories are a fabulous way to do that, to capture make meaning, move toward action. We believe that people live in a system that is a social system, and that decisions and change are made in the social system, and stories are the kind of currency of the way things happen in human systems. So even if they're informal, quick, personal stories, or if they're large narratives, social and cultural narratives, the story is really the way that we live and breathe in social systems, taking action together. So I I believe that telling stories is one of the most important things that we can do as leaders. It tells it does three things. One is it tells us what's important. So if a leader tells a story about one thing or about another thing or about a third thing, they're focusing the attention of their people on that thing. The second thing is that it gives us humanity. It makes us show up all as human being storytellers, not as decision makers and followers. And so there's a kind of first person humanity that comes. And the third is it's just fun, and they release energy. They allow people to relax and be present. And so stories do so many different things. They really are a gift, especially in times of uncertainty. They help people feel safe. One

of the things that we've been reflecting on a little bit in some of the work that we do and conversations that we have is kind of the shift away from the more manufacturing based economy and production lines and terrorism and that sort of rigidity, that almost sort of scientific aspect of production and use of labor, towards the more knowledge economy that we work in. Do you think that the that shift has affected our complexity of our world and the way that we work together?

Oh, absolutely. I think it is caused by and has caused that shift. The way we'd like to think about it, though, is that you're not moving away from you're expanding beyond because you're not going to give up the need for economies of scale and processing, and so you're not going to give that up, but you're going to expand beyond it and recognize that you have to attend to the people in the larger expanding markets and climate change and social responsibility, as well as making sure that your zero defects process is moving forward on time and under budget. And so I think that that larger world of expanding possibility and knowledge work is a kind of wraparound of the old, predictable systems. And I think it's being the use of knowledge is driving it, and I think it's also driving the use of knowledge. We see that in artificial intelligence and the way that AI has moved into our decision making and action, and we'll continue to, I think, where that's at the intersection where the technical and the intellectual the knowledge base, cross. And so I think in the next couple of years, we're going to see more and more of that line between technical and knowledge approaches fading away, being transformed. That sounds exciting and scary all the same time.

And a lot of work, you talk about a couple of phrases. You talk about adaptive action and you talk about pattern logic. Would you be able to say a little bit about each of those for the audience as well.

Sure. So adaptive action is the process that you use to take action when you don't know what to do. So most of our ways of acting and planning and moving forward have to do with knowing what the end point is, having some certainty and predictability for accountability. But if you're working in a system that is complex, that you can't predict, that you can't control, you need some way to be able to make decisions and move forward. And so adaptive action is a process that allows you to do that. It is three. Steps, very complex. First one is what, the second is so what, and the third is now what. And once you take action, then the system changes, and you begin again. So what's your data collection? What's happening? What am I seeing? What is in this moment important. So what is meaning making? And I may do that by myself. I may do that with a group. I may do that in an instant, or I may do it over a year. And then the action, which must move forward, even if you have incomplete information, you take an action. And then, when you do everything around you, the system shifts, and it gives you another opportunity to begin what so that's adaptive action. We do it over and over and over, individuals and groups in instance and in long periods of time. And that's the way that you make decisions, learning all the time and acting all the time in complex systems that's adaptive action, and it works with pattern logic. And pattern logic is a way to think about change in a system that is unpredictable, where there are lots of parts. And so we say a finite Challenge is a problem to solve an infinite situation gives you patterns to shift so often. If you feel stuck in a problem, if you can think of it as a pattern, it gives you options for action. So if I have an employee who's not doing what I think they should and they aren't performing up to my standards. If I think of that as a problem, I'm going to solve it. There's a whole pathway of things I'll do. If instead I think of the pattern of that person's history and the space where they are and the work I'm asking them to do and the skills they have and the possibilities, then I have a whole different set of ways to engage with that pattern so that's pattern logic, the ability to transform to see something in more complex context, so that you have more options for action, that's pattern logic.

That's That makes so much sense, but it also triggers a couple of interesting questions for me now in the sort of more traditional approach to management and leadership, I have a fairly clear understanding of which strengths and weaknesses and leaders and managers can benefit under sort of a more traditional approach. So I see these things, and I'm like, oh, that really helped you in that scenario under this this sort of new way of approaching things. Do you see different human and personal skills in leaders coming to the fore. Do you see people with different skills better at this way of doing things?

Yes, and I think some people, because of their history and their education and their background and their habits, are much more comfortable in moving into pattern logic. It just is more natural to then they're comfortable with it. In fact, it's in some ways, it's cultural. We find people from the global south and from the east as being much more comfortable moving quickly into pattern logic, because it's much closer to the way that they have practiced culturally. On the other hand, we think that it's also teachable, and some of those skills are around asking questions and being able to stand in inquiry. So we in the west and north tend to think of expertise as answers, that we bring answers and leadership in this pattern based logic is about asking the best questions. Where do you look? What do you ask? How do you focus your attention and others attentions in moving forward? So that's one of the characteristics we find that is very important. The second is to be able to learn in action, so that constantly building skills, adding tools, adding perspectives, adding languages to the work that you do. So that learning process is very important. And then the third is being able to spot patterns, to be able to make sense of something that is chaotic. So those three things, making sense of something that's chaotic, being able to learn in action, being able to ask questions, those are the three skills that we try to teach for leaders and in leadership.

Yeah, that makes, that makes complete sense. And the other the other flip side of that is, are there certain traits, habits, behaviors, skills, that maybe leaders struggle more with managing it? And so I guess there's two I'm thinking about in particular. One is and I one of them, I speak as someone who's. Occasionally struggles with it is I struggle with uncertainty and being comfortable with it, and I've worked really hard with it, but I'm not great at it. And I know a lot of people I've worked with who've felt something simple, similar. So I'm interested if it's harder for people who are uncomfortable in certainty. But also I've worked with some people who are a little bit reticent. They enjoy the process of questioning quite a lot, and therefore there is a danger sometimes they stay in that process for too long and miss the cues to make a decision. So do you? Do you? Do you find that? Sorry, I'm just smiling because as I'm saying this, I'm realizing that James is probably sitting there grinning, going, Oh, just like she's talking about us. And just, I just wonder, if you see those two things, people who are uncomfortable with uncertainty, and people who maybe don't always jump to a place where they do need to make a decision as finding this harder.

Absolutely. In fact, when someone calls me in as a consultant, it's for one of two reasons, either they're stuck because they're seeing things as linear and making assumptions that they need to shift. And so they're stuck because they can't move forward, or they're stuck because they're going around in circles and are so confused and all over the place. And so there are two ways to be stuck. I do find that there are certain disciplines that tend toward the first, towards certainty and predictability and structure. So for example, I've done a lot of work with aeronautical engineers, and they want a spreadsheet, they want to know, but they've also run into places where that doesn't work. They try to sell their ideas upstream. They try to resolve their conflicts, they try to deal with innovation and new ideas, that they don't do that so well, and so they realize themselves that their standard, habitual ways aren't complete. They need something else. And this is the way we talk about it. Is not we're going to change and turn you into a different person. It is. We're going to stretch you into some new muscles. We're going to help you build you already have creative muscles. We're just going to help you strengthen them a little bit. And we do the same thing for organizations that are way off the charts. And we have done work with marketing companies, for example, where they're so creative and so innovative, they can't possibly make a decision and move forward. And so for them, we say, keep your creativity. We want you to be able to do that, and we're going to help you build your muscles to plan and execute as well. And so it's the idea of being a whole person and a whole institution where you have the capacity to do anything and the wisdom to choose what's right in a moment, I think the two of you, one of the reasons why you're such great partners in this work is that you stand at those two sides. And so when I listen to your interviews, I hear such a nice play between the one and the other, and that for us is health in a complex system.

That's It's hilarious, but you say that, yes, we reflected on on that a few times. I've got a follow up question, which is, you know, when we're talking about this complexity and the, you know, the difficulty, some extent, identifying cause and effect and trying to find these patterns and things like that, I guess it probably feels that in that environment, it's difficult to be certain about the impacts of our actions being what we desire them to be, or even that they necessarily have action. And in a world where a lot of people are action oriented and expecting this sort of agency and ability to impact, how do we get comfortable just putting things out there, trying to create spaces and shape the world without knowing necessarily that we get outcomes or what do you think we do appear we develop the skills to track outcomes. That's

a really good question, and what I do is to stick with what I know as long as it works. So there's no reason if what you're doing is working and giving you and your team and your organization, your community success at all those different levels. If it's working, keep doing it, but in this complex world, there will be a time when something doesn't work. Now it may not be that it doesn't work for you, but it may not work for your community, or it may not work for someone else on the team. So when what you're doing, what is your habit, breaks down, then you need something different, and at that point to acknowledge, yes, I don't know, I have questions, then you move into the space of inquiry. And so that's why the uncertainty isn't so bad. It's because it's better than knowing it doesn't work. Yeah, right. And so when you're trading knowing that you're stuck for not knowing what's going to happen, then suddenly you're free to explore more widely about. What your possibilities are,

yeah, if that makes sense. So you're moving from the cave of certain wrongness towards an open and potentially directionalist field of opportunity, which is maybe overwhelming, but it's better than being trapped in the wrongness. Is that fair?

I love that image. That's great. It is. And the other thing that we find happens is when we're stuck in the cave, it's really easy to blame other people or to blame ourselves, and so we feel guilty, we feel angry, we feel frustrated, and so that those energies are just not productive. We don't have time for that. We don't have resources for that. These days, if instead you look forward with possibilities to see what is, what might happen, what options there might be. Suddenly, energy is released in the system, and you can move forward together without wasting all that blame energy.

Yeah, yeah, that sounds, sounds liberating, just thinking about it, I've got, I guess, just on the subject of, I guess leaders or people trying to, trying to lead small teams and things like that. Have you got any sort of final thoughts for them in terms of, maybe they're feeling uncertain about the future or uncertain about the world? Any final thoughts for them about maybe using systems or complexity theory to help them through that, or anything they could do differently as a result of knowing some of the things we've discussed,

there's a practice that we use that we think is very simple but really powerful, and that is, if you have if you're stuck, if there's a problem You feel like you can't solve so write it on a flip chart or on the wall or in a piece of paper. Just write it down, just in a couple of sentences, and then have people sit around it and ask questions, no answers, just questions, and ask questions until you run out of questions, and those questions be open ended, full of possibility, and what happens as you're asking those questions is that you begin to see the problem differently. Someone else asks a question that sparks a question in you. Someone else asks a question that makes you realize there's a totally different way to think about what's there that that practice of putting a wicked issue out there and just asking questions, asking questions, asking questions is great. In fact, we have a session online every weekday morning at 10 o'clock our time, which would be four o'clock in the UK, where for 20 minutes someone brings a wicked issue, and we ask them questions. Usually they're between 15 and 20 people in the room, and from all over the world, all different disciplines, asking them questions. And then we turn to them in the end and see what they have seen. And it is, it's called The Power of questions, and we find that that practice is really good at getting us unstuck.

That sounds like a great activity. Actually, I think that would be really fun to come to you talked about, you know, for wicked questions that people are facing. And at the beginning, you talked about wicked questions or wicked challenges that your wicked issues that you're dealing with as well. Just to give a bit of context to people before we start to wrap up, what types of wicked issues do you do you deal with? What types of wicked issues do people come to you with? And perhaps maybe most importantly, what types of wicked issues do you most enjoy getting involved in trying to help resolve or move forward or see what emerges Well, for me, the wicked are the better.

So right now, I'm working on a variety of issues. So one of them is with a group of facilitators who are trying to improve human rights in factories in Southeast Asia. And so this is a group, a community of facilitators. Each one works with a group of factories trying to get the workers and the management to shift conditions to improve human rights there. I'm also working with a hospital system in the UK that totally transformed to respond to COVID, and now they're in a response time when they know they're going to be working with COVID and they have to get back to regular work. And so how did they go about shifting resources? What do they keep? What did they lose? What did they learn during COVID times? And so I'm working with the hospital system to do that. I'm also beginning to work with the Centers for Disease Control here on strategy. So how do you shift strategy in a time of pandemic, understanding that this is not the only pandemic there we will have more and more quickly. So how do we take this opportunity not just to respond to what is now? Wow, but how do we help it build our muscles so that we can do better in the next one? Whatever that looks like. I mean, you talked about wicked problems. Those sound like very wicked problems

in a good way, right? Yes, in a good way. And the and it's so important in these to say, for people to admit, no, there's no answer. We cannot answer this. But then it opens the possibility to say, what can we do to make a difference? What can we do?

Yeah, basically, like rewarding areas to work in. I'm afraid we're coming up to the end of time here before we wrap up. Though, I know that you do some a range of interesting things. So I mean, you talk there about your wicked issues, conversations that you do, but I know you also do some some other workshops, and you do certification courses as well. Can you say a little bit more about those and and how people can learn more about you and work with you?

Sure? So we do free sessions, this 20 minute power of questions every weekday, monthly, we do live virtual workshops. So there are hour long sessions focusing on a particular issue. The last one was about leadership, the next one will be about risk management. So once a month, an hour, those are free, and then we have tuition based sessions. So one set are called adaptive action labs. And those are are, of course, online these days, where people bring their wicked issues and we teach them tools and processes, and they use them to do real work and to break through on their real wicked issues. They're called adaptive action laboratories, and the certification training is a longer process that allows people to get into the theory as well as the practice of human systems dynamics. It's a four month online program where people bring their own issues, make changes and move forward. And it's so exciting to see how people break through on issues. There's a woman at a who's a works in a philanthropy that's doing trying to do strategy in the midst of the pandemic, and she came yesterday and she said, HSD helped me 1,000% yesterday. So she's in the current cohort. We're starting a new one in September. People from all over the world involved in all different kinds of programs and disciplines recognize that many of their wicked issues are the same, and as they learn and work together, they just watch each other break through. It's very exciting. So we have one that's starting in September. That's

great. And your website is hsdinstitute.org is that right? It is indeed, www.hsdinstitute.org

there's also there under Resources. There's a keyword search space where you can find resources from HSD on a number of topics. You can just put in whatever you want. There are more than 500 elements there. We have a we have an open intellectual property policy, so anything people learn from us, they're free to use. We ask that people cite the source so they can find out more, and that as they learn, they teach it back. So we continue to be learning community, right?

Well, some text, okay. Well, we'll share some of those details when we when we publish the podcast. And I think it's just time for me to say thank you very much. That was a fascinating conversation. So thank you. Yeah, very well. Thank you. Really nice to me. It was fun. You.

Okay, so you are back in the room with us now. That was our conversation with Glenda, and we spoke about human systems dynamics. We spoke about complexity. We spoke about systems theory. We spoke about trying to bring some of this stuff into the workplace and into society, and trying to use it to tackle really wicked problems. So a really interesting conversation. Jen, did you have any big takeaways from that, or anything you want to

reflect on that? James, is the sound of my mind being a little bit blown during that conversation. Tell me about it. There's a lot in there, and I it's quite difficult for me to navigate into it, to pull something out, because there was so and I know I say this all the time, but that really there was so much that got me thinking. And I guess the point that I reflected on to Glenda again. Would still the thing that I'm really, really grappling with, which is this idea that, are we artists or scientists or both, when we're in the workplace trying to lead, manage, organize? Because for me, that's and I maybe it sounds, I don't know, a little bit eternity to some people, but it just feels really important, and I can't quite put my finger on why, but I feel like that conversation with Glenda has just reinforced that idea

for me. Yeah, and you know what I mean, my mind was blown from that conversation. That's the second hour I spent chatting to Glenda, and I'm still mind blown by it like you. I think there's something really interesting in that, you know, sort of artist versus scientist piece. And one of the things that we explored a bit in there that struck me was the sort of duality of needing to recognize that the world is hugely complex and interconnected, and it's not always easy to see the impacts of our actions and to know where to influence the world to change, and holding that on one side, while on the other side, knowing that we need to find some clarity and some guidance and some signals to follow so that we can make informed decisions and really take action to help us move in the right direction. So it's about weighing up and about balancing of hard to fathom, complex and then the refined, informative information that'll help us shape actions, and then trying to trying to hold on to both of those things at the same time, I think is helpful and fascinating and awfully complex to use a word, yeah.

And I know we talked a fair bit about, sort of some of the metaphors in the conversation that kind of spring to mind when we're talking about messy or wicked, all that sort of stuff. But one of the things that really strikes me is we're in a period of uncertainty at the moment in 2020 we're recording this, and I feel like people want to plan and create a solution. And actually, what I took from the conversation with Glenda is it's like we're in the dark, like you just said, and there's signals or flashlights or moments, and we have to spot them and follow them, not knowing what's in our path because we can't see, but you have to assume and hope that you're going to move forward and use your instincts to keep correcting your bearings, as if, if that makes sense, using the information that you're receiving as you go through the process. And I think I don't know, I feel like it's a really useful metaphor for some managers right now. Yeah, yeah,

it's sort of shaping things as they emerge, and that whole interconnectedness of it's fascinating. Well, hopefully we'll get a chance to chat to Glenda again, and it will be fascinating to hear about some of the wicked problems that she's working on in more details and see what emerges there, because it's clearly the case. But this, you know, systemic approach to change and influencing things can lead to some really large changes, and it'll be great to explore that.

Yeah, I think so. Well, I guess that's all we've got time for right now. So probably best for us to say goodbye, but not before we say, Don't forget. You can check out what we're up to on www, worldwork.io where you can check our latest articles, blogs, seminars, and you can also come find us on Twitter, because we love having a little tweet chat. Yeah, we do. So you can find us personally at JG carrier, at Jamie underscore s and you can also find us at the well. Podcast,