IATEFL Annual Conference 2012Glasgow 20th March

Mess and Progress

Adrian Underhill

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters

byPortia Nelson

Difficulty or Mess?

Every problem interacts with other problems and is therefore part of a set of interrelated problems, a system of problems…. I choose to call such a system a mess.

Russell Ackoff

1. Recall a simple difficulty you have faced recently at your workplace

2. Now recall the most complex situation you currently face

3. Now list the ways in which the simple and complex situations differ

A Difficulty is fairly clear cut, definable. I can explain it, label

it. Probably solvable with current thinking. I may know what the answer will look like

A Mess is extensive, boundaryless, uncertain,

ambiguous. No correct view. Resists change. Everything is interconnected. Hard to know

where to start or what the concern really is. No tidy fix

within current thinking

“A system is an integrated whole whose essential properties arise

from the relationships between its parts....”

(Fritjof Capra)

Traditional view is to see…- Things as primary and - Relationships as secondary

Systems Thinking tends to see- Relationships as primary and - Things as secondary …

Systemic Thinking has been developed over the past 50 years to make the full patterns clearer,

to see connection and relationship rather than isolated entities, to see how to change

them effectively

The traditional, hierarchical, top down approach is working less and less well in settings

where complexity is increasing.

It is not smart enough for today’s complexity, where you need

intelligence dispersed throughout the system

- Decisions based on incomplete data

- Cause and effect are disconnected

- Unintended consequences

- Demand that leadership serves people

-Demand that work has significance

- Need for leaders to have self knowledge / personal maturity

-

Most of what we know about leadershipdoesn’t apply…

The great thing is to realise that leaders’ work

is essentially very different from the past

(Wheatley)

1.Who is a leader?

2.The focus of the new paradigm

3.Two kinds of leadership problem

4. The essential leadership job is …

5.What about control…?

6.OK, so why is it not happening?

Shift from:Influencing the community to follow the leader’s vision

Shift towards: Influencing the community to face its problems (Heifetz)

And what are these problems?

Problems =Technical (fix with existing know how) = Difficulty

Or

Complex (Gap between values and reality…. cannot be closed by current know how) = Mess

The essential leadership job is to help people:

Either: adapt values

Or: adapt reality

Or: adapt both

= Adaptive Leadership (Heifetz)

When people are aligned to their purpose,

when the gap between values and behaviours closes,

what people experience is a stream of ease … (Lewin)

Our conceptions of leadership are locked in a time-warp, constrained by lingering

archetypes of heroic warriors and wise but distant fathers…

Masculine aspects of leadership

have been assumed as the norm of leadership… and these assumptions are

deeply embedded outside our awareness.

(Sinclair)

A learning organisation is one that:

facilitates the learning of all its members and

continuously transforms itself…

(Pedler and Aspinwall)

A company that does lots of training is NOT a learning

company

“How can a team of committed managers with individual IQs

above 120 have a collective IQ of 63? ...” (Senge)

Individual learning can be wasted unless harnessed at organisational level

1.. It’s easy to get people to listen to and experiment with new ideas and suggestions2… When one person learns something new, everyone hears about it3.. Making mistakes is part of learning. You can be open about it. It’s not career limiting4.. Staff members of all ranks give each other plenty of quality feedback from above, below, sideways5.. Everyone is involved in discussing school policies before adoption6… People in one dept. know what people in another dept. are thinking, and they help each other

Systemic thinking requires:

Slow Knowing (Claxton)

More patient less deliberate modes are better suited to making sense

of situations that are fleeting, messy or ill-defined.

Allow different ways of knowing: cognitive, artistic, imaginative,

emotional, intuitive … (after Fullan)

It is professionally exhaustingto maintain the pretence

that messes are difficulties…

I want to face the problems – unclear, vague, and messy that I

have discovered to be real around here.

The Learning Mantra:

See what’s going on Do something different

Learn from it

Learning to think systemically:

1. See more points of view

2. Encourage connectivity not control

3. See whole school as an adventure park for your learning

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

Bennis, W. and Goldsmith. J. 1997. Learning to Lead. Nicholas BrealeyBurns, A. 1999 Collaborative Action Research CUPCapra, F. 1997. The Web of Life. Harper CollinsFletcher, J. 2001 Disappearing Acts MIT PressFullan, M. 2004 Leadership and Sustainability Corwin PressFullan, M. 2001 Leading in a Culture of Change Josey BassGoleman, D. 2010 Ecological Intelligence: The Age of Radical Transparency. PenguinHeifetz, R. 1994 Leadership Without East Answers Harvard University PressLane, A. 2005 Systems Thinking and Practice: A primer. Open University T551Lewin, R. 2001 Weaving Complexity and Business: Engaging the Soul at Work TexereMarshall, J..Coleman, Reason Eds 2011 Leadership for Sustainability Greenleaf PubMcNiff, J. and Whitehead, J. 2005 Action Research for Teachers David FultonPedlar and Aspinwall 1998 Concise Guide to the Learning Organization Lemos & CraneSchon, D. 1991 The Reflective Practitioner CUPSinclair, A. 2004 Doing Leadership Differently 2nd Ed Melbourne University PressTorbert, W. et al. 2004 Action Inquiry: The Secret of Timely & Transforming Leadership. BKVarela, F. October 2009 http://www.dialogonleadership.org/indexName.shtmlWheatley, M. 1992. Leadership and the New Science. Berrett Koehler 

“Controlling the system is not the aim –

rather we should increase intuition about how the system

works in order to interact with it

more harmoniously” (Wheatley)

 

… if men demonstrate these relational qualities it is regarded

as extra good leadership….

When women demonstrate them it may be regarded as ‘what women do anyway’ or ‘typical feminine

behaviour’ and it is disappeared… (Joyce Fletcher)

“We must become adept at learning…

we must … develop institutions which are learning systems …… capable of bringing about their own continuing transformation”

(Schon)

The act of looking for certain information evokes the information

we are looking for...and eliminates our simultaneous

opportunity to observe other information…

Every act of measurement loses more information than it obtains.

John Archibald Wheeler

..Most leader development is likely to be based on technical

solutions, and not on the

tough adaptive challenges(Fullan)

Teachers, social workers, or planners dealing with their messy situations may feel a

nagging sense of inferiority in relation to other professions

(engineers, architects)who are able present themselves

as models of technical rigor,Even their own academic

managers can make them feel constantly under pressure to

solve messes as if they were tidy difficulties…