Overview

Do you need to change the way you think when faced with a complex situation? This free course, Managing complexity: A systems approach introduction, examines how systemic thinking and practice enables you to cope with the connections between things, events and ideas. By taking a broader perspective complexity becomes manageable and it is easier to accept that gaps in knowledge can be acceptable.

Syllabus

Introduction
Learning outcomes
1 Overview of the unit
1 Overview of the unit
2 Part 1 Starting the unit
2 Part 1 Starting the unit
3 Part 1: 1 Thinking about expectations
3 Part 1: 1 Thinking about expectations
3.1 What are you hoping to learn?
3.2 Learning by experience
4 Part 1: 2 Preparing to tackle this unit
4 Part 1: 2 Preparing to tackle this unit
4.1 Something different
2.2 The nature of systems thinking and systems practice
2.3 Taking responsibility for your own learning
2.4 Appreciating epistemological issues
2.5 Review
Given up already?
Part 2 Experiencing complexity
Part 2: 1 Introduction
6 Part 2: 2 Immersing yourself in complexity
6 Part 2: 2 Immersing yourself in complexity
7 Part 2: 3 Representing your experience of complexity
7 Part 2: 3 Representing your experience of complexity
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Complexity and rich pictures
7.2.1 Trap 1: representing the problem and not the situation
7.2.2 Trap 2: the impoverished rich picture
7.2.3 Trap 3: interpretation, structure, and analysis
7.2.4 Trap 4: words and wordiness
7.2.5 Trap 5: the final version trap
7.3 Getting out of traps
7.4 Complexity from someone else's perspective
7.5 Summary
8 Part 2: 4 Being inside complexity
8 Part 2: 4 Being inside complexity
8.1 Loose ends
8.2 Stakeholder traps
9 Part 2: 5 Exploring complexity
9 Part 2: 5 Exploring complexity
9.1 Making sense of complexity
9.2 Systems maps: searching for system
9.3 Systems maps: Drawing systems maps
9.4 Influence diagrams
9.5 Multiple-cause diagrams
9.6 Sign graphs
9.7 Control-model diagrams
9.8 Diagramming a complex situation
9.9 Perspectives review
10 Part 2: 6 Review
10 Part 2: 6 Review
11 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity
11 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity
11.1 Part 3: 1 Introduction
1.1 Making sense of the metaphor
Part 3: 2 Systems practice – unpacking the juggler metaphor
13 Part 3: 3 Being a systems practitioner
13 Part 3: 3 Being a systems practitioner
3.1 The state of ‘Being’
3.2 Being aware of the constraints and possibilities of the observer
3.3 Appreciating your basis for understanding
3.4 Experience – making distinctions based on a tradition and constructing a history
3.5 Distinctions about systems practice
3.6 Learning and effective action
3.7 Being ethical
3.8 Reviewing some implications for systems practice
14 Part 3: 4 Engaging with complexity
14 Part 3: 4 Engaging with complexity
4.1 Articulating your appreciation of complexity
4.2 Articulating your appreciation of complexity
4.3 Experiencing complexity as mess or difficulty
4.4 Where is the complexity and what is it?
4.5 Choosing to distinguish between complex situations and complex systems
4.6 Appreciating some implications for practice
15 Part 3: 5 Contextualising systems approaches
15 Part 3: 5 Contextualising systems approaches
5.1 Introduction
5.2 What are systems approaches?
5.3 Purposeful and purposive behaviour
5.4 Methodology, method, technique, and tools
5.5 Experiences that motivated the development of systems methods
5.6 Developing the Open University hard systems method
5.7 Developing a VS method through the viable systems model and Viplan
5.8 Developing a soft systems method
5.9 Developing other systems methods
Open University systems failures method
Systems dynamics
Critical systems thinking
5.10 Contextualising any particular systems approach
16 Part 3: 6 Managing complexity
16 Part 3: 6 Managing complexity
6.1 Perspectives on managing
6.2 Modes of managing systemically
6.3 Clarifying purposefulness
16.4 Managing for emergence and self-organisation
16.5 Where does the systems practitioner stand in relation to a system of interest?
6.6 Reviewing the juggler through the understandascope
17 Part 4 Making sense of your experiences of complexity
17.1 Part 4: 1 Revising your understanding
References
Acknowledgements