Growing wings on the way : systems thinking for messy situations / Rosalind Armson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Armson, Rosalind.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Problem solving.

Decision making.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (342 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Devon : Triarchy Press, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

You may be: - trying to fix the healthcare system in your country... - dealing with family break-up... - exploring change - and making it happen - in your organisation... - worrying about how to look after your elderly parents... In any case, you'll know that with some problems it's hard to know where to start - we can't define them, we get in a muddle thinking about them, we may try to ignore some aspect/s of them and - when we finally do something - they usually get worse. These problems are so entangled they become 'messy situations' and our first mistake is to try and fix them as we would fix a simple problem. But Systems Thinking offers a range of good ways of approaching these situations and unravelling them. Rosalind Armson is one of the world's foremost teachers and practitioners of Systems Thinking, and her remarkable book explains how these messes happen and what to do about them. Specifically, she sets out a series of sophisticated and challenging - but practical and easily learned - skills and techniques for thinking better when you're'in a mess'. Whether you're new to Systems Thinking or have long experience, the book invites you to develop your skills through working with your own messy situations. It's written for managers, project managers, team leaders, 'change leaders', strategists, policy makers and concerned citizens as well as university students from a broad set of disciplines. Organisations and readers in education, healthcare, environmental management, IT planning and social care are just a few of those likely to find it helpful.

Contents:

""COVER""; ""CONTENTS""; ""Acknowledgements""; ""Introduction""; ""Part 1: Engaging with messy situations""; ""1. Messy issues, messy situations""; ""2. Framing the bigger picture""; ""3. Drawing rich pictures""; ""4. Identifying themes""; ""5. Escaping mental traps""; ""6. Managing my own complexity""; ""Part 2: Understanding messy situations""; ""7. Thinking about my thinking""; ""8. Understanding systems""; ""9. Diagramming""; ""10. Making sense of messy situations""; ""11. Diagnosing messy situations""; ""12. Thinking about diagramming""

""Part 3: Exploring purposeful action inmessy situations""""13. What?, How? and Why?""; ""14. How will it work?""; ""15. How will we know it is working?""; ""Part 4: Inquiring through action""; ""16. An inquiring mind""; ""17. An inquiring system""; ""18. An inquiring approach""; ""Appendix: The roots of systems thinking""; ""Glossary""; ""Index""; ""About the author""; ""About Triarchy Press""; ""Other Systems Thinking titles from Triarchy Press""

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

ISBN:

9781908009296

1908009292

9781908009692

1908009691

OCLC:

923435281