Community Southwest is delighted to welcome Stephen Duns to our Towards 2020 Collaboration Conference.
Stephen’s passion is to help individuals, organisations and communities identify their potential and support them to transform themselves to achieve their intrinsic magnificence. Stephen believes deeply that a strengths-based approach, storytelling and systems thinking are key factors in human emergence. Stephen is a trained coach and experienced mentor.
Stephen’s career experience includes several Chief Executive Officer and general management roles in health and community services in Australia and the UK. He has also worked extensively as a consultant, primarily in the not-for-profit and government sectors.
Stephen will provide an extraordinary learning experience for any business strategist or aspiring business manager through his topic “Systems Thinking and a Focus on Strengths”
Systems thinking is an holistic approach which focuses on the interrelationships within a system and the context of that system. We believe that systems are best understood when the relationships between the various elements within them and with other systems are identified. The only way to fully understand why an outcome occurs and persists is to understand the parts of the system in relation to the whole.
In this workshop you will be introduced to a range of tools to uncover the underlying systems and their interconnection, including Project Logic, Socio-Ecological Analysis, Theory U and Causal Loops along with the use of Appreciative Inquiry and other strengths based approaches.
Sounds like an interesting presentation. I have certainly experienced that when working within a business on a systems based problem, it is easily to remain focussed on the problem at hand , and forget that the system lies within a wider context.
In small business especially, I have seen this as an issue, where the lack of someone maintaining an objective, holistic view, manifests in low performance of the business.
Part of the issue of systems thinking can be that there is a focus on the word ‘systems’ and very little ‘thinking’ actually taking place.
The way we think is also the way we do things. It becomes our culture. This requires leadership from the top, where management are role models and every person involved with the organisation is consistently thinking from a customer/stakeholder/end-user perspective – everyday, all the time.
The Tipu Ake ki ti Ora leadership model provides us with a means of visualising a holistic and systematic approach to organisation. A systems approach is more than procedures and processes, it also includes creating an environment where creativity is encouraged and celebrated, where leadership is shared amongst everyone, where people work together in a collaborative, cross-functional teams, which requires unfettered and transparent communication, where everyone has their senses tuned into external influences, collective wisdom is shared and accessible by all and the focus is on collective wellbeing rather than individual power. (www.tipuake.org.nz)
As I stated at the beginning, the key word in systems thinking is ‘thinking’ – about all the above, about how each person in an organisation needs to interact with each other and with those that benefit from the service provided. Systems thinking requires us to let go of ‘me’ and instead become a part of ‘us’, it involves us understanding that great things can be achieved by people working together, collaboratively than can be achieved by one person trying to direct everyone else. http://bit.ly/6WzPXQ
John Coxon
http://www.johncoxon.com.au
Taking You From Frontline Manager to CEO