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Managing complexity: A systems approach – introduction
Do you need to change the way you think when faced with a complex
My OpenLearn Profile
- Personalise your OpenLearn profile
- Save your favourite content
- Get recognition for your learning
Managing complexity: A systems approach – introduction
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.
Course learning outcomes
At the end of this free course you should be able to:
- reflect on your purposes and expectations in doing this unit;
- record in your Learning Journal your initial and developing understandings of what the course is about;
- use your Learning Journal as an on-going record of your developing understandings, expectations and experiences;
- use your Learning Journal to record your reflections;
- begin taking responsibility for your own reflections;
- use reflection to understand some of your own preferred styles of working;
- draw a rich picture of a complex situation, review it, identify traps you have set for yourself within it, locate yourself and draw yourself in it;
- identify any stakes you have in a complex situation and any traps these stakes might set for the systems practitioner;
- identify some systems-with-purpose in a complex situation;
- draw a systems map, review it, and use it to prompt further questions;
- identify the main objectives in drawing a diagram and the outcomes of systems maps, multiple-cause diagrams, rich pictures and control-model diagrams;
- identify defects in systems maps and multiple-cause diagrams;
- draw an influence diagram;
- draw a multiple-cause diagram;
- evaluate your diagramming skills;
- use a sign graph to explore the relationships between variables in the case study;
- draw and use a control-model diagram as a diagnostic tool
- develop your awareness of your own practices and their measures of performance;
- begin to use metaphors as a means of exploring your own systems practice;
- develop, and take responsibility for, your own understanding of complexity;
- distinguish between messes and difficulties and explain the implications of treating complex situations as being either one or the other
- discuss complexity in the context of messes and difficulties;
- list the properties of an observed system;
- understand some of the implications of recognising the role of the observer and their own tradition;
- appreciate some ethical implications of being a systems practitioner;
- distinguish between systematic approaches and systemic approaches;
- identify examples of formulating a system of interest;
- appreciate the experiences that gave rise to the development of soft systems methodology;
- discuss the way a systems practitioner manages the engagement with complexity;
- discuss the importance of being aware for a systems practitioner and the implications of not being aware;
- discuss the importance of contextualising systems approaches;
- distinguish between purposiveness and purposefulness;
- distinguish between a tool, a technique, a method, and a methodology, in a given context; and recognise the importance of the context in making this distinction;
- recognise the four distinguishing features of a systems practitioner engaging in practice and the implications of not maintaining each of these four features;
- make connections with the history of lineages of systems thinking and practice.
You can start this cour