SYSTEMNESS: A Systems Leadership Academy

The Systems Leadership Academy includes over 36 hours of course time over a twelve-month period. Each session starts at 2:00 p.m. ET and concludes at 4:30 p.m. ET. Additionally, office hours are held immediately following each session from 4:30 p.m. ET to 5:00 p.m. ET. 

INTRODUCTION

The Systems Leadership Academy Overview & Introduction

We tend to think about things by breaking the world into pieces. But once we take a system apart, it loses its essential properties. It loses its systemness. We fragment the world instead of making it whole. This course will focus on systems-building principles, share concrete examples of the ideas in action, and provide a space to practice the skills for co-creating wholistic social systems designed to serve whole people. 

THE APPROACH  

A social problem is not one thing. Problems are patterns of cause and effect.

A social problem is a tangled knot of different kinds of interrelated and interacting problems. Our approach must match the complexity of the problem's structure. An ecosystem approach sorts problems into four different habitats based on the nature of the relationship between cause and effect.

Different things work in different contexts

The type of habitat you are in determines how you make decisions, as different problems prefer particular responses. 

Organizing around contexts, not problems

Instead of organizing teams around "what" a problem is about, an ecosystem approach organizes people around "how" a problem is structured.

Designing for both scale and variation

Structure is always a trade-off between scale and complexity. One organizing structure cannot do two different things.

THE PRACTICE

It's a systems thing, not a single thing

Systemness is about achieving a harmonious balance between scale and complexity to create a wholistic system. The "system" is how we work together.

It's better to dissolve a problem than solve it

If we don't address a problem systemically, we will end up solving the same problem, over and over again.

There is a time and place for everything

Context is everything. Human action is made meaningful by relating it to the contexts in which it occurs. Yet, too often, we remove people from their contexts.

To improve: solve for one, extend for many

Improving the macro system starts with the micro. We can't help a thousand people until we understand how to help one.

As a human institution, a system must be led

As leaders, we can build and organize a system that learns how to address any emerging issue, whether now or in the future.

Achieving Systemness: Epilogue

Systemness is the creation of an elegant order; its harmony entails a part's integrity and integration into the whole. We must learn to "cultivate our garden."

Due to the collaborative nature of systems work, there will be expectations for participants to continue this work beyond the scheduled session and determine how it might best integrate into their own work.

In order to best support you as a participant and your fellow classmates, we ask that you do everything you can to make all the sessions and be fully present in those sessions. We understand that things may come up, but this is to fully support you and the others in your class on your systemness learning journey.