Systemic Work With Organizations: A New Model for Managers and Change Agents (Systemic Thinking and Practice Series)

215 Pages·1995·9.41 MB·English

by  David Campbell

This edition first published in 1994 by
H. Karnac (Books) Ltd.
58 Gloucester Road
London SW74QY
Copyright © 1994 by David Campbell, Tim Coldicott, and Keith Kinsella
The rights of David Campbell, Tim Coldicott, and Keith Kinsella to be identified
as authors of this work have been asserted in accordance with §§ 11 and 78 of
the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Campbell, David
Systemic Work with Organizations: A New
Model for Managers and Change Agents. —
(Systemic Thinking & Practice Series)
I. Title II. Series
658
ISBN 1 85575 100 3
Printed in Great Britain by BPC Wheatons Ltd, Exeter
CONTENTS
EDITORS FOREWORD Vll
Introduction
PART ONE
Approach—
adapting theory to a new context
1 Key concepts of systemic thinking
2 Application of systemic concepts
in organizational work 28
Shifting from expertise to co-creation
v
VI CONTENTS
PART TWO
Praxis—
the constructionist approach in action
A Board-level consultation 61
Using the design process to develop a reflexive capability
A work-team consultation 84
Giving the client system time to reframe understandings
A whole-organization consultation 103
Widening the conversations about change
PART THREE
Methodology—
developing constructionist capabilities
6 The methodology so far ... 123
Work in progress
7 Getting started 148
Gaining acceptance of constructionist work
in an organizational context
8 Learning to take up the constructionist position 167
Personal reflections—experiences of the journey
Postscript
Next steps 187
Moving from knowledge to experience
as a basis for enactment
GLOSSARY 189
REFERENCES 196
INDEX 200
EDITORS' FORE WORD
O
ne of the unique features of this book is the fact that
the three authors, from very diverse backgrounds, have
come together at this particular time to create a conjoint
approach to work with organizations. From psychology and com
merce and engineering they have reached a common commitment
to a new way of understanding organizations. They are trans
posing systemic thinking from its origins in the therapeutic and
academic world of the social sciences to the hard-edged world of
organizational life. For years it has seemed eminently logical to
think of organizations as systems, but no one has devised a method
for using these ideas to bring about change. Because the authors are
amongst only a handful who are applying these new ideas as
consultants to a range of public and private sector organizations,
they are preoccupied with the problem of understanding and
evaluating their own work: "What works in which situation ...
and what doesn't work ... and why?" Their aim is to gather their
experiences together into a methodology that will enable other
practitioners to use these ideas.
vu
Vlll EDITORS' FOREWORD
Why should this book be appropriate at this particular time? As
editors we believe that the ideas in the book mirror the increasing
complexity of life today and the need to acknowledge an increasing
range of views and opinions about any issue. The days of simple
structures and easy explanations are gone, and practitioners need
tools to help them make sense of this emerging diversity. We see
systemic thinking—and its application called constructionist con
sultancy—as just such tools.
We are also aware that this book introduces this Series to a
new market. It aspires to create new ground—between the social
scientists and organization change agents—where new thinking
can be applied to old problems and where old ways of thinking
can be challenged with new techniques. The authors wrote with a
new audience in mind because they believe that increasingly
complicated organizational problems require a different kind of
practitioner than has existed before. They have tried to make the
book and its ideas as accessible and concise as possible, knowing
full well that some people find the language of systems thinking
very strange, and that managers and consultants do not have time
to wade through lengthy tomes to garner fresh ideas.
We hope familiar readers will find systemic ideas placed in new
contexts; for those of you coming to this field for the first time,
welcome!
David Campbell
Ros Draper
London
October 1994
SYSTEMIC WORK
WITH ORGANIZATIONS

Introduction
T
his book is written for managers, consultants, or people
aspiring to become consultants—for those, such as human
resources staff, with responsibility for managing change
within their own organization, or those who have reached a posi
tion of long experience in their own field and are now changing
their role to consult to others.
The authors' experience spans the public and private sectors.
The ideas in this book have been useful in the fields of health,
education, and local authority government, as well as in commerce
and industry. We have found among our public sector clients
growing acceptance of the need today to import ideas from the
private sector, but at the same time a concern among these man
ners that they do not have a context that gives meaning to the
imported ideas. The counterflow into the private sector of ideas
about collaboration, governance, ethics, and support for commun-
Jty has presented similar problems. It is this difficulty of helping
clients translate and fit knowledge and practice from one sphere
°f action to another that has provided a central challenge to the
authors as they have developed their model of systemic working.
1
2 INTRODUCTION
To grapple more effectively with a world of work in which there
is an increasing fragmentation of traditional structures and values,
the authors put forward two central ideas:
1. when people think systemically, they are able to understand
better the effects of connectedness in organizations, and
account more effectively for the dilemmas and tensions that
arise during change;
2. when people understand and accept how they collectively
create and maintain mental pictures of the organization and its
problems, they are able to alter and renegotiate these under
standings and find new ways of solving their problems.
Although many consultancy techniques are presented here, this
is not just a book of techniques. The authors describe a way of
thinking, a way of being, as a systemic consultant that is akin to
developing a new identity. From this new position, a consultant
negotiates the work with clients and creates techniques to address
the demands of a consultation process in a way that is different
from and, we believe, more productive than traditional consult
ancy services.
We are convinced that one does not become a systemic thinker
or a constructionist consultant by reading. This book is not a
manual telling the reader "how to do it". Rather, it is an introduc
tion to the ideas and practices that the authors have found
successful and compelling; readers will have to go much further
before applying these ideas to their own practice. We have found
the best way to progress is to work with other people who share an
interest in developing systemic ideas.
The work in this volume will be described with a particular
terminology which may be new for some readers, and for this
reason a comprehensive glossary is included at the end of the book.
However, two terms in particular should be clarified at the outset:
1. Systemic refers to the broad field of ideas derived from General
Systems Theory and expanded in several directions since the
1960s. These ideas will become clear and familiar as the reader
proceeds through the book.
2. Constructionist refers to some aspects of systemic thinking that
focus on the construction of problems in organizations and the