Examples of systemic change and relational working

Real examples of systemic relational practice 

This is a list of the examples that describe some of my experiences as a designer of relational services, that has been created to help understand what a deeper approach to change & design might look like. The approach is probably quite different to what you are used to incorporating test and learn methods, systems thunking, human learning systems and relational working; that's one reason why I have put this online.

​These examples incorporate the characteristics of dealing with complexity, and uses systems thinking as a base to develop an approach to really change and transform services fundamentally, and in particular engaging managers and decision-makers. Relational design.

If you are looking for case studies rather than methods, they are here 

Systems Leadership

Engaging with senior managers is something that we should all understand as being fundamental to any real change. Leaders have the ability to make things happen, and to take lead of the change to ensure sustainability. This is an example of how to avoid some of the pitfalls that consultants can make, trying to get leaders to do what they want, rather than what the leader needs to do.
Once connected to leaders, this is an example of a first stage of engagement, to begin the process of working together on the problems that leaders face. This rapid test and learn method is within a system thinking framework and its purpose is to give the leaders a taste of the potential for the design. I use it to help them to experience a design, and then to co-create a strategy for how to take the design forward within their service.

Where I start and design is with the manager of that service. They understand the fundamental difference that systemic design can give them compared to traditional change or service design, so that we can co-create a strategy together on how their service should be designed. This results in a deepening systemic understanding through learning. This is an example of a managers learning for themselves from the wporkplace, rather than from others, and its impact on real mindset change. A shift to an outside in perspective.

Helping a leader to learn new ways of understanding what systems leadership is about, by learning from a experiment team of front line staff. Learning from the workplace is often the most powerful way to learn. This is the usual way that I engage with leaders to help them in a way that helps them to shift their mind-set, rather than develop classroom sessions where their learning is rational.

Implementation and Teamworking

How many of us have witnessed resistance to change from the front line? That can be avoided in certain situations, and this is an example of the groundwork that was made to avoid that resistance. For me, engaging and co-design with staff should be the normal approach in my work.

Any real innovation has to detach itself from the current way of working, and explore innovative approaches. Here we will highlight how this can work using systems thinking, test and learn principles, Human Learning Systems and complexity concepts

Helping managers understand systems thinking involves fundamental insights. As a part of sense-making it forms a corner-stone to fundamental systemic change. Taking someone through, using the iceberg model, this is made far easier using a diagram, as is demonstrated in this example.
In support of an outside-in perspective, this is a framework on how to understand demands coming into an organisation or service, and how to begin to group them for the subsequent design of services. This is the detail of the beginning of my version of systemic design (from John Seddon), which then creates the knowledge to develop the new work flow through the service, and the design of the interactions with the customer.
What is especially important is to analyse the demand so that complexity is understood from a systems thinking perspective, so that the demand and the design can be congruent.
Redesigning the flow of work, from the start of the flow with the customer, to the end. Creating a seamless flow breaking down silo working and developing croft functional team working.
Moving from an experiment or a prototype to making this way of working normal is not simply a move from one activity to the next on the plan. It is a critial point, where leaders decide that the prototype is going to be the test bed of the new design. The design work itself moves from a test and learn phase that has limited viability and few resources, to a real test of the new approach using real people and changing the underlying system. Changes need to be made, managers need to clear their diaries and then need to make decisions. It is a big and important step that needs care to be performed to be done correctly.
Systemic measures are an element of any management and systemic design, especially as we know that measures drive behaviours of the managers and staff. In true systems thinking fashion, looking at the service from end to end and outside in, the measures that we can create are different to those that the organisation currently uses. Here we look at the method and a case study, using systems thinking to creating a new set of measures for systemic design, to manage and learn.
Designing measures for complex services requires an approach that is different to logical service design. Here we go into the differences and examples that demonstrate how this works with systemic design, systems thinking and a complexity framework.
This model is the basis of the framework of the Understand phase of the systemic design thinking methodology I use. It is the basis for the Discovery phase of service design.
It describes how we approach understanding a service for the first time. It is for sense-making
This model, used as a framework or guide, takes us through a sequence of analysis that corresponds to an outside-in concept that is rooted in a holistic systemic view of a service, without getting distracted by the organisations desires,
How to engage with stakeholders that your remit of work does not directly include, is often a significant issue when trying to redesign an end to end service. This example is one way of using systems thinking and design thinking, together with participative approaches & techniques, to develop supportive and collaborative design.