CoCreating Clarity and Systems Thinking

CoCreating Clarity is centered in Relationship — Awareness, Observation and Communication — between self and other, and equally if not more importantly within oneself. Decades of work at a major high-tech company led me to conclude in a paper published in the newsletter 'The Systems Thinker' in April 1995:

"We are beginning to believe that a root cause of many of our business problems lies in the breakdown of personal relationships. Although our first inclination in business is to blame profitability problems on poorly executed strategy or a lack of management skills, we believe that the cause may well be the absence, avoidance, or breakdown of authentic connection and communication between human beings.

Today I am even more certain of this. I would now also expand my statement to say that it may well be true, not just for problems in our businesses, but also in our homes, our communities, our educational institutions, our non-profits, our government bodies, our diplomatic efforts — and indeed in every walk of life.

We are all familiar with breakdowns in communication. We complain about them a great deal and we assign blame for them. Avoidance of communication is less visible, less discussable, far more insidious, and often designed to control people and/or outcomes. And not least of all, the absence of communication while appearing to be more benign, may well have the farthest reaching destructive effects. In today's world obliviousness is no longer an excuse.

In more 'technical' terms CoCreating Clarity is about a fundamental shift from Cartesian Thinking to Systems Thinking. Cartesian or Reductionist Thinking is how most of us are trained by our schools and institutions, and often results in separate individual action being highly valued and rewarded. Systems Thinking, hardly ever taught in mainstream education, embraces individual action in relationship with the collective — a much more holistic approach, and one that is rarely recognized and even more rarely rewarded.

In fact Systems Thinking, or any similar effort to consider the collective, is often misinterpreted to mean a loss of autonomy and control. Fears prevail of endless hours spent struggling to reach consensus, and ultimate analysis paralysis. This view, while inaccurate, is nevertheless understandable because Systems Thinking in action demands the practice of effective communication skills, and therefore very quickly uncovers deficiencies that result in the absence, avoidance and breakdowns thereof.

For almost 400 years we have been immersed in a world that is largely organized and operated according to the principles laid out by the seventeenth century philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes. Cartesian Thinking is primarily focused on discrete things, boundaries, cause and effect, and the analytical or scientific method. Systems Thinking is all of this and expands beyond to include relationships, connections, interdependence and an understanding of the whole. Cartesian Thinking demands an 'either/or' answer. Systems Thinking embraces 'both/and' — a tricky concept at best for most of us.

The following words excerpted from Peter Checkland's book 'Systems Thinking, Systems Practice' capture beautifully the essential simplicity, and inherent difficulty of making such a shift!

"Rene Descartes taught Western civilization that the thing to do with complexity was to break it up into component parts and tackle them separately. The lesson has been well learned, and the idea is deeply embodied not only in scientists, for whom the idea is central, but in anyone who has a Western-style education.

Systems Thinking, however, starts from noticing the unquestioned Cartesian assumption: namely, that a component part is the same when separated out as it is when part of the whole. The Cartesian legacy provides us with an unnoticed framework — a set of intellectual pigeonholes — into which we place the new knowledge we acquire.

Systems Thinking is different because it is about the framework itself. Systems Thinking does not drop into its pigeonhole, it changes the shape and structure of the whole framework of pigeonholes. This questioning of previously unnoticed assumptions can be painful, and many people resist it energetically."

Or for those who prefer, I quote from the popular 'Dilbert' cartoon. In the last frame of a recently published strip, speaking to Dogbert, Dilbert says:

"Have you ever noticed that clarity makes people angry?"

In his ground breaking book "The Fifth Discipline" published in 1990, Peter Senge laid out a new and exciting roadmap for individual, team, and organizational learning. With a masterful blend of logic, structure, and intuitive understanding the book explores the principles and practices of Systems Thinking, Personal Mastery, Mental Models, Building Shared Vision, and Team Learning.

CoCreating Clarity begins with the recognition of our innate connectedness as whole systems ourselves, both as individuals and in relationship with each other. As such it may be the hardest work we have ever chosen to do. And the rewards are great.

CoCreating Clarity returns us to a deeper and more inclusive awareness of our connectedness and interdependence, along with the responsibility that this entails. It is in this fresh state that new options are discovered, and the freedom of our own best choice and action is recovered.

Read more in CoCreating Clarity: A New Systems Story.

And get started now with A Checklist for Everyday Systems Thinking!


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"Systems Thinking is different because it is about the framework itself. Systems Thinking does not drop into its pigeonhole, it changes the shape and structure of the whole framework of pigeonholes. This questioning of previously unnoticed assumptions can be painful, and many people resist it energetically."
Peter Checkland
Systems Thinking, Systems Practice