Systems Seeing Adventure – Day 6-9: Looking at a situation from different lenses

I have decided to bundle a few days together. The reason is, that I now need to come up with a situation that the rest of the adventure is using for the exercises. So I need to find something that I can share publicly. On the other hand I want to look at a work-related situation as well. So I will have a simpler situation for the blog, and a more complicated one for myself. In the posts I will share examples with the public situation, but also share insights from the work situation.

Day 6: Describe Focal Situation

Think of a situation you’d like to explore with a systems lens as we practice various systems approaches and views. It’s good (since these 15-20 minutes of daily journaling add up) if it’s something that matters to you to explore and understand, and begin to shape responses to.
Write a few paragraphs describing the situation.

As public scenario I will use my endeavor to get solar panels for our house. The project has come to some point of closure finally, so it should provide enough material for the exercises.

• Terraced house
• Roof facing WSW
• Three large roof windows – not much roof area left
• Old fuse box – no space for necessary electrics
• Got three calculations from companies with unreasonable offers
• The fourth company suggested to place as many balcony power plants as possible and have an electrician registering it as full solution

The work example I chose is our Software Development Life Cycle. As this is company internal, I can not share any explicit information. But I can share general insights.

Day 7: Context Scan

Consider the broader context of the situation you identified (in the previous activity). One way to make this visual: Put your situation in a circle (named abstraction) at the center of your page. What’s around it? What is the “context” for this situation?

Not everything might be readable, sorry.

Insights

One thing I realized again is that visualizing is helping with thinking about more and more topics for the situation. Putting it on a flat map reduces a bit the ability to visualize all connections. While drawing I remembered how interconnected and intertwined certain topics are, even though you can treat them as kind of individual streams. Looking at individual streams would be a change of perspective. This would keep the rest of the system, but change the importance of certain connections.

For example looking at the new product of manufacturer for balcony power plant solutions will keep mostly all other topics relevant. This product needs to provide advantages over the offers and needs a solution for the fuse box situation. But as I know now, it also has impact on the energy network provider, as some specific certificate is necessary to provide.

The lesson I learned from this small situation applies in a multitude to the work situation I chose. In the solar power example I have about a handful of other actors involved (net provider, electrician, sales people, myself). With my company’s SDLC the amount of actors alone is x-time higher, all with their individual motivation. The context is so much larger, as the SDLC is a rather central part of the company, which is a system by itself. It gets complex (intertwined) enough by its central nature. The interfaces with other processes, the amount of rules that need to apply, the amount of people involved more or less in the process is sheer endless.

Day 8: Sketch the Situation

Continue exploring the situation you described. Draw the situation, using words and images, but keep it informal and sketchy. The situation sets the general frame (so we aren’t bringing the whole world into our picture).

I gave it my best to draw something. As I said the other day, drawing or sketchnoting is not my strength. Here you can see why.

My insights for today are mostly, that when sketching the situation you reduce certain things to graspable elements of the situation. Virtual elements are too hard to draw, so you focus on the more or less real world things.

I’m not sure yet, if this is a good or a bad thing. Maybe it’s a way to put a filter on the situation. The instructions went on and tell about how elements of the system interact and what they care about and their concerns. I tried to not over-clutter the image. This takes away a lot of information that I had written down or put in the other diagram, and especially this is by far not what I have in mind for the situation. There are a lot of relations and interconnections, that would leave that drawing in a state where you can not see, understand or read anything. So I would say, a bit of focus is good. I definitely did not focus on all the most relevant bits and pieces, but then also the question, most relevant from which perspective.

For my SDLC problem I re-focused a lot from individuals to groups, or representing only some element from complicated relations. But there were too many parts and parties involved. I tried my best, but I was not happy.

Day 9: Practice Empathy

Pick one of the people in your situation sketch (Rich Picture, if you did that in the previous activity), and explore their experience of this situation, using an Empathy Map (see instructions on the image.)

I would say that I am half good with empathy and understand motivations of people in systems. Doing it with this Empathy Map helped to organize thoughts a bit better.

Insights

Mostly it was a confirmation that I’m on the right track with what I’m doing already. Splitting another person into all these different perspectives is really helpful. As I’m talking about a situation that is now solved, I can look back at the interaction with this person. And filling out the empathy map helped me re-evaluate the communication that happened. And I think I felt empathy for the person from the first email on that reached me. I tried to explain the situation from my point of view as good as possible, as I was aware that this most probably not a standard case. When I found out that I had no idea what I actually needed to provide at one point, I asked them politely for any example and thanked them, explaining my next steps. Would I have not felt empathy for the person and understood their situation, I might have reacted differently.

I believe that I have empathy for different roles, mostly at work but also many other areas. From a systems thinking point of view, taking different perspectives is essential. Empathy is the key to take perspectives of other people. The empathy map helps with that in a more formal way, what will work more “naturally” with practice.

In Systems Thinking you can also take the perspective of any other element or relation or distinction. For non-human elements of a system empathy is restricted. But I guess it will also help to a good degree to evaluate non-humans this way. I will think more about this and come back to you.

That’s it so far with the exercises. I found it very interesting to use different lenses for a change. I will practice more with those when looking at other systems.