Systems Seeing Adventure – Day 10 and 11 – Telling it backwards

In case you wonder what this Systems Seeing Adventure is all about, there is this post from Ruth Malan explaining it. It’s about a 31 day systems seeing adventure. So I decided to take you with me on this journey.
Welcome to the next block of applying different lenses to situations, to better analyse the system.

Day 10: Circle of Cares and Concerns

Explore the concerns and orientations of various people or groups (“stakeholders”) who impact, and are impacted by, this situation you’re exploring.

The template gives some structure to this exploration.

1. Put the situation at the center.
2. Identify stakeholders who are directly involved, and why and how they care about the situation, and impact its unfolding. Identify their cares and concerns as they relate to the situation, and how they impact it.
3. Move out a level to who else cares, and consider how they are related to (and influence) directly involved stakeholders. What are their cares and concerns (as relevant to the situation)?

I produced another piece of beauty here. My drawing and writing skills are splendid. Anyway, I’m distracting.

This tool is a nice way to focus on the empathy and motivational part of people involved in the process. Looking at what these roles or people care about and what they are concerned about will help to understand the situation even better. Why is someone focusing on certain aspects? Either they especially care about this or are concerned about this and try to mitigate this.

In my example I have a sales person in the loop. Nothing against sales people, they are important for companies to make money and pay salaries. In my case, they want to sell their product to me. Their motivation is to earn the most they can make from me, from what I sensed, if the solution makes sense or not. At least in most cases. But in turn I can add this concern to myself in the picture, that I get offered a very expensive non-solution.

To look at motivations of actors in a system with the lenses of cares and concerns is a helpful approach to understand them in a more distinct way. This can help to better explain certain actions or reactions.

Also adding the second level of cares and concerns is helpful. Because these are then drivers for the people in the first level. This can explain even better why they care or are concerned. And in the analysis stage it helped me to find more motivations and reasons for their behavior.

Taking into account this additional level of actors in the system broadens the view. It looks at influences to the system that might not be directly part of the system in the first place. Like adding a new dimension to it. It’s collecting relevant information for your model, while not necessarily adding more complexity to it.

Intermezzo: Sensemaking and Framing

There is a bunch of quotes on page 18 of the slide deck around sensemaking. And the key message I took from some is, that detecting the problem is key to understanding the situation. When you come into a new situation, the first step is to find out about the core problem, the problem that is at the center of the situation.

Day 11: Narrative History: Unwinding Threads

Pick up a thread in the situation (in your verbal or visual narrative, or in your experience of it), and write a few paragraphs exploring how it came to.

What were the various paths of influence and unfolding? What are some stories of the history that you were there for, or have heard others tell? While you have time (in the 15-20 minute window), pick up other threads and explore those and notice interconnections.

I don’t want to bore you with the details of my interaction with the administrator of the energy net provider. Looking at the history of this single thread and going further back, how it even came to this interaction, is like going through a specific path through the situation.

I may have not done the exercise as intended. I was telling the story backwards in time, like in one of my favorite chapters of the Kangaroo Chronicles. The author Marc-Uwe Kling is telling the story backwards, starting with the end of an evening. And step by step he goes back in time during the evening, and one weird situation after another is explained how it began.
So I went back from status quo step by step. That way I focused on where I came from in this specific situation. As I know myself, if I start in the beginning, I will loose focus. Telling the story backwards has helped me.

I picked up one other thread. And while the second thread was not directly connected in the situation as it evolved, there were some interconnections. And if some decisions would have been made differently earlier in the situation, these threads would probably changed place. And everything would have been different. To stop speaking in riddles. If I would have decided that the “professional” solutions were worth the money, they would have taken care of registering the installation with the net provider. They would have had all certificates at hand, as the components installed would have been of a different – let’s call it – category, where these certificates are treated with more implicitness. Then I would have not come into the situation to communicate with this person at all. That person would then have been second level in the care and concern circle from Day 10.

There was a quote from the fantastic Elisabeth Hendrickson on that page, where I picked out this sentence: