REPLY Justice System Workshop Ideas (SD6650)

[SDMAIL Andrew P. Jones]

Posted by  "Andrew P. Jones" <apjones1 at bellsouth.net>

System Dynamicists:

John Eggers asked about suggestions for a day long set of activities on 
systems thinking.

In our experience at Sustainability Institute, the following design principles 
tend to work  (links to papers et al are at the bottom):

1.  Start with their vision for results.  Help participants to name an outcome 
they'd like to achieve, by when.  E.G., prisoners in some disciplinary status 
down 20% by 2015.  Keeps the day focused on concrete results.

2.  Play quick "serious" games to support diverse learning methods. We usually 
use "Warped Juggle", John Shibley's "Living Loops", and "1, 2, 3 Go" from Linda 
Booth Sweeney's and Dennis Meadows' "Systems Thinking Playbook."

3. If you have only one day, don't teach causal loop diagramming or stock/flow 
diagramming.  Don't emphasize the methods, but USE the methods to make vivid and 
visceral and clear some relevant, applicable insights about how their world behaves 
over time under different conditions.  Kim Warren has articulated the fallacies of 
teaching method to managers.

4. The examples need to be from THEIR work.  Given the shared topic area, we 
typically take one of three approaches (or a combination), depending on how much 
customizing time we have and how much access we have to their thinking and 
challenges before the event.

A. Give participants opportunities to apply some systems thinking and system dynamics 
"tips" to their own work. Several years back, Phil Rice, Dennis Meadows, Gillian 
Martin-Mehers and I designed a one day workshop with games and application along 
these lines for LEAD International to translate into other languages and take to 
developing countries.  Tips focused on looking at long term historical and future 
behavior (dynamic graphs), finding ways that results self-reinforce (R loops) and 
watching for push-back and policy resistance (B loops - Sterman's Business Dynamics 
and especially its Instructor's Manual are full of examples).  Again, lead with the 
principle, not the loop method.

B. If you can work with them beforehand, have the experience to facilitate a group 
this way, and ideally have at least two trainers, create a stock/flow concept diagram 
(non-simulatable at this point) of their system for them and give them a chance to 
build on it. EG, a 20,000 foot view of population flows in the correctional system, 
mapping potential points of intervention.  We've created something similar on diabetes, 
and it tends to work exceptionally well for a range of participants. For methods, 
read the "Group Model Building" literature, particularly Vennix's book and Richardson/
Anderson's and team's papers on "teamwork" and their "scripts".  Stock/flow chains 
tend to work better than feedback maps for this type of exercise.

C. Explore and apply the insights of a single system trap or archetype.  We often use 
"Shifting the Burden" since it helps managers advocate for strategies that address 
the root causes of problems they face.  We'll start with an example distant from 
their field -- lately we've been using the "worse before better" manufacturing 
improvement story in Sterman and Repenning's paper, below.  Then help managers tell 
similar stories of trade-offs between symptomatic solutions  and fundamental ones, 
either with a diagram or without one.

Links:

Playbook:
http://www.sustainabilityinstitute.org/tools_resources/games.html

Warren paper:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/resolvedoi?DOI=10.1002/sres.651

LEAD:
http://www.lead.org/page/101

The "tips workshop":
http://www.sustainabilityinstitute.org/services/wkshopflier.PDF

Business Dynamics and Instructor's Manual:
http://www.mhhe.com/business/opsci/sterman/

Teamwork paper:
http://www.albany.edu/~gpr/Teamwork.pdf

Scripts:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/11225/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

Vennix' book:
http://www.ecampus.com/book/0471953555

Sterman/Repenning:
http://web.mit.edu/nelsonr/www/CMR_Getting_Quality_v1.0.html

Drew Jones
Posted by  "Andrew P. Jones" <apjones1 at bellsouth.net>
posting date  Mon, 24 Sep 2007 10:33:47 -0400