More systemic failure.......
The mental models of those responsible for US/Israeli policy in the middle-east seem well suited to deliver systemic failure. Seymour Hersh provides the background! As a colleague said: 'This would be ironic, on the 50th anniversary of Suez, if it were not so sad and dangerous.'
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Return to Oz 2
It is now six weeks since my return. It has been an exponential learning curve about Melbourne. House hunting is a good way to learn your way around, re-orient to the sun - north facing, or more strictly north-east facing rather than south facing is the go (but hard to find)! Otherwise the task is not something I enjoy. The campus and surrounds are buzzy, cosmopolitan and people are friendly, welcoming and helpful. The diversity of food and coffee outlets on campus are in marked contrast to my previous one.
The quality of light and the blue of the sky are so different from the UK. The wattle and the wine uplifting!
What has changed and what is unsettling? The TV programmes leave a lot to be desired (so do a lot in the UK). The focus of the Melbourne media on the injuries to players and on field 'assaults' in the AFL is an interesting cultural statement! I sense a growth in US-style 'self-made person' rhetoric and belief. Is this at the expense of concern for others, giving something back? After six weeks Melbourne does not feel very big.
Rises in petrol prices are causing concerns - a hot political issue. Here I can fill my car up for $52. In the UK I cannot do it for £52. I suggest most poeple here are not aware of how expensive petrol and other forms of energy are likely to become. The sprawling outer suburbs, the mortgage belts, seem unsustainable socially and environmentally (particularly when water is added to the equation). The same seems true of the car industry (reminiscent of the UK) - still a big employer in some states but surely not viable in a global economy!
This is world water week. Given the extent of concerns about water at both a global and national level I was surprised when Kerry O'Brien, presenter of the ABCs 7.30 report, found the comments of Frank Rijsberman of the International Water Management Institute, so controversial.
It is now six weeks since my return. It has been an exponential learning curve about Melbourne. House hunting is a good way to learn your way around, re-orient to the sun - north facing, or more strictly north-east facing rather than south facing is the go (but hard to find)! Otherwise the task is not something I enjoy. The campus and surrounds are buzzy, cosmopolitan and people are friendly, welcoming and helpful. The diversity of food and coffee outlets on campus are in marked contrast to my previous one.
The quality of light and the blue of the sky are so different from the UK. The wattle and the wine uplifting!
What has changed and what is unsettling? The TV programmes leave a lot to be desired (so do a lot in the UK). The focus of the Melbourne media on the injuries to players and on field 'assaults' in the AFL is an interesting cultural statement! I sense a growth in US-style 'self-made person' rhetoric and belief. Is this at the expense of concern for others, giving something back? After six weeks Melbourne does not feel very big.
Rises in petrol prices are causing concerns - a hot political issue. Here I can fill my car up for $52. In the UK I cannot do it for £52. I suggest most poeple here are not aware of how expensive petrol and other forms of energy are likely to become. The sprawling outer suburbs, the mortgage belts, seem unsustainable socially and environmentally (particularly when water is added to the equation). The same seems true of the car industry (reminiscent of the UK) - still a big employer in some states but surely not viable in a global economy!
This is world water week. Given the extent of concerns about water at both a global and national level I was surprised when Kerry O'Brien, presenter of the ABCs 7.30 report, found the comments of Frank Rijsberman of the International Water Management Institute, so controversial.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Systemic understandings - sophisticated grasp or avoiding responsibilty?
In the UK about the time of the Hutton Inquiry, or possibly the Butler Inquiry (there were so many over Iraq with such little useful effect) I observed that some politicians and journalists were starting to to use the 'S' word - 'systemic'. My colleague John Naughton drew attention to it in a blog at about that time and in a subsequent posting at the time of Charles Clarke's resignation.
This word is one of the two adjectives based on 'system' - systemic (pertaining to a system or a whole) and systematic (methodically, as in following a recipe). Fortunately recent usage suggests that those who are using it know the difference. This is true in Oz as well - a recent headline says: 'Abuse claims prompt fears of systemic problem in detention centres' .
What is not clear however is whether those using the 'S' word do so as a means of avoiding responsibility by implying that systemic failure cannot be avoided. If so this is a copout!
For over 30 years at the OU we have been teaching courses which equip students (who are usually working at the time) with concepts and skills to understand why systemic failure occurs and how, by thinking and acting systemically, many unintended consequences can be avoided i.e. how to take responsibility for avoiding systemic failure! The evidence we have is that our courses work for students, as shown by the research published in 'Waving not Drowning' drawn from alumni working within the NHS.
Despite this experience and expertise systemic failure abounds in all walks of life. For example, I was recently one of 23 academics who signed an open letter calling for a review of 'Connecting for Health', the Blair government's multi-billion pound IT project for the NHS (published in Computer Weekly on 11 April 2006 and addressed to the Health Select Committee). My motivation in contributing was to try to prevent yet another IT-based systemic failure and the loss of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money. Despite the best efforts of my colleagues, those responsible for the project, after some initial agreement that a review would be helpful, mounted a successful defence and it is more-or-less business as usual, although recent failures may re-focus attention and scrutiny. The recent failures article says:
'The project to overhaul the NHS's computer systems, costing millions, is so beset by problems that hospitals would be better off if they had never tried to implement it, according to a confidential document apparently sent by one of the scheme's most senior executives'.
The perspective of Richard Granger, the Director of Connecting for Health can be gauged from this interview.
This is not just a UK phenomen as this example from Australia demonstrates. Here is a little of what it has to say:
'The [Australian] Government faces an uphill job generating public confidence in its new hi-tech benefit card after the Auditor-General found the current system is so shoddy, almost half the records are wrong.
An Australian National Audit Office random check of 10,048 Centrelink customer records has found 45.3 per cent contain at least one error.
In 29.8 per cent of these cases, the error has a dollar impact.
The average debt caused by the errors was $1,034.
Anyone who has ever dealt with Centrelink will cringe at the prospect that 16 million Australians will have to front up for a 15-minute interview with the agency to register for the new smartcard between 2008 and 2010.'
Of course UK citizens ought to be equally, or more, concerned with New Labour's foolish committment to press on with ID cards.
In the UK about the time of the Hutton Inquiry, or possibly the Butler Inquiry (there were so many over Iraq with such little useful effect) I observed that some politicians and journalists were starting to to use the 'S' word - 'systemic'. My colleague John Naughton drew attention to it in a blog at about that time and in a subsequent posting at the time of Charles Clarke's resignation.
This word is one of the two adjectives based on 'system' - systemic (pertaining to a system or a whole) and systematic (methodically, as in following a recipe). Fortunately recent usage suggests that those who are using it know the difference. This is true in Oz as well - a recent headline says: 'Abuse claims prompt fears of systemic problem in detention centres' .
What is not clear however is whether those using the 'S' word do so as a means of avoiding responsibility by implying that systemic failure cannot be avoided. If so this is a copout!
For over 30 years at the OU we have been teaching courses which equip students (who are usually working at the time) with concepts and skills to understand why systemic failure occurs and how, by thinking and acting systemically, many unintended consequences can be avoided i.e. how to take responsibility for avoiding systemic failure! The evidence we have is that our courses work for students, as shown by the research published in 'Waving not Drowning' drawn from alumni working within the NHS.
Despite this experience and expertise systemic failure abounds in all walks of life. For example, I was recently one of 23 academics who signed an open letter calling for a review of 'Connecting for Health', the Blair government's multi-billion pound IT project for the NHS (published in Computer Weekly on 11 April 2006 and addressed to the Health Select Committee). My motivation in contributing was to try to prevent yet another IT-based systemic failure and the loss of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money. Despite the best efforts of my colleagues, those responsible for the project, after some initial agreement that a review would be helpful, mounted a successful defence and it is more-or-less business as usual, although recent failures may re-focus attention and scrutiny. The recent failures article says:
'The project to overhaul the NHS's computer systems, costing millions, is so beset by problems that hospitals would be better off if they had never tried to implement it, according to a confidential document apparently sent by one of the scheme's most senior executives'.
The perspective of Richard Granger, the Director of Connecting for Health can be gauged from this interview.
This is not just a UK phenomen as this example from Australia demonstrates. Here is a little of what it has to say:
'The [Australian] Government faces an uphill job generating public confidence in its new hi-tech benefit card after the Auditor-General found the current system is so shoddy, almost half the records are wrong.
An Australian National Audit Office random check of 10,048 Centrelink customer records has found 45.3 per cent contain at least one error.
In 29.8 per cent of these cases, the error has a dollar impact.
The average debt caused by the errors was $1,034.
Anyone who has ever dealt with Centrelink will cringe at the prospect that 16 million Australians will have to front up for a 15-minute interview with the agency to register for the new smartcard between 2008 and 2010.'
Of course UK citizens ought to be equally, or more, concerned with New Labour's foolish committment to press on with ID cards.
So what has changed?
In 1993 I wrote:
The drought of the early 1890's led to fundamental changes in the way the Western Division was viewed; at this time Henry Lawson (1990) wrote in his poem "Bourke":
"No sign that grass ever grew in scrubs that blazed beneath the sun;
The plains were dust in Ninety-two, and hard as bricks in Ninety-one.
On glaring iron-roofs of Bourke the scorching, blinding sandstorms blew,
No hint of beauty lingered there in Ninety-one and Ninety-two.
This was reflected institutionally in the 1901 Royal Commission, which was a landmark in that it concluded that the nature of the land itself imposed special constraints on any attempt to populate or utilise it (NSW Parliamentary Papers 1901). It is also only through the chronicles of poets, like Lawson and the myriad story-tellers that represent the Bushies oral tradition that we know of the experiences of the pastoralists. These are not incorporated into scientific discourses but are powerful in shaping the ways in which pastoralists interpret their world of experience - we are the bush, as our collaborators observed. The study of Pretty (1991) of the 3-4 fold increase in agricultural productivity in 17th - 19th century Britain is salutory as it was achieved by farmers without either institutionalised science or extension.
One hundred years later the headlines exclaim:
"Dirt poor. You think you have heard it all before .... about how Australia's farmers are suffering. But not on this scale, not in this way. The vast plains of our state's west have become a disaster area - for both people and their properties. Hopes and dreams are being eroded, just as surely as the land itself." (Wahlquist 1992).
In 1993 I asked: So what has changed?
According to Asa Wahlquist, still writing on this subject, 'things are bad, very bad, for much of the western division. How bad we will probably know only when the drought ends and the exodus begins.' The situation seems much as it was to me.
Elsewhere Asa attacks Jared Diamond's conclusions about Australian Agriculture and chronicles some of the changes for the better that she perceives. Almost daily the media runs a story on land management or water and the letters pages reveal the range of perspectives that exist on these issues. Thus far, however, I do not encounter many who feel new dams are part of the solution.
My original comments were published in Ison, R.L. (1993) Changing community attitudes. (Invited Keynote Paper) The Rangeland Journal 15, 154-66.
In 1993 I wrote:
The drought of the early 1890's led to fundamental changes in the way the Western Division was viewed; at this time Henry Lawson (1990) wrote in his poem "Bourke":
"No sign that grass ever grew in scrubs that blazed beneath the sun;
The plains were dust in Ninety-two, and hard as bricks in Ninety-one.
On glaring iron-roofs of Bourke the scorching, blinding sandstorms blew,
No hint of beauty lingered there in Ninety-one and Ninety-two.
This was reflected institutionally in the 1901 Royal Commission, which was a landmark in that it concluded that the nature of the land itself imposed special constraints on any attempt to populate or utilise it (NSW Parliamentary Papers 1901). It is also only through the chronicles of poets, like Lawson and the myriad story-tellers that represent the Bushies oral tradition that we know of the experiences of the pastoralists. These are not incorporated into scientific discourses but are powerful in shaping the ways in which pastoralists interpret their world of experience - we are the bush, as our collaborators observed. The study of Pretty (1991) of the 3-4 fold increase in agricultural productivity in 17th - 19th century Britain is salutory as it was achieved by farmers without either institutionalised science or extension.
One hundred years later the headlines exclaim:
"Dirt poor. You think you have heard it all before .... about how Australia's farmers are suffering. But not on this scale, not in this way. The vast plains of our state's west have become a disaster area - for both people and their properties. Hopes and dreams are being eroded, just as surely as the land itself." (Wahlquist 1992).
In 1993 I asked: So what has changed?
According to Asa Wahlquist, still writing on this subject, 'things are bad, very bad, for much of the western division. How bad we will probably know only when the drought ends and the exodus begins.' The situation seems much as it was to me.
Elsewhere Asa attacks Jared Diamond's conclusions about Australian Agriculture and chronicles some of the changes for the better that she perceives. Almost daily the media runs a story on land management or water and the letters pages reveal the range of perspectives that exist on these issues. Thus far, however, I do not encounter many who feel new dams are part of the solution.
My original comments were published in Ison, R.L. (1993) Changing community attitudes. (Invited Keynote Paper) The Rangeland Journal 15, 154-66.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Dual citizenship - the debate
Having lived and worked in the UK for 12 years I return with dual nationality - British and Australian, something the Australian government did not allow till 2002. The recent plight of Lebanese and Israeli Australians has ignited a debate about who is really Australian and the desirability or not of allowing dual nationality. A feature article in the Australian Finanacial Review, more balanced than the Courier Mail article (but not available electronically) explores the issues and makes, in my view, strong arguments, for maintaining dual nationality arrangements. Surprisingly the government has no idea how many Australian citizens have dual nationality. If anything, based on my experience to date, I would say that Government does not go far enough in encouraging this arrangement so as to facilitate an outward-looking, globally mobile citizenry (whether virtually or physically). Certainly tax, medical care, superannuation and other arrangements seem unduly complex at this stage, not that British banks - or at least mine - seem any better. Mine cannot deal with my Australian account number for internet transfers because they are one digit short in their account code field!!.
Having lived and worked in the UK for 12 years I return with dual nationality - British and Australian, something the Australian government did not allow till 2002. The recent plight of Lebanese and Israeli Australians has ignited a debate about who is really Australian and the desirability or not of allowing dual nationality. A feature article in the Australian Finanacial Review, more balanced than the Courier Mail article (but not available electronically) explores the issues and makes, in my view, strong arguments, for maintaining dual nationality arrangements. Surprisingly the government has no idea how many Australian citizens have dual nationality. If anything, based on my experience to date, I would say that Government does not go far enough in encouraging this arrangement so as to facilitate an outward-looking, globally mobile citizenry (whether virtually or physically). Certainly tax, medical care, superannuation and other arrangements seem unduly complex at this stage, not that British banks - or at least mine - seem any better. Mine cannot deal with my Australian account number for internet transfers because they are one digit short in their account code field!!.
Experiencing global warming impacts
In May 2005 I was fortunate to make a visit to the Iguazu Falls on the border between Brasil and Argentina. Even at that time the river was low but the falls were spectacular. Compare the photos taken of the same area then (above) and now (below - source: Aurea Cunha/Gazeta do Povo/AE).
Climate change impact surely?
Yet in this country (Oz) the current (and long-term) Federal government are in denial presenting a policy that is perhaps best described as 'environmental terrorism'. In this case I follow the definition of terrorism as 'systematic intimidation as a method of governing or securing political or other ends'. One only has to read the paper by Clive Hamilton (The Dirty Politics of Climate Change) to see how this is enacted. The net effect is to protect vested interests (promote first-order change) at the expense of innovation and change, particularly the emergence of new insitutions and economic activity that will address the systemic basis of climate change at the same time as creating demand pull for new technologies and institutional arrangements (second-order change).
Elizabeth Farrelly, in a well crafted article, entitled 'Eyes wide shut on the issue of the century' provides some compelling arguments.
Some of the states are doing better.
There are no bananas today
Life in Oz is tough! Muesli without banana is like Heloise without Abelard. What creates this situation? Cyclone destruction of almost the whole of the local banana crop along with quarantine restrictions on imports. Prices are so high they are taking some of the blame for the rise in inflation that is likely to see home interest rates rise tomorrow to over 7%. At dinner the other night we were given bananas as a special treat!!
Life in Oz is tough! Muesli without banana is like Heloise without Abelard. What creates this situation? Cyclone destruction of almost the whole of the local banana crop along with quarantine restrictions on imports. Prices are so high they are taking some of the blame for the rise in inflation that is likely to see home interest rates rise tomorrow to over 7%. At dinner the other night we were given bananas as a special treat!!
Monday, July 24, 2006
The cafe society twelve years on...
Perhaps it is just Melbourne but I am almost overwhelmed by the number of coffee shops, cafes and restaurants. Is the early 21st century cafe society sustainable? According to a SMH article Australians are still way behind the Finns in per capita coffee consumption and clearly out in Oz suburbia and rural areas Nescafe fans still persist! I hate to think how many empty shops there will be if there is a significant downturn in the economy. Don't get me wrong I underwent withdrawal symptoms 12 years ago after moving from Sydney to Milton Keynes! In 1994 London was little better than MK, but somewhere along the way both London and MK changed and a good coffee ...with half reasonable (if too expensive) food was possible. But somehow Melbourne almost has too much on offer. In the street outside my partner's office, where five years ago there was only one coffee shop, now there are five.
There is also the vexed issue of the 'world in my coffee cup'. As I wrote a few years ago in our Open University course, 'Managing complexity. A systems approach':
Ecological backpacking in Seattle – the ghost of coffee’s past
by Alan Durning
If you are not a coffee drinker like me then Alan’s story may not be as personally challenging as it was for me. To me the story lays bare the systemic connections between my behaviours and the implications of that behaviour when it is aggregated. If I imagine his story as being about a ‘system to satisfy my passion for drinking coffee each morning’ then I have to conclude that it is an effective system, most of the time, in achieving the transformation ‘passion unmet to passion met’ for me. But, his story also reveals the extent to which resources have to be used to achieve the transformation as well as the number of activities undertaken. His story makes transparent what I intrinsically know but choose to ignore in my passion for drinking my daily cup of coffee. Despite the unanticipated and undesirable outcomes of this set of activities and my heightened awareness of the emergent properties from these activities, which have long-term undesirable effects, at heart I do not want to change my behaviour! So what are the implications of my position? Well, I console myself by believing that my coffee drinking habits are not at the top of the list of sustainable development issues of which I am aware. Alan generalizes in his story about getting off this ‘consumption kick’, and that, for me, is part of it. But is it enough?
The more I engage with sustainable development issues the more complex I perceive them to be. Drinking coffee is not an isolated and individual act, it is also a social act. This is why we have coffee shops and can talk of a ‘cafe´ society’. Another way of saying this is that there are many stakeholders with an interest in maintaining an interconnected set of activities, which I might recognize as the system I have described above. Many of these stakeholders will have a passion for coffee as I do but others will have different interests and will probably look at the same set of interconnected activities and recognize it as a different system. From the perspective of a peasant in Colombia it may be ‘a system to eke out a livelihood’, or from the perspective of a concerned natural resource manager or environmentalist, ‘a system to increase the rate of rainforest destruction’'.
This is an example of why systems thinking and practice skills and capabilities are urgently needed.
Perhaps it is just Melbourne but I am almost overwhelmed by the number of coffee shops, cafes and restaurants. Is the early 21st century cafe society sustainable? According to a SMH article Australians are still way behind the Finns in per capita coffee consumption and clearly out in Oz suburbia and rural areas Nescafe fans still persist! I hate to think how many empty shops there will be if there is a significant downturn in the economy. Don't get me wrong I underwent withdrawal symptoms 12 years ago after moving from Sydney to Milton Keynes! In 1994 London was little better than MK, but somewhere along the way both London and MK changed and a good coffee ...with half reasonable (if too expensive) food was possible. But somehow Melbourne almost has too much on offer. In the street outside my partner's office, where five years ago there was only one coffee shop, now there are five.
There is also the vexed issue of the 'world in my coffee cup'. As I wrote a few years ago in our Open University course, 'Managing complexity. A systems approach':
'I like to start each day with a cup of strong Italian style coffee. It is one of the modest passions that I have in my life – at least that is what I tell myself. I also tend to navigate my way around parts of London and Sydney, two cities I know reasonably well, by the quality of the coffee shops. So what have my coffee drinking habits to do with managing complexity, or more particularly managing sustainable development? The connection was brought home to me in a very challenging way in a short story from Alan Durning of Seattle (below) which I read as part of my preparations for writing this course material. What do you make of his metaphor about there being ‘a world in my cup’.
Ecological backpacking in Seattle – the ghost of coffee’s past
by Alan Durning
My name is Alan and I am a compulsive drinker. Coffee is my brew. I used to drink it daily, sometimes hourly. I drank it by the pot ... cappuccinos, frappacinos, even Folger’s drip. Now I’m on the wagon, drinking locally grown herbal tea. You see, this terrible thing happened. A dream straight out of Scrooge. I saw where my coffee comes from. It started one morning in the kitchen. As I poured the beans into the grinder, I suddenly found myself in a clouded forest on a mountain above the Cauca River in Colombia. The lush vegetation was disappearing all around me as a coffee plantation grew. Farm workers were spraying the trees with pesticides made in the valley of the River Rhine in Europe. I began to choke on the poisonous fumes when I was transported ... to New Orleans. Burlap sacks of coffee beans were being unloaded from a freighter burning oil from the Orinoco River Valley of Venezuela. It was like a spin on the house that Jack built: the freighter was made in Japan out of steel forged in Korea from iron mined in the lands of Australian aborigines. Workers were pouring the beans into a roaster, which was fuelled with natural gas piped in from Oklahoma. Out the other end, my beans poured into bags of nylon, polyester, and polyethylene – plastics from New Jersey – and aluminium foil from a smelter in Oregon. That smelter was powered by electricity from dams that have nearly wiped out wild salmon in the Columbia River. Suddenly, I was in my kitchen again, but hovering by the ceiling, looking down. My beans, now disintegrating in the grinder, had come to my home inside a brown paper bag made from pines in the northern Rockies. On the trip from the supermarket, my car had burned a sixth of a gallon of gasoline, spewing carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and volatile organics into the air. The gas had come from Alaska’s North Slope by way of Prince William Sound and a refinery in northern Washington. Hovering above myself in the kitchen, I watched as I took that first sip of the day. But from my cup came pesticides, oil, molten steel. My ecological wake. And it wasn’t just the coffee. My T-shirt. My newspaper. My radio. The wake of it all washed over me. I buckled under its weight. Then my bathroom scale appeared, flashing 115 pounds. My daily consumption of natural resources. I fell to the floor, crushed and bloated. I can’t shake this dream. I’ve gotta find a way of using less. Can we make things better? Figure out better ways of getting around? Get stuff from closer to home? I don’t know, but I do know this, my name is Alan, I’m a compulsive coffee drinker, and there’s a world in my cup.
Alan Durning was Executive Director of Northwest Environment Watch in Seattle. This commentary was first heard on the radio show ‘Living on Earth’ on KPLU, adapted from Alan’s This Place on Earth (Sasquatch Books) and I have taken it from the book Carley, M. and Spapens, P. (1998) Sharing the World. Sustainable Living & Global Equity in the 21st Century, London, Earthscan, p. 67.
Alan Durning was Executive Director of Northwest Environment Watch in Seattle. This commentary was first heard on the radio show ‘Living on Earth’ on KPLU, adapted from Alan’s This Place on Earth (Sasquatch Books) and I have taken it from the book Carley, M. and Spapens, P. (1998) Sharing the World. Sustainable Living & Global Equity in the 21st Century, London, Earthscan, p. 67.
If you are not a coffee drinker like me then Alan’s story may not be as personally challenging as it was for me. To me the story lays bare the systemic connections between my behaviours and the implications of that behaviour when it is aggregated. If I imagine his story as being about a ‘system to satisfy my passion for drinking coffee each morning’ then I have to conclude that it is an effective system, most of the time, in achieving the transformation ‘passion unmet to passion met’ for me. But, his story also reveals the extent to which resources have to be used to achieve the transformation as well as the number of activities undertaken. His story makes transparent what I intrinsically know but choose to ignore in my passion for drinking my daily cup of coffee. Despite the unanticipated and undesirable outcomes of this set of activities and my heightened awareness of the emergent properties from these activities, which have long-term undesirable effects, at heart I do not want to change my behaviour! So what are the implications of my position? Well, I console myself by believing that my coffee drinking habits are not at the top of the list of sustainable development issues of which I am aware. Alan generalizes in his story about getting off this ‘consumption kick’, and that, for me, is part of it. But is it enough?
The more I engage with sustainable development issues the more complex I perceive them to be. Drinking coffee is not an isolated and individual act, it is also a social act. This is why we have coffee shops and can talk of a ‘cafe´ society’. Another way of saying this is that there are many stakeholders with an interest in maintaining an interconnected set of activities, which I might recognize as the system I have described above. Many of these stakeholders will have a passion for coffee as I do but others will have different interests and will probably look at the same set of interconnected activities and recognize it as a different system. From the perspective of a peasant in Colombia it may be ‘a system to eke out a livelihood’, or from the perspective of a concerned natural resource manager or environmentalist, ‘a system to increase the rate of rainforest destruction’'.
This is an example of why systems thinking and practice skills and capabilities are urgently needed.
Reading with jetlag
John McGahern's novel 'That they may face the rising sun' contains some of the best prose I have read in years. Although based in Ireland it evokes my own rural upbringing in central-western NSW - particularly in the way he deals with time, place and relationships. It was ideal reading for jet-lagged hours of wakefulness upon my return to Oz. One short exerpt particularly captured my attention (p.170): 'When it was considered carefully, all Frank Dolan had done was to be too honest and too self-expressive. Each quality alone was dangerous enough: combined together they were a recipe for disaster'. This reflection arose when Frank Dolan 'lost' a sure bank loan because he was not prepared to play the game - to 'stretch the truth' to meet the needs of the 'banking system'. The story is germane to contemporary organisational life - and perhaps close to the bone when it comes to my own circumstances and that of my colleague, John Naughton, whose well selected gift the book was.
One excerpt in my other reading also reminded me of John, a committed Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge - in her 'The Knox Brothers' Penelope Fitzgerald, citing her father, Eddie Knox (circa 1910) says: 'This shocked Owen [Seaman, the influential editor of Punch], who controlled the politics of England entirely in verse. He had, indeed, a strong sense of vocation, and I remember his saying sadly about somebody or other, 'he is the kind of man who doesn't take his humour seriously'.
John McGahern's novel 'That they may face the rising sun' contains some of the best prose I have read in years. Although based in Ireland it evokes my own rural upbringing in central-western NSW - particularly in the way he deals with time, place and relationships. It was ideal reading for jet-lagged hours of wakefulness upon my return to Oz. One short exerpt particularly captured my attention (p.170): 'When it was considered carefully, all Frank Dolan had done was to be too honest and too self-expressive. Each quality alone was dangerous enough: combined together they were a recipe for disaster'. This reflection arose when Frank Dolan 'lost' a sure bank loan because he was not prepared to play the game - to 'stretch the truth' to meet the needs of the 'banking system'. The story is germane to contemporary organisational life - and perhaps close to the bone when it comes to my own circumstances and that of my colleague, John Naughton, whose well selected gift the book was.
One excerpt in my other reading also reminded me of John, a committed Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge - in her 'The Knox Brothers' Penelope Fitzgerald, citing her father, Eddie Knox (circa 1910) says: 'This shocked Owen [Seaman, the influential editor of Punch], who controlled the politics of England entirely in verse. He had, indeed, a strong sense of vocation, and I remember his saying sadly about somebody or other, 'he is the kind of man who doesn't take his humour seriously'.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Systems thinkers gather in Melbourne!
Another arrival in Melbourne, planned for September is Tom Bentley, former head of thinktank DEMOS. His pending arrival has already been the subject of media coverage: The Melbourne Age byline was: 'Former Blair 'policy wonk' to advise Bracks'. (For those unfamiliar with Australian politics Steve Bracks is Premier of the state of Victoria). The article advises that: 'He will do two jobs in Melbourne: working in the Premier's Department three days a week and teaching for the other two at Melbourne University's Australia and New Zealand School of Government. He follows Geoff Mulgan, former head of the Blair Government's strategy unit, in taking a post at the school.'
Tom, whilst at DEMOS, fostered the publication of 'System Failure' by Jake Chapman. This in turn has lead to an Open University short course based on 'System Failure' called 'Making Policies Work'.
Both Tom and Geoff Mulgan, amongst their many other achievements, have given well-recieved presentations to Systems Practice for Managing Complexity (SPMC) Network conferences.
Another arrival in Melbourne, planned for September is Tom Bentley, former head of thinktank DEMOS. His pending arrival has already been the subject of media coverage: The Melbourne Age byline was: 'Former Blair 'policy wonk' to advise Bracks'. (For those unfamiliar with Australian politics Steve Bracks is Premier of the state of Victoria). The article advises that: 'He will do two jobs in Melbourne: working in the Premier's Department three days a week and teaching for the other two at Melbourne University's Australia and New Zealand School of Government. He follows Geoff Mulgan, former head of the Blair Government's strategy unit, in taking a post at the school.'
Tom, whilst at DEMOS, fostered the publication of 'System Failure' by Jake Chapman. This in turn has lead to an Open University short course based on 'System Failure' called 'Making Policies Work'.
Both Tom and Geoff Mulgan, amongst their many other achievements, have given well-recieved presentations to Systems Practice for Managing Complexity (SPMC) Network conferences.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Arriving in Oz
My 'new' office has different views to those in Milton Keynes - a view of the Melbourne skyline to the south and just across the road the new 'Alan Gilbert Building' - a rather recent erection named after the recently departed and controversial VC (and President). More on that later.
Melbourne is perhaps the only city which has not had its elm trees wiped out by Dutch elm disease. I expect them to provide much needed shade in the summer.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
New beginnings
Despite good intentions my attempt to set up a Blog in 2003 did not amount to much!! Other things took over. For a sample see my webpage.
A change in my personal circumstances from the end of June 2006 has provided an opportunity to take up Blogging seriously. My intention is still to embark on systemic musings as and when issues that concern me - capture my enthusiasm - arise. However I am also starting another inquiry as the posting below explains.
Return to Oz 1
My first posting was written the day after my arrival in Melbourne - 2nd July 2006.
I am Australia bound for an 18 month sabbatical based at the Melbourne Water Research Centre. This will be the first time I have lived in Australia for an extensive period in over 12 years…. so I have set myself the task of keeping a blog about my experiences of re-assimilation! For various reasons I have been apprehensive about the return, or at least my departure from the OU and the Systems Department, at this moment in time.
Two weeks earlier, whilst at a conference dinner at the ‘Our Dynamic Earth’ Centre in Edinburgh, Craig, an Australian participant, was called on to make some announcements. When I said to others at my table that I found him hard to understand – he had a very broad Aussie accent - they looked relieved and exclaimed: ‘What chance have we got? We can’t understand him at all!’ So who and what has changed? This is part of my inquiry.
When I first arrived in the UK I was rarely anxious about travel. In fact I thrived on it! How things have changed. My main anxiety, the ecological footprint of my impending flight, was partially relieved by Mark Y’s gift - two trees planted to offset my CO2 production of 1.9 tonnes for 16911km flight from London to Melbourne. But as the New Internationalist article in the latest edition makes clear, I should not have been so readily relieved. At least it was a gesture and one of the few available in the circumstances ….apart from deciding not to go. Our new course explores the issues.
The trip from Milton Keynes to Heathrow is now something that has to be planned and negotiated – it is no longer just a drive and was never just a train trip. I suggested allowing two hours so as to arrive at 10.20 for a 12.20 departure. Against her better judgement my colleague and generous ‘taxi driver’ agrees. My anxiety goes through the roof as the M1 comes to a dead stop south of Luton; why was our lane, one of three, stopped for longer? A wrong call of the dice? Would this be one of the daily 30 minute to three hour stoppages that are part of driving in the south-east of England – or one of the big snarls that can take the best part of a day to clear? In the end I was fated to catch my plane for Melbourne – the two hours we had allowed to get from Milton Keynes to Heathrow turned out to be just right…but what if….? When it comes to driving in this part of the world being right after the event doesn’t help much - it offers no guidance for next time - a 2004 survey for the Department of Transport found that the main reason why people found congestion annoying was because it made their journey times unpredictable.
Checking in was another queuing event – plenty of time to worry about overweight luggage and what it might cost! I feel sure BA has not worked at its queuing theory. Check-in safely negotiated and on-board but queuing for a take-off slot adds more time than usual – a panel has fallen off an incoming plane! Queuing again for showers in the Qantas lounge at Hong Kong, made worse by a relict of white superiority who, much to his spouse’s discomfort, attempts a queue-jumping coup d’etat. I am not sure if he gains the better of the Thai woman running the show – I left in disgust but did return for a shower just in time, name safely recorded on the queue list! Was he Australian or English – difficult to tell but the worst of the old ‘white man in Asia syndrome’.
On board again and determined to sleep between Hong Kong and Melbourne I am awoken by a very Aussie, nasal ‘Excuse me Darl! (sounding like Daarrl) addressed to me. Later I overhear a conversation between other passengers – a couple – who reject this patronising form of address. ‘Excuse me I’m not your darling’! It is years since I have heard the phrase. Now I am aware of how insensitive it is. Are those Aussies who use it aware of this? Otherwise, hostesses and stewards were affable and helpful.
One of the more memorable conversations from my last visit to Australia was with an attractive, blonde, air hostess who said she lived on the Gold Coast. We were en route from Singapore to Bali at the time. She was enthusiastically telling me about the great shopping there was to be done in Bali. On her previous trip she had taken back 15kg of nice round Bali rocks for her garden! Clive Hamilton with fellow Australia Institute Director Richard Denniss explores the Australian obsession with materialism in their 2006 book called ‘Affluenza: When Too Much is Never Enough’. In her review Amanda McLeod says: “Since the early 1990s Australians have been infected with ‘affluenza’ – a virus over-consumption which Hamilton and Denniss characterise as ‘the bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses’, a growth fetish and an ‘epidemic of stress, overwork, waste and indebtedness caused by dogged pursuit of the Australian dream’” (see a review)
We arrive early at Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne aided by northerly tail winds. As we come into land I look out the window and feel transported. No other planes are evident – unlike European airports it is not a huge parking lot it seems – but inside there are lots of people all the same – and a long queue for immigration. I might add that our gained time was all lost, and more, due to an on-board wait for a quarantine officer to debrief a sick passenger and give the all clear to disembark. He or she took time to arrive and then had no battery in their mobile phone – which for some reason was needed. SARS, bird flu …..or a common cold – we were not to know. The young lads in the seats beside me breathe a sigh of relief when they can switch on their mobile phones and re-inhabit their ‘new’ world – none of this 12 years ago.
In Melbourne it is raining – something to be celebrated as Victoria has had its lowest June rainfall on record: ‘Melbourne, Australia is in jeopardy of running dry in the next 15 years if does not cut water use by a third’. Water is now A on most people’s list including government . Perhaps our work with water as part of the SLIM project will have something to contribute?
Despite good intentions my attempt to set up a Blog in 2003 did not amount to much!! Other things took over. For a sample see my webpage.
A change in my personal circumstances from the end of June 2006 has provided an opportunity to take up Blogging seriously. My intention is still to embark on systemic musings as and when issues that concern me - capture my enthusiasm - arise. However I am also starting another inquiry as the posting below explains.
Return to Oz 1
My first posting was written the day after my arrival in Melbourne - 2nd July 2006.
I am Australia bound for an 18 month sabbatical based at the Melbourne Water Research Centre. This will be the first time I have lived in Australia for an extensive period in over 12 years…. so I have set myself the task of keeping a blog about my experiences of re-assimilation! For various reasons I have been apprehensive about the return, or at least my departure from the OU and the Systems Department, at this moment in time.
Two weeks earlier, whilst at a conference dinner at the ‘Our Dynamic Earth’ Centre in Edinburgh, Craig, an Australian participant, was called on to make some announcements. When I said to others at my table that I found him hard to understand – he had a very broad Aussie accent - they looked relieved and exclaimed: ‘What chance have we got? We can’t understand him at all!’ So who and what has changed? This is part of my inquiry.
When I first arrived in the UK I was rarely anxious about travel. In fact I thrived on it! How things have changed. My main anxiety, the ecological footprint of my impending flight, was partially relieved by Mark Y’s gift - two trees planted to offset my CO2 production of 1.9 tonnes for 16911km flight from London to Melbourne. But as the New Internationalist article in the latest edition makes clear, I should not have been so readily relieved. At least it was a gesture and one of the few available in the circumstances ….apart from deciding not to go. Our new course explores the issues.
The trip from Milton Keynes to Heathrow is now something that has to be planned and negotiated – it is no longer just a drive and was never just a train trip. I suggested allowing two hours so as to arrive at 10.20 for a 12.20 departure. Against her better judgement my colleague and generous ‘taxi driver’ agrees. My anxiety goes through the roof as the M1 comes to a dead stop south of Luton; why was our lane, one of three, stopped for longer? A wrong call of the dice? Would this be one of the daily 30 minute to three hour stoppages that are part of driving in the south-east of England – or one of the big snarls that can take the best part of a day to clear? In the end I was fated to catch my plane for Melbourne – the two hours we had allowed to get from Milton Keynes to Heathrow turned out to be just right…but what if….? When it comes to driving in this part of the world being right after the event doesn’t help much - it offers no guidance for next time - a 2004 survey for the Department of Transport found that the main reason why people found congestion annoying was because it made their journey times unpredictable.
Checking in was another queuing event – plenty of time to worry about overweight luggage and what it might cost! I feel sure BA has not worked at its queuing theory. Check-in safely negotiated and on-board but queuing for a take-off slot adds more time than usual – a panel has fallen off an incoming plane! Queuing again for showers in the Qantas lounge at Hong Kong, made worse by a relict of white superiority who, much to his spouse’s discomfort, attempts a queue-jumping coup d’etat. I am not sure if he gains the better of the Thai woman running the show – I left in disgust but did return for a shower just in time, name safely recorded on the queue list! Was he Australian or English – difficult to tell but the worst of the old ‘white man in Asia syndrome’.
On board again and determined to sleep between Hong Kong and Melbourne I am awoken by a very Aussie, nasal ‘Excuse me Darl! (sounding like Daarrl) addressed to me. Later I overhear a conversation between other passengers – a couple – who reject this patronising form of address. ‘Excuse me I’m not your darling’! It is years since I have heard the phrase. Now I am aware of how insensitive it is. Are those Aussies who use it aware of this? Otherwise, hostesses and stewards were affable and helpful.
One of the more memorable conversations from my last visit to Australia was with an attractive, blonde, air hostess who said she lived on the Gold Coast. We were en route from Singapore to Bali at the time. She was enthusiastically telling me about the great shopping there was to be done in Bali. On her previous trip she had taken back 15kg of nice round Bali rocks for her garden! Clive Hamilton with fellow Australia Institute Director Richard Denniss explores the Australian obsession with materialism in their 2006 book called ‘Affluenza: When Too Much is Never Enough’. In her review Amanda McLeod says: “Since the early 1990s Australians have been infected with ‘affluenza’ – a virus over-consumption which Hamilton and Denniss characterise as ‘the bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses’, a growth fetish and an ‘epidemic of stress, overwork, waste and indebtedness caused by dogged pursuit of the Australian dream’” (see a review)
We arrive early at Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne aided by northerly tail winds. As we come into land I look out the window and feel transported. No other planes are evident – unlike European airports it is not a huge parking lot it seems – but inside there are lots of people all the same – and a long queue for immigration. I might add that our gained time was all lost, and more, due to an on-board wait for a quarantine officer to debrief a sick passenger and give the all clear to disembark. He or she took time to arrive and then had no battery in their mobile phone – which for some reason was needed. SARS, bird flu …..or a common cold – we were not to know. The young lads in the seats beside me breathe a sigh of relief when they can switch on their mobile phones and re-inhabit their ‘new’ world – none of this 12 years ago.
In Melbourne it is raining – something to be celebrated as Victoria has had its lowest June rainfall on record: ‘Melbourne, Australia is in jeopardy of running dry in the next 15 years if does not cut water use by a third’. Water is now A on most people’s list including government . Perhaps our work with water as part of the SLIM project will have something to contribute?
Wednesday, February 26, 2003
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