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maelorin at 09:05pm on 13/12/2005 under systems thinking
maelorin at 09:05pm on 13/12/2005 under systems thinkingapparently, i'm a natural 'at' systems thinking. which is news to me, and not so much.
it amuses me that there are all kinds of journals, books and blogs about thinking systemically. all manner of 'how to's and training programs and so forth.
amusing because so much of it is about tools and processes and stuff for thinking about how you think about a system. now, i value reflection. it's a great way to pick apart a problem, and to understand how - and perhaps why - you do something in a particular way. perhaps it's the aspie in me, but when it comes to problems, i find it much more effective to think about possible solutions rather than thinking about how i'm thinking about how to solve a problem. it's a bit late to be doing that when you're supposed to be doing, i would have thought ...
perhaps if more time and effort went into learning thinking skills during school, grown ups wouldn't be fussing about with learning them as adults. this is not to say that one cannot, or should not, refine and develop your thinking as an adult. but it seems bizarre to me that it is a novel thing to learn about drawing cycles, and flowcharts and suchlike. that understanding a system might require learning something about its' components and how they relate to one another. even better, learning and remembering and applying that knowledge.
if more people did that kind of thing, we might have less of this kind of crap about the place: "Organizational Learning is the end of the war between thinking and doing."
give me a break!
it amuses me that there are all kinds of journals, books and blogs about thinking systemically. all manner of 'how to's and training programs and so forth.
amusing because so much of it is about tools and processes and stuff for thinking about how you think about a system. now, i value reflection. it's a great way to pick apart a problem, and to understand how - and perhaps why - you do something in a particular way. perhaps it's the aspie in me, but when it comes to problems, i find it much more effective to think about possible solutions rather than thinking about how i'm thinking about how to solve a problem. it's a bit late to be doing that when you're supposed to be doing, i would have thought ...
perhaps if more time and effort went into learning thinking skills during school, grown ups wouldn't be fussing about with learning them as adults. this is not to say that one cannot, or should not, refine and develop your thinking as an adult. but it seems bizarre to me that it is a novel thing to learn about drawing cycles, and flowcharts and suchlike. that understanding a system might require learning something about its' components and how they relate to one another. even better, learning and remembering and applying that knowledge.
if more people did that kind of thing, we might have less of this kind of crap about the place: "Organizational Learning is the end of the war between thinking and doing."
give me a break!
amused
(no subject)
And school (even university) doesn't usually teach "learning," although you may have been lucky enough to have a teacher willing to attempt the feat. Learning how to think is difficult enough; teaching people to think for themselves is near impossible. It's why I made a good tutor but a poor lecturer - I try to get my students to think (which is only possible in a small group situation).
(no subject)
a few places say that "systems thinking is hard - not many can do it" and i think: have they tried to get people to even think at all, lately?
i relate to connections more easily than content myself. i find linkages easier than i do discrete points. mind you, i find stuff easiest that others find difficult, and the reverse to be equally true.
i can see a difference between chaotic and complex systems, and between systems and processes. i can also see similarities.
i'm thinking that "systems thinking" is far to constrained by itself. i think systemically, in the sense that i consider how things relate and are organised with respect to each other. and i don't "see" them so much as just "know". hence my penchant for doodling - making ideas and so forth concrete - or at least representing them in a more concrete form.
my mind lets patterns emerge from complex and/or chaotic events. perhaps my thinking is more "emergent" than "constructed" [certainly in the sense that hard constructivists might claim]
i think this vodka is definately mine ...