Systems Change - An Introduction

People in the public, social, and other sectors are beginning to see that the underlying reductionist assumptions and paradigms through which they have historically approached challenges may not be adequate for the scope and complexity of today's concerns. In this regard, new concepts about systems transformation are emerging; there is now a sense that their vision, breadth, and vocabulary are powerful enough to match the complexity of the difficulties at hand. By using a new set of ideas, you begin to look at what you are doing with new eyes and more clarity, providing renewed motivation and drive to your efforts to transform complex organizations toward more sustainable outcomes.

You are now beginning to understand these difficulties as systemic, open-ended, co-evolving, and in need of new methods of inventing, leading, organizing, and reacting. A method that harnesses the power of the very complexity that produces these issues, a method that is holistic and networked rather than incremental or sequential, a method that works with complexity rather than against it.

This strategy is inspired by and founded on a new style of thinking inherent in complexity theory and systems thinking. A strong new collection of theories centered on holism, systems, emergence, self-organization, nonlinearity, networks, adaptability, and resilience, among other things. This new method, which is based on systems thinking, is now known as systems transformation. Systems change is the process of altering the fundamental structure of a complex system in order to alter its behavior and results. In contrast, more traditional techniques rarely examine system structure and instead focus on altering components, events, and results.

The objective is that through observing system structure, modifying those structures, and organizing in new ways, you will be able to establish patterns and institutions that can better organize us in synergistic ways. So that the structures of the system you inhabit do not incentivize and coordinate us in ways that have negative externalities that contribute to so many of the wicked problems you face, but rather have positive externalities that add up to something greater than the sum of their parts as new types of organization emerge. This course provides an overview of this new way of thinking, as well as its methodologies and models, taking you from theory to practice in an attempt to provide a 360-degree picture of this fascinating new subject with limitless promise.

Who this course is for:

• This course will be particularly suited to those working in NGOs, foundations, philanthropy, but equally public sector, business management and anyone interested in how to change complex organizations

Requirements:

• Students should have a solid grasp of the english language and ideally be familiar with systems thinking

Udemy rating: 4.2/5

Enroll here: https://www.udemy.com/course/systems-change/