In the course of this text I am exploring the idea if "problems" aren't more of a concept than a fixed reality. It's all about systems thinking.
But first: Has it ever happened to you that you came through the front door with a proposition and no matter how hard you tried to create a good dialogue with a person, that it just didn't work out?
What do I mean by "front door"?
picture source: pixabay
For example the firm resolution "we have to talk". Has it ever worked in the way you imagined it to work?
Or an assumption or suspicion that is difficult or impossible to prove? For example, learning from children "exactly what was going on".
Or to ask someone the question: "Are you so aggressive because you had an aggressive father?", the moment someone appears aggressive?
Maybe you have other examples of front door confrontations? Then I would be pleased to hear them.
Dive into Systems
In this excellent class given by Dr. Qi Van Eikema Hommes from MIT you are going to hear about systems thinking in comparison to scientific thinking to which I refer also down below. She gives a very clear speech and interesting examples from both industry and the human social realm. It's the newest and best lecture I so far came across. Here you can see the presentation slides of her class.
When you search for a more modern form of lecture you'll notice that the speakers try to integrate their audience. Much is to say about teaching and learning. I only want to briefly mention that ...
... it is apparent to anyone who has taught others that the teacher learns more than the students do. Teaching is a much better way to learn than being taught. Schools are upside down. Students ought to be teaching and faculty members should be learning how to help others learn and how to motivate them to do so.
A student once stopped me in the hall and asked, "Professor, when did you teach your first class?" That was easy: I answered, "September of 1941." "Wow!" he said, "You have been teaching for a very long time." I agreed. Then he asked, "When was the last time you taught a course in a subject that existed when you were a student?" This question required some thought but finally I got it and answered, "September of 1951." He said, "Do mean to say that everything you have taught for about fifty years you had to learn without having it taught to you?" I said, "Yes." "Wow,” he said again. "You must be a pretty good learner." I modestly agreed. He continued, "What a pity you are not that good a teacher." He had it right: faculty members know how to learn better than they know how to teach. Therefore, they should be acting as resources to students who are either engaged in teaching others, or learning on their own or with others cooperatively.
source: TRANSFORMING THE SYSTEMS MOVEMENT
What is a system?
Some time ago I was dealing with a case involving a family that I supervise in my open counselling hours. It is a family with a different cultural background - we call them "immigrants". I have to mention that because it plays a role.
But before I go into the details I first want to present - in a simplified way - what a system is.
In the words of Russel Ackhoff:
1. A system is a whole which contains two or more parts.
Each of which can affect the properties and the behavior of the whole.
2. None of the parts of the system have an independent effect on the whole.
How any part affects the whole depends on what other parts are doing.
Between any parts of the system there is a direct and indirect path.
3. If you group the system into subgroups, no matter how many sub-groups you have, each of them will have an effect on the whole system. And none will have an independent effect.
A system is a whole which cannot be divided in two or more independend parts.
The whole system derives from the way how the parts interact and not how they act separately.
A system as a whole has a property of which none of its parts have.
Take your physical body. Only the whole body can take you from one place to the other, but none of the bodies parts - legs, lungs, heart, brain - can do that on their own.
Russell Lincoln Ackoff (12 February 1919 – 29 October 2009) was an American organizational theorist, consultant, and Anheuser-Busch Professor Emeritus of Management Science at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Ackoff was a pioneer in the field of operations research, systems thinking and management science.
A more detailed explanation you can find in this paper or here, from where I quote:
The author of General system theory was Ludwig Von Bertalanffy in 1950’s. A system is a complex of elements in interaction, which on first appearance does not seem interconnected or inter related.
Systemic or systems thinking were developed and discussed among a variety of scholars and non academics in different parts of the world, in particular during the 60s. In the last two years I published several articles on the topic, referring to my profession as a social consultant, a summary of some of those texts you find here.
A statement which Mr. Ackhoff gave in one of his speeches I found particularly significant:
"You cannot understand the nature of a system by analysis."
An analysis in the scientific sense is when you isolate a part from its whole and examine it. You determine its properties, you get behind its function.
Analysis is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts in order to gain a better understanding of it. ... The word comes from the Ancient Greek ἀνάλυσις (análusis, "a breaking up", from ana- "up, throughout" and lusis "a loosening").
The German wiki adds:
The opposite of analysis ("dissolving into individual components") is synthesis ("assembling elements into a system").
In the above linked paper Russell Lincoln Ackoff says - referring to the circumstances of our times:
I believe the pattern of thought that is required is systemic. It is difficult if at all possible to reduce the meaning of "systemic thinking" to a brief definition. Nevertheless, I try.
Systemic thinking is holistic versus reductionistic thinking, synthetic versus analytic. Reductionistic and analytic thinking derives properties of wholes from the properties of their parts. Holistic and synthetic thinking derives properties of parts from properties of the whole that contains them.
Deriving from the average does give some but not enough clues for the particular and the whole
As a social worker, I have always wondered what benefits scientific results and studies could be for me in a particular case, and very often I have not found one. The "unfortunate" thing about studies on the human psyche is that they have to reduce a complex issue and apply analytical methods, that they have to be repeatable and take place under laboratory conditions so that they can indeed be repeated. In addition, scientists are interested in questioning what their previous colleagues have found to date and doing more research. But repeatability, reductionism and refutation do not help me so much for the very unique encounters, expressions and views of the clients and my own in relation to the whole.
Just think about how far we've come from the times where Freud published his findings or other academics and where we today know that many of the findings science was pretty confident about changed quite a lot over time.
I very much appreciate that the paradigms are shifting and that both - systems and scientific thinking - can coexist, for those thinking methods have undoubtably their advantages.
School system
The example in the further text deals with the social system "school" and the sub-systems "families" as well as "pupil" and "teacher". The superordinate system is the social matrix into which this school and all other systems are integrated. This is primarily the German nation. But above this is the community of all people.
Here I depict a feedback in the system in which the events are taken up negatively:
Event perceived as erroneous --> communication of this event as erroneous to other parts of the system
--> continuation of this form of communication in the system as far as no other form of event perception is offered
--> amplification of the event communicated as erroneous to the reporters
--> negative feedback to the participants triggering the event or identified as event-triggering
It's also possible to change that into a positive feedback loop.
After this introduction, I want to go into what I daily deal within my profession as a social consultant.
The case
The mother came one day with the information that her daughter, who goes to primary school, has problems with her classmates and that they would have complained to their parents at home, and there would also be physical quarrels. The teacher called a meeting because her interventions with the children were unsuccessful and the quarrels between the children continued. The teacher sought support from the school's trusted teacher and, at the meeting, called on a so-called cultural representative to help and at the same time act as a translator. This man though, was not confirmed by the family. I speak to the family in English, which is very well spoken by both parents.
Without going into too much detail, the other two children were said to have reported to find the girl's behaviour alienating and frightening, although not much can really be said about it, as the adults are always pre-influenced in the children's hearing and their own interpretations of the events are already part of the system. A cultural conflict can be suspected or I should better say, seems to be constructed.
More than one possible reality?
If, for example, there had been no complaints from other parents, the teacher would probably have settled the matter internally. Now, however, if she felt compelled to react to the complaints of the parents more so than to experience the girls in their daily activities and re-arrange the framework of her interaction with them she might have been able to make a difference in the so far outcome of the event.
For now, however, It is in the air that the parental style of upbringing, which seems at first sight so different from our culture, could be a problem (without being proven). Such suspicions are not dismissed, as they occur in the individual cases and appear where the children of immigrant families seem to find themselves between two chairs. What they are taught in school and the social fabric that exists there, and what their parents consciously and unconsciously pass on in terms of cultural heritage seem to be two different things. But the question is: Are they really so different?
From a systemic point of view, a super-construction already prevails, namely the view, generally perceived as valid, that "people from different cultures inevitably come into conflict". This "superordinate" system influences the "underlying" sub-system, here school and parental home, which can be viewed as an organic system that interacts with one another.
Actually, there is no problem. It's created through thinking in a mindset focused on problems
All this does not necessarily have to be reflected in conflicts. For example, when the actors in that system do not try to control the actions of the systems-participants but handling the interactions in a manner of skillful spontaneity, respectively through an aesthetic approach.
The system surrounding the family could have reacted differently. The parents of the girls who complained at home could, for example, have responded calmly to their children's fears or questions. Instead of picking up their daughters communicated anxiety.
Now, the fact that they did not do so indicates that they are worried, firstly about their own child and maybe secondly about the daughter of the family they are talking about.
Single actings and control seeking
However, action by the school has already taken place and it seems impossible to say to what extent and in a way which is understandable to the girl's parents the "problem" has been appropriately brought to their attention. The teacher says that the parents have been informed in good time, the parents say that they were not. In the meantime, the girl was asked to sign a contract in which she promised that she will not fight her comrades anymore.
There is dissatisfaction among the participants because it is unclear whether and to what extent the size of the (created) problem actually still affects the children and not more strongly the adult participants.
Behind the "strange behaviour" of the daughter, the adults - teacher and other participants - suspect that the daughter could be beaten at home. In a recent meeting, the girl was told that "no matter what the problem, she could come to the responsible person."
The assumption implied here, that the girl is abused at home and that her behaviour at school is a kind of desperate expression of this behaviour, is in question.
None of this needs to be true.
It could as well be that the girl is still undecided, as she actually reacts to her border crossings in two seemingly different cultures, of which she is already beginning to see the differences - after all, case is strong, that the construction of this different realities are already set implicitly by the behaviors and emotions of all actors of the system. From a systemic point of view this is most likely to take place; looking through the eyes of that girl.
That made me pensive and I came and come back in time to consider whether under the surface of the rejection of punishment exactly this is still very strongly rooted in my culture. For we seem to find "praise" right, which is the opposite of punishment. So how can we make ourselves believe that we are against punishment when we so much plead for praise? It is generally spoken openly in schools and parental homes, yes, my son is asking to receive such praise. But what is meant by "praise" is a different chapter.
What children want is not praise, but encouragement.
That is something completely different. No adult, not even a child, falls for the idea that praise might have something to do with someone being authentically interested in their well-being.
Praise is the quick way out if you don't know how to encourage someone. After all, praise is only given retrospectively, i.e. when a thing has already been completed, while encouragement is given in advance. Pre-spectively. Praise promotes an action or omission, encouraging points at interaction and a process in the making.
If you have not completely forgotten how intelligently and sensitively you recognized these differences as a child, then it helps you to trust these senses in your present adult life as well.
Children knock off and test how their fellow human beings react to what they still have to explore in the situation. Children move through their space and want to experience how their fellow world reacts to what they are told as a kind of rule, but have not yet really experienced. Therefore they want to go into the experience and try many different things.
Children encounter many contradictory statements and behaviors in the surrounding social matrix.
So they try to find their way around. If something is regarded as problematic and only as problematic, then of course not the child and not his parents are to blame for it, not the teachers either, then a system of many social actors tries to construct a reality to guarantee something like stability.
Indeed, the girls behavior indicates "a mess" in the system and she represents a "disturber". Her parents might construct "racism", the teacher might construct the "foreign culture as problematic" as well as the other parents to which their daughter has reported and received back some emotions which might have strengthen this construct of problems.
This construction of reality cannot have any claim to absolute truth simply because it is a social construction in which everyone is actively involved. It contains all the contradictory feelings and voices of individuals who, on the basis of their own beliefs perceived as true, are at odds with the actions they have already carried out.
(Imagine for a minute all actors of the system would have constructed completely different realities.)
Taking myself into the equation
Although I am clearly against punishment, I had violated my son when he was young. I did it out of an unrestrained emotion. I also yelled at him (still do, feeling bad about it afterwards). Nevertheless, I told him time and again that one should not do such a thing. Inevitably I conjure up a conflict with it, for how can my son, whom I treated uncontrolled, now understand me? Should he follow my words, should he orient himself to the fact that one may lose control in time, because his parents did the same? He will feel both and do both. One time he will behave reasonably, the other time not.
When my son entered the new school after his elementary years, he got in trouble a lot and was fighting a lot. His teacher and I were meeting several times but it never occurred to me nor to the teacher that his quarreling might have anything to do with our cultural background - I even did not one second think about our little conversation back then. I was focused on how I could help my son and the teacher to get along.
So the question should not be why someone is punishing, because this question has long been answered: out of rage. Rather, one can ask: In which situations, in which you wanted to hurt someone, did you not do it? You can also ask: How did it come about that you did not distribute any punishment? What moved you to behave sensibly?
The construction of reality is known in systemic family therapy or systems theory understanding. We all construct reality in order to bring a certain order into the system and react to currents perceived as chaotic in the way of ensuring certainty. But if we try too hard to fix things as true or untrue, we fail because of the unconscious conflicting contradictions within ourselves.
Self reflection
If you say that punishing others is absolutely wrong, the logical consequence should be that you henceforth do not act punitively. But what do you do if you are not able to keep to your own rule? How do you want people to deal with you? To whom can you entrust yourself, with whom can you discuss your misconduct, and where do you find sensitive reflection that does not contemptuously eye and judge you, but shows you how to deal with yourself in a forgiving and affectionate way?
As far as your reality construction looks like you find your own misconduct unforgivable, you will tend to hide, embellish, or justify it if someone comes on the scene as your accuser. The actions of others must then be put in a worse light to distract from your own. The inevitability of your own actions is then expressed in not showing empathy to those to whom you accuse their evil intentions.
From a systemic perspective it does not make sense to ask the question of guilt.
One asks about your resources and the exceptions/events that confirm that you behaved benevolent in your system and where you felt comfortable afterwards. This is to encourage your future interactions, doing more of the same which serves not only yourself but all the others in the system. It's suggested to look at a problem as something containing already the solution.
Back to the girl one could ask the question to the teacher: "When is the girl a supporter for the class? Where did she proceed to be helpful, which of her interactions were perceived as motivating by her classmates?" This could help the teacher to take a broader perspective and leave the focus of the problem reality. She could report it back to the parents. The teacher would also have succeeded in strengthening her own position and proving competent in offering perspective change.
The art of questioning - approaching situations aesthetically
To effectively irritate the children when the teacher experiences them again as quarreling or beating, she could intervene by asking the children: "What do you think the ants would think if they observed you? What about the bird sitting up in the tree? How would your pet react to a brawl if you had pets?
The role of aesthetics is not as well understood in our culture as are the roles of science, technology, education and economics, or even as well as ethics-morality.
source: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/dd7e/f924e44861877b76d65a865754d741d07b0f.pdf
Basically, it is not so important which concrete example you choose, it is mainly to irritate the children and to arouse their interest with surprising questions - this I understand as an aesthetic approach. Such offers can then develop into further deeper dialogues, which children usually enjoy conducting, especially if they are still young and prepubescent.
Things happening right now must be seen as a system in which events occur to regulate this system. Systems never can be "fixed" but always are in the change, there is no end to an event, only temporarily taken up interventions in the way people interact with one another.
A problem occurring as a disturbance can be seen as being given a good opportunity.
You can always see a chance in it where such a constructed reality appears. Whenever a problem tries to construct or manifest itself, there is also a creative way dealing with an ambiguity. Because nobody, who does not construct a problem, would not be interested in finding an attitude that frees him from the shackles of frustration and uncertainty.
The superordinate system, which suggests to foreign families that their culture contradicts the culture existing in the country, generates a renewed self-suggestion that proves this construct right. Since there is always a core in it that regards it as problematic, there is a danger that those involved will become too attached to this form of reality. They overlook the fact that they can change this reality. That is in my eyes actually ...
... the true meaning of "constructive feedback".
What can the girl's parents do? They might consider abandoning this construction of reality - that they are discriminated against because of their ethnic origin - and substitute with another one. A creative leader within this group might find out what that could be; preferably the class teacher. Just to give an example, the parents - having received some guidance and inspiration - can ask themselves whether by abandoning this variant of reality they are helping their daughter to integrate more serenely into everyday school life. They could encourage their daughter to ask what rituals the parents of her school friends go through with their children. Have they been told bedtime stories or are they still telling them? Which fairy tales do the other classmates know and what is played at home?
Let's go all the way back to the beginning.
Children fighting in the schoolyard. They call out mean things to each other. They try out what they can do, sound out boundaries, move.
The chain of events did not need to take place at all. If children live in a world where adults are not constantly and permanently concerned with creating difficult realities, they can pursue their child-like things.
When two girls argue, physically argue, and these girls then go home and talk about how mean a classmate had been, do parents need to reinforce that? And if they then do this in the form of a complaint or a worried statement to the class teacher, does the teacher have to advance the construction of this reality?
And when the parents are invited to a conversation where (serious) things are discussed with them and their child, does the construction need to be further strengthened?
What if, instead, the teacher would make an opening irritating statement, like so:
"I am happy that me meet each other. Your daughter gave us all the good opportunity to come together and to learn something. I do not know right now the outcome of this meeting. So let's explore what we can come up with when we cooperate and ask the right questions." Also, the parents could start with this sentence.
Should it be about adults wanting to protect children?
But if you want to be a protector, you need something to protect others from, don't you? What would it be like if adults abandoned children as their projection surfaces and instead offered a different construction of reality?
In this context, I find it critical to realize a child's compliance with a rule in the form of a contract.
Imagine that you as an adult would be required to sign in front of witnesses - let's say colleagues at work and bosses - never again to annoy or offend anyone. But you suspect that you may fail. Because in fact, that is exactly what will happen. Nowhere in our adult existence do we have to confirm such things with our signature, they are rather the not quite concrete moral conventions to which we have said "yes" in principle.
In fact, one cannot pretend that this is a self-contained system.
Aren't all the rules outside school just as valid as in school?
Certainly. The children know that, too. So what about the teachers themselves, for example, who have children? Have they never violated their children, physically or mentally? Hardly.
Is the teacher never unfair, angry and has she never dragged a classmate with her or indirectly injured them? Didn't the others in the system let their temperament pass too? What about the pupils in the schoolyard? Those who were not caught fighting? Shouldn't they all be presented with the contract?
Wouldn't it then have been fair for all participants to have signed such a contract?
All this is also unconsciously and maybe also to an extent consciously clear to the girl.
So what will happen in the future if you focus on the deficit?
The girl could go on with beating her classmates. What then is a contract worth? What are the consequences? To what extent should the consequences be felt?
The girl will realise that signing the document is a kind of helpless attempt on the part of adults who cannot deal creatively with the situation. After all, it is not a question of the child not understanding what the rules say. She would very much like to follow the rules, but has not yet found a good way to do so.
Not only has the girl long since understood which rules apply, she also has to observe that her assurance that she understood the rules is not believed. The adults now want to justify this distrust by demanding her signature. If they had only considered once what it would mean for them personally to sign in front of witnesses and make a promise of which they cannot possibly know whether they will ever be able to keep it, they would probably have refused.
What I would like to warn against at this point,
however, is to think that the girl will be irreparably harmed and that she will suffer in the future as a result of these experiences. It is not said at all how the girl will later behave as an adult, there is no certainty at all as to how good or bad the girl's life is or will be. Only the amplification of the adults on this someone's nailing down view could contribute to the fact that this experience remains as predominantly destructive in the memory.
Surely there are experiences and events in your life that you have survived that have been difficult to really problematic? Then you know that there are ways to re-frame what you have experienced and to take other perspectives than what you may be used to. As long as you are alive, you always have the chance to take the creative freedom through the construction of reality, to do exactly that: to construct an alternative reality.
Without the systemic view of the whole, one tends to judge the single parts.
And therefore cannot find a creative way of interacting with them, especially since one's own experiences unconsciously play into it. "School" is a whole within which the individual participants can behave and work together to the extent that they take a systemic view. Because it's impossible to take oneself out of the equation and pretend to exist outside this system.
The girl merely draws attention to a weak point in the system: how her frontier experiences on the subject of right and wrong are conceived.
By living a highly individualized life in modern societies and assuming independence from our neighbour, we often don't have the real impression that our interaction has an effect in the system. Therefore, we are reluctant to change our perspective and interact with the other system participants by tending to start individual actions, while we are not aware that interaction actually takes place, but now beyond our conscious thinking.
I have known the family for several years, so I have an effect on this system - but even without knowing them, the effect would be there, but indirectly.
This text is therefore more than just an information and perspective giving publication.
It is at the same time a reflection of what is happening around me and the realization that I am part of the whole. This writing exercise should help me to find a good way to deal with my clients and to protect myself from the arrogance that I know exactly what to do. I think it's about asking questions in the upcoming meetings and pointing out systems thinking relevance.
Do problems exist?
Yes, they do. But:
Because there is no such thing as a final truth from the point of view of the individual participants in the entire system, why not accept that the construction of reality is ongoing? And because it is, you can take advantage of it and construct a reality of a kind in which collaboration aims to achieve consensual intermediate results that inspire to such an extent that you remain interested in this form of creative collaboration.
I finish with the words of Ackhoff:
Art inspires, produces an unwillingness to settle for what we have and a desire for something better. It is the product and producer of creative activity, change; it is essential for continuous development. Art also entertains, recreates, yielding fun from what we do regardless of what we do it for. It is the satisfaction we derive from "going there" in contrast to the satisfaction derived from "getting there." Recreation provides "the pause that refreshes." It recreates creators. We would not be able to maintain continuous pursuit of ideals without payoffs along the way.
All pictures above are from one pixabay origin and altered by me for the purpose of this blog entry.
Sources & References:
Youtube video - Van Eikema Hommes from MIT
Power point slides: https://sdm.mit.edu/systemsthinkingconference/2014/presentations/hommes.pdf
Russel Ackhoff: TRANSFORMING THE SYSTEMS MOVEMENT
Russel Ackhoff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_L._Ackoff)
Analysis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis
Repeatability
Reductionism
Refutation
Construction of reality
Systemic family therapy
Systems theory
A SYSTEMIC VIEW OF TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP by Russell L. Ackoff: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/dd7e/f924e44861877b76d65a865754d741d07b0f.pdf
General System Theory - Foundations, Development, Applications - by Ludwig von Bertalanffy:
https://monoskop.org/images/7/77/Von_Bertalanffy_Ludwig_General_System_Theory_1968.pdf
WHAT IS SYSTEM THEORY? Rudolf E. Kalman:
https://www.kyotoprize.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/1kA_lct_EN.pdf
http://www.gregoryhwatson.eu/images/Quality%20Progress_2010%20-%20Breaking%20from%20the%20Pack.pdf