Description
Book SynopsisSystems Thinking for a Turbulent World will help practitioners in any field of change engage more effectively in transformative innovation. Such innovation addresses the paradigm shift needed to meet the diverse unfolding global challenges facing us today, often summed up as the Anthropocene.
Fragmentation of local and global societies is escalating, and this is aggravating vicious cycles. To heal the rifts, we need to reintroduce the human element into our understandings â whether the context is civic or scientific â and strengthen truth-seeking in decision-making. Aided by appropriate concepts and methods, this healing will enable a switch from reaction to anticipation, even in the face of discontinuous change and high uncertainty. The outcome is to privilege the positive human skills for collaborative navigation through uncertainty over the disjointed rationality of mechanism and artificial intelligence, which increasingly alienates us.
The reader in search
Table of Contents
List of Figures and Tables, Acknowledgements, Preface, Introduction, CHAPTER 1 – HEALING OUR FRAGMENTED WORLD, Step 1 Seeking the Ox., Thinking Differently, A Systems Worldview, CHAPTER 2 – REHABILITATING THE OBSERVER, Step 2 Finding the Tracks., Paradigm Shift, Thread 1 – Presence of the Observer, Thread 2 – Observation, Intervention and Ethics, Thread 3 – Reflexivity and Reciprocity, Thread 4 – Circularity and Re-entry, Thread 5 - Reflection and Perception, Thread 6 – Transdisciplinarity, Thread 7 – Multi-perspective Dialogic, Weaving the Threads, CHAPTER 3 – REPERCEIVING THE FUTURE, Step 3 - First Glimpse of the Ox. , Changing Boundary Perception, Anticipating the Unpredictable, The Three Horizons, Deepening the Paradigm Shift, CHAPTER 4 - ANTICIPATORY SYSTEMS ARE DIFFERENT, Step 4 Catching the Ox., Foresight as Anticipation, From First-order to Second-order Anticipatory Systems, Taking a Transdisciplinary Viewpoint, The Structure of the Anticipatory Present Moment, CHAPTER 5 CULTIVATING DECISION INTEGRITY, Step 5 Taming the Ox., The Trap of Rationality, Decision as Learning, The Notion of undecidable questions, The Navigational Implications of Second-Order Decision, Implications for Management and Governance, , CHAPTER 6 – THE CO-CREATIVE WAY, Step 6 Riding the Ox Home., Pattern Thinking, The Gestalt of Pattern Recognition, The Practice of Repatterning, Participative Repatterning, Cognitive Kinetics, Idonics – the Key Tool, Facilitating Participative Repatterning, CHAPTER 7 – TRANSFORMING IN THE NOW, Step 7 - The Ox Out of Sight, the Self Alone., Perception within the Present Moment, The Four Modes of Anticipation, An Exercise of Anticipatory Consciousness , APM Exercise 1 – The Stretch, APM Exercise 2 – Reflexive Questions, Tapping Our Potential , Getting to Grips with The Now, CHAPTER 8 – NATURAL SYSTEMS THINKING, Systems Thinking as Qualitative Practice, References, Index
