In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to recognize and understand systems
- Systems thinking, cybernetic thinking, and complexity models
- Practical tools for analyzing ethnographic data and making strategic or tactical recommendations
‘Systems’ and ‘complexity’ are buzzwords these days – they frequently refer to anything complicated, interrelated, multivariate, or just difficult to understand. But there are well-developed models and methodologies that empower us to identify, analyze, act, and create change in systems.
In this tutorial we will learn and apply systems thinking and complexity models. Participants will learn tools for sensemaking and action that they can use to steer strategic priorities and make tactical recommendations for process, product, and service improvements.
We will cover:
- How to recognize and analyze systems and complexity
- Approaches to systems and cybernetic thinking
- Learning to see and act within systems
- Applications of systems thinking – from project framing, data generation, and sensemaking, to influencing strategic or tactical change
- Practical tools for analyzing ethnographic and qualitative data and communicating insights
Who Will Benefit from This Tutorial?
Everyone is welcome to participate in this tutorial, and it will be particularly useful to practitioners interested in expanding their data analysis toolkits.
Assignments
Prior to the session, participants will complete a short reading assignment and reflection exercise.
Instructors
Jessamy Perriam is a Senior Lecturer in the ANU School of Cybernetics. She is a digital sociologist with particular interests in public sector digital transformation, failure, and digital methods. Prior to becoming an academic, Jessamy was a radio and online producer at the ABC and enjoyed telling stories of everyday Australians in Central West NSW and Perth. A growing curiosity around technology and society drew her to the UK to join the second cohort of the MA/MSc Digital Sociology program at Goldsmiths, University of London. She has held applied research roles in and alongside the UK government’s digital transformation efforts, writing and producing online and distance education materials for The Open University, and moving to Denmark and turning a weekly lecture session into a talk radio show.
Alex Zafiroglu is a professor and an ANU Futures Fellow in the School of Cybernetics. The School specializes in research and training in the analysis of complex open systems, generating potential future states, and implementing methods and practices to nurture the conditions, relationships, and dynamics to realise them. Through deliberately transdisciplinary theory generation and practical applications, Alex and her colleagues make space for multiple, value-informed futures that hold the dynamics of planetary conditions, the wellbeing of humans, other species and actors, and resources in productive tension. Prior to joining the ANU, Alex was a Principal Engineer in Social Sciences at Intel Corporation, where she spent 15 years leading multi-year research and strategic planning activities in research labs and business teams. Alex made significant contributions to the R&D and commercial development of technology across the Advanced Research, Digital Home and Internet of Things divisions.