Over the last four months I have been delving deeply into two different worlds – one the academic domain of Systems Thinking, and the other the very practical business of delivering Further Education. I have been pursuing the question of what a self-improving system in FE might look like, and getting a wide range of thoughts and inputs.
As the ideas generation phase of my project starts to conclude, I am beginning to turn to the question of what are the most common, the most exciting and the most compelling themes and ideas that have emerged from my listening and reading.
One of the most striking things first of all is that I have found virtually no overlap between the two worlds. There are people who know about Systems Thinking, and there are people who know about Further Education. The overlap is minimal. Of course there are people in FE who think strategically – government officials, people in national roles in sector bodies, some senior leaders and practitioners in the field. But the language and key concepts of Systems Thinking seem largely absent.
The key concepts of Systems Thinking as I see them applying to FE are:
I will cover these in turn in future blogs.
But it is interesting to note that while almost nobody in FE seems to have studied Systems Thinking explicitly, there are noticeable influences from it that have crept into the language, especially amongst Government officials. It’s common to hear people use phrases like “perverse incentives” or “levers that are not attached”.
John Maynard Keynes famously said “Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back”. The language is quite spicy, and I intend no disrespect to policy-makers (I was one of them for 16 years, after all); but I think it is interesting how ideas from one management theory or another seem to percolate through in incomplete and distorted ways into mainstream thinking. I was certainly guilty of this when I worked in DfE.
Meanwhile out in the field, the focus is different. Themes that have come up commonly from practitioners and senior leaders have included the importance of trust for a well-functioning system; and of collaboration; and of openness and an absence of fear; and of the interplay of research and teaching.
I will have lots to say on these themes and more over the coming months. But as I move into phase two of my project – which is synthesis and sense-making of all the material I have gathered – I still remain open to new inputs. So if you would like to give me your thoughts on the topic what a self-improving system in FE might look like then do get in touch on enquiries@etfoundation.co.uk. I would love to chat to you.
David Russell
Executive in Residence at Oxford Saïd Business School
Education and Training Foundation