How might we establish Systems Thinking practice as a professional field?
The Sensemaking meetup is Systems Change Finland’s monthly meetup where we explore topics related to applied Systems Thinking and Complexity with interesting speakers. Instead of being one-sided lectures, our meetups are spaces where participants can also make sense about the topics with each other.
In June’s meetup on Tuesday 1.6.2021 the discussion was ignited by Benjamin Taylor from the UK who will be speaking about Systems Thinking capacity building and how to use systems approaches in consulting. The event hosted by Systems Change Finland’s Helén Marton had about 50 live participants on Zoom and YouTube.
Benjamin Taylor (LinkedIn, Twitter) is an adviser, consultant, coach, lecturer and speaker with wide experience in service organisations and local public service who works at RedQuadrant and The Public Service Transformation Academy. He is highly connected and active in the global Systems Thinking community and he runs the Systems Community of Inquiry where he curates resources related to Systems Thinking and Complexity. He is also a global board member at Systems and Complexity in Organisation (SCiO), the systems thinking practitioner professional body. Benjamin is also the Managing Partner of RedQuadrant where he does public service consulting using systems approaches.
Benjamin has been involved in building the Systems Thinking practitioner community in many ways. The Public Service Transformation Academy social enterprise that he is the Chief Executive of provides training and capability building for transformation. In this context and in the professional body Benjamin has been part of defining a Systems Thinking Practitioner job competency framework, qualification, and post-graduate Apprenticeship, which he introduced in the meetup. He also runs his own ‘tool shed’!
In the meetup he spoke about how he has used systems approaches in his consulting work. Ben spoke about three interrelated challenges on how to build systems thinking practice capability, how to share materials and build communities of practice and enquiry and how to deliver systems work.
Based on his experience in following the Systems Thinking practice field for a long time Ben mentioned he has identified four different groups related to the field and how their strengths might be connected together.
You can also check out SCiO’s page on competency framework and qualification and SCiO’s future events.
You can check the event recording here:
You can find Ben’s slides here:
Interested to learn more about Systems Change Finland and about how to join our community?
Systems Change Finland seeks to cultivate a society that can deal with systemic and complex challenges. The purpose of Systems Change Finland is to promote the application of approaches that help people, organizations and society understand and work with systems and complexity.
- Join the Systems Change Finland group on Facebook
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- Become a member and check our WWW-page at systemschange.fi
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