Abstract
The M-ball is concerned with juggling as an overall performance, managing both the juggling and the desired change in the world. Another way to describe this is as co-managing self and situation. Managing also introduces the idea of change over time, in the situation, the approach and the practitioner – of adapting one’s performance. A range of perspectives on managing are introduced and explored. The reflections on a 25 year career of a systems practitioner, primarily immersed in the practice lineage of practising systems dynamics, is provided to exemplify what might be entailed in juggling the M-ball.
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- 1.
I generated this list with my colleague Rosalind Armson in the mid-1990s; I make no claim that this list is definitive or that this is the only way to categorise my list.
- 2.
This is a good example of how, even in my own practice, it is hard to escape the practice of classifying or typologising – though I would claim that I do so with awareness of what I do when I do what I do!
- 3.
This is the same issue taken up by Henry Mintzberg [16].
- 4.
I am aware that my language is not really adequate here – I trust that by now you will have become at least partially aware that because we are human beings, then it follows that my perspective is that the practitioner – situation relationship is best understood as a relational dynamic – they bring forth each other. So whenever I use the word situation I am using a short hand description for a practitioner (observer) – situation relationship that mutually construct each other.
- 5.
- 6.
Since the global financial crisis there have been many commentators who argue that what has been lost is ‘trust’. This is a claim that is hard to disagree with, but much harder to think of in terms of how trust is built and sustained. I would argue that trust is an emergent property of the process of relationship building and maintaining. So trust per se cannot be managed; it is about managing the quality of relationships.
- 7.
- 8.
For example see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifelong_learning (accessed 15th August 2009).
- 9.
In this section I am reminded of the book by Scott M. Peck [21]. For me it acts as a metaphor for my concerns and how to think about systems approaches in an evaluative sense. Thus the systemic is the road less travelled – but making the choice takes one to different places. Traditional evaluation approaches do not, in my experience, do justice to the implications of making and pursuing these choices.
- 10.
The same choices face complexity theorists or thinkers. They may choose to see complexity existing in the world or they may see complexity thinking as providing the means to formulate an epistemological device, a way of knowing, that is capable of generating new explanations about the world, as opposed to descriptions of it.
- 11.
I would have said situations rather than problems!
- 12.
He argues that hierarchy becomes hegemonic when everyone accepts that it is normal, that that is how things are!
- 13.
I use this expression though I understand being rational as another form of emotion.
- 14.
For example the introduction of SSM, a systems methodology, into the guidelines for government procurement and implementation of information systems failed because it became a blueprint, in which what could have been a context sensitive methodology became reduced to a technique [11].
- 15.
However, this is not magic and involves a lot of work by many people and excludes as many (such as those without internet access) as it potentially includes.
- 16.
See also Blackmore [1] whose book deals more with multi-stakeholder processes, communities of practice and social learning.
- 17.
But an unintended consequences was that the capability to do SD modelling was lost – those who moved to Treasury soon discovered that SD would never displace the extant modelling approaches already embedded there. Hence all SD practice capacity was soon lost.
- 18.
Tim’s experience is not unique in this regard – within the SD community of practitioners qualitative SD practice, based on conceptual modelling rather than conceptual + quantitative modelling is now a recognised form of SD practice; as with Donella Meadows and other SD practitioners ‘systems’ in this reading are referred to in ways that grant them an ontological status.
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Ison, R. (2010). Juggling the M-Ball: Managing Overall Performance in a Situation. In: Systems Practice: How to Act in a Climate-Change World. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84996-125-7_8
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