Systems Leadership

Public service problems such as homelessness and health inequality sit across many organisations, and no one of them can fix them alone. This module introduces what a system is, drawing on Donella Meadows, the tame and wicked distinction of Rittel and Webber, and the growth of systems thinking from Forrester to Senge. It reads Everyone In as a system and applies Cynefin to member and officer relationships.

When the same problems keep returning despite good people working hard, the cause usually lies in the structure. This module covers the core grammar of systems thinking: stocks and flows from Forrester's system dynamics, reinforcing and balancing loops, delays and oscillation, and the iceberg model from Senge's tradition. It reads the English NHS waiting list as a stock and explores John Seddon's idea of failure demand.

A good map turns a tangle of opinions into something a group can point at, argue about and improve. This module compares rich pictures, causal loop diagrams and actor maps, explores Peter Checkland's Soft Systems Methodology and Werner Ulrich's boundary questions, and reads the 2007 Foresight obesity system map. It shows why smaller maps drawn together with the people affected often lead to more action.

Today's problems often come from yesterday's solutions. This module introduces the system archetypes Peter Senge popularised in The Fifth Discipline: fixes that fail, shifting the burden, limits to growth, eroding goals, the tragedy of the commons and success to the successful. It reads temporary accommodation in England as a shifting the burden pattern and offers a five step process for using archetypes without turning them into blame.

A system has many parts you could change, so which are worth the effort? This module works through Donella Meadows's twelve leverage points, from shallow numbers to deep goals and paradigms, and explains why most effort goes to the weakest levers. It examines information flows through the Cardiff Model for Violence Prevention and reads Wales's 5p carrier bag charge as leverage that changed a default and then a norm.

No one controls an organisation, yet leaders shape the conditions from which outcomes emerge. This module contrasts the machine model with the weather model, sets out the properties of complex adaptive systems, and offers practical tools: simple rules, enabling constraints in the spirit of Dave Snowden's Cynefin work, and a notice, amplify, dampen cycle. It reads Buurtzorg's self-managing nursing teams as a complex adaptive system designed on purpose.

If nobody is in charge of the whole, what does leadership actually look like? This module sets out leadership as a practice rather than a position, drawing on Senge, Hamilton and Kania's three capabilities, Ghate, Lewis and Welbourn's six dimensions, Senge's five disciplines and Wheatley and Frieze's move from hero to host. It reads Greater Manchester devolution as systems leadership and weighs honestly what the evidence can and cannot show.

Some problems need an answer; some need a change in us. This module takes Ronald Heifetz's distinction between technical problems and adaptive challenges across organisational boundaries, where nobody holds command. It introduces the balcony, an adaptive work matrix and a five step practice for giving the work back, reads the Cardiff Model for Violence Prevention as adaptive work, and names the familiar forms of work avoidance in partnerships.

Many groups cling to habitual answers. This module explores Otto Scharmer's Theory U: its five movements, four levels of listening, the three voices of judgement, cynicism and fear, letting go and letting come, and prototyping as learning by doing. It reads u.lab Scotland as Theory U spreading through a public service system, and is honest that the approach is widely used but has seen little controlled testing.

The work of a systems leader happens in partnerships, and most partnerships stall. This module draws on Chris Huxham and Siv Vangen's research on collaborative advantage and inertia, their four themes of aims, power, trust and membership, and their trust-building loop, alongside Adam Kahane's ideas of power and love. It reads the Poverty Truth Commission as systems leadership and turns the ideas into everyday relational habits.

Collective Impact, set out by John Kania and Mark Kramer in 2011, has shaped how funders, councils and charities work together on problems no single body can solve. This module covers its five conditions and the backbone function, weighs Tom Wolff's critique and Cabaj and Weaver's Collective Impact 3.0, and reads the Strive Partnership carefully. It closes with a question every partnership should ask: whose agenda is the common agenda?

In Wales, core ideas of systems thinking are written into law. This module reads the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 as a systems framework: its five ways of working, the involvement duty, Public Services Boards and the planning cycle. It uses Gwent, the first Marmot region in Wales, working with Sir Michael Marmot's Institute of Health Equity, to show how a statutory partnership can choose a goal beyond reporting.

England has built its systems architecture in layers, through the NHS and devolution, and the structures keep changing while the craft endures. This module sets out the role of Integrated Care Boards, traces twenty years of place-based working from Total Place to the current reforms, and explores system, place and neighbourhood scale. It reads Total Place as a lesson in counting the whole, and compares what England and Wales can learn from each other.

What if learning, rather than control, were the way we managed complex public services? This module introduces Human Learning Systems, developed by Toby Lowe and colleagues, and its three principles of being human, learning and systems. It sets out a learning cycle with shared learning spaces, a commissioning spectrum from spot purchase to alliance, and reads the Plymouth Alliance for Complex Needs as relational commissioning in practice.

What gets measured gets managed, but not always well. This module explores Goodhart's law and Campbell's law, Gwyn Bevan and Christopher Hood's three kinds of gaming, and Mark Friedman's Results-Based Accountability, including the distinction between contribution and attribution. It reads the Welsh ambulance Clinical Response Model as a system changing its measure because the measure was harming its purpose, and offers a process for designing measures for learning.

Systems change outlasts most jobs, so looking after the person doing the work is part of the work. This module draws on Ronald Heifetz's holding environment, Heifetz and Linsky's advice on managing yourself, and Ghate, Lewis and Welbourn's ways of being. It explores your own energy as a stock, the different clocks a systems leader keeps, a simple cycle of personal practice, and what Jacinda Ardern's resignation shows about leading yourself.

This capstone brings no new theory, only new eyes. It reads three well-known English cases, the Wigan Deal, Leeds as a restorative city and the Preston Model of community wealth building, through the whole systems leadership toolkit: stocks and flows, archetypes, Meadows's leverage points, adaptive work, trust and power, and measurement. It draws out four common lessons and asks you to take one idea back to your own work this week.