Ask the Brazilian government why it wants to develop the Amazon, and you'll get one answer. Ask the Yanomami people who live there, and you'll get a completely different one — and both are arguably legitimate. Critical Systems Heuristics gives you a structured way to surface competing perspectives like these before they derail an intervention.
Developed by Werner Ulrich, Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH) is a framework of questions for surfacing, elaborating, and critically examining the boundary judgements that decide what counts as relevant to a system, and what is omitted. This introduction, taught by Tony Korycki, is designed for people new to systems thinking and can be split across three one-hour sessions.
You'll learn to:
- Work through CSH's 12 questions, covering sources of motivation, control, knowledge, and legitimacy, from the perspective of those who run a system, then flipped to explore those affected by it,
- Compare a situation “as-is” against what it “ought-to-be”, and use the gap between the two to guide where change is needed,
- See how CSH handles legitimacy for people, and interests, that can't speak for themselves: future generations, non-human stakeholders, and groups without a voice in the room,
- Choose between practical ways to gather this information — solo reflection, interviews, or carefully structured workshops — and understand the trade-offs of each.
1h 19m video plus exercises, originally a 3-hour half-day. £100 pre-recorded. Trainer: Tony Korycki.
Trainer
The training is presented by Tony Korycki, a practitioner in systems thinking, alongside methods for business improvement, process management and architecture, organisational design, quality, benefits management and operational measurement.
Tony has a Postgraduate Diploma in Systems Thinking in Practice, and has worked with professional practitioner and knowledge sharing groups for many years, in several spheres.
He is supporting author, with Patrick Hoverstadt, of the Steve Hales book ‘Reframing ITIL’; applying systems thinking to service management of Information & Communications Technology.