Adapting How We Practice in a Constantly Changing Working Environment — Lessons Identified from the Defence Research and Operational Military Environment

Working in a busy, constantly changing workplace and with an organisational structure that has very different drivers to academia and industrial / commercial ventures, what lessons can be shared that helps us to consider and be more effective at applying Systems Thinking skills anywhere? By comparing working in a busy high-level operational military headquarters to the office-based science and technology research way-of-working, I aim to share some of the lessons I identified in both these environments and some of the lessons I learned or have developed mitigations for. Not everything is successful and quite often the academic or 'correct' application of ST methods or methodologies are not possible. By recognising these issues and taking a step back to find other ways of enabling influence or positive effects based on ST, sharing these learning points (both based on practice in the environment and the Practitioners influence) could be of value to our community.