This blog is partly an attempt to weave together some of the topics that interest me.

I’m particularly interested in systems theory and systems thinking which is about looking at the world in terms of wholes and connections.  It is essential to understand and know how to use systems ideas if you’re going to get anything useful done or improve existing, invariably messy, situations.  Simple as that.  While we have an intuitive feel for what a ‘system’ is, there are various structured methodologies which can help to organise our thinking.  I have a lot of experience of using soft systems methodology, for example.

I am also very interested in psychology, which considers why people differ from one another.  People, to my mind, are endlessly fascinating.  Our big brains distinguish us from every other species in the known universe.  But in spite of the massive advances in human knowledge over the past 100 years, we still don’t understand very much at all about how they actually work.  How, exactly, do the roughly 100 billion neurons which constitute my brain remember that the name of our cat is Sheba and enable me to distinguish her from all other cats?  If anyone can tell me, I’ll buy them a pint.  Psychologists are fond of saying ‘we are all psychologists’ and that’s certainly true: we all try hard to understand others intentions and thoughts, not least because our survival as individuals partly depends on us doing so.

People are interesting enough as individuals, but when we organise ourselves into groups things get really fascinating.  We use the word ‘management’ to describe the business of organising in groups, but we’ve been doing it since homo sapiens first wandered around the plains of East Africa wondering how to get their next lunch.  Peter Senge coined the term ‘learning organisation’ to describe the idea that people can learn collectively as well as individually and suggested that effective organisational learning was crucial to any organisation, or group’s, success.

I am fascinated by technology too and am continually astonished what we’ve managed to develop and exploit it, particularly in the last 100 years.  One of my favourite technologies is the aircraft, but computers and the web are high up the list as well.  The web has been described as the best idea mankind ever had.  Because the web enables us to network billions of human minds in ways which simply weren’t possible before, I’m sure that’s right.  We’ve barely scratched the surface of its potential.

But the thing which gives me the biggest kick of all is helping other people to think and learn more productively.  From time to time people have told me that I’ve changed the way they think.  Sometimes people are asked on workshops and courses what they’d like to have engraved on their tomb-stone.  It’s impossible to beat Spike Milligan’s ‘I told you I was ill’ (which, apparently, he wasn’t allowed to use!) but ‘He changed the way a few people think’ would do for me.  I just hope I changed the way they think in a good way…