Systems Thinking - Course One of Three

Expedition Information

Lead facilitator: Karen Vickers. Topics and activities would include: Tuning to place and whole system integration; Life cycle analysis activity and perspectives on human social systems; Systems mapping and the ecology of Savannas; Leveraging for change; Exploring and mapping personal systems like stocks, flows, and boundaries; Educational game drives and field walks with a Savanna ecologist (Karen) and naturalist/biomimicry field guide (Sam)

The Systems Thinking Platform

[Adapted from Leyla Acaroglu] (1) Everything is interconnected (2) Change and evolution are constant (3) Systems functioning depends on circular processes which are infinite (4) Linear processes are finite (5) We can select a lens with which to observe anything, from the micro to the macroscopic, but as we scale up, new properties emerge that could not be seen or understood using a reductionist lens. (6) Our present experience is determined by our collective relationships to everything around us (7) The future is undefined (8) Ecological well-being must be at the core of all we do since we cannot isolate ourselves from our reliance on Earth’s systems

Pricing

Course 1 - Systems Thinking [ZAR 5000]; Course 2 - Deep Ecology [ZAR 6000]; Course 3 - Biomimicry [ZAR 16,600]; Course 1 & 2 - [ZAR 10,000]; Course 2 & 3 - [ZAR 19,000]; All 3 Courses - [ZAR 22,0000]

Immersion Description

“From an early age, we are taught to break apart problems, to fragment the world. This apparently makes complex tasks and subjects more manageable, but we pay a hidden, enormous price. We can no longer see the consequences of our actions: we lose our intrinsic sense of connection to a larger whole.” - Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline. The goal of systems exploration is to expand our understanding of how things work, to discover properties and relationships between issues that are not obvious at first sight, and to ultimately shift our perspective. We will devote the first three days of the program to thinking about the whole and the hidden connections that we are almost never encouraged to think about in our everyday lives. Nature is a great place to begin this process as we observe but also intuitively know, the connections that allow ecosystems to function. The ultimate objective, however, is to then take this same thinking and apply it to human social systems, our organizations, our communities, and even ourselves. By so doing we can identify the leverage points (from something as large as a complete mindset change, to something as small as understanding how a single feedback loop influences our daily behavior) that will allow us to implement the necessary change to alter the system for more desirable outcomes.