The Dawn of a Paper Full of Contradictions and Common Knowledge

Alright. So, "The Dawn of a Systems Leader." What? Leaders are both given a pass for ignorance but also must undertake the "high-risk," skills-needed, good-intention-are-not-enough task of bringing together stakeholder with varying goals, backgrounds, and histories of collaboration. No. A leader should not be ignorant. Open to new ideas? yes. Able to listen? yes. Willing to engage with people "across borders"? yes. Willing to learn? yes. ALl of these ideas are so incredibly basic it blows my mind that it's not presented via pop-up book. This paper was astoundingly superficial. This paper is ineffective, in my opinion, outside of its target audience of people under the age of 10 and those residing in the oval office. Though, Trump definitely is embracing the ignorance of a strong systems leader... maybe omit that part and then submit it to the oval office.

The second Senge reading, well I guess the first technically, "Collaborating for Systemic Change" was an interesting read. The problem with reading papers that are 10 years old is that they are out-of-date. The beginning of this paper claims that "cross-sector collaboration is unexplored," this is only partially true-even when this paper was published. In 2002 a publication titled "Conservation Medicine: Ecological Health in Practice" presented the idea of 'Conservation Medicine,' which is the cross-sector, collaborative effort to conservation looking at connectivity of ecosystem, animal, and human health. This field of Conservation Medicine is what socio-environmental systems thinking truly is, and much of the work done in conservation medicine is work that addresses very extensive and intricate systems that currently inhabit the world. A systems thinking class would be much better served if it were to look at papers or books related to conservation medicine as they provide intricate systems and how collaborative efforts have been made to address the extensive and interweaving problems. If anybody is interested in resources on Conservation Medicine, I have a substantial list of peer-reviewed articles that emphasize good and bad collaborative conservation efforts, along with a textbook ("New Directions in Conservation Medicine," A. A. Aguirre et al., 2012). I also would recommend "The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How it Changed Science, Cities and the Modern World" which is a great read about the cholera breakout in London in 1854, it presents a dynamic system full of balancing and reinforcing feedback loops and all those other cool system words.

Signing off. Peace ooot.

Comments

[Brugo]

Brysen,

When I think of conservation as "medicine" I wonder whether that metaphor - which is fundamentally organismic, or focused on the health of the individual as a singular being - is an adequate metaphor for a world where the parts are NOT integrated as they are in a body, but are power-laden, perspectival, conflict-ridden, and where different stakeholders draw the boundaries around the system in different ways. What do you think?

[Brysen Daughton]

Dr. Goldstein,
Interestingly, some of the best peer-reviewed articles explaining intricate systems that I have read were based on global distillation of heavy metals and pollutants. One of these papers looked at contaminants found in breast milk and how the western practice of updating their technology and "recycling" the old tech was a big cause for this. So, this paper accounted for several stakeholders and processes from the intricacies of gaining the locals trust to the failed recycling practices, all the way to manufacturing and western purchasing practices. I believe the field of conservation medicine is a growing field that brings a collaborative and multi-stakeholder effort to conservation. Though, I will concede that there is a large business effort that could be brought into the field.

[Katie Halmo]

I do think 'under-explored' would have been a more appropriate word choice, rather than unexplored for Senge. While some of the things Senge mentioned seem superficial, I don't think they're being integrated as fully and often as they should be. It was seems like common sense, but it isn't as common as it should be if that's the case.
I like that you mentioned conservation medicine. It's an interesting application of a systems approach, and has the room to further integrate more systemic components. The health care system is [obviously] a system. And that's actually more how I perceive conservation medicine being applied, rather than simply from the organismic perspective. And, as Bruce pointed out, with any system, where there's conflict, there's room for growth and further systemic collaboration.