Systems Thinking Course Review: By Tyler M. Woodard, BSEM, CEM

This is a Valuable Evaluation of the Systems Thinking Course from Tyler's Perspective After he Completed the Course Last Year. It is a Rare Insight into an Important Self-Study Course.

Introduction

When Tyler M. Woodard, BSEM, CEM, whose LinkedIn indicates he works at the Illinois Department of Public Health as an Illinois Inter-Agency Strategic Planning Cell Representative, shared his certificate for completing the systems thinking course, I quickly asked if he would answer a few questions. This course is housed at the Naval Postgraduate School’s Centre for Homeland Defense and Security. I am proud to say I originally developed it, which Dr. Tom Makin amended later.

 I want to extend an eternal “thank you” to Charles Hamper (of Creek Technologies at the time), who brought the course to life for the first time, navigating a small book’s worth of information and foreign visualizations. Crucially, Charles and his team understood how to show variable flow through the various system models I made, which are great teaching tools and are still in the course. Charles, thank you so much.

Here is a blog post on the first version that expands on the topic in areas this post does not and with visuals.

Course Background

It has a story.

Dr. Wendy Walsh was unequivocally the inspiration behind this course and remained one personally for years after this project saw daylight. I am proud to have been selected as the subject matter expert to bring Dr. Walsh’s idea into being. I left Denver at three in the morning in August of 2017 to meet Dr. Walsh, and before dinner, we had a draft of the course written up while sitting poolside in Santa Cruz or thereabouts. The next day, we went to Monterey to visit the Naval Postgraduate School, typed our course up, and presented it to Glen Woodbury, possibly Jodi Stiles, and Heather Hollingsworth. We left with an agreement. Dr. Walsh and I completed two other great projects on self-organization in FEMA regions on both coasts, which appear to have exited the internet but were cited heavily. This was the good life, I told myself with certainty, and I was right. I was concurrently a co-founder of the Adapt Institute during parts of this project. Dr. Walsh and I met up at some point in person, possibly in conjunction with the Natural Hazards Workshop, maybe in 2018, to discuss progress.

Dr. Walsh was the head of FEMA Higher-Ed then, and I was contracted under FEMA Higher-Ed to write the course content. I believe Dr. Walsh and I were both surprised when the designed referenceable and multi-perspective approach to each section and concept led to a more extended duration project than presupposed, and somewhere around 180 pages of text with system models I made for emergency management and homeland security problems. The project ranged from August 2017 to December 2018, or as I like to call it, about a day before my Honeymoon. During this period, I checked out a stack about two feet tall from the Interlibrary loan program in addition to my extensive collection and bought a few rare finds.

As noted above, Charles Hamper and his team developed version one, which I do not believe ever had an online presence. Years passed, and I moved on to other projects focused on complexity, design, and human dimensions. Like a clap of thunder and a blinding light, the course reemerged later in its final form, which Tyler took.

As a consultant of any type, it seems rare to see how your work is performing years later. Having the ability to do so is invaluable and undoubtedly rewarding. I received quantitative data on the course a couple of years ago, but to my knowledge, this course evaluation is the first of its kind. It was clear from the beginning this was not an opportunity to miss. I put some questions together quickly, and Tyler responded. Only mild edits have been made, and not to meaning. Please enjoy his evaluation and view the course for yourself.

The Evaluation

1. What did you like about the course?

The most interesting and thought-provoking part of the course (for me) was the module that addressed Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety, which states that to effectively manage or control a complex system, the system used to manage it must be at least as complex. I’m still grappling with that in the context of emergency management and public health because I have observed in practice that, often, the simplest solution to a problem is the best one. For example, incident management software that is unnecessarily complex doesn’t get used or is so cumbersome that it actually impedes incident response. I’ve thought about Ashby’s Law and what it means for public health EM almost every day for the past several months.

2. What did you dislike about the course?

If I’m being honest, the scrolling. I think scrolling through several pages gives the perception that the course is much longer than it actually is, so I felt a little fatigued.

3. Were there any areas you would have liked the course to expand upon or areas you did not think had value?

I would have liked to see an expanded discussion of Ashby’s law in the context of emergency management, maybe even with opposing viewpoints to add context. As I mentioned above, that was the most interesting part for me.

4. Was there anything missing from the course?

Not that I can think of.

5. Did you think the course was too long or too short?

It’s been a while since I took the course, but I would say it took me somewhere in the realm of 10-12 hours to comfortably get through it all. I don’t believe it was too long because the subject matter is complex and made for the advanced practitioner; the average local public health practitioner is probably not going to take a course on systems thinking. I do think the format made it seem longer than it was because there was quite a bit of scrolling.

6. Were the stock and flow, and causal loop diagrams helpful in solidifying systems thinking concepts?

I think anywhere you can add diagrams and charts, it’s helpful to visual learners like myself.

7. What were your most meaningful takeaways from the course?

I think one of the things that this course reiterated for me is that “complex” does not necessarily mean “complicated.”

8. Do you understand systems thinking enough to apply parts of it to your work or teach others?

I believe so. Another great book that I’ve read is Systems Approach to Management of Disasters by Slobodan P. Simonovic.

9. Was there any part of parts of the course that has continued to impact how you understand and approach your job?

Yes, I think most of the course has impacted my approach to my job in some way. I’ve referenced the course modules a few times already since taking it.

10. If you would, why would you recommend the course to others?

I would be a bit selective when recommending the course to others, just because I would want to make sure the person is ready for it and can benefit from it.

Conclusion

I, the author, am part of a research study on disaster literacy. The study heavily focuses on community members and also reaches those who work in disaster management, but this population is much less of a focus. This course covers systems thinking well and prepares emergency management and homeland security professionals to manage risk in new ways based on understanding elements as being connected in dynamic ways. The MS-13 case study and model, as well as the community vulnerability models, provide a visual pathway into systems thinking. Systems thinking offers an outlook, language, and set of tools for addressing perplexion in professional life and constructively finding ways to manage it without materializing every decision to see what an effective strategy or intervention is.

'Qualitative models are vital to systems thinking, while quantitative models are essential in systems dynamics. In systems thinking, it is imperative to understand the understanding found across the course and related text before materializing a system through visualization. This helps to ensure systems are understood before they are brought into being on a whiteboard, handled, and intervened in. Systems, like people, must be respected as an absolute baseline. Understanding comes next. Systems tell puzzled observers how they want to be touched and stepped in. Suppose those who wish to manage them listen to systems first and hear what possibilities for change are naturally available. In that case, coherence between the system and the management strategy may be created, producing less friction and a lower revision rate.

Some people, like Snowden, correctly say systems thinking is not appropriate in all contexts. Fortunately, this course does not consistently deliver a purist’s systems thinking. For example, Tyler’s favored course element was Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety, a Cybernetic rather than a systems thinking principle. However, it was too important to ignore. I threaded it into the narrative and repeated a similar process several times with other theories. The systems thinking presented here includes a meaningful complex adaptive systems angle alongside or even permeating traditional systems thinking tools, understandings, language, and ideas. I recommend the work of Meadows and Stroh to continue learning a conventional perspective on systems thinking.

In addition to systems thinking in emergency management or homeland security graduate programs, other disciplines are necessary:

• Design: Fry, Manzini & Escobar

• Biology: Maturana, Varela & Thompson

• Philosophy: Heidegger, Nietzsche, & Agamben

• Systems: Meadows, Capra, Morin, Cilliers & Waldrop

Emergency management and homeland security are not classical disciplines. They cannot be studied solely from their perspective, like physics or mathematics. Both fields must become multidisciplinary to provide a comprehensive, balanced, and responsible education capable of producing functioning professionals who work as expected and eventually find and develop the next phase of practice. I have been concerned with the gaps in education underlying emergency management, a field with so much responsibility, since co-developing “The Next Generation Core Competencies for Emergency Management Professionals” in 2017. There may be a tendency to lean further into emergency management texts and only study one discipline instead of becoming multidisciplinary. Systems thinking as a narrative and collection of tools will show the value of joining multiple disciplines to create well-rounded and dynamic professionals with a layered understanding of the world.

Thank you for reading, and thank you to Tyler for contributing. This has been a truly unique opportunity to see how something thought of eight years ago at a hotel with Dr. Walsh and me is still of value.

Sincerely,

Gregory Vigneaux, M.S.