Growing Wings on the Way : Systems Thinking for Messy Situations

You may be: • trying to fix the healthcare system in your country... • dealing with family break-up... • exploring change - and making it happen - in your organisation... • worrying about how to look after your elderly parents... In any case, you'll know that with some problems it's hard to know where to start - we can't define them, we get in a muddle thinking about them, we may try to ignore some aspect/s of them and - when we finally do something - they usually get worse.

These problems are so entangled they become 'messy situations' and our first mistake is to try and fix them as we would fix a simple problem. But Systems Thinking offers a range of good ways of approaching these situations and unravelling them. Rosalind Armson is one of the world's foremost teachers and practitioners of Systems Thinking, and her remarkable book explains how these messes happen and what to do about them. Specifically, she sets out a series of sophisticated and challenging - but practical and easily learned - skills and techniques for thinking better when you're'in a mess'.

Whether you're new to Systems Thinking or have long experience, the book invites you to develop your skills through working with your own messy situations. It's written for managers, project managers, team leaders, 'change leaders', strategists,policy makers and concerned citizens as well as university students from a broad set of disciplines.

Organisations and readers in education, healthcare, environmental management, IT planning and social care are just a few of those likely to find it helpful.