‘Systems Convening’ book launch webinar – 2nd September (2pm)

Join ‘Communities of Practice’ pioneers Etienne and Beverley Wenger-Trayner for the launch of their new book ‘Systems Convening – a crucial form of leadership for the 21st century’, which features the work of a number of Q community convenors.

More info and link to book: https://q.health.org.uk/event/systems-convening-book-launch-webinar/

Here’s what ‘adaptive spaces’ pioneer Prof Mary Uhl-Bien wrote in her foreword comment for the book:
“With this book, Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner offer a valuable contribution to the world and the leadership community by outlining characteristics necessary for modern leadership: the ability to nurture and support what we in complexity leadership call, adaptive space. Adaptive space can be thought of as the conditions that promote adaptability. It does this by creating safe spaces for agents (people, ideas, resources, information, technology) to “conflict” and “connect.” Conflicting, as the authors so elegantly identify, is the creative force that allows new ideas and innovations to develop and morph into adaptive solutions to complex problems. Connecting is the emergent force that allows innovative solutions to amplify and scale into an adaptive new order for people, organizations, and society.
While systems convening is referred to in the book as social learning leadership and developed from that discipline, what the authors have discovered is so much more. Systems convening reveals and elaborates the fundamental dynamics through which social systems naturally adapt and survive in response to changing environments. Systems convening brings together many of the core dynamics of complexity as shown in the physical and biological sciences and combines it with deep knowledge and awareness of social systems and human nature. While academic literature has provided the outlines of how these processes and dynamics occur, systems convening fills in the blanks. It provides the most complete resource to my knowledge of what systems convening, or enabling leaders in complexity leadership, must do to create and foster adaptive space. As we now so painstakingly know, this skill is no longer just a “nice to have” but a “must have” for leaders and followers challenged to survive and thrive in an ever-increasingly complex world.”

The Wenger-Trayners interviewed 40 systems convenors – including a number of Q Community members – who are using this approach around the world, working on diverse issues ranging from improving government transparency to enhancing cancer care.

Systems Convenors work to enable sustainable change, across challenging silos, in complex social landscapes, amid changing circumstances. Convenors see a landscape with all its separate and related practices through a wide-angle lens: they spot opportunities for creating new learning spaces and partnerships that will bring different and often unlikely people together to engage in learning across boundaries.

From the book’s introduction: “You may not have heard about them; what they do is rarely in their job description. You may not even be aware of what they do; they tend to act as enablers rather than taking credit or seeking the spotlight”.

The role of Systems Convenors is increasingly necessary in UK healthcare too, with the emergence of the NHS Integrated Care System (ICS) structure making cross-boundary work ever more important. (Surrey recently recruited three ‘Systems Convenors’ to help stimulate radical changes in healthcare, using the book as a guide).

Helen Bevan (Chief Transformation Officer, NHS Horizons) writes in her foreword comment: “We’re moving to a world where enabling change is less about planning a change process, programme management and governance systems and more about connecting, convening and building bridges with and between many people. So yes, systems convening is a crucial form of leadership for the 21st century and I welcome the contribution that Bev and Etienne are making through this book. Let’s answer their convening call.”

Follow Systems Convening on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SysConvening