There is a strong awareness that new types of skills are necessary if companies and public organizations are to face successfully the immensely complex and interconnected situations that are increasingly being witnessed. Let’s consider as an example the recent Covid-19 pandemic, whose understanding has undergone various interpretations and has provided for a lot of confusion in data understanding regarding the number of infected people per day, number of deaths and recoveries, etc., notwithstanding the fact that an epidemic has a typical behaviour over time (which depends on its peculiar aspects). In other words, making sense of phenomena requires not only the capability to interpret data but to interpret the behaviour of the system underlying the generation of that data. In other words, we need to move from just the understanding of symptoms to the capability to understand the root causes, without “guessing” them (as it basically happens with stochastic methods), but by referring them to a systemic structure. This realization has entered the public limelight and companies/institutions are raising their attention to the need to bridge a gap in the amount of people in the organization with such appropriate skills that could in turn also teach/educate/train other employees; these skills are not limited anymore to technical knowledge but encompass an entire pool of transversal skills that include the ability to think critically, the spirit of initiative, the ability to solve problems in groups, to share a common vision, to get away from wrong mental models and cognitive biases, the capability to differentiate between an accumulation process and the accumulation itself (i.e.: deficit and public debt) etc.: in other words, the capability to think in systems. Such types of skills may appear abstract and vague, but they are exactly what will be required if we are to face and solve successfully many of the largest issues of the 21st century. Among these issues, in this project we will apply these skills to two very important aspects needed to change the way we live everyday on this planet: sustainable development and digital transformation. Thus, the objective of the project will be to prepare and train in Systems Thinking (ST) the next generation of people that will become the trainers of tomorrow and that will be increasingly needed in public and private organizations across Europe. ST has become a key competence and can be considered as a way of thinking aimed at solving complex problems related to real-world uncertainty. It starts from the basic principle that the world is a system of highly interconnected natural, technical and social entities, hierarchically organized to produce behaviors observable by stakeholders. So, ST is a tool with which it is possible to describe a system as a whole (in other words, by explicitly addressing the various interdependencies that are acting in a system and its non-linearities), highlighting its dynamic nature and the interactions that occur among the elements of the system and avoiding any simplification and/or linearization (linear thinking has led decision makers to take linear decisions in a deeply non-linear world, hence producing huge disasters). This systemic frame of mind is based on the following fundamental notions: the ability to know how to observe and grasp the "circular" nature of the world in which we live awareness of the role of the "systems" structure in determining the situations we face the understanding that there are potentially unexpected consequences for the actions we take the understanding of the presence of delays between action and consequences the understanding of stocks and flows dynamics (i.e.: the dynamics of accumulation processes) The project will hence build on the above mentioned initiatives and ultimately produce a completely new educational framework that sees the application of ST to two key aspects in the future development of humankind: digital transformations and the goals of the Agenda 2030. To achieve the objectives of the project the following activities will be implemented: -Teach ST skills and approach -Teach System Dynamics as the operational/mathematical declination of ST -Build and develop relevant knowledge belonging to the issues of sustainable development and digital transformation and develop the mental and mathematical models that will synthesize and analyze the knowledge -Develop interdisciplinary connections and improve activities and methods aimed at shaping ST skills and the systems approach -Create small synthetic environments where it will be possible to examine any studied content also under the influence of external conditions -Build and develop self-management skills At the end of the project, a pool of trainers - thus equipped with systems thinking skills - will be available and, through the project network, ready to act as systems thinking teachers/trainers to private and public organizations.
The objective of the project was to develop a course to prepare and train in Systems Thinking (ST) the next generation of people that will become the trainers of tomorrow and that will be increasingly needed in public and private organizations across Europe when dealing with Sustainable Development (SD) issues and Digital Transformation (DX) of organizations (including the interdependence of the two topics). ST has become a key competence and can be considered as a way of thinking aimed at solving complex problems related to real-world uncertainty. It starts from the basic principle that the world is a system of highly interconnected natural, technical and social entities, hierarchically organized to produce behaviors observable by stakeholders. So the main objective of the project was on one hand to extract evidence of the need for public/private organizations to start thinking in systems when dealing with SD and DX (IO1), and then to gain evidence of how ST has eventually improved (IO5 and IO6) the capability to deal with SD and DX issues after taking the SYSTEMA course, which consisted of 3 modules, one only theoretical on ST (IO2) and the other two concerning the application of ST to SD and DX (IO3 and IO4).
There is strong awareness that new skills are needed for public/private organizations to face successfully the complex and interconnected situations that are increasingly being witnessed. For example, the recent Covid19 pandemic, whose understanding has had various interpretations and provided for confusion in data understanding as to the number of infected people per day, deaths, recoveries, etc., notwithstanding the fact that an epidemic has a typical behavior over time. So making sense of complex phenomena requires both the capability to interpret data AND the behavior of the system generating that data. We need to move from the understanding of symptoms to the understanding of root causes, without “guessing” them (as it basically happens with stochastic methods). Thus organizations are raising their attention to the need to build capacity with such appropriate skills (also to educate other employees), which are not limited to technical knowledge but encompass also transversal skills (think critically, ability to solve problems in groups, share a common vision, etc.): in other words, to think in systems. In particular, in this project we applied Systems Thinking to two sustainable development and digital transformation.