Finding Our Way

Working with Life’s Dynamicsin School Systems

People speak so easily these days of systems—systems thinking, systems change, connectivity, networks. Yet in my experience, we really don’t know what these terms mean or their implications for our work. We don’t yet know how to act in or think about this new interconnected world of systems that we’ve created.

Those of us educated in Western culture learned to think and manage a world that was anything but systemic or interconnected. It’s a world of separations and clear boundaries: jobs in boxes, lines delineating relationships, roles and policies describing what each individual does and who we expect them to be. Western culture is very skilled at describing the world by these strange, unnatural ...