Systems thinking Systemic leadership
Systems thinking Systemic leadership
Featured projects
Instrumental in the design, launch, and delivery of a unique MSc program for civil servants in the UK in systems thinking and leadership at the Birmingham Leadership Institute, University of Birmingham, UK. This program responds to the UK government's endeavor to support civil servants build their systems thinking capabilities.
Established a new Centre of Excellence for Leadership at India Leaders for Social Sector (ILSS) and served as its acting head to stabilize its constitution and operations. Focused on IP creation, designing new programs, and led ecosystem mobilization efforts.
Led the project for the launch of two XPRIZEs in India, the only ones to be launched outside of the US. The first focused on women's safety using digital technology; the second focused on water conservation and regeneration. This project involved several elements spanning organizational alignment, stakeholder engagement, and PR.
Multi-year leadership development for the top management of Honda India using a holistic competency model design and deployment. This work involved designing and implementing development centers, leadership coaching, and managerial development cycles. Later, the project evolved into employee engagement interventions using systems thinking approaches.
Capacity building in systems thinking and systemic leadership for senior civil servants of the Department for Business & Trade (UK Government). Advisory on systems approaches to the DBT's focus on enhancing entrepreneurship and productivity in the UK economy. This is aligned to the UK Government's vision of integrating a systemic lens into the modus-operandi of civil servants.
Collaborated with MICA Ahmedabad to train 100 public health counsellors of the Ministry of Health, Government of Odisha, on behavior change communication. Sensitized the audience on a systems approach to communications, considering socio-cultural and linguistic nuances.
Point of View
The current socio-economic malaise created by a simplistic and linear approach to management has put in question fundamental assumptions of modern businesses and the way social/organizational institutions are managed. In the last 50 years, the amount of damage we, as a race, have inflicted on the planet, on peoples and on our personal selves is more severe than what was done in the previous 3000 years.
We need a profound shift from linear thinking to systems thinking.
Systems thinking enables us to understand dynamic boundaries in social and organizational situations, appreciate interrelationships and recognize emergent patterns. It offers an alternative understanding to the dominant worldviews that have surfaced in the nineteenth century onwards that separate mind-&-matter, cause-&-effect, and profit-&-responsibility with a dualist standpoint.
Systems thinking needs to be a state of mind.
Systems thinking as a state of mind can serve as an inspiration for business managers, policy makers and change agents to thread disparate strands with analysis and logic, and yet transcend the same in the passage through lateral thinking and connected rationality.