Context, Context, Context: How Our Blindness to Context Cripples Even the Smartest Organizations

It's well known that human beings are allergic to change. This is nowhere more true than of human beings in organizations. Organization Development initiatives, Leadership Development programs, and Business Transformation plans all founder too often on our resistance and reluctance, on the tendency of people and things to slip back to how they were before. For a long time, Systems Thinkers in general (and Power+Systems pioneer Barry Oshry in particular) have understood that the problem lies with our failure to look at the surrounding organizational structures and dynamics, at the wider picture, at the context. Barry Oshry draws on a lifetime's experience to explain the nature of the problem with our organizational structures, and the ways in which we can dissolve the problem. This book is written in play-form: a simple briefing conversation between a recently hired team member and the Chief Contextual Thinker for a Business Consultancy firm. They discuss the change initiative they are running for a key client. The conversational format allows Oshry to introduce the relevant theory clearly and in sequence, while addressing questions and misunderstandings as they arise. The result is a guide to Systems Thinking for Organizations that's as short, clever, engaging, bright, and helpful as any business book you have ever picked up. This is a story with the potential to transform any organization and it is written for anyone interested in the workings and structures of human organizations: from Board Directors and Chief Executives, through Middle Managers to interested workers. *** "Exceptionally well written, organized and presented, 'Context, Context, Context' is unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, corporate, community, and academic library Systems Thinking, Organization Development, Sociology, and Business Management collections and supplemental studies reading lists." --The Midwest Book Review, Library Bookwatch, The Sociology Shelf, January 2018 [Subject: Systems Thinking, Organization Development, Sociology, Business]

Table of Contents:
The Scene Chapter 1: THE PLAN Chapter 2: The Essence of MICROSCOPE Part I: People in Context Chapter 3: How THE PLAN showed up in the Top Context Chapter 4: How THE PLAN showed up in the Bottom Context Chapter 5: How THE PLAN showed up in the Middle Context Chapter 6: How THE PLAN showed up in the Customer Context Part II: Systems in Context Chapter 7: Putting Whole Systems in Context Chapter 8: The Indispensable Language of Whole Organic Systems Chapter 9: MICROSCOPE’s Strategy Chapter 10: The Annotated Slide Show For Tops Chapter 11: The Annotated Slide Show For Middles Chapter 12: The Annotated Slide Show For Workers Coda: Take One Coda: Take Two Afterword References

About the Author :
Barry Oshry is a pioneer in the field of human systems thinking. His life’s work has been to empower individuals and organizations by transforming system-blindness into system-sight. The educational programs he has developed include The Power Lab, the Organization Workshop on Creating Partnership, and the When Cultures Meet Workshop. In 2013 he launched The Worldwide Week of Partnership, during which Power+Systems trainers across the globe conduct pro bono partnership events for educational, charitable, advocacy, and service organizations in their local communities. In 2015 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Organization Development Network. Barry is the author of The Systems Letter, Seeing Systems, Leading Systems, In the Middle, and The Possibilities of Organization. He is also a playwright whose stage productions include “What a Way to Make a Living,” “Hierarchy,” “Power Play,” and “Peace.” ​In 1975 he and his wife and partner, Karen Ellis Oshry, founded Power+Systems, Inc. whose worldwide network of trainers continues the work of empowering individuals and organizations by transforming system-blindness into system-sight.

Review :
"Barry Oshry's latest work is as compelling as it is concise. With immense care and great clarity, he sets out a powerful language to describe and understand whole systems. The concepts not only help us to grasp more securely the profound personal and organisational consequences of our blindness to the contexts in which we live our lives but also grant us fresh perspectives from which to appreciate those contexts anew. Oshry shows us that there is a different way to enact our whole system lives, a way that elaborates and realises our individual and collective potential. As I have become more familiar with Oshry's work, I have increasingly drawn on it to inform my teaching of healthcare professionals undertaking courses in leadership, quality improvement, strategy and innovation. The powerful positive response to his work of students and colleagues working at all levels in the health system is testament to the transformative potential of Oshry's insights. This book will further elaborate that potential. " Prof Martin McNamara, Professor and Associate Dean for External Relations, UCD School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health Systems, University College Dublin, Ireland "Barry Oshry has hit a home run with his informative, instructive and inspiring book. His work encourages leaders to be totally awake to the essential importance of context and current realities in promoting deep organizational learning. Oshry's contextual framework is a powerful organizational tool for us as we continue to push our leadership thinking and actions while striving for a mountain top perspective. " Richard Streedain Ed.D Professor of Leadership Studies, National-Louis University