'Open System Theory by Warner Burke'
— Transforming Organizations, Revitalizing Communities and Developing Human Potential
an excerpt from our Oct. 2019 keynote webinar with Warner Burke, Ph.D.
The following is an excerpt from this webinar transcript: https://youtu.be/Nl8C2bOuOcw [19:15 - 22:26]
According to Dr. Warner Burke:
[. . . ] Our basic fundamental theory in OD work should be Open System Theory. And Open System Theory means that we look at input, throughput, and output with a feedback loop.
How is that for a fast definition of Open System Theory?
But what we spend entirely too much time on is, especially on the outset of a consulting project, is throughput, because throughput is much more exciting, because that's about leadership and culture, climate, and all those things that we're known for and like to like to work on.
Whereas at the outset particularly – we should be interested in input and output. Input means – and this would please Lewin immensely if we started off with inputs – because that means: What are the forces that are coming in on our client, that the client is having to deal with from that person's external environment? What are those forces all about? That’s ‘Lewinian thinking:’ “Feel the forces!” That’s input and where we start is with that.
And then we go from input to output. We don’t go from there to ‘leadership.’ We go from there to output: What is it that you are trying to accomplish? And how is it, that these forces that are coming in on you are helping you to accomplish that, and how they're not.
So what’s the main thing you want to know about input? If it's a business, you want to know about competition and the marketplace that the organization is in. And you really want to “talk business.”
And if you're talking about output, it's about whether or not you're winning or losing with respect to your competitor.
So it's more fun for us to talk about culture and leadership and mission and strategy – that’s throughput stuff – and that's where we eventually go but we don't start there.
So the client then gets up and gets concerned when you're talking OD stuff and you're not talking performance. And so one of the things that might be a good idea for all of us to have on our desk is a book like ‘Performance Management for Dummies.’ You might want to keep something like that handy so you can talk the language pretty easily – it’s right here on my desk.
So I'm really concerning myself with the corporation here, but nonprofits have a mission; and so there's where you start – with what is preventing them from accomplishing their mission. The input-and-output way of thinking should begin there as well.
For more from Warner Burke’s keynote webinar, check out: https://nexus4change.com/blog4change/2019/warnerburke
And check out NEXUS4change’s webinar series of 30-min. high-impact change tool talks. Check our events page [www.NEXUS4change.com/events] for more on the power of Design Teams, the Change Formula, Collaborative Roadmaps, Appreciative Benchmarking and more.