The authors do not seem terribly keen on mission statements, but they do present us with their ten values – twice. Appropriately, given the themes and structure of the book, these are offered in the spirit of learning rather than as “ten easy steps for consultants engaged with whole systems projects”. Whole systems development depends on working in a way that expresses these values. Perhaps, in fact, the authors have offered a mission statement for the book: “How can organisations fit to house the human spirit, be created and sustained such that they meet the needs of communities and society at large?”. They present the major problems as they see them – restructuring, internal silos, territory being defended and short‐termism. They imply and occasionally state explicitly that these are the result of a Mad Management Virus. However, the specific features of the virus are identified as targets inspection, control, dehumanising and undue worship of the private sector.
Within the text, the authors take us through why whole systems change is needed, how it is developed, how it is put into effect and how their five keys are used to open the systems in a way which they think is desirable. The five keys are leadership, public learning, valuing difference and diversity, meeting differently, and follow through.
The book is effective at presenting a coherent picture of what they mean by a “whole system”. They manage well the paradox that while constantly proclaiming the need for any group or organisation to define and work out its own solutions to problems, without recourse to experts and other people solutions, they give many practical illustrations of how to go about the development processes they describe, effectively. The limitation in their coverage, if it is such, is that they are essentially concerned with and write about the public sector rather than private undertakings. A reason to see this as a potential limitation is that it may seem that they have less to say to those engaged in change in, for example, manufacturing industry or the world of finance. Less rather than nothing, providing that those reading the book are prepared to look seriously at the principles involved, and to see ways in which these could be applied in their own different circumstances. It is a feature of the book that the authors want everyone to do this – but it may be more difficult for private sector workers who are not given the stimulus of cases drawn from their worlds. For most readers, I believe that the book will be challenging, informative and directed towards values with which people in training and development and human resource management are likely to be sympathetic.
I was delighted to see that one of their ten core values is “Putting learning at the heart of what we do”. I was not surprised that in consequence they frequently refer to processes which they describe appropriately as “Action Learning”. It seemed that in some, if not all, cases, the action learning process was engaged in as a task undertaken and the processes used to tackle it, rather than through action learning being proposed as a development method. While action learning always should emerge from working on problems, the potential difference in the starting point might be significant. Given the themes of their book, it is not surprising that the authors clearly prefer action learning groups that deal with a common problem for the group rather than individual projects. Given the context in which they want to work, this is understandable. I have the sense, however, that they rather downplay through their action‐learning references and elsewhere, the significance of achieved individual learning as sometimes a precursor and always a support for effective action learning. It was disappointing in association with this point, to see that there were no references in their discussion of a group of facilitators learning through action learning, to the set actually discussing the learning they were acquiring – compared with the other questions they present to the reader as features of the group. It is odd how frequent it is that people who write about action learning do not actually discuss the learning process – and imply, therefore, that it is never discussed explicitly. Without such a discipline, action learning loses part of its massive potential. However, the chapter on group working actually does include the question: “Did those who designed the event collectively review their learning, what was that learning and how will it be used in future?”.
The authors have to face another paradox in relation to the difference (in Revans’ terms) between P and Q. They are essentially (despite writing a book) disposed to regard P i.e. the knowledge developed outside the group or organisation trying to look at problems, as an often unfortunate feature of the Mad Management Virus. Fortunately, while presenting their own experiences very well, they do add to them by reference to other authors. Helpful though these usually are, there are some odd and significant absences. There are no references to the GE workouts, which seem to have a great deal in common with the activities and methods described in the book. I would also have liked to have seen references to the connections or differences between their work and that of Peter Senge (the Fifth Discipline and his later books), and perhaps the closest of the learning organization books to their own ideas Sculpting the Learning Organization, by Karen Watkins and Victoria Marsick. Most of all, I missed any reference to Chris Argyris on the theory and practice of defensive routines. Although they refer to his other work on single and double‐loop learning, no mention is made of defensive routines, which are a crucially significant explanation of why change does not occur. People encouraged to work in the ways described in this book may still be immensely inhibited by the existence in themselves and others of these routines. Argyris’ formulation that in groups and organisations some things are not discussed – and the fact that they are not discussed is itself not discussable – is fundamental to the kind of approaches which the authors of this book are suggesting.
