Abstract
The staff of a state public health leadership institute used a national leadership competency set as guidance for its curriculum. An important competency of that and several other national competency sets is systems thinking. Efforts to provide useful training in systems thinking were only partially successful. Literature searches revealed only one successful application in practice, even though surveys find that systems thinking continues to be a critical training need. During its final year, the staff of the institute developed a framework for a personal system thinking approach, which was favorably received by institute participants. The great majority of the participants in the institute were middle managers who were expected to develop their leadership skills and advance in their careers. This paper presents a refined version of the systems thinking framework. Among the advantages, it provides are: it requires no expenditure other than time, it requires no consultants, it can be tailored to the needs of any worker, it can be revisited as often as desirable, it recognizes that conflict and competition are ever-present in organizations and agencies, and it a can provide a roadmap for personal leadership action.
Highlights
The idea of a system, if not the term itself, has been a way of thinking about human relationships at least since Greek philosophers studied the polis (Aristotle, 1962: pp. 289-295)
It provides are: it requires no expenditure other than time, it requires no consultants, it can be tailored to the needs of any worker, it can be revisited as often as desirable, it recognizes that conflict and competition are ever-present in organizations and agencies, and it a can provide a roadmap for personal leadership action
Systems Thinking in a State Level Leadership Institute Curriculum. In view of this continued and strong need for systems thinking training, the experience of a state level public health leadership institute may be helpful for other public health organizations that wish to strengthen their members’ systems
Summary
The idea of a system, if not the term itself, has been a way of thinking about human relationships at least since Greek philosophers studied the polis (Aristotle, 1962: pp. 289-295). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention soon established grants to create public health leadership institutes at the national, regional, and state levels primarily in schools of public health. These created a formal network of such institutes. The major conceptual work of the leadership institute network was the creation of a competency set that contained a prominent place for systems thinking (Wright et al, 2000) This competency framework became the basis for the institutes’ training programs reaching thousands of public health practitioners and academics. Given the workforce turnover in public health agencies, there will be an ongoing need for training, and it is likely that the resources available for such training will be increasingly scarce
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