Systemic intervention | about 50 minutes | free
Design a small collective inquiry that can change both action and the assumptions behind it.
A bridge exercise across related but distinct approaches. Vickers' appreciative systems are not identical to Cooperrider's 4D Appreciative Inquiry. Systems convening offers practical social-learning resources, not a claim to be the same named methodology.
This is original learning material, not a reproduced official course. Mechanical checks have determinate answers within the stated case. Worked comparisons for open judgements show defensible reasoning, not the only possible model. Specialist pedagogical review is not recorded.
Fictional case: a council, a charity and a residents' group meet monthly about access to advice. Each presents success figures, but nobody changes practice. The council values prompt closure, the charity values sustained relationships, and residents value getting an answer they can use. One joint case worked unusually well because a resident and adviser could contact a named decision-maker directly. That person has since left. Residents say meetings use unfamiliar language and are held during their working hours.
Use paper, your own drawing tool or the notes below. Attempt each step before opening its comparison. Describe a diagram in words when that is more accessible.
Produce: Three judgements about what counts as a good result, without forcing one metric.
Prompt closure, sustained relationship and a usable answer are different appreciations of the situation. Ask what experiences and standards sustain each judgement. This is an appreciative-systems inquiry in Vickers' sense; it is not simply a request to think positively.
Produce: Evidence of enabling conditions and a question about transfer.
Ask what the named decision-maker could actually do, what trust and access made possible, and whether the arrangement depended on unusual unpaid effort. A 4D Appreciative Inquiry route could explore successful experience, imagine a better arrangement, design it and sustain learning; keep that distinct from the earlier appreciative-systems analysis. Do not assume a single success can be copied unchanged.
Produce: A jointly owned question, small action, observation and reflection.
Question: can a named decision route improve usable answers without creating an unmanageable dependency? Agree a small trial with participants, gather resident accounts and response traces, and review together. Change the meeting time and language so residents can participate. Record who can stop or revise the trial.
Produce: One change to action and one change to a governing assumption.
Changing how quickly cases are closed is an action adjustment. Questioning whether closure is an adequate definition of success changes a governing assumption. The group should show what it learned and altered, not merely that it held another meeting.
These checks test the supplied case, not your overall competence. Open answers and model variants still need your judgement.
The group records attendance as proof that a social learning system exists and that residents share the official purpose.
Look for changes in shared inquiry, relationships, action and the capacity to challenge assumptions. Attendance alone establishes none of those. Ask residents whether the process is usable and consequential.
The named decision route improves speed but residents feel pressured to accept an answer. What should the learning group do?
Revise the definition of success to include the quality and freedom of the interaction. Investigate the pressure, change the process with residents and reconsider the trial's limits. Do not treat the complaint as resistance to an otherwise successful innovation.
A different model can be defensible when its purpose, assumptions and reasoning are explicit. A contradiction, incorrect unit, invented fact or unacknowledged change of purpose needs repair. Keep both your first attempt and revision.
No sign-in or submission is required. Notes are not sent by this practice tool. Use fictional information, not identifiable client or learner data. Saving stores this page's attempt only in this browser; clearing browser data can remove it. Export a copy to keep it elsewhere.
The complete original case above is free. Links below distinguish exercises from explanations, recordings, software and paid study. Reading a page or drawing in a tool is not itself a model check.
Use the cases to examine legitimacy, boundaries, agency and learning partnerships. The original case here provides the checkable rehearsal.
Authors' page, free PDF route and paperback links inspected. It is a related social-learning resource, not identical to every method grouped in the bridge exercise.
Write a prediction before a change and compare observation with it. The service and evaluation cases here give a small exercise and answers.
The Institute's account of prediction, study and theory revision inspected. It distinguishes PDSA from a simple implementation check.
Further reading for each framework row, including the separate references associated with transposing theory.
Public sharing confirmed; approach and theory bibliography inspected. The presence of a reference does not establish that it contains self-check exercises.
Choose the relevant workshop and check current arrangements. Learning with others is needed beyond a solo worksheet.
Authors' overview describes workshops using participants' live projects. Specific dates, places, prices and availability are not asserted here.
Ask for practice with feedback in the named approach, rather than assuming every recording includes assessment.
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