Critical Systems Intervention: A Way to Deploy Critical Systems Leadership in Complex Organisations

Abstract

Critical Systems Leadership (CSL) is a type of leadership associated with the politically radical systems philosophy known as Critical Systems Thinking (CST). A methodology known as Total Systems Intervention (TSI) showed some initial promise in how to operationalise CSL as part of the CST implementation process, but TSI was soon critiqued both on political and scientific grounds, resulting in revisions like Critical Systems Practice (CSP). We believe that CSP missed some of the key aspects of the criticism, so we want to bring attention to a different version of TSI called Critical Systems Intervention (CSI), which we believe is simpler, sounder and more aligned with CST’s commitments to critical awareness, emancipation and multimethodology.  We illustrate the usefulness of CSI by revisiting a CSP case study, showing how the CSI approach corrects for areas where the CSP intervention would be open for critique.  Due to how CSI embodies ideas from classic CST literature that were identified in the early days but not sufficiently explored and thus abandoned too quickly, we believe that CSI is the currently best vehicle for operationalising CSL.