A quick poem on systems practice. Join the conversation on LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_a-systems-practice-if-if-systems-practice-share-7485079093026271232-5IWa/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAACuq-oBecVFDW6PCf3lkoG-peMeuLBeoho
A systems practice If
If systems practice can invite without deceiving,
And open up the field without pretence;
If it can simplify without relieving
The world of all its mess and consequence;
If it can make a pathway worth pursuing,
Without pretending that’s the whole terrain;
If it can certify without subduing
The living thought it ought to test and train;
If standards strengthen practice without fixing
Its concepts into doctrine, rule or creed;
If research stays entangled in the doing,
And lets the work revise the books we read;
If practice learns from more than recollection,
And tests its favourite tales against the facts;
If methods meet in disciplined connection,
Not mashed into a workshop bag of hacks;
If access grows while power’s made explicit –
Who frames the question, sanctions, and decides;
If those invited have the means to shift it,
Not merely seats arranged along the sides;
If judgement lives as reach and numbers widen,
And context isn’t processed out for scale;
If what is measured doesn’t rule the system,
And tidy replication isn’t hailed;
If naïve enthusiasts can love without converting,
Popularisers share yet not make thin;
If curmudgeons can doubt without deserting,
And gooroos cease to fence their followers in;
If experts can be useful without ruling,
And learners can be humble without fear;
If challenge doesn’t curdle into sneering,
Nor warm inclusion make the thinking disappear;
If it can hold the model and the muddle,
The discipline, the doubt, the need to act;
If it can enter fully in the struggle,
Yet keep its claims proportionate to fact;
If it can change itself while changing others,
And see the part it plays in what goes wrong;
If different schools can work beside each other,
Without demanding all must sing one song;
Then systems practice may be a worthy practice-
Not merely maps, a movement, creed or brand;
A craft that keeps its theories in contact:
To understand through action, and to act to understand.
chosen path 