Tagaytay City, Philippines— Some 18 senior leaders from the Philippine Congress successfully completed the Legislative Training Course on Systems Thinking at the DAP Conference Center on July 1-5, 2024. The course, conducted by the Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP), is part of the Capability Building on Innovative Leadership for Legislative Staff (CBILLS) Program.

The residential training aimed to enhance the strategic thinking and collaborative competencies of senior leaders through systems thinking tools, techniques, and approaches. It focused on how the systems thinking can analyze multi-dimensional aspects of recurring and emerging issues, enabling the development of social innovations for long-term solutions.

Czarina B. Teves, an experienced Organization Development consultant with 30 years of expertise in strategic planning, team building, and organizational change, served as the course’s resource person. Teves began her lecture by describing the government as a system and explained system behavior in the context of challenges faced by leaders in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous (VUCA) world. She introduced various systems thinking tools and methodologies, including the Cynefin Framework and the Iceberg Model, which helped scholars analyze the events, patterns, structures, and mental models influencing public sector challenges.

A key component of the course was a sensing journey where senior leaders gathered news articles related to the policies authored by their offices and identified recurring challenges with external stakeholders. This exercise culminated in the presentation of a systems map, identifying the root causes of issues and leverage points for interventions. For their final requirement, senior leaders must draft a Narrative Systems Intervention Plan using systems thinking principles to formulate workable solutions for public policy issues in the Philippines, such as economic development, social welfare, health, and family relations.

The Senior Leaders Track offers customized learning interventions for senior officers of the secretariat and technical officers in higher-level positions. This year, 10 scholars from the House of Representatives and eight scholars from the Senate of the Philippines are enrolled in the track.

(Trisha Mae Mariano)