The Systematic Approach is a model used that simulates our natural thinking pattern when we are working out how to do something. All people do not use all the steps, nor think in the same way but by following this method in its entirety it ensures that those steps you sometimes assume in your thought processes are clarified and identified and ensures that there is nothing missed.
It is easy to follow and enables the user to present information logically and efficiently. It makes the user aware of the stages they go through in their thought processes and were they are at in their thinking. It also enables the user to identify their strong and weak thought processes thereby offering an opportunity for the individual to improve their skill at thinking.
The Systematic Approach can be used at the beginning of a task for an overview of what needs to be done or it can be used to perhaps review a significant event in retrospect and then move into almost like a learning cycle of how that event/decision could be improved upon for the future.
One of the most important features of the Systematic Approach is its common language if used by a Group. All members know the process and the stages and information can be exchanged easily and in an understandable fashion if it is adhered too.
The Systematic Approach begins with a task or a problem. We then need to Clarify our aims. What is the task? What is its purpose? (Why are we doing the task? What is it for? Who is it for?) What are the end results? (What do we want to achieve when the task is completed? What will it look like?) What are the success criteria or standards we are working too? (What will indicate that we have been or are being successful? How can we assess the end product to be confident that it is what is required?).
Once we have identified these factors we need to get things done and so we have to examine all the relevant information we have both known and unknown. Known information is background information, facts, past experience, resources (time, money, materials, people, skills), ideas, options and risks. Unknown information is exactly that what we need to know to successfully complete the task.
Finally we move into the last stage of what has to be done using the known information and to seek the unknown information (what has to be done by me, what has to be done by others, how can I help them?). We then plan and specify what will be done, how, where, when, and by whom and action it. We can then review the procedure by assessing the results achieved in relation to the aims and determine if more needs to be done and analyse successes and difficulties so as to plan for improvement.
The Systematic Approach is cyclic in its application. Plans need to be followed by action, and then by review, so leading into the next cycle of Preparation, Action, and Review.
(Acknowledgement is given to The Coverdale Organisation Ltd 1987)
