Reflection three: Systems theory and retrospective sensemaking Retrospective sensemaking among the nouveau riche David Owens-Hill

Queens University of Charlotte

Introduction As an American born in the late 20th century I belong to an ever-growing organization loosely composed of individuals who have seen their familial monetary worth grow. Familial dynamics are themselves a great example of Systems Theory as interdependence is innate through childhood and early adulthood until the system opens and new members are allowed in through significant relationships and familial expansion. But the number of members of this organization who have seen their monetary situation change for the better over time know of the adhocracy of relationships built on this fiscal growth. Im not sure I totally followed this intro. Maybe take your time with yoru point a bit more. I was born into a lower-middle class family with two very hard working parents in blue collar jobs. Dad laid ductwork for an HVAC company and Mom performed a variety of service jobs. When I was six years old, they decided that self-employment would be a more effective use of their skills and they started a small business building custom, high end homes. Almost instantly the business reputation for quality work spread in our small town and my parents because the one-stop shop for large, custom homes. Almost overnight we went from a family that had to manage their expenditures down to the penny to a family with disposable income. We started taking vacations. We bought new cars and a new house. Our clothes got nicer. Our friends got richer. While my parents were excellent at maintaining relationships they had for years, they also made new friends with our new country club membership. Around this time a relative opened a trust fund edict that had been sealed for many years and my brother, my cousins and I were immediately granted a significant sum of money to ensure a college education.

Sensemaking in a position of financial worth As someone who saw a fiscal reality that was both absent in security and one that was flush with disposable income, I realized that managing and maintaining this money would be a task that could not be ignored. Unlike friends that I made growing up that had always had money, I realized that the foundational support of disposable income to a particular lifestyle was fleeting. Retrospectively I understood that keeping this? lifestyle meant working hard to ensure the pool of money was constantly being refilled. When I was fifteen years old, my best friends parents decided to divorce. Like my parents, my friends family were accustomed to a particular lifestyleone that involved considerable amounts of cashand I saw first hand that, when the divorce and dissolution of assets threatened that lifestyle, there was a personal price to pay. My friend had used his familys worth to construct a social reality that included certain niceties and, when he saw this reality being threatened, he realized that he had no world-lens that would effectively prepare him for the actively adjusting ???? his constructed reality. He, tragically, turned to drugs and is currently in a state of rebuilding his socially constructed significance as a recovering drug addict. Yikes! Okay, I love your topic so far, but I feel like you need to take your time making your points re: systems theory. Talk more about retrospective sensemaking and socially constructing a reality. Explain your terms and illustrate them more clearly. Youre losing me a bit. The blame game The nouveau riche of our generation seem to feel a sense of entitlement. Their lens on the world is tinted with the color of currency and acts as a reality vacuum. The rich will try first to fix problems with money and, only when that fails, will turn to

innovation. Lets look at the propensity to borrow excessive amounts of money when debt mounts. An astute observer realizes this only leads to more debt, but the reality constructed around the rich indicates that this is an acceptable form of maintaining optical satus quo. Their lifestyle is unaltered, thus their life is unaltered. When the time comes? that global economic meltdown is eminent, the public sphere is not full of middle-class citizens asymmetrically communicating blame to the rich, it is full of rich elite explaining the flaws of other rich elite. The blame festoons to the top of the issue, the public sphere sensationalizes it and the systematic failure goes unresolved. Good now talk about how systems thinking (interconnectedness, unexpected consequences can inform your point. Telling the story I would never clam to be affluent and I dont think that my parents would claim to be either. I am self sufficient, content in my situation and able to save a little here and there for a rainy day. I do, however, feel entitled to claim a lifestyle that is no longer my own. Not sure I know what you mean by this. When my own parents divorced, our familial disposable income was significantly depleted and, once I graduated from college, most of my trust fund was redistributed. But we tell the story we favor, and the story I have constructed is one of an individual unencumbered by financial woes. Its the story I learned from my parents and one that they cling to even though our days as friendly construction robber barons has passed. In this situation, retrospective sensemaking could work to provide a lens useful to recreating a story that is more appropriate for the reality of our situation. Good. Now what would weick say about retrospective sensemaking---

e.g., its the only real type of sensemaking there is. And what can we learn by realizing that fact? Systems Theory as a connector for those who have seen their financial worth fluctuate Those who have seen personal financial worth fluctuate would do well to accept that organization wants to happen. As we see our global economy recoil against those who pushed it to the extreme, we should open up our systems to those with various backgroundsethnic, socioeconomic, ethnographicto see what they can contribute to the truth we are retrospectively building as we see our situation in flux. Organization wants to happen. We should accept this second order change. These are excellent points, david. I just feel like you really need to explain and expand on them. You sort of list a bunch of great, complex points in a row. Try to tell the reader what you mean. And I feel like there is a lot more you could discuss of weicks points. But whatever you decide to cover, make sure you explain it and make your illustration of it very clear. Good work.