Critical Systems Heuristics Workshop

Welcome to the Critical Systems Heuristics Workshop!

 

This workshop is the third of four workshops being offered as part of the Systems Evaluation Toolkit training series. Other workshop topics are Social Network Analysis (March 5), Realist Theories of Change (March 18) and Outcome Harvesting (April 15). Each workshop can be taken on its own. Each workshop in this series can be taken on its own—register for the sessions that interest you, or sign up for all four and receive 15% off the total cost. If the cost of this workshop is a barrier, please contact info@hellokrd.net to explore tuition support. 

“Systems thinking” is by now a familiar phrase in evaluation, often used to describe complexity, emergence, and non-linearity. Yet many evaluators find it difficult to translate these helpful ideas into concrete evaluative practice. This challenge becomes even harder when dealing with the less visible parts of systems - things like values-alignment, control, power dynamics, and legitimacy. This half-day interactive workshop will build your capacity with an introduction to boundary critique and Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH). Critical Systems Heuristics is a structured way to surface and examine the assumptions and values that shape how a system works and how we evaluate it.  

As a participant, you will work step-by-step through  the four domains of CSH (motivation, control, knowledge, and legitimacy), applying structured questions to real evaluation contexts. Through a mix of knowledge sharing, individual application, and facilitated discussion, the workshop supports participants to:

• surface boundary judgments,
• distinguish aspirational from actual experience, and
• examine how values, power, and perspective shape systems.

Drawing on the facilitators applied practice in philanthropy, Indigenous governance, and professional development settings, this session presents CSH as a practical, learnable method for ethical sense-making.

 

About the facilitator: Roman Katsnelson, MBA CED, CE is the founder and principal consultant at KRD Consulting Group on Treaty 7 territory in Calgary/Mohkinstsis. He has extensive experience designing and delivering systems-thinking and evaluation capacity-building initiatives across organizational, community, and funder contexts. His practice centres equity, relational accountability, and utilization; integrating data, dialogue and systems thinking to support collective sense-making and informed action. 

 

Who should attend? This workshop is intended for practitioners with some practical experience designing or conducting evaluations and exposure to common evaluation approaches such as logic models, theories of change, or utilization-focused evaluation. Participants do not need prior experience with systems-thinking methods or Social Network Analysis. The workshop assumes comfort engaging in reflective discussion and applied exercises using real-world evaluation contexts. Participants are encouraged, but not required, to consider a current or recent evaluation example they can draw on during reflection and practice activities.

 

Learning objectives:

The workshop focuses on learning by doing -- roughly 40% instruction and 60% active learning. Instruction time will cover the foundations of CSH, the ethical lens of systems thinking through boundary critique, and the structural logic of its four domains. Active learning time will include guided application of CSH questions to real contexts, paired reflection and facilitated group dialogue to support collective sense-making.

Participants will work with their own evaluation contexts where possible, supported by prompts and examples.