Systems Thinking is a way of seeing the world as a series of interconnected and interdependent systems rather than lots of independent parts. Every system is like a Matryoshka doll, made up of smaller and smaller parts within a larger whole.
Systems are essentially networks made up of nodes or agents that are linked in varied and diverse ways. As creative change agents dedicated to tackling complex issues, we need to overcome reductionist thinking structures and leverage systems thinking in order to uncover all of the unique dynamics influencing problems.
eg. A forest is not an object, it is a network-process of relationships that exhibits such a resemblance to a single-living entity that it seems to breathe, react, think, reproduce, strategize, move, die.
It’s often the connection points that present the most opportunity for making change – these will form the basis for our intervention points.
Node - elements within a system that you can identify (stock is old term for it)
Flow - action that node/stock takes through a system, way it moves
Feedback loops - way that stocks and flows operate - balancing or reinforcing
- Balancing: good, produces stability, self correcting, like a thermostat
- Reinforcing: exponential growth, leads to instability, so not always good, more of same thing doesn’t get checked or balanced, like an avalanche and population growth
E.G. Bathtub - system of bathtub (objective is to have a bath), stock is water, flow is water entering bathtub. Interventions can affect you having bath - speed of water, plug
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Donella Meadows - “the most effective place to intervene in a system is at the paradigm level”
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If we can change the way we see the world - the explanatory maps and models we employ, and the value systems we base our intentions and decision-making processes
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Appropriate meta-design is about providing a meaningful story that can guide appropriate participation and thus lead towards increased sustainability.
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“Culture is not about what is absolute, real or true. It is about what a group of people get together and agree to believe”
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Transformative innovation, systems and resilience thinking, a design- based approach and learning from natural systems can all help to inform urgently needed culturally creative conversations about how to co-create regenerative communities, regenerative economies, and a wide diversity of regenerative cultures
WHY IT MATTERS!
- The entire universe is a continuous evolutionary living process
- Self-organizing endless fractal levels of living complexity as reflexive systems learning to play with possibilities in the intelligent co-creation of complex evolving systems.
- Autopoiesis (continuous self-creation) shall be adopted as the core definition of life. Since galaxies, stars, planets, organisms, cells, molecules, atoms and sub-atomic particles all fit this definition, this implies that life is the fundamental process of the cosmos, a self-creating living whole with self-creating living components in co-creative interaction.
OTTO SCHARMER - EARTH 4 ALL PAPER ON TRANSFORMATIONAL LEARNING INFRASTRUCTURES (BASED OFF SYSTEMS THEORY)
- I have argued that the most important leverage point for changing a system – our capacity to transcend an existing paradigm (Meadows, 1999) – is missing. Of the five interventions discussed, building transformational learning infrastructures is one of the most important because without that capacity many of the other interventions are not going to work.
- That kind of shift is at the root of success or failure in most complex multi-stakeholder processes. Navigating the systems-change territory requires more than data and facts. It requires a holding space and a v that enable stakeholders to suspend judgement (have an open mind), to see a problem through the eyes of others (have an open heart) and to let go of the old so that the new can arrive (have an open will).
- The lower half of Figure 3 shows that social action is enacted from an inner state based on curiosity, compassion and courage (opening the mind, heart and will), which gives rise to the social field of presencing. We see plenty of evidence for this type of social field in co-creative and regenerative initiatives and movements around the world.
- Over the past six years, however, we have also seen a significant (even massive) uptick of the opposite social field: absencing.
- The fundamental difference between the social fields of presencing and absencing is how we respond to disruption: we can choose to respond by turning away and closing down, or we can choose to respond by turning toward and opening up.
- Ultimately, presencing embodies what Meadows described as the most effective leverage point for systems change: letting go of the old and opening up to what is emerging around and through us.
Economics
- There is another blind spot in conventional economic thought that gets significantly less attention: consciousness. In my view, consciousness may be the most important blind spot in economic theory today.
- The quality of results in a system is a function of the quality of relationships. In turn, relationships are shaped by the quality of the interior conditions from which we operate (awareness). In short: form follows consciousness.
- Connect some of the most important approaches to rethinking economics – including Doughnut Economics, Green Growth, De-Growth and Wellbeing Economics – into an emerging framework for transformational awareness-based systems change.
- The problem with our economy doesn’t start in corporate boardrooms. It doesn’t start on Wall Street. It originates in how we frame the key categories of economic thought – and how we teach them in business schools and schools of economics.
- Alternative economic frameworks do exist. The problem is that they don’t have anything like the support structures that enabled the rise of the neoliberal school of thought.
- We need a similarly strategic support structure for the new economic paradigm. That will help
Governance
- The main barrier (and leverage point) to evolving governance structures is that two crucial elements are missing. First, in most systems we are missing platforms that bring all of the relevant stakeholders together.
- And second, once you bring together the right constellation of partners and players, there is no process and support infrastructure that helps them to move from debate to dialogue, and from a siloed to a shared view of the system.
- Where do we see ABC spontaneously evolving in society today? Many places: locally, in villages, in cities, in regions. Whenever people organise around a place-based commons we tend to see a version of awareness-based collective action (see Table 1). The reason that special-interest groups have such influence over larger systems is due to the lack of platforms and processes that provide the transparency and holding spaces for collective engagement.
- When these collective governance structures are in place, they can deliver meaningful change: the power to evolve, or self-organise, a system’s structure.
Politics: make democracy more dialogic, distributed, direct and data-driven
- This intervention in politics and the intervention in data governance speak to Meadows’ leverage point number four: the power to change, evolve and self-organise a system’s structure.
Societal learning infrastructures: democratise transformation literacy
- It only works in practice if the new collaborative arrangements have a collaborative leadership capacity that infuses intelligence and intentional leadership into the governance of the system. Creating learning infrastructures that build this new collective capacity at scale is crucial to making the five turnarounds work.
- Leadership, from a systems view, is the capacity of a system to sense and shape its future. It’s the capacity of a system to let go of the old, and to let come the new: the future that wants to emerge.
- The blind spot of our current learning and leadership capacity-building systems could be filled by transformational ecosystem learning.
Building collective capacity in systems learning and systems leadership is probably the most important leverage point.
1. Making systems sense and see themselves
The key to making multi-stakeholder collaborations work lies in shifting the members’ mindsets from a silo to a systems view, or from an egosystem to an ecosystem awareness. That happens when the system learns to sense and see itself.
2. Tools and practice fields
Getting a system to sense and see itself requires supporting methods and tools. But just dropping a new set of tools on people is rarely effective. Because new tools require people to engage with others in new ways, they also need safe environments where people can practise using them (practice fields).
3. Embodied learning and social arts
In these practice fields, the use of embodied learning practices – inspired by the social arts – has proven to be critical for moving from conventional (head-centric) to transformative learning environments (head, heart, hand).
For example, we use Social Presencing Theater as an intuitive way of mapping the invisible deep structures of systems change (Hayashi, 2021). The stakeholders vary with the context, but three roles are always present: the voices of Mother Earth, of the most marginalised (in each system), and of the emerging future (children or future generations).
4. The power of listening and dialogue
The first and most actionable shift towards profound systems change is often at the interpersonal level – in how we listen and how we hold conversations.
5. Supportive infrastructures, or “containers”
6. Inner leadership
At the source of all great leadership work are two root questions: (1) Who is my Self? (2) What is my Work?
Offering quality spaces, methods and tools to explore these questions is essential for transformative leadership work
7. Blended online -offline platforms
8. Arenas of activation
When collaborating with people in a context of collective anxiety and depression, highly accessible and scalable events that offer an initial experience of inspired connection in the context of first-person stories by, among others, the pioneers for profound systems change themselves, can spark and activate this dormant potential for profound change that currently exists around the world.
