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During a recent climate change rally, on an unusually warm day late last fall, I noticed two young women holding this sign:   

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They laughed when I asked them about systems change. They had to admit, systems change sounded like a good idea but they weren’t sure how to actually do systems change. Fair enough. Most adults don’t either.

Last Fall, I started working with teenagers and young adults through a local non-profit called SparkShare (https://www.sparkshare.org/), a non-profit dedicated to supporting young people to solve problems across differences. During a one-day systems change summit, I worked with 100 teen leaders in 13 groups from the Boston area, all of whom are focused on solving complex challenges in their communities — from vaping, substance abuse, racial equity, to youth employment, climate change and safer streets.

During the summit, the youth groups focused on “helping the system to see itself” through systems mapping.  We also built in plenty of opportunities to envision “future states” (Buckminster Fuller’s term), cross-pollinate between and among the groups, make real commitments for action and have fun!  In the month leading up to the summit, I worked with each group virtually to shape a strong systems question, one that incorporated change over time.  I opened the summit by thanking some of my “teachers” including Dana Meadows, Ruth Rominger, John Sterman, Dennis Meadows, and Peter Senge, and introduced the concept of systems, system dynamics and the broader field of systems change. At the close, I let them know they were not alone and encouraged them to connect with the growing number of people around the world who understand and use systems-based approaches in a variety of professions.

Their reaction to the day was electric! You can see a short video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnwRBepvqoc&feature=youtu.be

Most exciting were the practical actions groups took after the summit. One team used their systems mapping experience to better understand the multiple factors that drive teen vaping, concluding that they had to reach their peers in different ways, reduce access, and engage adults. After the summit, they partnered with a manufacturer of vaping detectors and are now working with school administration to get vaping detectors into bathrooms at their high school.

Together with the team at Sparkshare, we’re working to make systems change a core part of how their youth partners work together to positively impact their communities, and develop the skills to become the future problem solvers our world desperately needs. We’re actively looking for funding to create a scaleable systems change “hub” offering:

• Virtual, in-person labs for whole-systems learning, rapid prototyping 
• Collaborative network building
• Peer and expert coaching
• Virtual, in-person community
• Question-led database
• Protocols that enable partners to test solutions and learn from what works (and what doesn’t).

If you can help us make this systems change “hub” a reality, please do be in touch. I’ll be announcing upcoming “whole-systems learning” opporutnities over the next few months via this blog.

Take good care!

What is Systems Change: Fostering health in systems through coordinated shifts in narratives, relationships, networks and structures.   

Surgeon and author Atul Gawande looked at the extreme complexity of knowledge in a range of fields from medicine to disaster recovery. He found that avoidable failures could be dramatically reduced with a simple tool: a checklist.  Simple surgical checklists such as those described in Gawande’s book, The Checklist Manifesto, have been adopted in more than 20 countries and are considered the biggest clinical invention in 30 years.

In almost every profession, we deal with complexity. If you’re working to ensure food security, create a zero-carbon future, foster a healthy democracy, cultivate healthy communities and safe school environments, eliminate slavery in supply chains, safeguard water sources, resolve sectarian conflict, protect endangered species, restore forests or other seemingly intractable issues, you are likely challenged on a daily basis to help others see the impact of our actions on the often tightly interconnected systems of which we are a part. In the case of climate change, a systems view shows us the link between politics, policy (for example, legislation related to carbon emissions and deforestation), the natural sciences (particularly forests, which help stabilize the climate by absorbing heat-trapping emissions from factories and vehicles), and a person’s own consumption habits. Without a systems view, the complexity can be daunting, and the result is often policy resistance or, worse yet, polarization and political paralysis.

In my work as a complex systems coach and teacher, I often hear people say: “But where do I start?” To answer that question, my colleague Michael Goodman and I created this simple checklist as a guide for framing complex issues. There are of course more “checklists” for enacting systems change. But this is a good place to start. We hope you find this helpful.

For those of you who are familiar with the iceberg model, you will some overlap with this checklist.  Here Mike Goodman explains:  “While there is some overlap with the six steps, this checklist is meant to highlight some important elements of systems thinking not very visible in the six steps alone. The six steps were based on traversing the iceberg from top to bottom with some amount of iteration:

1. Tell the Story

2. Draw Graphs

3. Draft Focusing Question

4. Identify the Structures

5. Apply the Going Deeper Questions

6. Plan an Intervention

In contrast, the checklist focuses on identifying the change, thinking about boundaries, making structure visible using closed loops, delays and archetypes and power of language. The two go together but are different.”

 

We would love to hear from you. Comment here, or join the conversation on LinkedIn.

 

 

Systems change. That’s a phrase I’m hearing more and more. And I wonder, where our next generation of leaders learn to drive this kind of change, the systems kind, where nothing stands alone and actions leave tracks? Where will they learn to connect the dots, discovering as they do force multipliers among seemingly disconnected issues like education reform, climate change, electoral reform, racism, violence both local and global, and inequities of every kind, among other pressing issues of our day? 

We know these challenges don’t occur in a vacuum.  Climate change displaces people, which exacerbates poverty and conflicts among classes, races, and religions, which makes it harder to stop or reverse climate change, and so on and so on.

To transform systems, we need to make them visible. We need to see how seemingly unrelated things affect one another. We need narratives and visuals that reflect the complexity of our world; and we need to truly understand what it takes to transform and renew systems.

My hope for any anyone who wants to change the world is this: Understand in your bones what Martin Luther King called the “interrelated structure of reality.”  Many, many others have made the same observation.  Wise author, Joseph Campbell, once said:  “People who don’t have an understanding of the whole can do very unfortunate things.” I want us to flip that: People who understand the whole can do very fortunate things!  

Here’s the challenge: most of us get that everything is connected to everything else. Yet we often act just the opposite: We act as if we are separate from the natural world in which we live. We inadvertently play whack-a-mole, legislating policies to solve one problem only to cause other problems somewhere else. We design products that serve some practical purpose but simultaneously harm our planet. Just think of the number of road-building programs meant to reduce congestion that have actually ended up increasing traffic, delays and pollution.

In some ways, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Much of our education remains focused on discrete disciplines (e.g., math, science, engineering) that train students to “solve” problems with highly focused technical skills and no understanding of how their technical solutions impact other problems in what are always tightly interconnected systems.

So, where do you start? Understanding context is key. For me, I get to context by gathering up all the pieces I see, connecting them to each other, and reconnecting them to a larger whole. It’s much like putting together the many different pieces of a puzzle in order to discover a larger picture or meaning than any one piece alone could reveal. This usually means you need to reach across boundaries and across sectors and engage as many voices and differing perspectives as you can.

Whether I’m working with a community, an organization, a school, or even my own family, the result is a greater sense of health and vitality. Indeed, the root of the word health comes from the Old English hǣlth, which is related to the word whole. I’ve seen this over and over, which is one of the reasons why I’ve been at this systems thinking idea for so long.

To truly transform systems, we all need to learn how to embrace ambiguity, to make friends with failure, to understand that our inner journey is inextricably linked to our external success, and to no longer blame a single cause for some outcome. We must learn to look deeper, to look for all those hidden causes that are interconnected and together produce and perpetuate those symptoms or outcomes we don’t like.

And, if you can do all of this with a committed, diverse group of people with a common focus on transforming what Russ Ackoff called wicked messes or my friend and colleague Sara Schley calls painful persistent problems? Your experience and your result will be all the better.

I’m working now on a systems “playbook” for young leaders working to make systems-driven change.  If you’re applying (or interested in applying) an an understanding of complex systems into learning, decision making and design, be in touch.  I’m eager to hear from you.

If you haven’t yet, take a look at:

• The “The Mistake Mystique” by Buckminster Fuller
• A Whole Systems Learning for Young Leaders — a short film by myself, David Macauley and The Donella Meadows Institute
• PBS Learning Media:  Systems Literacy pilot — Try one of the on-line learning modules here. 
• Sustainability Leaders Network — a praxis network for young leaders
• Complexity Academy – an e-learning site dedicated to complex systems (wonderful!)