What is System Change and Why this is a Powerful and inevitable dynamic of the XXI Century?
Unique problem solvers can intervene and connect to produce system change
Table of Contents:
- What is system change? Why do we need it?
- What is necessary for system change
- A change in Paradigm: from reduction analytical thinking to synthesis
- Emergence and Self-organisation: no one is controlling the process
- Relational Thinking: Everything is connected
- New Language and New Paradigm
- Nonlinearity and Feedback loops
- Conclusion
What is system change? Why do we need it?
System Change has been used for tackling complex challenges through
the application of systems complexity thinking. In this story exposition, we focus on what elements and concepts one needs to know to be capable of solving wicked problems systematically and producing leverage points for system change.
Knowing this can make an individual actor, like yourself, become a differentiated systemic problem solver, differ from those who cannot see systems and stand out from the crowd.
What is necessary for system change
First of all, everything that involves change is a process. Therefore, its long term perspective. Why? Because a system can process interventions and have outcomes, through accumulations of actions. These intervene actions can only be made collectively.
Collective because individual actors are rarely important in complex systems and wicked problems. Producing changes in a system such as financial system, cities, communities problems, inequality, environmental degradation must be done by multiple actors, using different disciplines and looking at different systems interacting and affecting one another — -all these considerations require knowledge of four integrating aspects, illustrated below:
A change in Paradigm: from reduction analytical thinking to synthesis
Holism and reductionism represent two paradigms or worldviews that provide fundamentally different accounts as to how to best view, interpret and reason about the world around us. It has to do with values, beliefs and assumptions that shape our thinking and actions in the systems we make part of.
Reductionism emphasizes the constituent parts of a system. It’s a process used by modern science that breaks an object or problem into its parts to analyse them separately and then reason about the system.
While holism emphasizes the whole system. In this paradigm, we look at how parts are interrelated, how parts connect to produce systemic effects, as well as the possibility of effective solutions and changes.
Emergence and Self-organisation: no one is controlling the process
Emergence is a process involved in all types of complex systems formation. It is linked to the phenomena of local interaction between agents in a network, micro-level of a system, they produce macro-level behaviour patterns. Examples of emergence are huge, they are all around:
- the evolution of the universe
- formation of traffic jams
- development of social movements
- flocking of birds
- the cooperation of trillions of cells giving rise to the human body
- formation of hurricanes
- financial crises.
The synergies between elementary parts give rise to self-organization. What do I mean by it? Well, the formation of distinct patterns happens without a central command, no single individual can control or coordinate the process and interactions, they are driven by an evolutionary dynamic. All these facts make a system change something that can only be produced through a chain of actors interacting in a network of relations.
Relational Thinking: Everything is connected
Fundamentally to solve wicked problems and produce interventions in systems through leverage points, developing a relational view of the world is essential. As I pointed out, what matters in systems is the interrelations between the parts, that is to say, the connections between parts are our primary focus rather than focusing on the parts themselves.
Networks are our field of observations.
The relational paradigm of system change is to emphasize how
connections produce interdependencies. How these interdependencies, in turn, shape the components parts and interact with context to produce the events and the behaviour we observe in systems.
For example: how oil extractions and production interrelates with transport systems, consumption and economic growth to produce climate change effects and environmental degradations.
Therefore, we need to map systems and change our paradigm to be able to see how everything and all of us is connected. See clusters inside huge unbounded Networks.
New Language and New Paradigm
In order to solve ill-defined problems, we need to adopt new languages, the languages of systems and Networks. We need to change our paradigm to think holistically. Thus, learn how to perform the process of synthesis, as illustrated below:
Nonlinearity and Feedback loops
System changers must accept the nonlinearity of the real world. It means dealing with nonlinear causality where multiple factors affect an outcome, synergistically.
It means seeing causation flowing in a bidirectional or multidirectional pattern. It involves cyclical processes where one thing impacts another which in turn impacts the source. In this way, all effects are interrelated to produce chains of events that we every day in our cities, our communities, our organisations.
Producing changes In a System;
These nonlinear changes happen in feedback loops. These loops of nonlinear causation create the structures. These structures produce the behaviour of the systems we are interested in changing.
Thus, having a deep understanding of the loops that and variables that interact to produce the behaviour of a system is fundamental to be capable of producing leverage points and intervening in all types of complex systems.
Concluding Remark
According to Professor David Snowden: system change is about how we can produce more days like these and fewer days like that.
How we can look at systems and see relations between the parts, the variables, the causes. Understand that ill-defined multiple factor problems involve multiple actors, dimensions, multiple scales, interactions among systems, between systems and their environment.
Instead of focusing on parts and trouble-shoot solutions, focus o the gear that is creating them in the first place. What are the systemic structures that are creating the events? Events that we can see as inequalities, climate change, segregations, democracy and institutions degradations, and the financial crises that affect all.
Those willing to accept the challenge and the effort needed to change their paradigm. To acquire systemic awareness and think on nonlinear relations between parts of a system, as well as think from the perspective of the whole system, These people will be the system changers needed in this new era, in the century of complexity and stand out from the crowd.
References and Further readings:
- System innovation is a major network of system thinkers in the whole world that train humans to produce change and share knowledge through Creative Commons: https://www.systemsinnovation.io/courses
- The Systems Thinker. (2015). Transforming the Systems Movement — The Systems Thinker.
- Reductionistic and Holistic Science. Infection and Immunity, [online] 79(4), pp.1401–1404. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3067528/
- H. William Dettmer (2006). Destruction and Creation: Analysis and Synthesis, [online] Available at: https://bit.ly/35B7VgN
- Donella Meadows, Thinking in System book.
