Systems Mapping for Clarity
At BAM, we use an 8 Dimension Scale-Linking framework to assess the health of any system. Said more efficiently, we try to understand things in their context. For instance, an excellent technique to grow tomatoes in your yard may not be feasible for producing 100 acres of them and vice versa. How you get fresh produce in your kitchen may be different from how a prison population gets fresh produce. Similar concepts may have different realities at different scales and in different circumstances. You get the idea.
One of the ways that we encourage you to make heads or tails out of the situation you are trying to understand is through the practice of mapping. Of our eight dimensions of wellness, this typically falls under the physical wellness dimension but not necessarily. RMI, a group focused on tackling the climate crisis, says,
“Broadly speaking, systems mapping is the creation of visual depictions of a system, such as its relationships and feedback loops, actors and trends. Systems mapping is intended to provide a simplified conceptual understanding of a complex system that, for collective action purposes, can get partners on the same page.”
We think of it sort of like a treasure map, and the treasure is clarity.
Leyla Acaroglu, a systems expert, says, “Systems thinking requires a shift in our perception of the world around us. In order to build a new multidimensional thinking framework, we need to discover the dynamics and interconnectedness of the systems at play. This is where systems mapping tools come in — they provide an exploration of the system, communicate understanding, and allow for the identification of knowledge gaps, intervention points, and insights.”
Side Note: We encourage you to watch all of Leyla’s talks on Youtube. You won’t be disappointed.
When you draw your first map, think about things like stocks and flows.
A stock is a reserve, a buffer, a shock absorber. If you go to the grocery store, they probably have tons of one product on the shelf. That is a stock. That extra stock could handle some unpredictable purchasing behavior from the customers. If the store only had an inventory of one of the items and someone purchased it, that little system stops until it is replenished. Most systems are filled with various stocks. If you want to get more meta, communities can have collective trauma stocks from a natural disaster. New Orleans clearly remembers the last several major hurricanes. They use those memories to inform their decisions now.
A flow is simply the inflow to a stock or the outflow from it. Your refrigerator is a stock. When you buy groceries, you are causing an inflow. When you eat, you are causing an outflow. Understanding the flows of a system is critical.
We also look for feedback loops. Right now, as you may notice or may learn, many of our feedback loops are broken. The designers of “solutions” often don’t use them and therefore don’t know that the “solution” causes new problems or never fixed the old ones. People who don’t wear clothing for women but design clothing for women are creating a broken feedback loop. This is really obvious if you have a baby. Nearly every parent trying to snap a onesie in between the wiggling and delicate legs of an excited infant says something like, “who came up with this design? Have they ever changed a diaper?” This is a missing feedback loop. Existing feedback loops are often easy to spot. You flip the light switch, and the light turns on. Your behavior caused the outcome you were expecting, and you move forward.
A delay refers to the length of time from the action to the feedback. The longer the delay, the more complex the feedback loop is to find. If you flipped a light switch and four days later that light is on, you might not think that the switch had anything to do with it. If you are a singer and you have to sing at a stadium that has a long delay from your voice to hearing yourself back in the system, it can become very confusing, maybe even causing you to forget the words or tune temporarily.
Below are various maps of systems. We encourage you to try and map a system in your life.
If you are interested in more of this we encourage you to start with Donella Meadows's book Thinking in Systems. It is a primer on systems thinking and mapping.
