Systems Thinking in Design 2023: Somia’s Compiled Key Takeaways
Wow, a month has passed since our event happened! We have taken the last month to catchup on our sleep, to quickly reconvene with our projects and more importantly, to download with each other the takeaways we took from our inspiring speakers.
With this, we hope to document and record the day for those who came and those who missed the event. This article aims to capture key learnings and we will be releasing a more detailed download of each speaker in future articles to come, so follow us!
1. Seeing the Invisible in Human Systems: A Lens into the Covert Dynamics of Organisations
Tong Yee currently leads in the field of Organisational Development and Human System Design. He is highly sought after as an inspiring and innovative public speaker, trainer, coach and thought leader, and works most frequently in Singapore’s healthcare, school, and banking systems.
Key takeaways:
- In complexity (complex systems), it is less meaningful to look at good design, but rather whether we have the capacity for emergent design.
(Emergent design refers to the ability to adapt to new ideas, concepts, or findings that arise while conducting qualitative research.)
With our fast-changing world, there is less of designing Best Practices but more of designing Emerging Practices. - As humans, we sometimes choose what we want to see, and therefore we miss many variables — we need to increase our capacity to allow us to see bigger or consider more variables.
- When we consider core elements in intrapersonal experiences, we can then building lasting relationships when we are able to know what our partner(s) or end-users will do in crisis.
2. Systems Thinking in Policy Making
Andhyta “Afu” Firselly Utami is a researcher and an activist who stands strongly and firmly behind public policies and climate change. Her current work focuses on education and awareness in politics, through Bijak Memilih. She co-founded Think Policy, a one-stop platform to address intergenerational policy challenges through evidence and empathy-based policy.
Key takeaways:
- Zoom out to see the system as a whole in order to identify and reframe problems.
- When problems are adaptive instead of technical, it becomes more complex to solve because it requires a change in perspective, values and norms. And you can’t solve adaptive problems with pre-packaged solutions. Instead, it requires experimentation and discovery, which will take a longer time.
- It is therefore imperative to solve problems iteratively by
Step 1) Deconstructing and localizing the problem.
Step 2) Plan short term processes, reflect and change or pivot regularly.
Step 3) Sustain authority & legitimacy by building social capital though formal and informal authority, and maintaining independence and neutrality.
3. Researching Complex Systems: Navigating around Inclusive Digital Finance
Anindya Fitriyanti and Rayi Harjani are both consultants at Somia Customer Experience and shared about their 2-year long DifiForAll project journey. Anin, senior consultant, pivoted from architecture to service designer few years ago, and deep in her heart she wants to marry these two disciplines to drive innovation along with many other interests she has. Rayi has a heart for humans especially those who are underserved. Her experience in practicing design research and ethnography methods makes her always aimed to answer people’s needs with convenient solutions.
Key takeaways:
- When there is too much data collected over many points and over a long period of time, researchers can get lost in trying to sense make the data, hence it is important to find framework to synthesise and visualise the synthesized data.
- Look bigger to see the connections between different actors in the system (using a Network Map) to discover that each stakeholder is working in silos and not in sync. Therefore collaborating together will have higher probability to get us to the goal of our project.
- Looking deeper to see the core problems (using the Iceberg Model), motivation / mental model that make the resistance high to adopt a solution — — if not fixed, solving the surface problems will not be sustainable / effective
4. From Product to Systems: Effective Approach to Business Transformation
Radityo Susilo is currently the co-Founder & CEO of Gapai, an employment startup dedicated to assisting Indonesian employees in realizing their dream of working overseas. The process has not been an easy, neither a short one but it is one Tyo is committed to improve continuously.
Key takeaways:
- Pivoted the business proposition from education to job postings — this reframe helped Gapai to find more impactful leverage points.
- By employing a systems-centric approach, Gapai collaborated with key stakeholders to deliver the key value proposition of overseas jobs from a usual 6 months to 1 month.
- Identify potential overseas employment agencies and invite them to give them a full immersion of the local talents to convince and to build trust.
5. Designing for Complex Systems: Uplifting Healthcare for The Nation
Dave is currently working in the capacity of a Product Design Manager in the Digital Transformation Office with the Ministry of Health with the goal of digitally transforming the healthcare system in Indonesia.
Key takeaways:
- Realising that there are many inefficiencies with siloed effort (1 region have 5 different apps doing tha same thing). There was no systemic view of the solutions: perhaps nobody knew what others were doing / ignored it.
- There is no other way than to through a very rigorous process of mapping all the existing solutions (more than 400 existing digital solutions) against the customer journey / business process in order to filter out the repetitions and the inefficiencies. There’s no easy way around it!
- It is especially critical to involve and communicate to identified stakeholders (human systems) on the field throughout the design process & implementation.
6. Generative AI and How It Will Shift Our Systems and Interactions
Sofian Hadiwijaya is a prominent serial techpreneur from Indonesia. He continually melds the hacker, maker, and entrepreneurial spirit, making notable strides in the tech landscape. His current muse is co-founding Avatara.id, a firm blending AI and blockchain to redefine entertainment and education.
Key takeaways:
- Gen AI is here and it is advancing rapidly. It is changing the way we interact with the system. Learn it, and consider it as part of our system.
- Always explore and learn to use advance technology that are new. Don’t just criticizing it but finding ways to utilize it for the our benefit.
- Using AI to generate prototypes quickly to test.
7. Systemic Approach to Customer Experience Transformation
Dr. Sri Safitri is currently heading the Education Ecosystem in a state-owned telecomm company, Telkom Indonesia. She was previously the Deputy Executive VP for Customer Experience & Digitalisation where she spearheaded the CX transformation in a very large establishment, Telkom.
Key takeaways:
- Changes and transformation takes time — it took 6 months just to get budget! Hence the need to manage expectations of the stakeholders and ourselves since transformation cannot be an instant impact especially when it is on systemic level.
- Since a lot of the work is stakeholder management: to convince and incorporate the changes, we need to always be persistent and go back to the objective that in the end, it is from and for the customers.
- Listening to customers complaints is one way to solve problems. Try also listening to the employee sides, because sometimes the problem solving can be within the organization and the work flow.
Thank you for taking the time to read our key takeaways! We are working on a more detailed breakdown of what our speakers have shared with us so follow us at Somia CX Medium for more.
This event could not have happened without the esteemed speakers, attentive and supportive audience and the fabutastic team at Somia CX!
Chin (Me) is a director and principal consultant at Somia CX. To read more articles from me, click here. Let’s connect on Linkedin 👋
Find more Systems Thinking Articles from the Somia Team here
- Systems Thinking in Design: What is it? — Part 1
- Systems Thinking in Design: Why is it important? — Part 2
- A Framework to Embed Systems Thinking into Design Thinking Process
- Systems Mapping Tools & Design Levers
- Systems Thinking in Design: Shifting Our Mindset
- Systems Thinking in Design: Systems Innovation
