Day 7 of “7 Days to Systems-Thinking”: Bringing It All Together
A link to the complete 7-day series of systems thinking is here …
Systems Thinking 101: The Magic of Systems Thinking
Yesterday, we covered quite a bit of ground.
In fact, over the course of the past 6 days we’ve covered: the definitions of a system, elements, interconnections, interrelationships, emergence, system purpose, complexity, stocks, inflows and outflows, balancing feedback, reinforcing feedback, dynamic systems, open systems, self-organising systems, self-correction, balance, time delays, oscillation, intervention, resilience and learning, model construction, and various systems-thinking tools and techniques.
That’s quite a list.
That said, there’s a great deal more that I haven’t covered in this series. For those of you who want to know more about this subject, check out the recommended reading at the bottom of this blog and particularly the “consulting” pages.
Before we start to wrap all this up, there’s one more area that I want to cover briefly – the subject of system archetypes …
System Archetypes
A while back, I mentioned that when we look at enough systems, there are particular patterns of structure that tend to emerge. A system archetype is a particular type of system structure that is found frequently in the world around us. Each system archetype is associated with, and represented by, a particular type of problem.
The best known system archetype is probably the “Tragedy of the Commons” (originally defined by Garrett Hardin) that outlines the natural tendency for individuals to “overgraze” a limited resource. There are many other kinds of systems archetypes that exist including “Fixes That Fail”, “Escalation”, “Drift To Low Performance”, ”Focus on Costs”, “Policy Resistance” … and many more. The interesting thing about archetypes is that a variety of potential solutions have been well-documented for each one.
You’ll find many of these archetypes lurking in your organisation. Guaranteed.
And, when you find an archetype, you can begin exploring which of the suggested solutions would be most appropriate to apply in your specific context. As a result, you’ll be a major step closer to addressing the underlying systemic nature of the problem.
Archetypes, then, are extremely useful patterns that indicate specific diagnostic issues.
Why Is Systems-Thinking Useful?
The journey we’ve taken has taken us through some pretty interesting terrain. You’ll now know that systems-thinking isn’t an academic pursuit – it’s about finding practical, effective and sustainable solutions to a myriad of real-world problems.
There are a number of advantages to systems-thinking, and the act of attempting to understand and map the systems we are concerned with.
A few of these (summarised from Dennis Sherwood’s Seeing the Forest for the Trees) are:
- Encourages a holistic view, and has a tendency to avoid short-termism,
- Makes explicit our mental models (that in turn helps us understand how we perceive and represent the world around us),
- Allows our mental models to be shared and communicated,
- Provides a means of exploring potential decisions, so their consequence can be anticipated in advance,
- Gives us the best possible chance of making decisions that are likely to work in the long-term.
Not a bad outcome for 7 days.
Closing Thoughts
The real beauty of systems-thinking is that is allows you to see the whole system for what it is … warts and all. The knowledge that this provides can reveal a variety of new and interesting opportunities for change.
However, the interventions you make to improve the system will not always produce the changes that you expect. Hence, if a small change produces a small response, you should not necessarily expect a larger change to produce a larger response. The world is nonlinear, and the systems that you examine and explore will also have nonlinear properties.
Hopefully, you’ll now be able to recognise and think about complexity in many more useful ways than you did before. This is a powerful thing in itself.
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to use this new found knowledge wisely.
May your systems be dynamic, open, self-organising, self-correcting and resilient.
Tags: archetypes, complexity, Hardin, mental models, nonlinearity, Tragedy of the Commons
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