By James Stauch and Daniela Papi-Thornton.
2. Daniela Papi-Thornton (biography)
In seeking to understand, map, and then act to intervene in a system, how can we make the best use of both subjectivity and objectivity? How can we effectively toggle between facts and norms, between what is true (or at least broadly verifiable) and what is valued (or valuable)?
In the book that this i2Insights contribution is based on (Stauch et al., 2025), the case is made for people to spend far more time understanding a problem, and proportionally less time acting to “solve” the problem. To help frame this approach, the SOS (subjective-objective-subjective) sandwich is used as a simple heuristic to show where subjectivity and objectivity can be taken into account when dealing with a system.
In this work, objectivity is considered as a vector, not a destination, with true objectivity always out of reach, as we can never be completely objective in our approach to research. That said, we can strive for it by recognizing our biases and seeking diverse viewpoints. Objectivity can only be approached by considering a wide range of observers and viewpoints, and a willingness to look beyond our own assumptions.
The journey to understand, map, and then act to intervene in a system, can be pictured like a sandwich, as represented in the figure below. The bread represents the subjective components, and the fillings are the objective ingredients that you layer on to make the sandwich as substantial and satisfying as possible. The relative times spent in each phase are indicated on the left-hand side.
Start with the subjective slice of bread at the bottom. This is where you ask some basic questions about the problem:
- What problem do I care about?
- What are the boundaries of the system(s) I want to explore?
You may need to explain why the problem you think is a problem is a problem (others may not think it is or may not see why it’s a big deal). It’s useful to think about “Who decides what good is?” or “What bad is?” and “Good (or bad) for whom?” Things that may seem urgent and necessary to you usually aren’t deemed urgent and necessary by many others (otherwise, there’s a decent chance that the problem wouldn’t even exist).
Then prepare the objective sandwich fillings. Figure out how you are going to learn about the problem and the system(s) that produce and maintain it:
- What kind of research do you want to undertake?
- Whom would you need to speak with and learn from?
Most of the time and effort required goes into this research phase, getting a better understanding of a system and figuring out where one might want to intervene. In the figure, it is referred to as “the 55 minutes,” drawing on Albert Einstein’s famous quotation: “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend the first fifty-five minutes thinking about the problem and the last five minutes thinking about solutions.”
The objective fillings, explored in our book, are mapping frameworks and tools that help answer the following questions:
- Where do we focus, and how do we set boundaries?
- What are the contours of the current system?
- What’s beneath the surface?
- How did we get here?
- Where might we be going?
- How is the system experienced by those within it?
- Who is involved and how are they connected?
- Who and what holds power?
- What causes what to do what?
- What ways of thinking keep the problem in place?
- Where in the system might change be possible?
There are many tools that can be used when exploring a system, but some tools that might be useful for this exploration include:
- Problem framing canvas (for deciding where do we focus, and how do we set boundaries)
- Actor and network maps (for depicting who is involved and how they are connected)
- Force field analysis (for gauging who and what supports or opposes a potential shift)
- Causal loop diagrams (for tracking what causes what to do what)
- Theory of change (for theorizing where and how in the system change might be possible).
The final step is to top the sandwich with that last subjective slice of bread, which asks about what you value:
- What are you coming to next?
- How are you going to act on this problem?
- What aspects of the system are you interested in?
It is important to remember that the goal of mapping a system and identifying gaps (the objective layer) is not to find the one biggest leverage point or most important place to take action. If there was one clear answer for how to “fix” something, it would already be fixed.
Instead, when it comes to contributing to shifting a system, deciding what action to take is just as much about self-reflection as it is about gaps in the system. Your journey into systems understanding will offer you a much better sense of the array of potential leverage points available. You might ask yourself these questions as you move from “problem understanding” to the subjective task of choosing how, where, and with what enthusiasm to act:
- What might you want to do to contribute to that change?
- What do you have the energy, excitement, or passion for?
- What do you enjoy doing?
- What are you good at?
- What connections, resources, perspectives, processes, data, or other contributions do you uniquely have that might be useful to leverage change?
- Which leverage point(s) map onto your own passions or interests?
This combination of better understanding a problem and better understanding ourselves is what might lead to identifying the most fruitful places for you to contribute to change. By self-reflecting, you can decide if, and if so how, to move forward. You might stick to what you know, or you might decide you want to build a new skill set in order to contribute in a new way.
What do you think? Do these ideas resonate with you? Are there questions that you would add in exploring the three layers? Can you provide examples of how you have employed an SOS sandwich?
To find out more:
Stauch, J. with Johnson, A. and Papi-Thornton. D. (2025). The 55 Minutes: An atlas to navigate problems, reveal systems, and ask beautiful questions in a radically shifting world. ATCO SpaceLab and Institute for Community Prosperity: Calgary, Canada. (Online – purchasable or open access on submission of email): https://the55minutes.com/.
Much of this i2Insights contribution is taken verbatim from this book, which also provides 30 tools, alongside descriptions of how to use the tools and about how the authors have used or adapted them).
Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Statement: Generative artificial intelligence was not used in the development of this i2Insights contribution. (For i2Insights policy on generative artificial intelligence please see https://i2insights.org/contributing-to-i2insights/guidelines-for-authors/#artificial-intelligence.)
Biography: James Stauch MEDes is a social innovation and systems change consultant and educator based in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, Canada. He is a complex systems strategist with ATCO’s SpaceLab (the company’s research and innovation unit) and cochair of the Banff Systems Summit. He was the founding Executive Director of the Institute for Community Prosperity at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at the University of Oxford.
Biography: Daniela Papi-Thornton MBA is an educator, coach, and consultant who has a Lecturer position at the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA, in their Masters of the Environment Program while also teaching at other social impact programs globally. She runs her own consulting practice called Systems-led Leadership working at the intersection of systems and social innovation.
There’s much I agree with in the article (such as objectivity being a vector, or in my terms one of several ideals that inform our communication), but there are also some suggestions I wish to make. I’ll focus on the latter, in order to move the dialogue forward. Please take these critiques in the spirit of dialogue in which they are intended.
1. I think we need to go beyond the objective/subjective binary to include three ideals in the context of research-informed communication: truth (understanding the natural world, which assumes the possibility of discussing what is real), rightness (understanding the social construction of norms, which assumes the possibility of discussing what is morally right, valued or worth considering) and subjective understanding (appreciating the contents and formation of individual perspectives, or inner worlds). It seems to me that you slip between talking about norms and subjectivity, as if all morality is subjective. This is a mistake that Alistair MacIntyre said was integral to the operation of capitalist modernity: it is legitimate to pursue truth-orientated inquiries, but modernity neuters moral inquiry by saying that morals (or values) are merely subjective sentiments. One therefore has to take morality as given rather than develop it through dialogue. The effect on research is the dominance of positivism, which is truth oriented only, or fall-back to interpretivism, which treats morality as no more than a participant perspective. When moral inquiry (including what should be researched) is made subjective instead of normative (socially constructed), then it is put beyond critique. This clears the way for forces of power to decide what is researched via funding and research appraisal mechanisms. I would argue for a more critical approach to inquiry that works with stakeholders to develop understandings of what needs to be researched, and makes transparent judgements in the light of what has emerged. You mention some of this in the second half of the article, but in my view, this requires clear identification of a third ideal of inquiry, beyond objectivity and subjectivity: social rightness.
2. The above problem manifests most clearly in the diagram of the SOS sandwich. The starting point is “What problem do I want to focus upon?”, as if we are entirely autonomous choosing subjects. Rather, decisions on what to research have both subjective and normative (socially constructed) dimensions. Framing the choice of what to research as purely subjective hides the role of power relations (including the impacts of funding and disciplinary legitimation mechanisms). It also makes it seem like the choice of focus is unproblematic, when it is common when researching complex issues to need to explore stakeholder perspectives in order to see how multiple issues interrelate. You do mention this essentially normative exploration, but it’s not captured in the objective/subjective binary or the SOS diagram. If done well, framing is a process, not a clear starting point, and multiple norms and subjective perspectives may be taken into account. Finally, talking about the choice of what to research as subjective makes it appear that I, as an autonomous academic, have the legitimate right to pursue my agenda, regardless of what others believe is important. While researchers need to resist becoming uncritical instruments of other stakeholders, there are good reasons why the old ideal of the autonomous academic is dying: we need to engage with policy agendas and those with lived experience in order to critique our own situated partialities as academics. I appreciate that you talk about boundaries and other perspectives after the SOS diagram, so you are aware of the problem, but I believe this needs to be integral to the diagram, so the choice of what to research is not framed as subjective in the first place.
3. One of the reasons I am proud of being in the systems thinking community is that we have, for the most part, reversed the ratio of time spent on problem exploration and exploring possible solutions or actions. In my view, social science has conventionally spent a long time on problem exploration, followed by the cursory identification of a few recommendations for change. In contrast, systems thinkers will have a problem identification phase, but 70% or more of their time is spent working with stakeholders (often in workshops) to explore potential ways forward for action. I agree that enriching the problem definition is important, but it’s AS important (perhaps more so) to enrich the process of deciding on actions. I suspect what you are critical of is policy makers jumping straight to action instead of rethinking their framings, and I am with you on this, but I suspect you fall into the old social science mode of focusing on problem exploration because, again, you view decision making on action to be purely subjective. On the contrary, I regard this as normative and socially constructed, requiring systemic exploration just as much (if not more than) problem identification.
As I say, I advance these critiques in the spirit of dialogue. SOS is a catchy name for a framework, but something significant is missing, from my perspective – the normative or socially constructed dimension, which makes clear that neither the decision on what to research or the focus of action after problem exploration are merely subjective. Once seen as socially constructed, it becomes obvious that substantial critical attention needs to be paid to these aspects of the research process.
These are all excellent points worth serious consideration. This blog post is, in part, meant to be a teaser for the book as a whole, which can be downloaded at the55minutes.com, so there is a lot of missing context (some of which may address some of what you raise, though you do also raise some points we do not address directly in the book). The book is not a scholarly work, nor is it primarily targeted toward an academic audience. That said, we welcome academic views and critiques of the material (in part because we see the distinction between academic and non-academic as a continuum, not a binary, which I suspect you’d agree with).
The problem selection process in our case was assumed to be sector neutral, with the assumption that an individual’s ‘choice’ of problem – what they have the time, energy, interest, and passion to work on – is indeed formed by their broader ecosystem (the socially constructed dimension, which includes but is not limited to the constraints and interests of their organization, community, industry, school, field of interest, etc.). Your more nuanced view of the difference between normative and subjective is interesting, and something we did not distinguish in the book. Throughout the book, where the terms ‘normative’ and ‘subjective’ are used, we treat them as synonyms. This is an over-simplication, but I think it is roughly consistent with the vernacular understanding of these terms.
You also raise a good point with respect to systems perspectives being far more action-oriented than straight-up social science. As practitioners who have worked for some portion of our careers in academic environments, though not as scholars, we have certainly heard the critique of our work from some social scientists as overly change-oriented, ‘teleological’, or otherwise sullying dispassionate scholarly analysis with practical application. But far more frequently, we have encountered the critique from the “move fast and break stuff” perspective that systems work just seems like analysis paralysis. Navel gazing. Having worked in a business school context, and been most closely connected to innovation-oriented or social enterprise-focused learning, our book is aimed primarily at this latter audience – those with a bias toward action (a phrase that may sound strange, but one that is much more frequently encountered in most of our society’s contemporary organizations and institutions than a bias toward problem understanding). As you allude to, in the social sciences the exact opposite bias is more prevalent. But even for such an audience, there is much beyond the action-learning continuum that we hope is valuable. For example, our appeal to bust out of disciplinary silos and to embrace engaging with the world directly – communities, companies, practitioners, activists, policymakers, and so on. This doesn’t come out in this piece, but it is addressed at length in the book. Thankfully, there are a growing number of scholars who are working to do just that (i2insights being one such vehicle to talk about such work), but the ‘system’ of academia still mainly does a poor job of incentivizing this. BTW, shameless plug – I have a TEDx talk on this very topic – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blnN7cGCxhM The co-author of this post (and of the book), Daniela Papi-Thornton, also has some wonderful reflections on that action-learning balance, some of which are captured in the book.
Thanks again for taking the time to offer such considered comments, as well as helpful distinctions and additional context.
Your piece dropped into my email this morning, hence I am here commenting. Good stuff. I frame things rather differently (along with others who frame them slightly differently yet again), yet we are, I believe, all “on the same page”, as people say. I shall seek you out on LinkedIn, simply to connect.
Thanks so much for commenting, Colin. Yes, there are many ways to frame this, many useful but none ‘correct’ (to paraphrase George Box). We find that in this space of understanding problems and ‘revealing’ systems, we are deploying (and mixing) many, many metaphors. And standing on the shoulders of many giants as we do so, as Daniela notes in the comment below. So the SOS Sandwich is, so to speak, just an appetizer. 😉
Very interesting contribution, lots to pertinent questions for all of us seeking another template approach to grappling with complex problematics. Without some indication of the tools suggested for navigating this journey it is difficult to grasp the flow of knowledge being created, and its application. However, the questions are great teasers of the breadth and depth that’s needed to get satisfaction from the sandwich. Thank you for the teaser.
Thank you, Bruce. We are grateful you read this piece and took the time to comment. Besides one tool I designed years ago, the tools in the book are not new contributions we designed. They are generally well-used tools and models for understanding systems. Some are listed in the article but others include the Iceberg Model, the Six Conditions Framework, behavior over the time graphs, and many more. These tools and approaches are all well documented and explained online for anyone who wants to deep dive into them. The value, we hope, the book brings is bringing the tool to reader’s attention in the frame of how it might be useful for their problem and systems understanding process. For each tool we provide a brief overview of the tool plus a look at how one or more of us authors use it and ideas for how you might try it out. You can download the full book for free on our site and see the full tool list. Thank you for reading and sharing your reflections!