Systems thinking – Page 2 – Integration and Implementation Insights

How systems thinking enhances systems leadership

November 29, 2023April 13, 2021

By Catherine Hobbs and Gerald Midgley

authors_catherine-hobbs_gerald-midgley — 1. Catherine Hobbs (biography)
2. Gerald Midgley (biography)

Systems leadership involves organisations, including governments, collaborating to address complex issues and achieve necessary systemic transformations. So, if this is the case, how can systems leadership be helped by systems thinking?

Systems leadership is concerned with facilitating innovation by bringing together a network of organisations. These then collaborate between themselves and with other stakeholders to deliver some kind of service, influence a policy outcome or develop a product that couldn’t have been achieved by any one of the organisations working alone.

Recognising that a network of organisations can achieve something that emerges from their interactions involves a certain amount of implicit systems thinking. After all, the classic definition of a ‘system’ is an identifiable collection of two or more parts that has properties, or achieves outcomes, that can only be attributed to all of the parts interacting, not any one of the parts in isolation.

Can foresight and complexity play together?

September 27, 2023February 16, 2021

By James E. Burke

author_james-burke — James E. Burke (biography)

What is foresight and how does it differ from prediction? What role can complexity play in foresight? Does Cynefin® offer a possible framework to begin integrating foresight and complexity?

In this blog post, I describe how:

Foresight identifies clues for the future and integrates them into forecasts
Complexity theory offers ways to understand how the future emerges
Cynefin® gives us a framework of domains that allows us to better understand trends and forecasts.

Three complexity principles for convergence research

September 24, 2021February 4, 2021

By Gemma Jiang

author_gemma-jiang — Gemma Jiang (biography)

How can principles adapted from complexity thinking be applied to convergence research? How can such principles help integrate knowledge, methods, and expertise from different disciplines to form novel frameworks that catalyze scientific discovery and innovation?

I present three principles from the complexity paradigm that are highly relevant to convergence research. I then describe three types of transformative containers that I have developed to create enabling conditions for applying complexity principles to convergence.

1. Ecosystem consciousness: An inversion of perspectives

Ecosystem consciousness is necessary because in complex systems the whole (ecosystem) is bigger than the sum of its parts; the wellbeing of the whole and the parts are interdependent and mutually reinforcing.

A heuristic framework for reflecting on joint problem framing

May 31, 2021June 23, 2020

By BinBin Pearce and Olivier Ejderyan

authors_binbin-pearce_olivier-ejderyan — 1. BinBin Pearce (biography)
2. Olivier Ejderyan (biography)

What is joint problem framing? What are the key issues that joint problem framing has to address? How can joint problem framing be improved?

What is joint problem framing?

A key aspect of tackling complex problems is effectively bringing together differing points of view. These points of view are what Craik (1943) refers to as “small-scale models” of the problem situation. These are mental models formed from each individual’s experiences, interests, knowledge and environment. These mental models then set the boundaries for what problem definitions and solutions are possible and relevant to consider.

Choosing a suitable transdisciplinary research framework

March 22, 2023May 26, 2020

By Gabriele Bammer

Author - Gabriele Bammer — Gabriele Bammer (biography)

What are some of the key frameworks that can be used for transdisciplinary research? What are their particular strengths? How can you choose one that’s most suitable for your transdisciplinary project?

The nine frameworks described here were highlighted in a series for which I was the commissioning editor. The series was published in the scientific journal GAIA: Ecological Perspectives in Science and Society between mid-2017 and end-2019.

Choosing among them is not a matter of right or wrong, but of each being more or less helpful for a particular problem in a particular context. And, of course, different frameworks can also be used in combination.

The brief descriptions and figures that follow aim to encapsulate each framework’s key strengths.

Three principles for co-designing intervention strategies

August 24, 2022May 5, 2020

By David Lam

author-david-lam — David Lam (biography)

What processes are involved when researchers and local actors co-design context-specific intervention strategies? This ‘how to’ knowledge is outlined in the three principles described below. Local actors can include non-governmental organisations, local leaders, community groups and individual activists.

Principle 1. Explore existing and envisioned initiatives fostering change towards the desired future

This has 3 key steps:

Identifying existing initiatives and knowledge working towards the desired future
Identifying who is involved and leading different existing initiatives
Analysing how existing and possible future initiatives from local actors contribute to changing the state of system elements that need to change for reaching the desired vision or up to an intermediate state.

Fifteen characteristics of complex social systems

May 31, 2021March 17, 2020

By Hamilton Carvalho

Author - Hamilton Carvalho — Hamilton Carvalho (biography)

What is it about complex social systems that keeps reproducing old problems, as well as adding new ones? How can public policy move away from what I call the Mencken Syndrome (in reference to a quotation from American journalist Henry Mencken) – that is, continually proposing clear and simple solutions to complex social problems – that are also wrong!

With this goal in mind, I have compiled a list of fifteen major characteristics of complex social systems based on the system dynamics and complexity sciences literatures, as well as my own research.

How can expertise in research integration and implementation help tackle complex problems?

October 11, 2021March 10, 2020

By Gabriele Bammer

What is expertise in research integration and implementation? What is its role in helping tackle complex societal and environmental problems, especially those dimensions that define complexity?

Expertise in research integration and implementation

Addressing complex societal and environmental problems requires specific expertise over and above that contributed by existing disciplines, but there is little formal recognition of what that expertise is or reward for contributing it to a research team’s efforts. In brief, such expertise includes the ability to:

identify relevant disciplinary and stakeholder inputs
effectively integrate them for a more comprehensive understanding of the problem
support more effective actions to ameliorate the problem.

Looking in the right places to identify “unknown unknowns” in projects

August 11, 2023November 5, 2019

Author - Tyson R. Browning — Tyson R. Browning (biography)

By Tyson R. Browning

Unknown unknowns pose a tremendous challenge as they are essentially to blame for many of the unwelcome surprises that pop up to derail projects. However, many, perhaps even most, of these so-called unknown unknowns were actually knowable in advance, if project managers had merely looked in the right places.

For example, investigations following major catastrophes (such as space shuttle disasters, train derailments, and terrorist attacks), and project cost and schedule overruns, commonly identify instances where a key bit of knowledge was in fact known by someone working on that project—but failed to be communicated to the project’s top decision makers. In other cases, unknown unknowns emerge from unforeseen interactions among known elements of complex systems, such as product components, process activities, or software systems.

With the right mindset and toolset, we can shine a light into the right holes to uncover the uncertainties that could affect a project’s success.

Four patterns of thought for effective group decisions

April 15, 2022July 30, 2019

By George P. Richardson and David F. Andersen

authors_george-richardson_david-andersen — 1. George P. Richardson (biography)
2. David F. Andersen (biography)

What can you do if you are in a group that is trying to deal with problems that are developing over time, where:

root causes of the dynamics aren’t clear;
different stakeholders have different perceptions;
past solutions haven’t worked;
solutions must take into account how the system will respond; and,
implementing change will require aligning powerful stakeholders around policies that they agree have the highest likelihood of long-term success?

The fields of systems thinking and system dynamics modelling bring four important patterns of thought to such a group decision and negotiation:

Linking collective impact to the characteristics of open living systems

August 11, 2023May 21, 2019

By Lewis Atkinson

How can communities most effectively achieve collective impact, moving from fragmented action and results to collective action and deep, durable systems change? In particular, what can those seeking to understand the characteristics required for collective impact learn from the characteristics of open living systems?

In this blog post I link five characteristics for collective impact, based on Cabaj and Weaver (2016) with 12 characteristics of open living systems drawn from Haines (2018, building on the work of Ludwig von Bertalanffy).

The five characteristics for collective impact are each necessary, but on their own insufficient to achieve impact because they are all parts of the same method of systems change:

Adaptive social learning for systemic leadership

December 9, 2021April 23, 2019

By Catherine Hobbs

What’s involved in developing human capacity to address complexity, taking a mid- to longer-term viewpoint than is usual? How can we create the conditions in which people can cope with the daily challenges of living in a complex world and flourish? What form of leadership is required to inspire and catalyse this transformation?

Framework for adaptive social learning

The need for systems thinking is often referred to, but rarely considered, as a rich and comprehensive resource which could be developed further and applied.