Thinking Systemically

"A systemic approach involves more than studying how boxes and lines fit together or how information networks operate. Just looking at the 'bigger picture' or exploring interconnections does not make an inquiry 'systemic'. What makes it systemic is how you look at the picture, big or small, and explore interconnections."

Written within the context of international development, this article sets out the case that systems thinking has the potential to help development workers better understand the factors that influence the abilities of people, organisations, and institutions to perform and to achieve desired outcomes.

Why turn to systems thinking? Bob Williams cites his own experience: "I have never held a single unified view on any project I've been involved in. How I handle a situation - whether to give money to a person on the street - will be the result of a complex set of internal arguments and trade-offs that can change in the time it takes for me to reach into my pocket. Yet the theories of management that dominate the international development world tend to force us to pick one and pretend that it's the one that should motivate everyone. And then we wonder why things don't work out quite as we planned."

After addressing some misunderstandings of what systems thinking consists in, Bob Williams offers a brief history of systems concepts. Over the past 50 years the systems field has expanded into a suite of 1,000 or more methods and methodologies, but 3 core concepts reflected in this history still guide systemic thinking into the present. They include:

1) Inter-relationships - How things are connected, and with what consequence, is central to any systemic inquiry. Core questions include: What is the nature of the inter-relationships within a situation? What is the structure of these inter-relationships? What are the processes between them? What are the patterns that emerge from those processes, with what consequences for whom? Why does this matter? To whom? In what context? In particular, systems approaches look at the following:

• dynamic aspects (where inter-relationships affect the behaviour of a situation over a period of time);
• nonlinear aspects (where the scale of an "effect" is apparently unrelated to the scale of the "cause", often but not always caused by "feedback");
• the sensitivity of inter-relationships to context (where the same intervention in different areas has varying results, making it unreliable to translate a "best" practice from one area to another); and
• entangled inter-relationships: characterised as "simple", "complicated", or "complex".

As Bob Williams explains, results chains and process models often assume cause and effect relationships that are relatively sequential: A leads to B leads to C. For example, capacity building could reflect the following dynamics: training (A) leads to increased knowledge (B), which leads to employment (C). One methodology centring around an awareness of inter-relationships that Bob Williams discusses is System Dynamics. Usually used in conjunction with computer simulations, this approach acknowledges that A and B may feed off each other and that C may cause A to reduce. So training (A) might increase knowledge (B) and this knowledge may increase the demand for further training (A), which leads to greater knowledge (B). Or, knowledge (B) may lead to people gaining employment in the field (C), which might reduce their ability to engage in the further training (A) that they need because they are now out in the field. This may be further complicated if there are response delays between each component. Thus, while the capacity of the situation may be initially enhanced (more training, knowledge, employment), over time the capacity of the situation reduces.

2) Perspectives - "Perspectives help to explain and predict unanticipated behaviours because they give us a window into motivations. They also draw attention to consequences unplanned and unintended. Towering above this is the need to acknowledge that people make programmes work, not some imagined 'logic' such as a logframe dreamed up by funding agencies....In terms of capacity the key question that flows from this discussion is not whether there is capacity within a situation, but how that capacity is perceived (i.e. capacity to do what for whom?) and how those perceptions interact." Also, a focus on perspectives entails considering alternative ways of understanding the situation. "The similarities and differences between what is and what might be create puzzles and contractions. When handled successfully, these 'tensions' can achieve deeper learning than just seeing things through one set of eyes and possibilities. It can also generate better insights into the real-life behaviour of a programme."

The systems field draws on a number of approaches for exposing and exploring perspectives, including asking: What are the different ways in which this situation can be understood? How will these different understandings affect how people judge the success of an endeavour? How will they affect behaviour, and thus the behaviour of the system, especially when things go wrong from their perspective? With what result and significance?

Bob Williams provides 2 examples of methodologies that centre around perspectives:

• Soft Systems first involves considering alternative perspectives (such as development as "aid", as "patronage", as a "tool of foreign policy", or as "empowerment") and then asking a series of questions to work out the structure, function, and logical consequences of each perspective. "Unlike most 'logic' modelling approaches, the idea is not to make 'real life' more like the logic, but to gain insight from the similarities and differences across several perspectives that help you improve the current situation."
• Activity Systems is based on the recognition that, while people can agree on a set of shared activities, they are often directed towards different purposes. This approach is designed to provide ways of helping people engage constructively in resolving the tensions that arise when circumstances expose the fact that people are engaged in the same activities but to different ends: "activity systems provides a way to see if there are innovative ways of reframing or reforming the activities to allow both goals to be satisfied."
  

3) Boundaries - "Every endeavour has to make a choice between what it includes and what it excludes, what is deemed relevant and what is not, which perspectives are honoured and which are marginalised....Boundaries are the sites where values get played out and disagreements are highlighted. A lot of power issues are wrapped up in boundaries; just as the person with the magic marker controls what goes on the whiteboard, the person whose perspective dominates a project decides the boundaries. Capacity development in the international arena is full of boundary decisions - who gets what kind of resources for what purpose, and whose interests are marginalised..."

Critical Systems Heuristics is one example Bob Williams provides of a method that poses a set of questions that help guide conversations about boundaries. It involves exploring 4 aspects:

• Entrenched values: Whose interests are being served and whose interests should be served?
• Command and control: Who controls what resources, and who should control what resources?
• Dogma: What expertise is required? Whom do we trust as experts and what expertise should be required? What is the risk of assuming this is all the expertise needed? (Bob Williams explains that capacity is especially bound up with notions of expertise).
• Righteousness: Whose interests are being excluded, marginalised, or harmed by the way we are framing the situation, and whose interests should be excluded, marginalised, or harmed?
  

In concluding, Bob Williams stresses that learning how to think systemically is itself a matter of capacity development. Speaking to fellow development workers, he suggests asking: "do the notions of focusing on inter-relationships, perspectives and boundaries help you improve your own understanding of capacity development? If they do, then start there. If that is insufficient, then dive a little deeper, pick a systems method or approach that seems promising for a particular issue you are engaged in. Try it out and see if it helps." He also stresses that "the main lesson is to avoid learning systems approaches on your own. Apprentice yourself. Find someone with a sophisticated understanding of the systems field and a good knowledge of one or two methods. Learn that method with them and then branch out."