How can systems thinking help us transform the world?

An actionable guide written in plain english with examples

Often when talking about systems thinking, I get stuck. I explain to friends that systems thinking is about seeing how complex the world is and how everything is connected. Their response is invariably: “I know the world is complex. So what?” This post is an attempt to answer that question. What can systems thinking teach us about how to transform the world?

Using On Purpose as an example, I’ll share how we have been using systems thinking to improve our organisation and impact.

What are systems?

Systems are any collection of things which interact with and depend on each other in order to serve a purpose.

Here are some examples of systems:

• The human body is a set of organs and processes which keep the human alive
• A football team is a set of players and tactics which together try to win
• A business is a set of people and processes which seek to provide a product or service

So, how does systems thinking help us to understand our world?

A systems thinker sees a problem, a behaviour or a trend and is curious about what wider systems that problem is part of. We realise we can’t predict how a given action will change the system, because everything is connected and influencing each other. To take some examples again:

• In the human body, it’s hard to know what will happen when you change your diet
• In a football team it’s hard to predict what will happen if you substitute a player
• In an organisation, it’s arguably even more difficult to know what will come about if you hire a new employee or alter your marketing strategy

This is brought to life more when contrasted with an alternative linear way of thinking.

A linear thinker might see a problem and immediately jump to the solution to that problem. This works fine in some situations, namely, in systems which are simple rather than complex.

• If you take a machine like a car, you can break it down into parts, fix the broken part, and slot it back in. There, you can be pretty confident fixing the part will fix the car.

In a complex system this isn’t true.

• In a poorly performing football team you can’t be sure that substituting a poor-performing player will lead to the team performing better. What if this poor performing player was contributing to team camaraderie, and when you remove them the team performs even worse?

But if you can never be sure how an intervention will change the system, what can you do?

How does systems thinking help us transform our world?

This question is best answered by taking an example. And what better example to give than the team at On Purpose?

On Purpose London is a system: we are a team of six people who interact to run an organisation and deliver a programme in order to achieve a positive impact, in particular developing people to transform the economy. We would like to change our system because we’ve noticed that for many of us our workload is too high, which impacts our ability to fulfil our mission of transforming the economy.

Let’s play out what we might do when applying linear thinking versus what we’d do when applying systems thinking. Applying a linear approach to understanding the problem might result in the following line of thought: If employees are overwhelmed with work, we can solve this by either hiring more staff or by reducing or streamlining the work.

Systems thinking shows us it isn’t necessarily so straightforward. The team feeling overworked is certainly one part of what is going on in our system, but systems thinking also prompts us to ask:

What else is going on? Who can I talk to to find out? How do different dynamics or events spiral or feed into each other?

Through conversations, a systems thinker might observe and follow an alternative line of thought:

There are various feelings: stress, frustration, tiredness. And various patterns - things getting done at the last minute, and tendency to focus on one’s own work rather than collaborate. And some of these things seem to be connected - because people feel there is too much work, things are often done at the last minute, so it takes longer, which is more stressful, and it's annoying if colleagues ask you to do tasks at the last minute when you’re stressed. So tensions can build, but there is little time to resolve tensions, improve processes or plan ahead. Tackling additional unforeseen work can be difficult and stressful. For example, when an employee leaves, time must be channeled into recruitment and onboarding. There is often little time to onboard well, and so new starters are more likely to feel overwhelmed.

Alongside this, the systems thinker sees plenty of positives in the team - a shared commitment and ambition to do the best job they can for the programme, huge amounts of empathy and patience, problem solving skills, and an openness to learn and improve. And plenty of nuance too - it is true that things sometimes get done fairly last minute, but they do always get done.

We might also map out how these factors are interacting with each other, or apply the “iceberg model” to consider not just the events we see happening, but also the underlying structures and mental models which might lie behind (or below!) these.

Seeing the full picture (or as much of it as you can) then begs the question: Where is a sensible point to intervene? This question also prevents you from falling into the traps of the linear thinker. Because actually, addressing the symptoms in isolation may have negative consequences. As you’ll remember from above, the linear thinker’s suggested solutions were hiring more staff, or reducing or streamlining work. Each of these has potential issues.

If we immediately hire more staff, there would be no time to onboard them, so they would likely simply join us in our difficulties in collaborating. Equally, reducing work is not straightforward: the team are impact-driven and ambitious, and it is not clear which work, if any, we could remove, without significantly compromising our mission or motivation. Regarding streamlining work, training the team to work more efficiently could amplify feelings of stress or even cause demotivation. What is more, this may not save much time: the team are already competent, efficient professionals. And our time-poor team would struggle to find the upfront time and headspace needed to streamline processes.

Instead, systems thinkers carefully consider how to break the cycle - maybe there is even a small intervention that will create a virtuous cycle of improvement.

Looking at the system, and with the advice of the organisational design and transformation consultancy The Adjacent, one of the things we decided to trial was a daily stand up meeting. It seemed like it could tackle multiple levels of the problem, break the unhelpful cycle we were in, and not cost us too much time. In this short daily meeting we agree on our priorities for the day, unblock tasks we are struggling with, and update a virtual Kanban board with our upcoming, in progress, and completed tasks.

So far it has improved things a modest amount. Capturing and collaborating on tasks has given us a sense of control, reducing stress. We prioritise collectively and distribute work, reducing siloes, and increasing team spirit. We can de-prioritise together when we see a busy period, decreasing workload in the most useful places. We have visibility of what other team members are working on, increasing trust and respect. Without a systemic approach, we’d have been unlikely to consider this intervention.

Importantly, we recognise that we can’t be sure what effect this standup will have, and so we are taking an experimental approach, periodically observing what is happening, acknowledging other factors influencing the situation, and being ready to dampen, amplify or adapt our efforts based on what we observe. This approach has meant we’ve iterated the format. We’ve added time to connect socially and time to name achievements from the past week, for example, nudging us to feel more positive and connected as a team.

Of course this is no silver bullet and just one part of the puzzle. We’re still learning and will be ready to trial different things depending on what emerges. Importantly though, the systems thinking mindset allowed us to better understand what’s going on with us as a team: it’s not anyone’s fault that we have been overwhelmed - it’s complex - and lots of factors interacted to create this situation. Equally it’s not a straightforward solution, so we won’t be too hard on ourselves if we don’t get it perfect straight away. However, we feel empowered, and are actively testing improvement initiatives with careful consideration, collaboration and curiosity - and, importantly, making sure we take the time to learn from what we test.

Transforming an organisation is one thing, but what about transforming the wider world?

This small-scale example illustrates just how difficult it is to understand systems, never mind change them. But that does not mean you should not try. Similar thinking can be applied to larger systems and challenges. For example, you could use the iceberg model (mentioned above) to understand the UK riots over last summer, or you could map out the food system in order to identify a sensible place to test out an intervention. More simply though, you can take the mindset to any situation. You can ask yourself:

What else is going on in the system?

Who can I talk to to understand factors or dynamics I might have missed?

How can I test something out and learn from that?

So, what can systems thinking teach us about how to transform the world? The takeaway that “systems are so complex, we can’t possibly do anything” is not satisfactory. But the takeaway that “systems are so complex, we need to involve lots of people in order to get a sense of how they’re working and test and learn as we go” is powerful.

What knotty problems are you working on at the moment? How might a systems thinking approach help?