RIGOR VS. SUPPORT

The Facilitative Modeling approach for making important decisions combines high levels of analytical rigor with high levels of stakeholder support.

Common Decision-Making Approaches

Because of this level of complexity in all aspects of organizational life, organizations usually rely on what I refer to as the “shoot from-the-hip” approach for making important decisions. You’ve seen this technique if you’ve ever been in a team meeting in which a decision must be made today. Some members of the group toss out their ideas; most participants stay silent. Eventually, the team leader contributes his or her opinion, and everyone agrees. Decision made! Most meeting participants later bemoan the “poor” decision, claiming they won’t support it. The result? The new policy dies on the vine prior to implementation, leaving the organization the same as it was before.

In analyzing “shoot-from-the-hip” decisions, we observe that they lack strength in at least two major areas: analytical rigor and stakeholder support (see “Rigor vs. Support”). This isn’t a novel observation: Organizations have struggled with these two shortcomings for years and have devised various ways to overcome them.

1. The Technological Approach Before making a major decision, in order to increase the level of analytical rigor (or understanding of the issues), managers often rely on analysts and their toolkit — what I call the Technological Approach. Organizations adopting the Technological Approach generally do so because they’ve fallen victim to the mindset that they must find the perfect answer. The idea is that if you throw enough analysis at an issue, you can completely understand everything and uncover an ideal solution. These organizations think the answer must be found in the numbers.

To process the data they generate, organizations subscribing to the Technological Approach employ spreadsheets and statistical techniques. Some even build large simulation models to test nearly infinite possible scenarios. However, these tools can obscure the assumptions underlying the analysis. And because decision-makers aren’t privy to these hidden assumptions, they cannot compare them to their own mental models — so they do not trust the resulting recommendations. This lack of trust in the analysis is a major factor in why, although usually carefully applied, the Technological Approach rarely generates the support needed to lead to effective policy-making.

2. The Stakeholder Approach In contrast, proponents of a Stakeholder Approach often put technology aside and instead try to build knowledge and support through stakeholder involvement. Well-known techniques that follow this approach include Future Search, Open Space Technology, the World Café, various forms of dialogue — even some facilitated mapping sessions using causal loop diagrams and systems archetypes. These methodologies share an underlying mindset — by getting representation from different players in “the system,” everyone will gain a broader view of the problem at hand. Further, by allowing participants to express divergent perspectives in an unconstrained fashion, the Stakeholder Approach lets them formulate creative, systemic recommendations.

Whether trying to define the problem or to generate solutions, people applying these processes (if only implicitly) tend to follow a model of interaction described by Interaction Associates as the Open-Narrow-Close model. During the Open phase, participants get all of the data on the table while defining the problem; if they’re generating solutions, this is the stage in which creative solutions spring forth from the group’s collective wisdom. During the Narrow phase, contributors take an overwhelming list of choices (problems or solutions) and narrow them down to a few to consider further. During the Close phase, they actually choose which problems to tackle or solutions to implement and how to do so. Managers then often assign groups to each of the major action items identified during this stage and give them their blessing to “go forth and implement.”

The Stakeholder Approach includes processes that build broad support — unlike what often occurs in the Technological Approach. Plus, it helps those involved to see the system from a broad spatial and sometimes temporal perspective. These results are necessary and important for creating effective changes in any system.

A major weakness of the Stakeholder Approach, however, is that the processes used to narrow and choose

APPROACHES FOR IMPLEMENTING SYSTEMS THINKING

Facilitative Modeling serves as a middle ground between the Technological Approach and the Stakeholder Approach.

among the resulting divergent issues/strategies lack rigor and usually

rely on the assumption that, simply by having enough stakeholder representation, the group will make excellent decisions. But as Irving Janis learned by studying extremely poor decisions (such as the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the escalation of the Vietnam War, which he described in his book Groupthink), groups with very high average IQs can function well below expectations.

Barry Richmond of High Performance Systems, Inc. created a simple example called the Rookie-Pro exercise that also illustrates this point. Despite working with a much simpler human. resource system than that found in most organizations, only 10 to 15 percent of individuals can guess the system’s future behavior — even after lengthy discussion! So the assumption that the collective wisdom of the group will surface in a way that leads to optimal decision-making is tenuous at best.

In addition, the framework employed to guide team members in narrowing and choosing among different options doesn’t help to determine if elements of the proposed solutions need to be implemented at different times and in varying degrees. The result is that the organization often chooses to put the same amount of resources and effort into each action item. Nor does the Stakeholder Approach determine if the issues are interconnected — different groups may be separately implementing policies that should be done together or, even worse, are mutually exclusive.

Facilitative Modeling

The good news is that there is a way to both rigorously understand (or

even reduce) complexity and improve stakeholder support! Practitioners are often drawn to the field of systems thinking because of its promise to build collective understanding — to get everyone on the same page. Even so, these managers can be pulled between the Technological Approach (big simulation models created by experts) or the Stakeholder Approach (facilitated sessions using causal loop diagrams or systems archetypes). But there’s a middle ground — a large range of activities that I refer to as “Facilitative Modeling” — where tremendous power resides (see “Approaches for Implementing Systems Thinking”).

Facilitative Modeling is a Technological Approach, because it uses computer simulation and the scientific method to build understanding. It is also a Stakeholder Approach, because it requires the input of the important stakeholder groups, uses a common language so everyone can get on the same page, and creates small, simple, and easy-to-understand models. The models don’t generate the answer; rather they facilitate rigorous discussion. Facilitative Modeling usually culminates in a facilitated multi-stake-holder session in which the participants generate common understanding and make well-informed decisions.

Overview of the Process

In the Facilitative Modeling process, a group of stakeholders identifies and addresses an issue critical to their collective success. The issue is often one that has been resistant to organizational efforts to “fix” it. After choosing the area for exploration, the group sets the agenda for a facilitate

session. In preparation for that meeting, several individuals in the group serve as a modeling team and develop (alone or working with a modeler) a series of simple systems thinking simulation models that clearly articulate important components of the issue. These components may include the historical trend for that issue, the future implications if the trend continues, possible interventions, and the unintended consequences of some of these solutions. The models are deliberately kept small so that stakeholders will understand them and the development process remains manageable.

However, it’s not enough just to make models! In fact, building useful models is probably less than half of what makes a Facilitative Modeling initiative successful. The process requires the modeling team and perhaps others to create additional materials for the facilitated session, such as workbooks for tracking experiments and writing reflections, as well as CDs of the models for after the session. A facilitator and/or design team needs to carefully plan various aspects of the session, such as appropriate questions, suggested experiments to run on the model, and a mix of small and large group discussion.

The facilitated session represents the culmination of the process. During the gathering, teams of two to four people explore the models on computers. The session includes large group interludes and debriefs between exercises. And at the end of the session, participants discuss and agree on

next steps based on the insights that emerged during the event (see “The Facilitative Modeling Process”).

Facilitative Modeling in Action

Using the Facilitative Modeling Process outlined above, a nonprofit organization recently explored potential issues associated with implementing new funding policies. This organization was responsible for improving the health and welfare of the poor population in a community by giving funds to other local nonprofits to provide services. Originally, the organization had determined which organizations to fund and how much funding to supply by analyzing the services that the target organization would provide; in recent years, it had settled into just increasing the amount of funding incrementally over the previous year’s figure. To create more accountability among the local organizations and improve outcomes in the community, the nonprofit had decided to apply a performance driven approach to funding (that is, base funding on projected improvements to performance indicators and then renew the funding if the community experienced noticeable improvement in those areas).

Some members of the organization, as well as members of an important partner group, were concerned about the potential barriers to implementing this updated approach and were eager to understand possible unintended consequences that might result from the change. They agreed that a Facilitative Modeling approach would be an excellent way to surface and discuss these issues in a way that would give all stakeholders shared insight. In little more than five days of working with a facilitator and a few representatives from the organization and its partner, the team developed three small “conversational” models for a one-day facilitated session.

At the beginning of the session, the group adopted a set of ground rules to guide their interactions. Once participants agreed to the guidelines, they began by experimenting with the first model. The purpose of this initial simulation was to surface and discuss the potential dynamics associated with implementing the new funding approach. Allowing “sub groups” to work with the models at their own speed often increases their level of understanding. However, even those with some skill at reading stock and flow diagrams similar to the one shown here can be quickly overwhelmed by maps. The simulation included a function that let the sub groups slowly unfurl pieces of the map so that they more easily followed its logic (see “The First Map” on p. 5).

The map shown here represents one way to look at the different organizations affected by the nonprofit’s funding decisions. The language of stocks and flows is ideally suited for looking at this issue. The three stocks at the top of the diagram (the rectangles labeled “Resistant,” “Not Committed,” and “Committed”) represent groups of organizations. Currently, because the new approach has yet to be implemented, all organizations would belong in the “Not Committed” stock. Eventually, as the new funding approach is made into policy, organizations would begin to move into the “Committed” or “Resistant” stocks. Obviously, if possible, the funding group wanted to avoid any organizations becoming “Resistant.”

At the session, the individual groups discussed the meaning of each of the stocks. What does it mean to be “Committed”? “Resistant”? They mulled over the question, What number of “Resistant” organizations would pose a problem for the program as a whole? Can “Committed” organizations become “Resistant”? Is it realistic to assume (as the model does) that “Resistant” organizations never become “Committed”?

Talking about the diagram helped he sub groups, and eventually the entire group, reach consensus about how organizations might become committed or resistant to the changed funding policies. For many of the participants, it was the first time they had discussed the potential that some of their client organizations might resist the changes! By working with the model, the group was able to surface an unpleasant concept in a way that allowed them to grapple with its implications for their changed strategy.

They then entered different values into the model to experiment with how the funding organization might allocate its resources in the coming months. How much effort should they put into developing the performance-driven funding program? How much into explaining the program to the funded organizations? And how much of each should they do prior to officially announcing the program? After announcing it? In short, the group wrestled with the systemic or “chestration” (a concept developed by Barry Richmond) of resources the magnitude and timing of efforts required to successfully implement the strategy.

The group concluded that, in the first phase of development, they should apply most of their efforts to designing the new policy. Doing so builds the “Clarity of the Program,” which is useful in preventing “Doubts About the New Approach” down the road. They realized that they would need to allocate at least some resources in the first phase to working with the client groups and addressing their doubts about the change. This process would also help them to refine the approach (see “Implementation Timetable” on page 6). The next phase would require additional work with the other stakeholder groups to explain the program prior to release. The third and fourth phases would involve implementation; this is when the nonprofit’s staff members would spend most of their time addressing the doubts of the affected organizations.
The group realized that the exact numbers of organizations in each category wouldn’t be the same in real life as in the simulation, but that the stories described by the model were consistent with what they now expected might happen when overhauling their approach to funding. In keeping with the need for systemic orchestration the group concluded that their allocation of strategic resources must shift over time, depending on which phase they were in (for example, in the second phase, they would need to apply some resources to program development and even more to working with stakeholders).

Working with Subsequent Models

In Facilitative Modeling, each model tends to add to the understanding generated by previous ones. Because the performance-based funding approach would require implementing a new IT system, the second model helped participants explore how a funded organization would need to allocate resources in order to develop a new IT system and build its staff ’s capacity to use it. The third model served as the capstone exercise, because it required participants to explore how client organizations might allocate their resources across the following needs: providing services, building and maintaining the IT system, investing in staff skill development, and collaborating with partner organizations.

THE FIRST MAP

The three stocks at the top of the diagram (the rectangles labeled “Resistant,” “Not Committed,” and “Committed”) represent groups of organizations. As the new funding approach is made into policy, organizations would begin to move from the “Not Committed” stock into the “Committed” or “Resistant” stocks.

During the large-group debrief of the third model, the nonprofit’s senior director said that he didn’t like one dynamic that he experienced with the model. In all cases, after the funding change, the youth population’s sense of disconnection from the community initially worsened, even when the simulated strategies encouraged a majority of client agencies to be committed to the shift and to effectively implement performance-based approaches to providing services. When he experimented with the model, the director kept trying to avoid this “worse-before-better” dynamic. Through probing questions, the group learned that it wasn’t that he didn’t expect this behavior to happen, he just wished it wouldn’t!

IMPLEMENTATION TIMETABLE

By using the model to explore the magnitude and timing of efforts required to successfully implement the strategy, the group concluded that, in the first phase of development, they should focus on designing the new policy.

This revelation led to an interesting discussion of what is often an undiscussable in the public sector: that policies designed to improve social systems often take time before they lead to noticeable improvements and that there is often conspicuous degradation of performance in the interim. The director expressed that it was political suicide to admit that things might actually get worse before improving. Ultimately, through the facilitated discussion, he came to understand that regardless of whether he wanted to admit that such a dynamic might occur, it was inevitable, given the long delays before activities such as IT development and skill-building would have a positive effect on services. Through this admission, he and his staff were then able to explore options for mitigating the effects of this unavoidable dynamic.

Ultimately, the nonprofit’s staff left the session with useful insight in several areas. First, they all understood that some of their client organizations might resist the new approach. Second, they realized that it would be helpful for them to include those organizations in developing the program. Third, the group agreed that building staff skills was likely to be a more challenging impediment to successful implementation of the changed approach than developing the IT infrastructure. Finally, they accepted that systemwide implementation would require orchestrating a series of activities that, even in the best of circumstances, would cause a “worse-before-better” dynamic. All of these insights were just the beginnings of an ongoing dialogue, and all were facilitated by using small models to focus the conversation.

The Value of Facilitative Modeling

As shown in the example above, there is a powerful place for small models in a facilitated environment. The process used for developing good systems thinking models increases the rigor of the analysis and captures the benefits of a Technological Approach. At the same time, by keeping models small, Facilitative Modeling improves on the benefits of a Stakeholder Approach and increases the likelihood that all participants end up in alignment. Moreover, the Facilitative Modeling approach uses a language — stocks and flows — that is more representative of reality than other visual mapping languages. For this reason, the participants are able to discuss and come to a novel understanding of the assumptions built into the model. Running the simulation provides an essential test of the group’s understanding and facilitates further conversations about the likelihood of different results. The computer-generated “microworld” creates a safe environment for experimentation.

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When formalized into new patterns of working together often through the creation of new umbrella

organizations with participants from diverse parts of society these mutually beneficial outcomes represent societal learning. Societal learning is a process of changing patterns of inter actions within and between diverse organizations and social units to enhance society’s capacity to innovate. Large scale problems such as poverty and environmental degradation require substantial societal learning in order for lasting change to occur.

Societal learning almost always involves the collaboration of the three organizational “sectors”: government, business, and civil society organizations (labor, community-based, religious, and nongovernmental entities). These sectors represent the three key systems of our society: political (government), economic(business), and social (civil society) (see “The Three Sectors”). All organizations can be categorized as being in one of the three organizational sectors, or as a hybrid of them. Any business that wants to profoundly alter its operating environment, any government that seeks to undertake fundamental reform, and any people who want to improve the world must partner with others from outside their sector.

Although societal learning represents an enormous challenge, the good news is that we have learned a lot about this process, and we have increased our capacity to make it happen. Still, the concept of undertaking big systems change is just beginning to influence the ways in which organizations operate.

Challenges of Societal Learning

Although related to individual, group, and organizational learning, societal learning is particularly challenging to achieve. Why? First, it necessarily involves changes in how complex institutions from different sectors operate, both separately and in tandem. So, for instance, in partnerships among environmentalists, government agencies, and corporations, all parties must embrace diverse view-points, forge new visions, and be willing to operate differently in the future than they have in the past. Reaching this level of cooperation and accommodation takes much work and a high degree of commitment, but the goal in this case, enhancing environmental sustainability is deemed well worth the effort.

Often, organizations discover that they must redefine the business they are in. In developing countries, many construction companies no longer regard themselves merely as builders of physical infrastructure, but rather as part of a joint effort to create sustainable water systems. This shift in perspective has enormous implications for how these businesses organize and undertake work. For instance, in order to engage the local communities in planning and building the infrastructure, they must take a broader approach to achieving their goals than simply completing project milestones on a tightly managed timetable.

Second, this kind of learning can take place on a local or regional level, but it also happens with global scale projects. For example, the Youth Employment Summit (YES) is a nongovernmental organization (NGO) that seeks to generate 500 million new employment opportunities for youth around the world over the next 10 years. This work involves generating cultural change through the interaction of businesses, governmental agencies, nonprofits, and others to boost the position of youth in society. An effort of this scope requires tremendous resources human, financial, and so on and profound levels of learning to accomplish.

Dynamics of Societal Learning

Given their ambitious goals, societal learning initiatives must go well beyond simply coordinating organizations and resources often referred to as single loop learning or first order change because it occurs within current structures and assumptions. Societal learning requires a shift in mental models and the development of new structures and processes, known as double loop learning or second order change.

Like organizational learning, societal learning deals with exploring the deep, underlying structures that drive behavior, surfacing the basic assumptions

we hold that limit our options, and developing innovative approaches to persistent problems. For instance, throughout the U. S., intense interaction between the banking industry and community based organizations (CBOs) revealed that the bankers’ view of poor neighborhoods as unprofitable markets was grounded not just in social biases but in fundamental business assumptions (see “Banking on Community Development”). Through their discussions with community representatives, the bankers began to understand that their assumptions about the poor were wrong. They also found that their rigid ideas about their own product lines, product development approaches, and delivery systems were the real limiting factors to the success of banking services in the neighborhoods, not the limited resources of the people who lived there. Working with CBOs and churches, the banks revamped their business models in order to better serve and profit from the community. Making this change happen took the creative synergy of all parties involved.

This kind of shift in thinking can spur complex synergies and powerful innovations. For example, the banks found that they needed to design new product development tools, because traditional telephone surveys and focus group methodologies were inadequate for conducting market research with individuals who don’t have strong English-language skills. The CBOs thus became expert articulators of their constituents’ needs and worked with the banks to develop, deliver, and manage leading edge products. Similarly, in South Africa, organizations engaged in constructing sustainable water systems discovered that the government’s budgeting process was a barrier. Once government leaders became aware of the problem, they changed the process, leading to a whole range of opportunities.

Such collaborations can even produce the more rarefied triple loop learning, which involves rethinking the way we actually think about an issue. Through their work on change initiatives, many poor people and wealthy people, business people and bureaucrats, social activists and conservatives have come to fundamentally change how they regard one another. By coming together in productive new ways, these groups create rich networks of social capital that allow societies to accomplish things they could not have done before.

Systemwide Change

In systems thinking terms, the challenge of those involved in societal learning is to understand and address numerous large and complex feedback loops. In development and change management terms, the challenge is to transform learning at a project and intellectual level into broad, sustainable systemwide change.

Because successful societal learning initiatives usually require innovations in business, government, and civil society simultaneously, some change agents are intentionally fostering organizational networks called intersectoral collaborations (ISCs). These collaborations can form at the community level, as with many community development initiatives; at the state level, as with education and workforce development programs; and at the international level, as with the worldwide “clusters” in natural resources, water and sanitation, youth, and traffic safety initiated by the World Bank.

Such collaborations facilitate interactions among organizations from each of the three sectors in an effort to generate and apply new knowledge. Collaborating involves recasting roles, responsibilities, and allocation of benefits from the partnership. The key outcome of the process is new relationships among the three systems that lead to improved results for the organizations involved and for society as a whole.

ISCs are potent social change vehicles because:

• They bring together perspectives from each of the three key sectors of society.
• They strive to develop actions that produce value for each of the different sectors.
• They offer a broad reaching mechanism for disseminating learnings and gaining adoption of new approaches throughout society. So, rather than having a government representative urge businesses to change how they operate, business people use their own business networks to champion change, based on business experience, in a language that other business people understand.
• They provide tremendous opportunity for mobilizing the diversity and scale of resources necessary for bringing about the desired change. Business comes with its financial and production assets, government with its rule making and tax resource assets, and civil society with its foundation funding and volunteer workforce.

To fully appreciate the distinctive qualities that the collaborating organizations have to offer, we must understand the generic differences among the three sectors (see “Attributes of the Different Sectors”). For instance, the “Assessment Frame” refers to how members of a sector decide whether or not their output is “good.” Government is particularly concerned with legality; business focuses on profitability; and civil society thinks in terms of equity and justice. Therefore, to be successful, a societal change initiative must produce these three outcomes.

In addition, understanding the core competencies of partner organizations helps participants better define their own roles in learning initiatives. This process emphasizes the rationale for bringing organizations in different sectors together in the first place: to combine core strengths and offset weaknesses. An entity in one sector may be less able to accomplish a certain task than an organization in another sector. For instance, a business may be proud of customers’ trust in its products, but it is impossible to compare consumer confidence to the level of trust that a good civil society organization, such as a church, can build within its community.

Civil society organizations tend to define their issues as “problems,” whereas businesses like to frame them as “opportunities.” YES originally defined its goals from a problem and social justice perspective young people lack jobs. Through their work with business partners, organizers came to understand that failing to articulate the business benefits of their mission might ultimately limit its appeal. YES was then able to identify a number of positive business outcomes, ranging from market development opportunities to support for human resources planning, that their program might produce.

Through productive debate and dialogue among the diverse participants, ISCs can maximize the contributions of each sector and produce innovations that are valuable for all involved (see “Potential Outcomes by Sector” on p. 4). These innovations typically could not be thought of or implemented by the participants on their own. For this reason, to be successful, collaborators must be willingly to share their own goals and processes openly.

For example, environmentalists have been able to point to creative ways in which businesses can significantly

reduce their energy costs; similarly, interaction with consumer advocates has led some companies to move from merely complying with government regulations to creating new products and markets by anticipating changing consumer desires and the resulting legislation. Thus, it is important to understand the distinct goals of organization members and build mutual commitment to achieving them. Partners must also be able to define collective goals part of a shared vision.

Developing a Societal Learning Initiative

Developing a societal learning initiative requires patience, vision, and commitment. These transformations take time. About two decades passed before substantial changes occurred in the banking industry in inner cities in the U. S. However, as knowledge about how to collaborate on complex ventures grows, we’re considerably reducing the length of time it takes to realize successful outcomes. Depending on the scale and complexity of the task at hand, some initiatives can achieve significant results within three to five years.

Sometimes the collaborations begin as an NGO program, sometimes out of an event that produces common recognition that a problem/opportunity requires the resources of diverse organizations, and sometimes under the leadership of an influential individual or organization, such as a government agency. Often associations and federations of organizations take the lead in these initiatives, because such entities represent a large number of constituents faced with the same problem. However, societal learning efforts must also include frontline organizations, such as individual businesses, because these participants have different knowledge and concerns than do the associations that represent them and their industry partners and competitors.

Because these largescale projects are at the leading edge of what we know how to do in terms of creating change, they require ongoing learning and the development of innovative processes and structures. Organizers of societal learning ventures should keep the following principles in mind:

1. Make learning the guiding framework. Adopting a learning framework means that leaders must incorporate a planning action reflection cycle into every aspect and stage of the project. To do so, all participants need to agree that initial plans will be intentionally broad and that details will develop as the project proceeds. In the case of the World Bank clusters mentioned above, participating organizations began with a relatively vague idea about what they might do together. After getting to know one another, they developed learning agendas that included both looking at current strategies for working together and under taking experiments with new joint activities. A disciplined process to engaging participants in gathering data and analyzing it in real time is also a key way to develop common understanding about new ways to work together more effectively In addition, adopting a learning framework means providing workshops and other opportunities for skill development, because changing systems requires that we also change individual behaviors including our own. For example, the concept of, “co-leaders” is a natural extension of the need for peer like relationships among sectoral organizations. Rather than having “one captain of the ship,” several people share leadership. Currently, few people have the skills and few organizations have the structures and processes to share leadership responsibilities. We need to develop these abilities to move ahead with significant social change efforts.

2. Use action learning to support the societal learning process. Action learning involves developing knowledge about how to approach an issue and then creating a strategy for doing so, while at the same time gathering data to refine the approach. Coupled with systems thinking skills, this methodology can help people simplify and clarify complex problems. The World Resources Institute is using this technique to develop management tools to help governments, NGOs, and companies fulfill commitments made in international environmental conventions.

3. Begin by thinking through the full spectrum of issues involved in addressing a challenge. Governments and development agencies have long thrown money at the problem of inadequate water services in the developing world. Time and again, they have organized government bureaucracies or hired international engineering firms to build infrastructures of pipes, dams, and water treatment plants. Within six months, the new infrastructure is often in disrepair, and people are getting water through their traditional methods. Now that’s a fix that fails!

In this example, the well-intentioned parties wrongly define the problem as strictly a technological one, rather than also being one of societal learning. Analyzing the current situation and the intended outcome would define not just the necessary physical infrastructure, but also the changes in behavior, beliefs, resources, and organizational support required to optimize outcomes. The analysis should also show critical barriers to success; for instance, many people in the developing world think of water as being free and are unwilling to pay for it; communities cannot afford to remain dependent on outside experts to operate and maintain the system; and communities need to have a regulatory structure to monitor the system and ensure that it functions to quality standards.

4. Map the current system. Participants should take the time to identify all stakeholders in the system and analyze the relationships among them. Doing so offers planners a sense of the current reality, the key stakeholders, and the actors involved. It can also help them to identify organizations that are “early movers” an important category in any change process, because they are the ones most likely to lead the effort.

5. Follow the traditional planning action reflection learning process. Convene the players to investigate possible new directions; collectively design pilot projects and implementation steps; define learnings; plan for scaling up the initiative; scale up implementation, and so on. One important task is to develop tools to address classic problems that frequently crop up, such as maintaining the commitment of organizational participants; addressing “glocal” (global local) concerns (ensuring that the venture responds both to local needs and those of outside participants); maintaining organizational simplicity in the face of task complexity; and producing valuable outputs for both the overall project and the individual organizations. Regular review processes are part of the important work of formalizing feedback loops.

Unintended Consequences

Given the large number of variables in such global efforts, there are often many unintended consequences. In the banking example, some CBOs found that their increasingly close ties to the industry undermined their support from within their communities. Construction companies in developing countries realized they had to rethink their business model. And by decentralizing and privatizing public services, governments often discover that they need new budgeting, monitoring, and regulatory processes. All of these lessons reflect deepening societal learning. When the collaborations are working well, these lessons will be ongoing and profound.

As with any innovation, societal learning can involve substantial conflict. In successful collaborations, dynamic tension does not go away, but the parties find ways to harness that tension. Sometimes, the disappearance of tension indicates that societal learning is not occurring that collaborators are having difficulty getting beyond the exchange of pleasantries to get to the hard work of grappling with deeper issues and differences. Or, the lack of conflict might indicate that societal learning has already occurred, and the collaboration is moving into a maintenance stage. The absence of tensions usually indicates that participants should reassess the purpose of the collaboration, whether it has resulted in societal change, whether the change is limited to a small group of organizations, whether external change has made the collaboration irrelevant, or whether there is a new purpose that the group wants to develop.

Enormous Potential

Organizations often approach today’s problems and opportunities from yesterday’s perspective. Nevertheless, much has changed in the last decade. In that time, many new NGOs and businesses have formed; even more important, there are now improved global networks including the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the International Business Leaders Forum, and CIVICUS (a civil society organization) that are engaged in intersectoral collaborations. Through experiments with these collaborations over more than a decade, we have vastly improved our knowledge about how to develop and sustain them. In this way, we have substantially increased our capacity for societal learning and our ability to effectively address complex issues such as the environment, war, and poverty and to create outcomes that are win win for all segments of society.

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The reactions to the report by solid waste industry constituents varied widely. This mixed response convinced MN OEA leaders that, in order to decide how to move ahead, they needed to conduct a participative forum. They felt that systems thinking and related organizational learning practices could help a group of representatives from different sectors identify leverage points for change and address the social and dynamic complexity inherent in such an intricate system.

Systems thinking tools can provide a vital and sorely missed perspective on the complex matters with which our legislators grapple.

That spring, MN OEA gathered 27 participants, representing citizens, businesses, government, recycling centers, and solid waste processing industries statewide, to think together about Minnesota’s solid waste system. A Blue Ribbon Panel of legislators, industry officials, and community representatives would then recommend legislation based on this group’s suggestions. Participants were asked to be leaders and experimenters, to look beyond their familiar areas of expertise in order to understand the whole system, to adopt a view with a longer time horizon than their organization generally used, and perhaps to reach conclusions that would not necessarily be in their organizations’ best short term interests.

A Historic Opportunity

Systems thinking tools can provide a vital and sorely missed perspective on the complex matters with which our legislators grapple. Although there have been many systemic analyses of public sector issues, the challenge is to discover innovative methods for encouraging public policy making institutions to accept and implement the conclusions that arise from these analyses. At least initially, there may have to be trade offs between being right from a systemic perspective and being effective from a political standpoint.

MN OEA employed a highly participative process to help the working group come to adopt as their own the findings of the solid waste policy report. The facilitators and MNOEA did not direct the participants’work; they simply brought together a capable group of people and provided them with tools for dealing with the complexity of the issues they were asked to address. This “hands-off approach, new for public policy discussions, was a critical factor in the project’s success.

MN OEA also carefully selected participants, identifying the various sectors for representation and soliciting nominations for people “in the trenches” who really understand their industries. The agency excluded registered lobbyists to try to minimize the political element in the process. Final participants were chosen through a voting procedure, based on their potential to see beyond themselves, their knowledge, and their work ethic.

The Participative Process in Action

The process began with an introduction to systems thinking and organizational learning (see “Tools for Change” on p. 8). The facilitator also told participants how different this work would be from their previous experiences, defined the notion of respect, and made explicit expectations about respectful behaviors.

In the nine days the group met, participants engaged in the following activities:

• They used the hexagon technique (see “From Ideas to Variables” by David Kreutzer, THE SYSTEMS THINKER V8N9, November 1997) to identify issues and concerns regarding the solid waste disposal system. Writing their observations on sticky notes and posting them at the front of the room allowed participants to be fully present, incorporate emotional responses as relevant data, separate issues from the individuals who articulated them, and create a complete picture of the system.
• The participants then identified variables and learned the language of causal loops. They worked in small teams to explore the issues represented on the hexagons, using systems archetypes, free form causal looping, and stock and flow diagrams.
• They began and finished each day with a dialogue style check-in/check-out (see “Check-in, Check-out: A Tool for ‘Real’ Conversations” by Fred Kofman, THE SYSTEMS THINKER V5N4, May 1994).Through this process, each participant could voice his or her state of mind, thoughts, and concerns. Sometimes supportive, sometime divisive, check-ins/check-outs and shared luncheons were critical to building trust.
• The participants synthesized the smaller causal loop diagrams into one large causal map, making the relationships across the entire solid waste system visible at a high level.
• They developed options and strategies for moving forward. The group tested these strategies using causal loops and stocks and flows by identifying and considering the unintended side effects of proposed actions.
• Lastly, the group developed recommendations for the Blue Ribbon Panel. As they did so, they identified guiding principles for themselves as well as for the state, such as “We must protect the environment and public health,” “We must reduce waste generation,” and “We must collect better data over time.” They also employed a six-level agreement model to discern how much support each recommendation received from members.

In previous participative processes, this was the point where some participants sat back and waited to see what would happen; others, who disagreed with the majority, worked to undermine the final results; and still others voiced their distrust of the political system to carry out the suggestions. This time, all concerns were considered openly. Most participants came to realize that if they didn’t give the process their best effort, they would be contributing to the self fulfilling prophecy that real change cannot be created within the political system.

Outcomes

In the end, the group made 10 recommendations to the Blue Ribbon Panel, with some suggestions about funding sources. The final report included several causal loop diagrams for explanatory purposes. The group elected representatives to provide context for the report during the presentation to the panel. The panel unanimously accepted most of the recommendations are substantial achievement. A major reason for this consensus was that there commendations were intentionally worded at a fairly high level, with little specificity. Nonetheless, the groundwork for this level of agreement was laid during the time the working group had spent together, talking about their assumptions and concerns, from their vantage points within the system.

Interestingly, one of the group’s recommendations was that they continue to meet periodically to assess how the system has changed and whether the actions taken on the recommendations worked the way they had anticipated, and to tackle some of the more difficult issues. Participants felt it was important to build on the foundation they had created, both from the content of their work and the relationships they had established.

They also expressed cautious optimism about the ability of the political system to act on these recommendations while preserving their original intent. As the participants move forward, their exposure to and growing understanding of systemic processes and group learning tools should contribute to improving the political process.

Governmental bodies like MNOEA play a vital role in protecting vulnerable resources, and yet they face staggering levels of complexity. Ultimately, we hope to see an increasing use of these tools in the areas where they have the most value in the stewardship of our societal systems.

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The Strategic Action Map

A strategic action map is a tool that helps teams think through, articulate, and implement high-leverage action strategies. It could be called a double loop strategy development tool, because it forces teams to go beyond seeking solutions within their current framework to take actions on that framework (for more about double loop learning in teams, see “Working in High-Leverage Zones with the Double-Loop Learning Matrix” in The Systems Thinker, V12N8).

In “Example of a Strategic Action Map,” notice that the gray portion in the middle (steps 8, 9, and 10) contains only three elements: phases, activities, and a timeframe. This is where the action is specified and

EXAMPLE OF A STRATEGIC ACTION MAP

A strategic action map is a tool that helps teams think through, articulate, and implement high-leverage action strategies.

progress is tracked. Notice also that this section contains pictures, for a little right-brain reinforcement of each item. Now, look at the surrounding areas of the map (steps 1-7). These sections literally frame the action portion of the map. This is where the framework, or basis, for the action is made explicit. When someone asks, “What are you planning to do?” you can show them the center of the map. When they ask, “Why are you doing that?” you can refer them to the frame around that action.

The map summarizes the following information: “We intend to go from our current condition (2) to our desired condition (3) by operationalizing the strategy (1) listed at the top of the page, and this is why we think this strategy will work (4). We have named the barriers we must overcome (5), we know what ‘success’ will look like (6), and we have considered the perspective of key stakeholders (7). What we will actually do is specified by the phases (8), timeframes (9), and activities (10).” Isn’t this the very stuff that a board of directors or leadership team would expect to know?

The Power of the Map

A strategic action map incorporates several of the organizational learning disciplines. In encompasses systems thinking by taking into account the “big picture” and the interests of key stakeholders throughout the system. It includes shared vision by establishing creative tension between our vision (desired condition) and our current reality (current condition). Additionally, a strategic action map supports team learning. Because teams complete the map together, members must make their assumptions about the change process explicit: Why are we trying this strategy, and what are we trying to create—really?

Because a strategic action map is more of a conversation facilitation tool than a precision planning tool, it is not a substitute for project management tools. However, we have found that, as a result of the high-quality conversation that this tool generates and the visual way in which the information is presented, we have less of a need for a deadline-driven tracking system. The work just seems to get done because of the high levels of synergy and alignment that creating the strategic action map as a group engender.

Completing the Map

As a first step for completing a strategic action map, the project team must analyze the problem situation and discover some new insights for addressing it. Team members then ask themselves specific questions at each of the 10 steps and enter the answers into a blank process map (you can easily create a template using Microsoft Visio or some other business drawing software package). A facilitator is usually helpful in guiding a group through the process.

1. Strategy. What is the goal and how do we intend to achieve it? Naming the “how” is the same as naming your strategy for this change initiative.

2. Current Condition. What is the current condition of the goal? What symptoms are you seeing? What data do you have? A little soul-searching goes a long way here. If a team has not already done so, developing causal loop diagrams at this point is helpful in describing “what is.”

3. Desired Condition. What is the desired condition of the goal? What is your vision for this change initiative? Notice that the team has just established creative tension by juxtaposing the current condition with the desired condition.

4. Strategy Assumptions. What leads you to believe that this change initiative will work? What has been tried in the past and why didn’t it work? Why do you even want this goal? This is where you test the strategy you have named in step 1. You must define clear reasons why you selected this strategy, so you can defend it when others ask you about it. Test the validity of the assumptions by asking questions such as: How often is this assumption true? When would this assumption not be true? What are some examples? Does anyone see it any differently?

5. Barriers/Obstacles. What barriers must we overcome for this change initiative to be successful? What are we up against?

6. Desired Accomplishments. How will we know that we have achieved the desired condition? What measurable outcomes will we see?

7. Key Stakeholders. What groups are affected by this change initiative? Whose view do we need to consider?

8. Phases of the Process. What phases (groups of activities) must we go through to move from the current condition to the desired condition? Add a symbol to represent each separate phase.

9. Timeframe. What are the dates by which each phase must be completed?

10. Activities. What specific actions or events must occur during each of the phases for them to be completed successfully?

Strategic Action Maps in Action

At GMHS, we develop strategic action maps for our organizationwide initiatives, as well as for smaller projects. We create our diagrams over the course of several meetings, refining and changing them as our thoughts percolate. The team that completes the map shares it with other associates to track progress, communicate action strategies, and induce further learning.

As an organization, we have found many of the mainstream business tools to be “too hard,” in that they fail to take into account the insights that emerge when participants compare their mental models. We have also found some of the organizational learning tools to be “too soft,” in that they don’t integrate enough measurement and concrete action steps. So, we have developed this hybrid tool that we think encourages insight for action—a way to operationalize our systems thinking all on one page.

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