From my work with both business and education professionals over the last 15 years, I have come to believe that systems thinking’s steep learning curve is related to the fact that the discipline requires mastering a whole package of thinking skills.

STEPS IN THE SYSTEMS THINKING METHOD

Begin by specifying the problem you want to address. Then construct hypotheses to explain the problem and test them using models. Only when you have a sufficient understanding of the situation should you begin to implement change.

Much like the accomplished basketball player who is unaware of the many separate skills needed to execute a lay-up under game conditions – such as dribbling while running and without looking at the ball, timing and positioning the take-off, extending the ball toward the rim with one hand while avoiding the blocking efforts of defenders – veteran systems thinkers are unaware of the full set of thinking skills that they deploy while executing their craft. By identifying these separate competencies, both new hoop legends and systems thinking wannabes can practice each skill in isolation. This approach can help you master each of the skills before you try to put them all together in an actual game situation.

The Systems Thinking Method

Before exploring these critical thinking skills, it’s important to have a clear picture of the iterative, four-step process used in applying systems thinking (see “Steps in the Systems Thinking Method”). In using this approach, you first specify the problem or issue you wish to explore or resolve. You then begin to construct hypotheses to explain the problem and test them using models whether mental models, pencil and paper models, or computer simulation models. When you are content that you have developed a workable hypothesis, you can then communicate your new found clarity to others and begin to implement change.

When we use the term “models” in this article, we are referring to something that represents a specifically defined set of assumptions about how the world works. We start from a premise that all models are wrong because they are incomplete representations of reality, but that some models are more useful than others (they help us understand reality better than others).  There is a tendency in the business world, however, to view models (especially computer-based models) as “answer generators;” we plug in a bunch of numbers and get out a set of answers. From a systems thinking perspective, however, we view models more as “assumptions and theory testers” we formulate our understanding and then rigorously test it. The bottom line is that all models are only as good as the quality of the thinking that went into creating them. Systems thinking, and its ensemble of seven critical thinking skills, plays an important role in improving the quality of our thinking.

The Seven Critical Thinking Skills

As you undertake a systems thinking process, you will find that the use of certain skills predominates in each step. I believe there are at least seven separate but interdependent thinking skills that seasoned systems thinkers master. The seven unfold in the following sequence when you apply a systems thinking approach: Dynamic Thinking, System-as-Cause Thinking, Forest Thinking, Operational Thinking, Closed-Loop Thinking, Quantitative Thinking, and Scientific Thinking.

The first of these skills, Dynamic Thinking, helps you define the problem you want to tackle. The next two, System-as-Cause Thinking and Forest Thinking, are invaluable in helping you to determine what aspects of the problem to include, and how detailed to be in representing each. The fourth through sixth skills, Operational Thinking, Closed-Loop Thinking, and Quantitative Thinking, are vital for representing the hypotheses (or mental models) that you are going to test. The final skill, Scientific Thinking, is useful in testing your models.

Each of these critical thinking skills serves a different purpose and brings something unique to a systems thinking analysis. Let’s explore these skills, identify how you can develop them, and determine what their “non-systems thinking” counterparts (which dominate in traditional thinking) look like.

Dynamic Thinking: Dynamic Thinking is essential for framing a problem or issue in terms of a pattern of behavior over time. Dynamic Thinking contrasts with Static Thinking, which leads people to focus on particular events. Problems or issues that unfold over time as opposed to one-time occurrences are most suitable for a systems thinking approach.

You can strengthen your Dynamic Thinking skills by practicing constructing graphs of behavior overtime. For example, take the columns of data in your company’s annual report and graph a few of the key variables over time. Divide one key variable by another (such as revenue or profit by number of employees), and then graph the results. Or pick up today’s news-paper and scan the head-lines for any attention-grabbing events. Then think about how you might see those events as merely one interesting point in a variable’s overall trajectory over time. The next time someone suggests that doing this-and-that will fix such-and-such, ask, “Over what time frame? How long will it take? What will happen to key variables over time?”

System-as-Cause Thinking: Dynamic Thinking positions your issue as a pattern of behavior over time. The next step is to construct a model to explain how the behavior arises, and then suggest ways to improve that behavior. System-as-Cause Thinking can help you determine the extensive boundary of your model, that is, what to include in your model and what to leave out (see “Extensive and Intensive Model Boundaries”). From a System-as-Cause Thinking approach, you should include only the elements and inter-relationships that are within the control of managers in the system and are capable of generating the behavior you seek to explain.

By contrast, the more common System-as-Effect Thinking views behavior generated by a system as “driven” by external forces. This perspective can lead you to include more variables in your model than are really necessary. System-as-Cause Thinking thus focuses your model more sharply, because it places the responsibility for the behavior on those who manage the policies and plumbing of the system itself.

To develop System-as-Cause Thinking, try turning each “They did it” or “It’s their fault” you encounter into a “How could we have been responsible?” It is always possible to see a situation as caused by “outside forces.” But it is also always possible to ask, “What did we do to make ourselves vulnerable to those forces that we could not control?”

EXTENSIVE AND INTENSIVE MODEL BOUNDARIES

The extensive boundary is the breadth or scope of what’s included in the model. The intensive boundary is the depth or level of detail at which the items included in the model are represented.

Forest Thinking: In many organizations, people assume that to really know something, they must focus on the details. This assumption is reinforced by day-to-day existence—we experience life as a sequence of detailed events. We can also think of this as Tree-by-Tree Thinking. Models that we create by applying Tree-by-Tree Thinking tend to be large and overly detailed; their intensive boundaries run deep. In using such models, we would want to know whether that particular red truck broke down on Tuesday before noon, as opposed to being interested in how frequently, on average, trucks break down. Forest Thinking–inspired models, by contrast, group the details to give us an “on average” picture of the system. To hone your Forest Thinking skills, practice focusing on similarities rather than differences. For example, although everyone in your organization is unique, each also shares some characteristics with others. While some are highly motivated to perform and others are not, all have the potential to make a contribution. Regardless of the individual, realizing potential within an organization comes from the same generic structure. For example, what is the relationship among factors that tends to govern an individual’s motivation?

Operational Thinking :Operational Thinking tries to get at causality—how is behavior actually generated? This thinking skill contrasts with Correlational or Factors Thinking. Steven Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, one of the most popular nonfiction books of all time, is a product of Factors Thinking. So are the multitude of lists of “Critical Success Factors” or “Key Drivers of the Business” that decorate the office walls (and mental models) of so many senior executives. We like to think in terms of lists of factors that influence or drive some result.

There are several problems with mental models bearing such list structures, however. For one thing, lists do not explain how each causal factor actually works its magic. They merely imply that each factor “influences,” or is “correlated with,” the corresponding result. But influence or correlation is not the same as causality.

For example, if you use Factors Thinking to analyze what influences learning, you can easily come up with a whole “laundry list” of factors (see “Two Representations of the Learning Process”). But if you use Operational Thinking, you might depict learning as a process that coincides with the building of experience. Operational Thinking captures the nature of the learning process by describing its structure, while Factors Thinking merely enumerates a set of factors that in some way “influence” the process.

To develop your Operational Thinking skills, you need to work your way through various activities that define how a business works examine phenomena such as hiring, producing, learning, motivating, quitting, and setting price. In each case, ask, “What is the nature of the process at work?” as opposed to “What are all of the factors that influence the process?”

Closed-Loop Thinking :Imagine discussing your company’s profitability situation with some of your coworkers. In most companies, the group would likely list things such as product quality, leadership, or competition as influences on profitability (see “A Straight-Line vs. a Closed-Loop View of Causality”). This tendency to list factors stems from Straight-Line Thinking. The assumptions behind this way of thinking are 1) that causality runs only one way—from “this set of causes” to “that effect,” and 2) that each cause is independent of all other causes. In reality, however, as the closed-loop part of the illustration shows, the “effect” usually feeds back to influence one or more of the “causes,” and the causes themselves affect each other. Closed-Loop Thinking skills therefore lead you to see causality as an ongoing process, rather than a one-time event.
To sharpen your Closed-Loop Thinking skills, take any laundry list that you encounter and think through the ways in which the driven drives and in which the drivers drive each other. Instead of viewing one variable as the most important driver and another one as the second most important, seek to understand how the dominance among the variables might shift over time.

TWO REPRESENTATIONS OF THE LEARNING PROCESS

Factors Thinking merely enumerates a set of factors that in some way “influence” the learning process. Operational Thinking captures the nature of the learning process by describing its structure.

Quantitative Thinking: In this phrase, “quantitative” is not synonymous with “measurable.” The two terms are often confused in practice, perhaps because of the presumption in the Western scientific world that “to know, one must measure precisely.” Although Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle caused physicists to back off a bit in their quest for numerical exactitude, business folk continue unabated in their search for perfectly measured data. There are many instances of analysis getting bogged down because of an obsession with “getting the numbers right.” Measurement Thinking continues to dominate!

There are a whole lot of things, however, that we will never be able to measure very precisely. These include “squishy,” or “soft,” variables, such as motivation, self-esteem, commitment, and resistance to change. Many so-called “hard” variables are also difficult to measure accurately, given the speed of change and the delays and imperfections in information systems.

A STRAIGHT-LINE VS.A CLOSED-LOOP VIEW OF CAUSALITY

The assumptions behind Straight-Line Thinking are that causality runs only one way and that each cause is independent of all other causes. Closed-Loop Thinking shows that the “effect” usually feeds back to influence one or more of the “causes,” and the causes themselves affect each other.

But let’s return to our “squishy” variables. Would anyone want to argue that an employee’s self-esteem is irrelevant to her performance? Who would propose that commitment is unimportant to a company’s success? Although few of us would subscribe to either argument, things like self-esteem and commitment rarely make it into the spreadsheets and other analytical tools that we use to drive analysis. Why? Because such variables can’t be measured. However, they can be quantified. If zero means a total absence of commitment, 100 means being as committed as possible. Are these numbers arbitrary? Yes. But are they ambiguous? Absolutely not! If you want your model to shed light on how to increase strength of commitment as opposed to predicting what value commitment will take on in the third-quarter of 1997—you can include strength of commitment as a variable with no apologies. You can always quantify, though you can’t always measure.

To improve your Quantitative Thinking skills, take any analysis that your company has crunched through over the last year and ask what key “soft” variables were omitted, such as employee motivation. Then, ruminate about the possible implications of including them systems thinking gives you the power to ascribe full-citizen status to such variables. You’ll give up the ability to achieve perfect measurement. But if you’re honest, you’ll see that you never really had that anyway.

Scientific Thinking: The final systems thinking skill is Scientific Thinking. I call its opposite Proving Truth Thinking. To understand Scientific Thinking, it is important to acknowledge that progress in science is measured by the discarding of falsehoods. The current prevailing wisdom is always regarded as merely an “entertainable hypothesis,” just waiting to be thrown out the window. On the other hand, too many business models are unscientific; yet business leaders revere them as truth and defend them to the death. Analysts make unrelenting efforts to show that their models track history and therefore must be “true.”

Seasoned systems thinkers continually resist the pressure to “validate” their models (that is, prove truth) by tracking history. Instead, they work hard to become aware of the falsehoods in their models and to communicate these to their team or clients. “All models are wrong,”” said W. Edwards Deming. “Some models are useful.” Deming was a smart guy, and clearly a systems thinker.

In using Scientific Thinking, systems thinkers worry less about outfitting their models with exact numbers and instead focus on choosing numbers that are simple, easy to understand, and make sense relative to one another. Systems thinkers also pay lots of attention to robustness they torture-test their models to death! They want to know under what circumstances their model “breaks down.” They also want to know, does it break down in a realistic fashion? What are the limits to my confidence that this model will be useful?

The easiest way to sharpen your Scientific Thinking skills is to start with a computer model that is “in balance” and then shock it. For example, transfer 90% of the sales force into manufacturing. Set price at 10 times competitor price. Triple the customer base in an instant. Then see how the model performs. Not only will you learn a lot about the range of utility of the model, but you also will likely gain insight into the location of that most holy of grails: high-leverage intervention points.

A Divide and Conquer Strategy

As the success of Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization has shown, systems thinking is both sexy and seductive. But applying it effectively is not so easy. One reason for this difficulty is that the thinking skills needed to do so are many in number and stand in stark contrast to the skill set that most of us currently use when we grapple with business issues (see “Traditional Business Thinking vs. Systems Thinking Skills”).

By separating and examining the seven skills required to apply systems thinking effectively, you can practice them one at a time. If you master the individual skills first, you stand a much better chance of being able to put them together in a game situation. So, practice . . . then take it to the hoop!

“Barry Richmond is the managing director and founder of High Performance Systems, Inc. He has a PhD in system dynamics from the MIT Sloan School of Management, an MS from Case Western Reserve, and an MBA from Columbia University”

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As long as we conceive of power as the capacity to exert one’s will over another, it is something to be wary of. Power can manipulate, coerce, and destroy. And as long as we are convinced we have none, power will always look negative. Even esteemed journalist Bill Moyers recently reinforced a view of power as categorically negative., “The further you get from power,” he said, “the closer you get to the truth.”

But power means simply our capacity to act., “Power is necessary to produce the changes I want in my community,” Margaret Moore of Allied Communities of Tarrant (ACT) in Fort Worth, Texas, told me. I’ve found many Americans returning power to its original meaning — “to be able.” From this lens, we each have power — and often, much more power than we think.

One Choice We Don’t Have

In fact, we have no choice about whether to be world changers. If we accept ecology’s insights that we exist in densely woven networks then we must also accept that every choice we make sends out ripples, even if we’re not consciously choosing. So the choice we have is not whether, but only how, we change the world. All this means that public life is not simply what officials and other “big shots” have.

So the choice we have is not whether, but only how, we change the world.

One related evidence of our power is so obvious it is often overlooked. Human beings show up in radically different notches on the “ethical scale” depending on the culture in which we live. In Japan, “only” 15 percent of men beat their spouses. In many other countries, over half do. The murder rate in the United States is four times higher than in Western Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan.

Plus, behavior can change quickly. Germany moved from a country in which millions of its citizens went along with mass murder to become in a single generation one of the world’s more respected nations. An incomparably less consequential but still telling example: In only a decade, 1992 to 2002, U. S. high school students who admitted to cheating on a test at least once in a year climbed by 21 percent to three-quarters of all surveyed.

So what do these differences and the speed of change in behavior tell us? That it is culture, not fixed aspects of human nature, which largely determines the prevalence of cooperation or brutality, honesty or deceit. And since we create culture through our daily choices, then we do, each of us, wield enormous power.

Let me explore related, empowering findings of science that also confirm our power.

Mirrors in Our Brains

Recent neuroscience reveals our interdependence to be vastly greater than we’d ever imagined. In the early 1990s, neuroscientists were studying the brain activity of monkeys, particularly in the part of the brain’s frontal lobe associated with distinct actions, such as reaching or eating.

They saw specific neurons firing for specific activities. But then they noticed something they didn’t expect at all: The very same neurons fired when a monkey was simply watching another monkey perform the action.

“Monkey see, monkey do” suddenly took on a whole new meaning for me. Since we humans are wired like our close relatives, when we observe someone else, our own brains are simultaneously experiencing at least something of what that person is experiencing. More recent work studying humans has borne out this truth.

These copycats are called “mirror neurons,” and their implications are staggering. We do walk in one another’s shoes, whether we want to or not.

“[Our] intimate brain-to-brain link-up . . . lets us affect the brain — and so the body — of everyone we interact with, just as they do us.” — Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships

We literally experience and therefore co-create one another, moment to moment. For me, our “imprintability” is itself a source of hope. We can be certain that our actions, and perhaps our mental states, register in others. We change anyone observing us. That’s power.

And we never know who’s watching. Just think: It may be when we feel most marginalized and unheard, but still act with resolve, that someone is listening or watching and their life is forever changed.

As I form this thought, the face of Wangari Maathai comes to mind. A Kenyan, Wangari planted seven trees on Earth Day in Nairobi in 1977 to honor seven women environmental leaders there. Then, over two decades, she was jailed, humiliated, and beaten for her environmental activism, but her simple act ultimately sparked a movement in which those seven trees became forty million, all planted by village women across Kenya.

In the fall of 2004, when Maathai got the call telling her she had just won the Nobel Peace Prize, her first words were:, “I didn’t know anyone was listening.” But clearly, a lot of people were beginning to listen, from tens of thousands of self-taught tree planters in Kenya to the Nobel committee sitting in Oslo.

From there I flash back to a conversation with João Pedro Stédile, a founder of the largest and perhaps most effective social movement in this hemisphere — Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement, enabling some of world’s poorest people to gain nearly twenty million acres of unused land. Under Brazil’s military regime in the early 1980s even gathering a handful of people was risky. And, in that dangerous time, who helped motivate João Pedro? It was César Chávez, he told me, and the U. S. farm workers.

I’ll bet Chávez never knew.

Just as important, the findings of neuroscience also give us insight as to how to change and empower ourselves. They suggest that a great way is to place ourselves in the company of those we want most to be like. For sure, we’ll become more like them. Thus, whom we choose as friends, as partners, whom we spend time with — these may be our most important choices. And “spending time” means more than face-to-face contact. What we witness on TV, in films, and on the Internet, what we read and therefore imagine — all are firing mirror neurons in our brains and forming us.

As the author of Diet for a Small Planet, I’m associated with a focus on the power of what we put into our mouths. But what we let into our minds equally determines who we become. So why not choose an empowering news diet? I’ve included my own menu suggestions in Recommended Reading at the end of Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity, and Courage in a World Gone Mad (Small Planet Media, 2007).

Power Isn’t a Four-Letter Word

Power is an idea. And in our culture it’s a stifling idea. We’re taught to see power as something fixed — we either have it, or we don’t. But if power is our capacity to get things done, then even a moment’s reflection tells us we can’t create much alone.

From there, power becomes something we human beings develop together — relational power. And it’s a lot more fun.

“Relational” suggests that power can expand for many people simultaneously. It’s no longer a harsh, zero sum concept — the more for you, the less for me. The growth in one person’s power can enhance the power of others. Idea 3 (see table) contrasts our limited, negative view of power with a freeing, relational view.

Let me tell you one story of relational power.

In the 1970s, pollution in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was so bad that drivers had to turn on headlights at noon to cut through it. But in the 1990s, this once-charming city — famous for its choo-choos — went from racially-divided ugly duckling to swan, winning international awards and the envy of its neighbors.

The city’s rebirth sprang in part from big investments in the city’s cultural renewal — including the world’s largest freshwater aquarium, attracting over a million visitors a year; a renovated theater involving one thousand volunteers annually; and a new riverfront park.

But all these weren’t the city fathers’ ideas.

IDEA 3: RETHINKING POWER

Twenty years ago, fifty spunky, frustrated citizens declared that the old ways of making decisions weren’t working and drew their fellow residents — across race and class lines — into a twenty-week series of brainstorming sessions they called “visioning.” Their goal was hardly modest — to save their city by the end of the century. They called itVision 2000. They drew up thirty-four goals, formed action groups, sought funding, and rolled up their sleeves.

By 1992, halfway along, the Visioners had already achieved a remarkable 85 percent of their goals. Smog was defeated, tourism was booming thanks to the new aquarium, crime was down, and jobs and lowincome housing were on the rise. People stayed downtown after dark, and the refurbished riverside had become an oak-dappled mecca.

Chattanoogans didn’t stop there. In 1992, a citywide meeting to shape a school reform agenda drew not the small crowd expected but fifteen hundred people, who generated two thousand suggestions.

By now the approach has seeped its way into the city’s culture. In 2002, to plan a big waterfront project, three hundred people participated in a “charrette” where teams used rolls of butcher paper to draw what they wanted to see happen.

“Basically, everything we do, any major initiative in Chattanooga, now involves public participation,” said Karen Hundt, who works for a joint city-county planning agency. From Atlanta to West Springfield, Massachusetts, from Bahrain to Zimbabwe, citizens taken by Chattanooga’s story are rewriting it to suit their own needs.

Here power is not a fixed pie to be sliced up. It grows as citizens join together, weaving relationships essential to sustained change.

Relational Power’s Under Appreciated Sources

While we commonly think of power in the form of official status or wealth or force restricted to a few of us, take a moment to mull over these twelve sources of relational power available to any one of us:

• Building Relationships of Trust. Thirty-five hundred congregations — Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and some Evangelicals and Muslims — are dues-paying members of one hundred thirty-three religious networks nationwide. These local federations with members adding up to as many as three million Americans are successfully tackling problems that range from poverty wages to failing schools. Their genius is what they call “one-on-one” organizing strategies. These involve face-to-face meetings allowing ordinary people to discover their own capacities because someone — finally — is listening.
• Ability to Analyze Power and Self-Interest. One such organization, Communities Organized for Public Service in San Antonio, analyzes corporate interests before bringing corporations into dialogue on job-training reform.
• Knowledge. National People’s Action documents banks’ racial “redlining” in lending and helps to pass the federal Community Reinvestment Act, which has brought over a trillion dollars into poor neighborhoods. Workers at South Mountain Company in Massachusetts buy the company and apply knowledge from their direct experience to make it profitable and to incorporate energy efficient methods.
• Numbers of People. The congregation-based Industrial Areas Foundation is able to gather together thousands for public “actions,” commanding the attention of lawmakers.
• Discipline. Young people in the Youth Action Program — precursor to the nationwide Youth Build — handle themselves with such decorum at a New York’s City Council meeting that officials are moved to respond to the group’s request for support.
• Vision. In the Merrimack Valley Project in Massachusetts, some businesses “catch” the citizens’ vision of industry responsive to community values and change their positions.
• Diversity. Memphis’s Shelby County Interfaith organization identifies distinct black and white interests on school reform and multiplies its impact by addressing both sets in improving Memphis schools.
• Creativity. Citizens in St. Paul devise their own neighborhood network to help the elderly stay out of nursing homes. Regular folks in San Antonio devise a new job training program that’s become a national model.
• Persistence. Members of ACORN, a two hundred twenty-five thousand member-strong, low-income people’s organization, stand in line all night to squeeze out paid banking lobbyists for seats in the congressional hearing room debating the Community Reinvestment Act.
• Humor. Kentuckians for the Commonwealth stage a skit at the state capitol. In bed are KFTC members portraying legislators and their farmer chairperson pretending to be a coal lobbyist. They pass big wads of fake cash under the covers. Grabbing media attention, they get their reform measure passed.
• Chutzpah — Nerve. Sixth graders in Amesville, Ohio, don’t trust the EPA to clean up after a toxic spill in the local creek, so they form themselves into the town’s water quality control team and get the job done.
• Mastering the Arts of Democracy. Organizations of the Industrial Area Foundation network, over fifty nationwide, evaluate and reflect — often right on the spot — following each public action or meeting. They ask: How do you feel? How did each spokesperson do? Did we meet our goals? A seasoned organizer will also try to teach a lesson about what the organization sees as the “universals” of public life, such as relational power.

Drops Count

Sadly, though, many of us remain blind to such a promising reframing of possibility. Imagining ourselves powerless, we disparage our acts as mere drops in the bucket … as, well, useless. But think about it: Buckets fill up really fast on a rainy night. Feelings of powerlessness come not from seeing oneself as a drop; they arise when we can’t perceive the bucket at all. Thus, to uproot feelings of powerlessness, we can work to define and shape the bucket — to consciously construct a frame that gives meaning to our actions (see “Spirals of Powerlessness and Empowerment” on p. 5).

powerment” on p. 5). That satisfying exploration begins, I believe, when we recognize that our planet’s multiple crises are neither separate nor random. They flow largely from a partial, and thus distorted, view of our own nature, which leads us to turn our fate over to forces outside our control, especially to a one-rule economy violating deep human sensibilities, not to mention our common sense. Our deepening crises flow, as well, from humanity’s to-date lack of preparedness to identify and skillfully to confront the tiny minority among us who seem to lack empathetic sensibilities.

As you now know, for me a “bucket” that both contains and gives meaning to our creative, positive acts is Living Democracy. It springs from and meets humanity’s common and deep emotional and spiritual needs. So, I wonder: In a world torn apart by sectarian division, could Living Democracy become a uniting civic vision complementing our religious and spiritual convictions — a nonsectarian yet soul-satisfying pathway out of the current morass?

I can’t be certain, of course, but I think so.

And then again, I ask myself often, whatever the real odds of reversing our global catastrophe, is there a more invigorating way to live than that of making democracy a way of life?

In answering that question negatively, I am certain.

Frances Moore Lappé is the author of 16 books, beginning with the 1971 three-million-copy bestseller, Diet for a Small Planet, which awakened a whole generation to the human-made causes of hunger and the significance of our everyday choices. This article is reprinted with permission from Chapter 4 of her newest book, Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity, and Courage in a World Gone Mad (Small Planet Press, 2007). For more information, go to www.gettingagrip.net. For chapter source notes, go to “The Book—End Notes.”

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A Starting Point for Theory-Building

Quality pioneer Dr. Edwards Deming once said, “No theory, no learning.” In order to make sense of our experience of the world, we must be able to relate that experience to some coherent explanatory story. Without a working theory, we have no means to integrate our differing experiences into a common picture. In the absence of full knowledge about a system, we must create a theory about what we don’t know, based on what we currently do know.

Each systems archetype embodies a particular theory about dynamic behavior that can serve as a starting point for selecting and formulating raw data into a coherent set of interrelationships. Once those relationships are made explicit and precise, the “theory” of the archetype can then further guide us in our data-gathering process to test the causal relationships through direct observation, data analysis, or group deliberation.

Each systems archetype also offers prescriptions for effective action. When we recognize a specific archetype at work, we can use the theory of that archetype to begin exploring that particular system or problem and work toward an intervention.

For example, if we are looking at a potential “Limits to Success” situation, the theory of that archetype suggests eliminating the potential balancing processes that are constraining growth, rather than pushing harder on the growth processes. Similarly, the “Shifting the Burden” theory warns against the possibility of a short-term fix becoming entrenched as an addictive pattern (see “Archetypes as Dynamic Theories” on pp. 9–10 for a list of each archetype and its corresponding theory).

Systems archetypes thus provide a good starting theory from which we can develop further insights into the nature of a particular system. The diagram that results from working with an archetype should not be viewed as the “truth,” however, but rather a good working model of what we know at any point in time. As an illustration, let’s look at how the “Success to the Successful” archetype can be used to create a working theory of an issue of technology transfer.

, “Success to the Successful” Example

An information systems (IS) group inside a large organization was having problems introducing a new email system to enhance company communications. Although the new system was much more efficient and reliable, very few people in the company were willing to switch from their existing email systems. The situation sounded like a “Success to the Successful” structure, so the group chose that archetype as its starting point.

'SUCCESS TO SUCCESSFUL' EMAIL

Starting with the “Success to the Successful” storyline (top), the IS team created a core dynamic theory linking the success of the old email systems with the success of the new system (middle). They then identified structural interventions they could make to use the success of the old systems to fuel the acceptance of the new one (loops B5 and B6, bottom).

The theory of this archetype (see “‘Success to the Successful’ Email” on p. 8) is that if one person, group, or idea (, “A”) is given more attention, resources, time, or practice than an alternative (, “B”), A will have a higher likelihood of succeeding than B (assuming that the two are more or less equal). The reason is that the initial success of A justifies devoting more of whatever is needed to keep A successful, usually at the expense of B (loop R1). As B gets fewer resources, B’s success continues to diminish, which further justifies allocating more resources to A (loop R2). The predicted outcome of this structure is that A will succeed and B will most likely fail.

When the IS team members mapped out their issue into this archetype, their experience corroborated the relationships identified in the loops (see “Core Dynamic Theory”). The archetype helped paint a common picture of the larger “elephant” that the group was dealing with, and clearly stated the problem: given that the existing email systems had such a head start in this structure, the attempts to convince people to use the new system were likely to fail.

Furthermore, the more time that passed, the harder it would be to ever shift from the existing systems to the new one.

Using the “Core Dynamic Theory” diagram as a common starting point, group members then explored how to use the success of the existing system to somehow drive the success of the new one (see “Extended Dynamic Theory”). They hypothesized that creating a link between “Usefulness of Existing Email” and “Usefulness of New Email” (loop B5) and/or a link between “Use of Existing Email” and “Usefulness of New Email” (loop B6) could create counterbalancing forces that would fuel the success loop of the new system. Their challenge thus became to find ways in which the current system could be used to help people appreciate the utility of the new system, rather than just trying to change their perceptions by pointing out the limitations of the existing system.

Managers As Researchers and Theory Builders

Total Quality tools such as statistical process control, Pareto charts, and check sheets enable frontline workers to become much more systematic in their problem solving and learning. With these tools, they become researchers and theory builders of their own production process, gaining insight into how the current systems work.

Similarly, systems archetypes can enable managers to become theory builders of the policy- and decision-making processes in their organizations, exploring why the systems behave the way they do. As the IS story illustrates, these archetypes can be used to create rich frameworks for continually testing strategies, policies, and decisions that then inform managers of improvements in the organization. Rather than simply applying generic theories and frameworks like Band-Aids on a company’s own specific issues, managers must take the best of the new ideas available and then build a workable theory for their own organization. Through an ongoing process of theory building, managers can develop an intuitive knowledge of why their organizations work the way they do, leading to more effective, coordinated action.

ARCHETYPES AS DYNAMIC THEORIES

Limits to success dynamic theory

The post Systems Archetypes as Dynamic Theories appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

If you’re not part of the problem, then you can’t be part of the solution.
– Bill Torbert

While this was happening, I was at my home in South Africa working on a book about how we can solve such tough, complex problems through open-minded, open-hearted talking and listening. Then my youngest stepdaughter, who is 27 years old, came home for the holidays and immediately lapsed into her old teenage behavior. She would go out without telling us, stay out partying until late, and sleep away the day. One evening she had spent hours on the phone having a weepy conversation with an old boyfriend. I was furious! I told her that this kind of behavior was absolutely unacceptable and that she needed to change what she was doing if she wanted to use my phone and stay in my house.

That approach didn’t work. The next morning she left and went to stay with her sister. I had managed to do in my own home what the Americans were doing in Iraq. I had tried to solve a tough problem by using authority: by force.

Why is it that we so often end up trying to solve our tough problems by force? Why is it that our talking so often fails? The answer is both simple and at the same time subtle and challenging. Our most common way of talking is telling, and our most common way of listening is not listening. When we talk and listen in this way, we guarantee that we will end up trying to solve our tough problems by force.

Two Distinctions for Solving Problems

I would like to offer two sets of practical distinctions that you can use to solve your tough problems more effectively. The first distinction is that there is more than one way to solve problems. There is an ordinary approach that works for simple problems, and there is an extraordinary approach that works for complex problems. The second distinction is that there is more than one way to talk and listen. If we are to solve our tough problems peacefully, we need to learn an extraordinary way of talking and listening.

I will explain these two distinctions by sharing two dramatic, life and-death stories. I’m not that sensitive to these distinctions, and so the volume has to be turned way up if I’m going to be able to hear them. These two stories involve situations in which the volume was turned way up, but the two sets of distinctions apply to all human settings—home, school, work, meetings, and national and international affairs.

I learned the first set of distinctions in 1991. I was living in London working for Royal Dutch/Shell’s scenario planning department, heading the social-political-economic research group. Our job was to tell stories about what might happen in the world outside the company, as a tool for Shell executives to use in making decisions today that would allow the company to do well no matter what happened tomorrow. One day, my boss, Joseph Jaworski, received a phone call from a professor in South Africa named Pieter le Roux, who wanted to use the Shell scenario methodology to help make plans for the transition in South Africa away from apartheid. Pieter was wondering if Shell could send somebody to provide methodological advice to the team he was putting together and to facilitate the workshops.

When I was chosen for this project, I knew almost nothing about South Africa, except that the country had a complex problem of apartheid, which most people thought could not be solved peacefully. I knew that the white minority government had been trying for years to deal with the situation by force and had failed, and that the opposition, led by the African National Congress, had tried to over throw the government by force and had failed. I was also aware that Nel- son Mandela had been released from prison a year before and that some negotiations were starting. But I didn’t know much about the scenario team Pieter had put together, except that it was very diverse and included blacks and whites, people from the left and right, professors, political activists, businessmen, establishment figures, trade unionists, and community leaders. I also knew that these people were heroes who had all, in different ways, been trying for a long time to make South Africa a better place.

Since I was very busy with my work at Shell, I didn’t do what I normally would have done: read up on South Africa and form my expert opinion about what was going on and what they ought to do about it. Not having had the time to form such an opinion, I arrived with a greater openness to what this amazing team was going to be able to do. I had also never done this kind of work outside of a company, so we simply used Shell’s scenario methodology. The team immediately launched into discussions about the ANC, the NP, the PAC, the SACP, the CP, and the UDF. I had no idea what they were talking about. One of the team members later said to me, “Adam, when we first met you, we couldn’t believe that anybody could be so ignorant. We were certain you were trying to manipulate us. When we realized that you actually didn’t know anything, that’s when we decided to trust you.” I had, by accident or synchronicity, managed to arrive with the perfect orientation: curious, respectful, and open.

What I came to understand in South Africa was that two parallel processes were occurring. There were the formal, official negotiations around a new constitution, which the newspapers reported about daily. But underneath these were hundreds of informal, unofficial meetings, such as the one I participated in, that brought together all the stakeholders—all the people who were part of the problems—to talk together about the problems and what ought to be done about them. It was through these myriad informal conversations that the formal process succeeded.

I also noticed that, even though we were using the exact same methodology as at Shell, the South African group brought a different energy to the work. In one way it was more serious, and in another more playful. What I eventually understood is that although the methodology was exactly the same, the group’s purpose was fundamentally different. At Shell we had been telling scenarios about what might happen as a tool to help the company adapt as best as it could to whatever might occur in the future. In the South African team, we were telling scenarios not so much to adapt but to create a better future. And this is what accounted for the different energy in the team.

Three Types of Complex Problems

So here’s what I learned in South Africa: a problem can be tough and complex in three different ways.

Socially Complex. A problem is socially complex when the people involved, the actors in the system, have highly diverse perspectives and interests. Problems that are socially simple can be solved by experts and authorities, because it’s easy to agree on what the problem is and for an expert or a boss to propose and implement a solution that people will support. But a socially complex problem cannot be solved without the direct participation of all the stakeholders involved.

Dynamically Complex. A problem is dynamically complex when its cause and effect are far apart in space and time. This is the kind of complexity that is addressed by systems thinking. A dynamically simple problem can be solved piece by piece, but when dynamic complexity is involved, we have to look at the behavior of the system as a whole.

Generatively Complex. When a problem is generatively complex, the future of the system is unfamiliar and undetermined. A generatively simple problem can be solved using rules of thumb from what worked in the past. But when the problem is generatively complex, it can only be solved through a group of people working it through together, listening for and trying out emerging solutions.

TWO WAYS TO SOLVE PROBLEMS

A problem can be tough and complex in three different ways; it can be socially, dynamically, and/or generatively complex. Ordinary problem-solving approaches work well for simple challenges. But when we want to solve complex problems, we need to use an extraordinary approach, in which stakeholders look together at the system as a whole and work through an emerging solution.

To give you an idea of how this problem-solving model works, let’s look at the simple matter of a police officer directing traffic at a difficult intersection. The problem is socially simple because everybody has the same objective: to get through the intersection safely and efficiently. The problem is also dynamically simple because all the causes and effects are right there, visible and immediate.

And it’s generatively simple because the way the officer directs traffic, based on what he or she learned at traffic-directing school, works fine. So the problem can be solved using the ordinary approach.

The ordinary approach works perfectly well most of the time. It’s when we want to solve complex problems that we need to use an extraordinary approach, in which the people who are part of the problem— the stakeholders—look together at the system as a whole and work through an emerging solution. This is what I realized the Mont Fleur team had done in South Africa. They had gathered leading representatives from all of the stakeholder groups and used sce- nario planning as a tool for thinking about the behavior of the whole system and finding emerging solutions. My point here is that the ordinary approach cannot generate a peaceful solution to a complex problem. If we use the ordinary approach on a complex problem, we will end up trying to solve the problem by force.

I understood the significance of this realization in my work in South Africa, where people were experimenting with an extraordinary approach to solving complex prob- lems that was applicable not just to the South African context, but else where as well. What I didn’t understand, because I was not experienced enough, is how the South African team was able to work with this extraordinary approach. In the years that followed, I got a lot of experience with this methodology through doing this kind of work with multistakeholder teams in South Africa, Northern Ireland, Israel, Argentina, Colombia, the United States, and Canada. I also began to develop, with colleagues, a family of tools for working with important complex problems in companies and governments.

It wasn’t until 1998, however, in the course of doing some work in Guatemala, that I really grasped the essence of how a group could use the extraordinary approach. I don’t know how well you know the story of Guatemala. It has the dubious distinction of having had the longest running and most brutal civil war in all of Latin America. Over a 36-year period, from 1960 to 1996, more than 200,000 people were killed and disappeared out of a population of only 8 million. More than a million people became internal refugees, and the country as a whole experienced a brutality such as humanity has rarely seen. By the time the peace treaty was signed in 1996, the social fabric of the country had been shredded.

Many brave and wonderful efforts, which continue today, have been made to try to put things back together again. One of these efforts, inspired by the project in South Africa, was called Visión Guatemala. The Visión Guatemala group brought together a group of leaders—even more diverse and senior than the South African team—from the mili- tary, the former guerrillas, business, church, academics, and youth leaders, to try to understand what had hap- pened in the country, what was happening, and what ought to happen. Those of you who follow the news know that things are by no means all right in Guatemala, but in the five years they’ve been working together, this team has made a big impact in the country, on the platforms of all the major political parties, on restructuring the education and tax systems, on constitutional amendments, on anti-poverty programs, on dialogue processes at the municipal level and among politicians, and so forth.

Four Ways of Talking and Listening

In 2000 a group of researchers from the Society for Organizational Learning interviewed members of the Visión Guatemala team to try to pinpoint exactly what happened in their group to allow them to do such extraordinary work in such a highly complex system. The answer the researchers arrived at has to do with the way this group, over the course of their involvement together, progressed in the way they were talking and listening.

Downloading. In the chart “Four Ways of Talking and Listening” (see p. 5), based on the work of Otto Scharmer of MIT, there are four quadrants. According to the researchers’ observations, the Visión Guatemala group started their conversations in downloading. This is supported by an interview with Elena Díez Pinto, the leader of the group. She said, “When I arrived at the hotel for lunch before the start of the initial meeting, the first thing I noticed was that the indigenous people were sitting together, the military guys were sitting together, the human rights group was sitting together. I thought, ‘They are never going to speak to each other.’ In Guatemala we have learned to be very polite to each other. We are so polite that we say ‘yes’ but think ‘no.’ I was worried that we would be so polite that the real issues would never emerge.”

This first type of talking and listening is called downloading, because we merely repeat the story that’s already in our heads, like download- ing a file from the Internet without making any change to it. I say what I always say or what I think is appropriate, such as “How are you? I’m fine,” because I’m afraid that if I say what I’m really thinking, something terrible will happen, for instance, I’ll be embarrassed or even killed. Listening in downloading mode is not listening at all. I am only hearing the tape in my own head.

Debating. The second kind of talking and listening is called debating. A wonderful example of this process occurred in Visión Guatemala’s first workshop. One of the interviewees said, “The first round in the first session was extremely negative, because we were all looking back to the events of recent years, which had left a deep imprint on us. Thus a first moment full of pessimism was generated. Suddenly a young man stood up and questioned our pessimism in a very direct manner. This moment marked the beginning of a very important change, and we continually referred to it afterward. That a young man would suddenly call us ‘old pes- simists’ was an important contribution.” This was debating in the sense that the young man was saying what he really thought, which is what happens when people make the transition from downloading to debating. A clash of arguments occurs; ideas are put forward and judged objectively as in a courtroom.

I used to undervalue debating because it seemed so commonplace. But in the last few years, through observing how many countries and companies in which I’ve worked stay in downloading mode, where people are afraid to say what they think, I’ve come to appreciate the move from downloading to debating as a huge step forward. You can see more perspectives, that is, more of the system.

However, in debating as well as downloading, you’re still seeing what is already there. Neither of those modes creates anything new. For example, in a debate or a courtroom, people have prepared what they want to say before they even enter the room. In that sense, both download- ing and debating lead to a reenactment of patterns of the past or of existing realities. To bring forward something new, we need to talk and listen in an extraordinary way.

Dialoguing. The third mode is called dialoguing. My favorite example of this in the Visión Guatemala team occurred one day when the group was talking about an extremely difficult subject: the civil war in which hundreds of thousands of people had been killed. A general in the army was trying to explain honestly what the war had looked like from his experience and perspective, which was both a very difficult and an unpopular thing for him to do. He certainly did not have the sympathy of most of the people in the room. As he spoke, the woman listening beside him, Raquel Zelaya, the cabinet secretary of peace who was officially responsible for implementing the peace accords, leaned over to him and said, “Julio, I know that nobody enrolls in a military academy in order to learn how to massacre women and children.”

FOUR WAYS OF TALKING AND LISTENING

Downloading and debating work fine for solving simple problems, but they don’t work for solving complex ones. For complex problems, groups need to use dialoguing and presencing, and to be able to shift from one mode to another, as appropriate.

This was a remarkable statement. On the one hand, she was signaling that she had been listening to him with empathy, listening from his perspective and realizing that no matter what had happened, he certainly hadn’t started out his life with a brutal intention. At the same time, through self-reflection, she was indicating her understanding that the way she thought about things mattered and affected how this situation would unfold. In other words, if you cannot see how what you’re doing is contributing to creating the current reality, then by definition you have no leverage, no place to stand, no way to intervene to change the problem situation. When Raquel made that comment to the general, she was recognizing the way in which herat titudes were part of the polarization and needed to change to open up a new way forward.

So in dialoguing, I am both listening to you from within you and listening to myself knowing where I’m coming from. I am not just listening objectively to ideas; I am listening subjectively from inside you and me. And because I’m listening from inside a living, growing system, I can glimpse what’s possible but not yet there. This type of talking and listening is the root of the potential forchange and creativity.

Presencing. This fourth type of talking and listening is what Otto Scharmer, along with Joseph Jaworski, Betty Sue Flowers, and Peter Senge, has written a book about, which is due to be released this winter and is titled Presence. For that reason, I am using the word presencing, because what I am referring to is the particular kind of talking and listening, of being and doing, that they describe in their book. In the Visión Guatemala group, we experienced this kind of generative dialogue one evening at the first workshop. The group had gotten together after dinner, and I had asked the participants to tell stories about their experiences, either recent or long ago. The exercise was a continuation of the scenario work of trying to understand what had happened and what was happening in Guatemala. But rather than use systems thinking as an objective tool to identify driving forces and key uncertainties, we were using amore subjective approach.

It was a dramatic evening. Helen Mack Chang, a prominent business woman, spoke about the assassination of her sister, a researcher, in broad day-light in Guatemala City some years before. She shared her experience of that day, after her sister had been murdered, and how she had run from government office to government office, trying to find out what had happened, and how the first person she had spoken to, who had lied to her and told her that he knew nothing, was the man sitting beside her that evening in the circle. We were long past being polite. Now people were really saying what they thought.

Then a man named Ronalth Ochaeta told a story. Ronalth was at that time the executive director of the Catholic Church’s human rights office, which published the very important first report on the civil war called “Nunca Más” (, “Never Again”). He spoke of how he had gone one day to be the official observer at the exhumation of a mass grave in a Mayan village. There were many such graves. As he stood by the side of the grave and watched the forensics team removing the earth, he noticed many small bones at the bottom. He asked them, “What happened here? Did people have their bones broken during the massacre?” They answered, “No, people did not have their bones broken. This massacre included several pregnant women, and what you’re seeing are the bones of their fetuses.”

You can feel a little bit now the quality of the silence—the quality of the listening, the realization, the understanding—that we have in this room right now. Perhaps you can imagine what it was like to hear that story in a group of 40 people, all of whom had lived through this experience and in one way or another been implicated. It was a silence such as I had never heard. It just went on and on, for five, maybe ten minutes.

At the end of the day, we were talking about what had happened, and several people used the word communion to refer to that moment when the whole group had been part of one flesh. I remarked that I thought there was a spirit in the room, and a Mayan man said to me afterward, “Mr. Kahane, why were you surprised there was a spirit in the room? Didn’t you know that today is the Mayan Day of the Spirits?” When the SoL researchers interviewed the members of the Visión Guatemala team, six of the intervie- wees referred to those five minutes of silence as the moment when everything had turned in the team, the moment when the team understood why they were there and what they had to do.

One of them said, “As to the story that Ronalth recounted, the one that caused such a big impact, that is one story and there must be a thousand like it. What happened in this country was brutal. Thirty years . . . and we were aware of it, I was. I was a politician for a long time, and this was one of the areas that I worked in. I was even threatened by the military commissioners on account of my political work. We all suffered, but as opponents, as enemies, always from our own particular points of view. As far as I am concerned, the workshops helped me to understand this in its true human dimension—a tremendous brutality. I was aware of it but had not experienced it. It is one thing to know about something as statistical data and another to actually feel it. To think that all of us had to go through this process. I think that after understanding this, everyone was committed to preventing it from happening again.”

This is what we mean by presencing. It wasn’t that people felt empathy for Ronalth; anybody could have told that story. It was as if, through Ronalth, we had all been able to see an aspect of the reality of Guatemala that was of central importance. It was as if, in those five minutes, the boundaries between us disappeared, and the team was able to see what really mattered to them and what they had to do together. In this way, the process of moving from downloading and debate to dialoguing and presencing can be described as one of opening, of developing the capacity to hear what is trying to come through.

Listening to the Sacred Within Each of Us

I have explained two sets of practical distinctions. First, there are two ways to solve problems: an ordinary approach that works for simple problems, and an extraordinary approach that works for complex problems. But the ordinary approach does not work for complex problems, and if we use it, we will end up trying to solve the problem by force. Second, there are four ways of talking and listening.

Downloading and debating work fine for solving simple problems, but they don’t work for solving complex problems. For complex problems, we need to use dialoguing and presencing. If you want to be able to solve complex problems, you need both the awareness of these different ways of talking and listening and the capacity to move among them.

In 1998 Desmond Tutu retired as the Anglican Archbishop of Southern Africa. His successor, Njongonkulu Ndungane, wanted to hold a strategic planning workshop with the 32 bishops who would now be reporting to him. He asked me to facilitate the workshop. Although there were some tough issues to be worked out, it was a joyous meeting.

Right at the beginning, I noticed that these bishops were remarkable listeners; they seemed intuitively to understand and be able to navigate among these four ways of talking and listening. For example, when we were making ground rules for the work- shop, they seemed concerned about the danger of downloading and not listening (they might have called it pontificating). One of the bishops proposed the ground rule, “We must listen to each other’s ideas.” A second bishop said, “No, brother, that’s not quite it. We must listen to one another with empathy.” Then a third bishop said, “No, brothers, that’s not quite it. We must listen to the sacred within each of us.”

I think the bishops got it right. If we can learn to listen to each other truly, with empathy, and if we can learn to listen to the sacred whole as expressed through each of us, then we can peacefully solve even our most complex problems.

The post The Potential of Talking and the Challenge of Listening appeared first on The Systems Thinker.