Systems thinking - it's complicated
29 April 2021 – In the second of our quarterly blogs, Alice Spencer, Programme Director and Global Lead for HRH The Prince of Wales’s Business and Sustainability Programme, explores the concept of systems thinking that is foundational to CISL’s education programmes, posing the challenge of how we encourage senior leaders to embrace complexity to inform decision making and catalyse systems level change.
"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."
John Muir
Volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) is regularly used to describe our new reality and can be seen as shorthand forthe growing need for a transformational change in our approaches of management and leadership. Applying ‘systems level thinking' to global VUCAchallengesis no longer an option. Put another way, we won’t arrive at simple, quick-fix solutions using linear thinking to address complex, long-term problems at a systems scale.
Many can recall moments of realisation that ‘everything is connected’; a constellation of individual bits working together to make up one complex, messy whole. Whether that was with a child’s curiosity, lying belly down in a field watching the intricacies of nature unfold between the blades of grass; or later in life visiting faraway places and observing the different socio-cultural dynamics that often teach us as much about ourselves as the host communities.
One moment for me was visiting South Pacific island nations, where those who contribute the least to global emissions are suffering the most from the results of climate change. Policies of‘dignified migration’to neighbouring New Zealand and Australia have been agreed before rising sea levels and increasingly intense weather events claim their island homes. This injustice is a symptom that highlights what happens when systems evolve that don’t consider consequences of actions, or inaction.
What was one of your own moments?
Totruly engage with the concept and begin thinking systemically, it is often an experiential, lived realisation that is sparked outside of the library halls; a well-told story, a documentary, an observation, a moment.Some people are intuitively systems thinkers, seeking out patterns and connections that underpin big societal challenges like climate change, systemic racism, the loss of nature and mass extinction or a global pandemic. Others can find thinking systemically frustrating and a barrier to ever getting anything done.
So how can systems thinking be deployed for better results rather than being the antithesis of focus and action?
The challenge – systems thinking versus commercial reality
"Social problems seldom get solved, because people define these problems in ways that overwhelm their ability to do anything about them."
Karl Weick, Small wins: Redefining the Scale of Social Problems
Examples exist of businesses observing trends, understanding system dynamics and taking action to get into a stronger position to mitigate shock for themselves and for the societies in which they operate. Within our seminars, we learn from these approaches, exploring the root causes of system shocks – not just the symptoms – and considering how we can leverage our crisis response to address underlying issues.
At an organisational level, many changes implemented are ‘low-hanging fruits’ such as switching from fossil fuels to renewable sources to power operations. While admirable, these changes often do not stretch far enough and ‘doing sustainability’ can become piecemeal investments in niche activities that promote incrementalism and not the transformational change required, at scale.
Transformative change requires solutions at systems level and asking questions such as ‘How can we mobilise financial resources to catalyse a transition to a decentralised energy system?’. By framing the right and most-challenging questions, we hope to influence organisations toshift from a well-performing organisation in ratings tables to a truly sustainable organisation.
At an individual level, it can be an overwhelming, lonely and potentially disempowering tobe a systems thinker in a linear organisation. It can also spur a lack of incentive to act; if you can’t change the system then what’s the point in doing anything at all? Or how can I do anything if I don’t know what effect my intervention will have?
The focus of our programmes is on helping individuals map out critical leverage points that can help individuals push toward even small yet disruptive interventions. Nudging a system towards a tipping pointcan be a significant unlock for change, whether that is the cost of renewables out-competing fossil fuels or regenerative agricultural practices safeguarding the long-term prospects of soil health and the future of our food systems.
Wicked problems
Most of the dilemmas we pose delegates in our programmes fall beyond classic, technical and even complex problems and into the category of ‘wicked problems’. To navigate complexity requires understanding the system to improve its function, however wicked problems are complex, multi-faceted, dynamic, unbounded, contested and cannot be solved in a ‘perfect’ way.
As senior leaders, our delegates are often required to have all of the answers and the imperfect response to systems level, wicked problems is not an appealing prospect to front in the boardroom. However, we encourage delegates to let go of the search of easy answers or of finding perfect and elegant solutions, and rather to engage with the tough but rewarding process of putting their shoulders – individually and collectively – to making progress on the big and messy challenges that we face. Recognising that there is no handbook for the future, no ‘right’ answer, just ‘better’ answers can be both daunting and liberating.
The future of business through the lens of systems thinking
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
Buckminster Fuller
At CISL we spend a lot of time thinking through how we can most effectively apply our influence and expertise to motivating systems level change via the programmes that we deliver.
This includes but is not limited to helping delegates:
- (Re)define the purpose of the organisation – what are you for? Is the purpose of your organisation written with the wider system in mind? Do you fabricate bits of material to put in cars or are you contributing to the reimagining of mobility?
- Deeply understand the root causes of a challenge – why it evolved, what paradigm has enabled it to exist and what can be done to start balancing the sheets to operate within our human and planetary boundaries? What levers are available to you and who can help you pull them? What is your entry point?
- Explore the interrelations – are you adequately curious about the interrelations of drivers and consequences; problems and symptoms? Start pulling at the threads and see what they may be hitched to.
- Identify the most material issues – where does your organisation have the most impact? You can have an excellent net-zero plan for your offices and immediate operations in the run up to COP 26, but if your most material issue is ploughing up of native forests, this needs to be proactively surfaced and addressed. If you don’t, an NGO will.
- Invite allies and adversaries into the tent – have you brought together insights and learning from across traditional boundaries or disciplines? Do your stakeholders reflect the diversity of the system within which you hold influence?
- Ask questions about how success is measured – how is your organisation organised and who makes decisions, and about what? The ‘G’ in ‘ESG’ is a powerful unlock to change that can take organisations beyond business as usual to meaningful change with systems in mind.
- Apply non-traditional approaches to wicked problems – doing the same thing and expecting different results is Einstein’s well known definition of insanity, so what is your organisation’s wicked problems that can benefit from a fresh approach?
Our series of Business & Sustainability Programme seminars, held around the world, have become a global benchmark for sustainability leadership education. With over 3,200 alumni from more than 1,500 organisations, we celebrate 26 years of the programme this year.
The programme is designed to give senior executives the knowledge and techniques to address key sustainability challenges in a practical way.
Participants are encouraged to review their current business models and set a vision for what success looks like in the future, leaving the course with the inspiration, understanding and confidence to define and respond to pressing social, economic and environmental priorities.