ABCD as a Systemic Means and Support to Ostrom’s Commons

The previous series of three posts attempted to bridge Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) with Systems Thinking, the two sections of the New Community Paradigms (NCP) wiki seen as being among the furthermost separated. Bridging NCP wiki-sections is a basic feature of the wiki, especially with the NCP wiki-map but the differences in conceptual approaches between the two are especially distant. Both were discovered in this search for new community paradigms. There is a bias towards Systems Thinking, not due to longer exposure, 2015, 2016 in earnest for ABCD and 2013 for Systems Thinking but to a natural affinity. Still learning both. The bridging of the two was done across a presumption of complexity incorporating both. Complexity, to be clear from the start, is seen as actually a good thing and necessary though all too often incoherent if not problematic.

The recent blog post, Ostrom, the Commons, and the Green New Deal continued to explore the development of concepts involving dynamic complex systems previously raised in this blog. In addition to bridging concepts, there is a desire to establish a deeper and firmer foundation through biological constructs such as Carrying Capacity and an interest shown in Ostrom's work by anthropologists.

This post questions how far ABCD relational practices and Ostrom’s polycentric governance can be extended limited by the increasing complexity inherent in larger groups or wider circles of Dunbar's Number. The reach of ABCD, and more indirectly Ostrom's polycentric governance, is arguably restricted by Dunbar's Number.

There are four layers, or "Circles of Acquaintanceship," or implicit social contracts making up Dunbar’s number scaling relatively consistently to each other. The first circle is three to five of our very closest friends. The next layer or circle is twelve (the size of a jury) to fifteen persons whose death would devastate us. Next circle is made up of fifty persons, or “the typical overnight camp size among traditional hunter-gatherers like the Australian Aboriginals or the San Bushmen of southern Africa.”

Beyond the fourth level of one hundred and fifty persons, there are still further circles with an ideal democracy set at five thousand, three hundred. Larger circles though involve even greater degrees of complexity and far less emotional attachment, especially between non-familial relationships.

Though usually in agreement or sympathy, there are a few points with which I don't see the same as Cormac Russell, Managing Director of Nurture Development and faculty member of the ABCD Institute, leaning towards Dunbar’s empiricism but then I am a keeps-himself-to-himself in-his-own-head type introvert so biased in my perspective.

Cormac does not include family members (or professionals), only true associates, in his associational connections and Dunbar does with kin prioritized. He sees Dunbar’s fourth level at 150 persons as a minimum meaning most of us have a deficit of 99 persons, not including familial relationships, to make up for from our average base of 51 persons in our associational lives. He knows that Dunbar saw the fourth level of 150 as a maximum limit which I suspect few people truly reach. It is not just walking distance separating people but emotional distance as well. As the number of people in a circle increases the emotional connection between them decreases with each successive circle and there are physiologically set cognitive limits.

However, it is Cormac’s vision of community associational relationships that must be strived towards to create the needed systemic changes in the direct democracy governance of our communities which requires not only connections but diversity as well to deal with complex even wicked problems. ABCD then becomes a necessary and even a primary component of New Community Paradigms but not necessarily a sufficient one.

The question to be considered then is how Ostrom’s polycentric governance of community and the commons could help ABCD extend the network of implicit contracts and, as importantly, how ABCD could support Ostrom’s polycentric governance to develop the required trust essential to achieve the advantage of those implicit social contracts.

As has been asserted before, Asset Based Community Development seeks to help communities find solutions to community challenges upon the basis of a system of community-based associational relationships to develop community wealth or resources as opposed to economic wealth or money by a few.

Most larger geographically placed, politically defined by institutional government type communities such as cities or towns are usually composed of many diverse socially and often demographically defined place-based communities or neighborhoods of differing levels of influence.

There are other distinct types of community in addition to these that can extend beyond geographic boundaries but still not be necessarily separate. Communities, in the context of this post and ABCD, will refer to neighborhoods and smaller social-based communities. Larger entities such as cities are dealt with through their institutions.

The previous series went over questions that ABCD believes each community or anyone sincerely wishing to build better communities needs to ask. An issue for many communities then is whether they or anybody are even asking these essential questions? ABCD seeks to change this by committing to re-seeding associational life at a hyper-local level (i.e. street level). ABCD is about the strengthening of social capital or what could also be considered the Carrying Capacity within a community to save people from a life of institutionalization by creating community alternatives to the institutional (systems) world.

ABCD and Community, a Systemic Analysis pt 3 reminded us that the carrying capacity of a local community depends upon good stewardship of that community’s welfare ideally requiring the correct sequencing of nurturing at three levels. The first level is recognizing that there are things that communities do best on their own without institutional assistance. The second level is recognizing that there are things that communities can basically do themselves but with some help from outside agencies. The third level is recognizing that there are things that communities need to have done for them by outside agencies. Something institutions readily and often exclusively do.

At the third level, the system being generated likely becomes entrenched, leading to a form of top-down service delivery by command, being persistent and resilient even while failing to address the needs of its supposed beneficiaries while eroding social capital and creating high levels of dependence on external resources which are now disappearing.

Neighborhoods have experienced years of interacting with the different public and private institutional agencies which have provided services of one kind or another, under the auspices of governmentally defined agencies, but not at equal levels. Outside agencies, institutional or otherwise, ideally should seek to be in the right relationship with smaller social, demographic, cultural communities. However, it has been many of these very same agencies who have failed, are still failing, and are now looking for means to systematize their failure as a new normal.

Cormac sees this institutionalization causing further atomization or breaking up of relationships or people’s sense of community into individual elements in what I believe can be interpreted as being a system of disorganized complexity. This is not considered an oxymoron, even disorganized gas molecules can be made to react (behave) in certain ways through proper manipulation. ABCD though could also involve the atomization of a community but to the level of independent agents connecting potentially in a self-organizing fashion through a system of organized complexity as defined by Jane Jacobs, structured by Ostrom and systematized by Meadows.

Without proper investment in community building through the correct Agency interactions or better community conversations, institutional stewardship remains stuck at the third level while second level interactions can be commodified drifting towards the third level in the name of efficiencies and there is little incentive to make any extended investment. The first level carrying capacity then is relegated to fighting to retain whatever influence on to which the community may be holding on let alone endeavoring to increase its social capital.

What leverage then is afforded to local communities or even those working sincerely and earnestly in support of local communities to ensure that this is done properly? Even if attempted, providing the proportionate support that does not displace or diminish local community power is a difficult balancing act with the best of intentions. It isn't by the communities themselves, at least not initially, and it is doubtful that it is the institutional agencies so is there presumably a third sector or movement outside of these communities that are being appealed to beyond the already converted to the ABCD approach?

This post will also reveal the connection of ABCD back to the concept of the Commons and Ostrom’s work, a path already established in the blog post-ABCD, Social Networks and the Commons connecting Associational Life:

“A viable way to be collective and inclusive from the bottom up, according to Cormac and those with a similar mindset, is to work through the concept of the communal Commons to enable some type of Coalition of the Doing in determining the relationship between Capitalism and the Commons".

David Bollier, Director of the Reinventing the Commons Program at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, starts off the article speaking of enclosures as the historical anthesis to the Commons.

“Enclosures eclipse the history and memory of the commons, rendering them invisible. The impersonal, individualistic, transaction-based ethic of the market economy becomes the new normal.”
An enclosure, as defined by Bollier, then can be seen as a form of imposed exclusion, a means of differentiating between clique or exclusive communities and colony or excluded communities.

A Commons, within an ABCD framework, can then be seen as both place-based with the resources of that place and people-based as an associational network overseeing those resource-based commons. The Social Network is both a people-based defined social system overseeing the Commons as a place-based resource so that the smallest associational successes of ABCD can not only reverberate through the entire community (system) but also give it history or legacy. It becomes a matter then, as Cormac has said, of not reforming (institutional) systems but reclaiming the Commons.

Learning to Apply a Systems Practice to the Wicked Problem of Homelessness

This is the beginning of another online course sponsored by Acumen and another course in collaboration with Jo Foraker with whom I worked with on the Modeling the Last Mile to Feed the Homeless series. In that course, the focus was on financial modeling but systems thinking modeling was always included underneath near the surface. Again, only a flavor of the course is going to be provided here and not the course itself. Instead, the focus, as before, will be more on how the course connects with new community paradigms.

This course is more directly on Systems Practice and is being taught by Rob Ricigliano of Omidyar Group’s Systems & Complexity Team. It appears that it will seek a more pragmatic or on-the-ground application of systems thinking than did the previously taken systems thinking certification course. One new aspect will be how to launch a team. This course will also be using the often featured Kumu relational mapping tool. Here is a perspective on Kumu by Rob Ricigliano.

The course focuses on solving what it calls groundhog day, whack-a-mole and opposite day problems, a little imagination will paint a picture. Another more operationally viable term is "wicked problem". The trouble for those trying to communicate this reality to others is that this reality can be confusing, frustrating and messy. The course sees systems thinking as a necessary mindset in addressing this reality by providing clarity and insights into points of leverage within such systems at which the greatest impact with modest force is possible. It makes it possible to enhance an organization’s adaptability to changing environments. Making it more aware of causal ripple effects, those instances of cause and effect which are separate in time and space from the more ostensibly obvious events within our immediate reality. 

Homelessness is seen as a wicked problem, a complex problem involving large scale system inputs and outcomes having very close, personal and detrimental impact on those afflicted by it. It will arguably require then a wide perspective to find viable solutions. 

In particular with the issue of homelessness in which communities have spent a large amount of money on shelters in many large cities yet did not reduce the overall number of people living on the streets within those cities. 

The course explores why. With the homeless shelter question, the suggested answer is “Shelters were never meant to provide a path to sustainable living.” Beyond that, no one program can address all of the underlying challenges facing our communities. They are all interconnected and interwoven. It is a complex perspective on reality as opposed to an imposed complicated top-down perspective. 

One positive example cited by the course and in the past by this blog, is the Calhoun County, Michigan study which used systems thinking to address homelessness. They looked at the “whole system” under which the incentive for funders and providers had been to provide quick fixes, addressing the immediate problem, rather than sustained change. They used systems thinking to determine where they could effectively intervene with higher level approaches such as housing first. This worked even when unemployment in the area was rising.

1. Setting goals
2. Good Systems Analysis
3. Finding Opportunities for Leverage
4. Preparing to Learn and Adapt Effectively

The course considers how to do a systems analysis through a dynamic systems map of key forces affecting the system under study. How to identify opportunities for impact or leverage points within that system to create the desired change. How do we get started on the process of learning and adapting so that if we manage to do that very well in the context of the complex system (meaning constantly shifting) we are working in we are able to adapt?

1. Mindset for how the world works and how to create change.
2. A set of tools and processes as to how to actually design and implement actions for change.

Rob then goes into what they mean by a system or what makes a system, differentiating it from more tangible physical systems such as an automobile or the healthcare system. Complex social systems produce results or consequences such as homelessness or other social ills to use his examples. This type of system is made up of complex forces that affect each other and more importantly for one’s efforts the issue with which you are concerned. For example, the “things” that produce homelessness are likely diverse but not isolated, they are interrelated in a manner that I would deem organic and intrinsic. These relationships between the things or factors contributing to homelessness can interact in unpredictable ways. 

So a system has discrete and diverse components or elements that are interdependent and interact in complex ways that dynamically change over time. This makes predictability more difficult, not impossible but the ability is far more constrained as one needs to constantly reassess one's systems analysis and the time frame for an accurate prediction can be shortened. 

The Omidyar Group’s take on systems thinking consists of three key components. It is a mindset. A way of thinking about how the world works and how to work with that messy world to promote desired outcomes. It is a set of tools to do analysis and develop a strategy. It is a particular set of processes which demands collective intelligence and sense-making resulting in collective action. This requires certain specific processes, such as participatory deliberations and dialogue.

The course recognizes that there are certain problems that are not solvable by directly addressing the apparent symptoms of the problem. With homelessness, it was the notion that we build shelters but that didn't actually solve the problem. It may have gotten certain people off of the streets but they were replaced and increased by more people. It can be necessary to look at the entire system to determine what it is about the system that is producing that and other negative outcomes. The conundrum is that certain acute challenges cannot be ignored until a complete and permanent solution to the chronic problem is found.

The feeding of the unsheltered, isolated homeless (even in homeless camps there is still isolation) is one such challenge. Those that can’t find occupancy in the shelters can also find themselves isolated from the community's food systems.  The direct approach to the problem, getting food and taking it to the camps is already known to be a tremendous logistical challenge. The question is how to create a system, an enterprise that works most effectively and efficiently in the existing larger systems and that can also, hopefully, begin to change that larger system to not only stop whatever activities it is doing to create the problems but to also directly work on the larger system issues to resolve them.

1. The nature of the environment one is working in.
2. The nature of the goal you have set for yourself.
3. One’s ability to implement this type of approach.

Rob then goes into three criteria for determining whether a systems approach should be applied. First is the nature of the environment one is working dynamic and constantly changing? Have supposedly obvious approaches been tried before and failed? Can change be overwhelming, not just for oneself but especially for those one is trying to assist? Even solutions that may work in one case don’t work in another. 

The second is the nature of the goal that one is striving to accomplish. This one is more problematic. Rob speaks of relief efforts to feed a specific group of people for a specific period of time or to house them so that they don’t die of exposure which can be seen as a relatively mechanical process. However, I don't believe the distinction is so apparent or that the Last Mile program truly fits into that configuration. The relationship between doing A to get B is not as deterministic in dealing with the unsheltered homeless as it can be with other forms of relief aid. 

Now it is true that finding ways to permanently house homeless individuals or better to prevent them from becoming homeless in the first place would be a higher point of leverage within the larger system. However, in focusing on the first approach of finding ways to permanently house the homeless, the status of those individuals in terms of health must also be considered and malnutrition and anemia will make helping them far more difficult. How all this will be addressed though will change from place to place. 

The third is what is happening with one’s self. Are you in an enabling environment, the ability, time and resources that allow you to step back and have the means and capability to think through the building of a strategy, say like taking this course then systems thinking is worth investing in. Rob warns, however, that it is not a magic solution. It does not make complex issues simple or worse yet if wrongly interpreted, simplistic. What it can do, from a new community paradigms perspective is make that complexity coherent. 

Using Deliberation and Systems Thinking to Address Healthcare Costs

This blog post is another in a continuing effort to integrate systems thinking with a system of both deliberative and participatory (or direct) democracy while recognizing the limitations of such attempts so as to learn more for the future. The focus this time is on healthcare costs.

These efforts to justify systems thinking as a means of scaffolding for systems of direct democracy have ranged from the more abstract approach to Deliberation and Democracy, a Kumu mapping of the article Deliberation, Democracy and the Systemic Turn co-authored by David Owen and Graham Smith and the Better Deliberative and Participatory Democratic Community Based Governance through Systems Thinking model that sought to demonstrate how systems thinking might be incorporated into a process of deliberative and participatory governance of a community to the more direct involvement approach with the DDST Community made through participation in the Dialogue, Deliberation, and Systemic Transformation Community and through another opportunity for exploration with the NCDD Overcome the Lack of Trust in Our Democracy, Leaders, and One Another project.

What they all have in common is that they are limited, not only in terms of George Box’s principle, "All models (or maps) are wrong, Some models are useful” but also in terms of applicability. They are narrowly focused experiments in applying systems thinking to questions of direct community governance. An analogy might be to see them as attempts to match the work of Erasmus Darwin, and others, in the natural sciences prior to his famous grandson’s theory of evolution. They are opportunities for trial and learning.

Just prior to finishing off with the Collective Impact series of blog posts, Kumu maps and presentations and then spending the last two posts on making up on some past good intentions, another opportunity to explore the integration of systems thinking and systems of direct democracy through Kumu mapping arose through the NCDD (National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation.

Back in September, the NCDD Community News announced an opportunity to Join the National Deliberation on Health Care Costs. The NIFI (National Issues Forum Institute), in cooperation with the Kettering Foundation and Public Agenda, was sending out, “You're Invited - Join a National Deliberation Project about Healthcare Costs - FREE materials available” notices.

The NIFI forum on a National Deliberation on Healthcare Costs provided another opportunity for direct involvement. A lengthy period of lead time before the NIFI process would finish in May 2016 provided time to build a Kumu relational map from the materials that were made freely available. Building the maps was a fairly extensive endeavor. At the conclusion, another limitation became increasingly apparent.

Healthcare, as well as a more focused examination of healthcare costs, is a complex, wicked problem. The applicability of the Kumu relational project on this topic was shown to be limited because of a notable difficulty in moving to a state of what has been called coherent complexity. There was no expectation to make the topic in its full range and depth simple. There was evidence that a deliberative inquiry on its own did not go deep enough to adequately vet the topic. It was also recognized that incorporating a deliberative process with the systems thinking inquiry provided more meaningful breadth. The two modes were better together.

Combining the two modes of thinking though required of others an overly large shift in their thinking, particularly if one or both mode were new to them. On the first impression, the proposed cure seems as complex as the wicked problem it is designed to address. In an ideal world, both modes would have been part of the K-12 curriculum becoming more second nature in being applied. It might be different if built with a group from the start but this was a solo effort. The Kumu mapping project was not designed to provide a set of specific answers but rather provide the ability to build templates for deliberation on various recommendations and the issues behind them.

To assist in this matter two Kumu presentations were created. The first Deliberative Discussions and Systems Thinking provided a general overview of combining systems thinking with a system of deliberation. It was a means of letting people know what they were getting into. The second presentation was more extensive, providing a guided tour as opposed to the former’s tour highlights. Developing a Systems Thinking Perspective of a National Deliberation Project on Healthcare Costs moved from the deliberative perspective to incorporate a systems thinking perspective and potentially provide a platform to move beyond. The full project, including both presentations, is here, How Can We Reduce Costs and Still Get the Care We Need?

In it, the untested but still strongly held hypothesis is made that most would be able to acquire the essential insights if they went through the entire presentation despite limited exposure to systems thinking. It could perhaps require that others are available to help but then a deliberative process can be said to be based on such a foundation. Having one person knowing something about systems thinking acting as a facilitator would no doubt be exceedingly helpful but there is no necessity that everyone is certified in systems thinking. The bigger obstacle would be getting everyone to give up their old mental models of political competition and conflict.

My own perspective is especially slanted having built the Kumu project from the ground up. As someone said before, “Everybody thinks that their own models are beautiful”. There were though two real world instances by which the viability of insights of the Kumu Healthcare Costs project was upheld at least to some extent.

The first was an opportunity to participate in an online forum on the topic hosted by the Kettering Foundation and NIFI. The deliberation forum used the NIFI Common Ground for Action featuring the Conteneo Collaboration Cloud. Having completed the system thinking maps on the topic, I had a strong foundation. Interestingly, the group seemed to gravitate to my way of thinking though to be truthful this cannot be shown to be correlated as the others had no knowledge of the Kumu project and I had no means to directly influence them. What might be surmised is that systems thinking provided the deepest perspective in the context of what people felt that they needed.

The second instance was the surprising correlation between the Kumu Healthcare Costs project and the Stanford Social Innovation Review presentation on “Organizing Communities to Create Health” despite having completed the systems thinking Kumu project before seeing the presentation. It could be asserted that the Kumu project was a “watch works” justification through systems thinking for the vision of the Creating Health Collaborative.

The concept of Communities Creating Health as a means of transforming our system of health in the Twenty-first Century begins creating a bridge with systems thinking between the resources found at the Healthy Cities wiki-page to the Direct Democracy and Systems Thinking wiki-page through Collaborating to Create a Healthy Cities from the earliest days of NCP.

This undoubtedly means enhancing complexity but hopefully, by being open and endeavoring to take a pathway of trial and learning, it will become both more coherent and more insightful for us all in creating new community paradigms.

Advancing Racial Equity Through Collective Impact and Systems Thinking

This post is on the final piece of the fifth and final module of the Living Cities online Collective Impact course. It continues the examination of the combination of Collective Impact and Systems Thinking applied to Community Engagement and Equity considered under the NCP Collective Impact wiki-page over the last three blog posts. Such a combined approach though goes much further back than that.

The article, Leveraging Grantmaking: Understanding the Dynamics of Complex Social Systems, was provided as part of the Systems Thinking Certification course in response to a request for something more concrete related to system thinking as applied to New Community Paradigms. The first of two of the article's main key points being that non-obvious interrelationships among elements in a complex system often thwart people’s best intentions to sustainably improve system performance. The second being that complex, nonlinear problems that most foundations address can be solved most effectively by thinking systemically instead of linearly about these problems. It demonstrated how such programs can be made more successful when these lessons were heeded in the development of a ten year plan to address homelessness in Calhoun County, Michigan (population 100,000).

Systems thinking is supposed to be a means of addressing complexity. It is natural to look for something concrete to build an effort upon. We want pragmatic solutions without wasting too much time on theory. This, however, brings about a counterintuitive trap raised by J. W. Forrester.

Policy improvements in the short run often degrade a system in the long run while policies producing long-run improvements often initially degrade the system at the start. Because the short run is more visible and more compelling, calling for immediate attention its impact is not really more concrete, but more what I have elsewhere called entrenched, as Forrester explains.

“However, sequences of actions all aimed at short-run improvement can eventually burden a system with long-run depressants so severe that even heroic short-run measures no longer suffice. Many problems being faced today are the cumulative result of short-run measures taken in prior decades.”

With simple systems, causes are close to symptoms of a problem in both time and space. In complex systems or with wicked problems, causes are often far removed in both time and space from the symptoms, lying far back in time and arising from an entirely different part of the system from when and where the symptoms occur, easily misleading us into believing our actions to alleviate the symptoms to be concrete in nature.

Three different disciplines or areas of consideration involving multiple perspectives then are brought together. The entire series of posts collected under the NCP Collective Impact wiki-page has involved taking on a number of new perspectives, the most notable being the use of Kumu relationship mapping.

The ability to adopt different perspectives is not only important to relational mapping, it is important to systems thinking in general. It is also important to a system of both deliberative and participatory democracy. It is essential, I would assert, in questions of equity, particularly if those questions are asked in terms of community economic and empowerment equity requiring answers of the larger community.

Two approaches have been presented throughout the exploration of the Collective Impact course and especially during the review of this last module. Under the Living Cities narrative approach, Week 5: Working with Communities to Advance Racial Equity and Eliminate Disparities (map) is the narrative starting point for what is the Advancing Racial Equity sector map. Under the NCP Kumu mapping approach, it becomes the goal and heart of the larger more complex effort. There are two different pathways then but with both moving toward the same objectives.

Neither is that much better or worse than the other barring a few insightful advantages by Kumu mapping that have been previously mentioned. If the Kumu mapping approach has done anything noteworthy, it is breaking the inherently linear aspect of the narrative approach adopted by Living Cities. This is not a criticism. The Living Cities online course was undoubtedly intended as an introductory course. Such an approach though makes it more difficult to question debatable premises or go in new directions. In truth, a better combining of the Living Cities narrative approach and Kumu mapping visual approach than has been achieved by this initial effort would be the best outcome.

To reach this point and help this effort grow, we must return to the roots. This means taking on yet another new perspective. Over the course of this series the systems thinking iceberg model has been featured a number of times. The main feature being the majority of which is hidden. This current example appeals to more organic connections using a plant analogy while retaining the hidden from view or deeper aspect with the added potential to grow.

The Advancing Racial Equity sector map then becomes the part of the plant seen on the ground. It is defined or influenced though by elements beyond the boundaries of its readily apparent morphology. It was advised in past posts that it was not necessary to click on each (map) link in a post. This time the series of (map) links will build from the ground creating the supporting and sustaining root structure {do remember though to close unneeded tabs}.

Continuing with the plant analogy, there are twelve elements making up Advancing Racial Equity sector map, the fewest of all the sector maps, which total fifty-two elements altogether thus supporting the general idea of a root system.

Of the elements of the Advancing Racial Equity sector map, Week 5: Working with Communities to Advance Racial Equity and Eliminate Disparities (map) serves as a trunk or stem. Some elements after their connection to the stem, stand independently. Other elements to be shown will be separated, with hidden connections to be revealed later. Still, other elements will be shown to have deep and extended connections.

A short Vimeo video, How do you build in a consideration of racial inequities when working with community members? (map), highlighting the Living Cities Integration Initiative, (map) features Michelle Fure, Outreach Coordinator Metropolitan Council and Uma Viswanathan, former Director of Boards and Commissions Leadership Institute for Urban Habitat (map). It provides a quick perspective on applying a racial equity lens to working with community members through community engagement and collective impact.

The Collective Impact Forum blog post Bringing an Equity Lens to Collective Impact (map) by Sarah Marxer and Junious Williams, one of the presenters in Racial Equity and Community Engagement in Collective Impact webinar (map) goes even deeper applying an equity lens to the five Collective Impact elements.

The Race Matters Institute (map) and Racial Equity Impact Analysis (map), along with additional resources of the Kellogg Foundation’s Racial Equity Resource Guide (map) and Harvard Implicit Bias Test (map) provide an examination of more personal perspectives of stakeholders and community members.

Moving on to the more connected elements, there is again a recognized need for Using Data to Close Achievement Gap (map) which along with Racial Equity and Community Engagement in Collective Impact, (map) is connected with Working with communities to advance racial equity and eliminate disparities (map) through the sector map Working with Communities on Racial Equity as discussed in the last post, Addressing Community Equity through Collective Impact requires a Deep Systemic Perspective .

4 Insights into Collective Impact plus Community Engagement and Racial Equity (map) can be expanded upon as the central element and theme for the 4 Insights CI + CE and Racial Equity sector map discussed in People like systems change, they just don't like thinking about it (systems) all that much, linking to the Living Cities Integration Initiative (map) cited above.

Returning to the sector map Working with Communities on Racial Equity and moving an additional degree further or deeper, takes us to a closer and expanded look at What Makes Collective Impact a Powerful tool for Systems Change? (map) by adding in the sector map CoIlective Impact as Tool for Systems Change as discussed in Thinking about Deep Systems Change through Collective Impact with an extension to include Evidence-Based Decision Making and finally completing the fifty-two elements making up the module.

The What, Why and How of Design Thinking and Collective Impact part 3 of 3

The previous blog post continued the discussion on design thinking and Collective Impact making the argument that design thinking should be integrated with systems thinking (as well as artistic thinking) to have the greatest impact on addressing the complex, wicked challenges facing communities.

The idea of combining design thinking and systems thinking has been around for some time with Innovation as a learning process: Embedded Design Thinking by Sara L. Beckman and Michael Barry from 2007 or Systems & Design Thinking: A Conceptual Framework for Their Integration by John Pourdehnad, Erica R. Wexler, and Dennis V. Wilson from 2011.

Part of the problem is agreeing on what they are separate so as to enable agreement on what they are combined. Practitioners are fairly comfortable with some ambiguity in their own field but misconceptions about the other could make cooperation difficult. The supposed Lessons Learned — Why the Failure of Systems Thinking Should Inform the Future of Design Thinking, from June of 2009, by Fred Collopy would seem to give neither side much hope since design thinking still seems in the same boat as systems thinking.  What Collopy doesn’t seem to have considered is that each could learn from each other, particularly if they were used to target the same challenges addressed under Collective Impact. 

The first step is to determine What is Design Thinking, Really?, from back in July of 2010 in which Venessa Miemis cites the term design thinking as referring to a set of principles, from mindset to process, that can be applied to solve complex problems, coined by IDEO’s David Kelley. 

She goes on to review Change by Design, by IDEO’s CEO Tim Brown, getting to the meat and potatoes of addressing Collective Impact concerns with chapters titled ‘The New Social Contract,’ ‘Design Activism,’ and ‘Designing Tomorrow – Today’, framing the opening pages of the book:

What we need are new choices – new products that balance the needs of individuals and of society as a whole; new ideas that tackle the global challenges of health, poverty, and education; new strategies that results in differences that matter and a sense of purpose that engages everyone affected by them.

The perspective had of systems thinking is important in this partnership. Some seem to wrongly assume that systems thinking only addresses well understood problems, with one best answer to that problem and the path to finding that answer being linear. Others believe that systems thinking involves making changes to a system that will lead to the elimination of a problem identified within one of the system components. Russell L. Ackoff though admonished us to Never improve a part of the system unless it also improves the whole. The fact that these errors or disagreements over definition are not only limited to those on the design thinking side of the issue complicates things.

Systems Thinking and Design Thinking from Triarchy Press correctly defines a systems thinking approach (in contrast to taking a reductionistic approach to complex systems like a business, separating it out into component parts and trying to manage each part as well as possible) as looking at relationships (rather than unrelated objects), connectedness, process (rather than structure), the whole (rather than just its parts), the patterns (rather than the contents) of a system, and context. While its definition of design thinking as using the definitions and assumptions of systems thinking and focuses on applying them to innovative processes for problem-solving and decision-making is arguably too restrictive.

Design thinking is about empathy and systems thinkers are the better for it makes the argument that “The combination of design and systems thinking can deliver a truly holistic understanding of a current system, generate ideas that will transform the system while yet continue to maintain a whole systems view to ensure the new system is sustainable.” This is not merely a touchy-feely appeal and this blog is not backing away from the need for the proper type of business discipline in the public sector. Empathy according to MixMashups' Gary Hamel drives innovation. 

In more recent articles, arguments have been made for design thinking to take lessons from systems thinking. In a Fast Company article of May of this year, Why Designers Must Put Invention First, Paddy Harrington quotes Charles Eames who said, "Eventually everything connects—people, ideas, objects, etc....the quality of the connections is the key to quality per se." The Eames office had a diagram of three overlapping circles representing the interests of the design office, the interests of the client and the interests of society as a whole, that explained their approach to their practice. Their work, the Eames said, was at the intersection of the three. The Eames talent, however, provided them the luxury of choice. 

Realistically, one won’t have the luxury of choosing clients if pursuing social change through design thinking and Collective Impact. How then Paddy Harrington asks can one, “...(establish a purpose that drives our practice more deeply and lets us work with more self-determination?” His answer is that Eames' approach is still the best guide for staying on course: first, connect everything in order to understand relationships, influences, and possibilities. In Richard Saul Wurman’s view, ”...[Eames] was selling his ignorance and his desire to learn about a subject. The journey of not knowing to knowing was his work."

Harrington further addresses embracing complexity and uncertainty citing Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan, who wrote:

"Categorizing always produces reduction in true complexity…Any reduction of the world around us can have explosive consequences since it rules out some sources of uncertainty; it drives us to a misunderstanding of the fabric of the world."

In response, Paddy Harington advises that “Rather than simplify a complex situation, we must start with a certain kind of fearlessness in the face of the unknown and establish tools to help us find answers in the absence of tangible information. And once we embrace that unknown, it’s the methodical application of those tools toward solutions that point us in a better direction.” This is a perspective that NCP can agree with, seeing Complexity as Cradle for Creativity and Innovation in moving from incoherent complexity to coherent complexity.

In the Fast Company article, Why "Design For Development" Is Failing On Its Promise, also from May of this year, Panthea Lee writes about noticing her colleagues wrestling a growing nervousness about how much design can create positive change and with the ways that, "design for development" is falling short of its promises.

She cites possible market-based reasons for this. In functioning markets, the user or customer is made powerful because of control of the money to spend. The users of a development program have no money so are often marginalized and powerless with no voice to compel governments to listen to them. Commercial projects have a clear idea of their user or customer and clear measures of success. Public sector design projects have no set "bottom line.” How does one then define the metrics for "improved governance"?  She recognizes at the same time that democracy requires people driving for themselves and that it is not simply a matter of having an easy answer or to "know the right solution. ” This means moving beyond defined terms of "evidence-based design decisions" and the desire to "drive positive change" so as to create a shift in what the work is serving.’’ She goes on to argue that, “(T)he world’s most intractable problems are deeply rooted in massive systems, while design is a discipline focused on the edges”. 

“Traditional design focuses on creating and improving society’s outputs and interactions, such as a sleeker mobile phone or a more efficient way to buy

coffee. When these skills are translated over to the public sphere, design 

still tends to focus on outputs instead of the real systemic problems.”

The Stanford Social Innovation Review makes the argument that design thinking applied to Collective Impact is capable of Turning Empathy into Action and lists the positive contributing attributes of each. 

It is this blog’s position that to be capable of, for example Solving Democracy’s Design Problem and moving from actual systems in the world such as Public Participation Designed for Entrenched Incumbents (Stafford Beer’s POSIWID) to more idealized, yet viable visions of Designing Public Participation Processes Map will require systems thinking as scaffolding for such a large, collaborative and scalable undertaking.

Feedback Loops Keep Collective Impact Impacting

In a recent Google Plus comment on the last NCP post, online colleague Daniel Bassill asked, “Do you know of any college that is using your articles and maps in an extended learning process? There's quite a bit of information, particularly if one visits the articles linked to in each node on the map.” The quick answer is no (it was a kind but undeserved compliment). He went on to make the valid point that, “A casual visitor might be overwhelmed and not stick around long enough to begin to understand the big picture the maps represent.” , in a vein similar to Ryan Mohr’s comment on the Collective Impact and Kumu Relational Mapping - Creating New Ways of Seeing Our Community post. We can look to start following some of Ryan Mohr’s advice addressed in the last post though it will still be more exploration than presentation. What should be kept in mind is that Collective Impact, systems thinking and design thinking all involve a different way of looking at the world. Kumu maps give us a different way of looking at those different ways of looking at the world.

The first thing that should be noted about the Kumu Module 3 Feedback map is that there aren’t any persistent feedback loops in the systems thinking sense of the term. There could be a repeat reading of connected articles and if article A helped one to understand article B and then article B in turn helped to better understand article A, and repeated as needed, that could be considered a feedback loop but it would likely be completed fairly quickly.

This is mentioned early on because the end of the last post promised to look at a topic particularly relevant to systems thinking — feedback loops. The information on feedback as it relates to Collective Impact can be found within the articles and other resources contained in the elements making up the Feedback map. Hopefully, it does not need to be mentioned that one has to actually read the associated material and not depend upon the still developing summaries provided in the narrative sections of a Kumu map. An attempt will be made to establish feedback relationships as defined by systems thinking as well.

The Kumu Module 3 Feedback map is organized on a branching or tree model. Certain elements serve as nodes, connecting and branching out to other element nodes. Admittedly, when presented at a single viewing, it can be daunting as was discussed in the last post.

Going first into the main narrative section of the Feedback map and mousing over to highlight and then clicking on the "Week 3 Feedback Loops Purpose" text takes one to the Week 3 Kumu loop which is in actuality a selected portion of the larger map focused on related content. Clicking on Week 3 Selected Map in the narrative section will focus only on that specific portion of the map. Week 3: Creating Community Feedback Loops to Fast Track Change is the central element node, with associated url, of the section map.

The resulting map is now far simpler. In addition to the main article on community feedback loops there are according to the legend in the bottom left corner, two blog posts, two reports and one journal article supporting the main article.

This is the same information provided by the Living Cities course except, rather than branches to other element nodes, with Living Cities the additional information is within the primary article, one, two or more layers behind links to other articles and resources. These relationships become more apparent with the maps. The original Living Cities' Week 3 related articles are the territory. We want to study the stones making up the road but we also want to know where the road can lead us or choose different paths. We will still need to expand into more complex maps if we wish to cross more difficult territory.

Once a section map is selected the focus remains even if returning to the Module 3 map by specifically clicking a relevant link or clicking on the background of the map area. One can go to the narrative of the section map and in this case click on 'Week 3 Clear' to clear the specific focus and then 'Back to Module 3' to return to the full Module 3 map. One can also return to the Module 3 map, with the selected focus maintained and add other selected focused map sections.

The journey through the extensive material can then be made easier by jumping directly to other selected specific map sections within the Feedback map. The next section map is 3 Flavors Feedback. Clicking on 3 Flavors Feedback Selected Map again focuses on the specific portion of the map. The central element node 3 Fabulous Flavors of Feedback Culture is not directly connected to the Week 3 section of the map but does connect through elements related to other section maps. Again, this section map is fairly simple consisting of three blog posts, including the initial one, a news release on a County PFS program, a news article on How to Achieve Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals, and the organization StriveTogether, introduced in Module 1 and cited in the central blog post.

The next section map to visit, Is Pay for Success CI?, which again can be focused on. It is directly connected to Week 3: Creating Community Feedback Loops to Fast Track Change. There are more element nodes within this section of the map because this section of the map extends out another degree or, if this was the Living Cities course, another layer of linked articles. The element nodes include the Week, the type of Work undertaken by Living Cities in this arena, five blog posts, a news article, two different organizations, one financial and one an outcomes-driven organization, and a report on the joint work undertaken by these organizations.

The next map section is 4 Keep It Real Community Impact Insights, repeating the step to focus then to the similarly named central element node takes us to the related Living Cities blog post. It is again separated by a degree or layer from the originating Week 3 section of the map. The element nodes associated with this section of the map include two blog posts, including the preceding post Is Pay for Success Collective Impact?, a set of resources on decision makers and do-ers, a news article, an organization and two books. If the Module 3 map were drawn vertically as with the systems thinking iceberg model then this section map would be at the lower levels providing a foundation for the rest of the map.

The final selected map section is Creating Feedback Loops. This is the busiest of the section maps with twenty directly related element nodes, seven blog posts, two from previous map sections, three related but different types of organizations, the resources from one of the organizations, a FSG resource with associated webinar and finally a connection to the previous Week 2 Amplifying the Voices of Community Members in Collective Impact.

Feedback within systems does not stop, however, once the interviews or reports are finished. There also exists feedback loops within the systems that we are attempting to impact and within the systems we devise as means of impact, necessitating again, feedback from those being served. Feedback is also an important component of the personal stories defining those making up the client audience. These feedback loops change each node making up the loop and can change further with sequential loops with multiple nodes and loops capable of raising emergent transitions throughout an entire system.

Feedback loops have to be considered in establishing optimal levels of service. Ideally, city budgets endeavor to reach optimal levels of expenditures to fund the programs which are beneficial to the community. In an example from Getting Deep into ST - Systems Thinking Certification they may fund road improvements to increase the capacity of the streets to allow an optimal number of vehicles. (The community question is what is that optimal number?) These three properties, budget, roads and cars can interact together in a variety of different ways. Built roads in a community can be increased but not easily and not indefinitely. Traffic, particularly if it originates outside of the community, could increase exponentially overtaxing the community’s circulation system. The community could try to find some means of balancing these conflicting influences but its actions might feedback in unintended ways.

As was pointed out in Direct Democracy and System Thinking Map - Some Potholes on the Journey, there are also limitations to our models or devised systems. In terms of a working reality, our maps or systems often assume only smooth sailing. In truth, any system could break down at each stage of the process and feedback to debilitate the entire system. It should also be appreciated that not only can something go wrong at each step of the actual process, necessitating a thorough review and response, but that each step can be important in its own right and is not merely a stepping stone to a final outcome. Feedback loops, especially those separated significantly by distance, time or aggregation, are a major source for unintended consequences.

Finally, as was pointed out in Exploring with the Dialogue, Deliberation and Systemic Transformation Community to Discover New Possibilities Part 3 of 3, it is the synthesis of the different ways of understanding systems that can lead us to the elements of storytelling helping to define complexity in a manner similar to what makes a great story. The elements in determining in what way a problem is complex are also the elements of an engaging story and feedback can be a meaningful part of that story.


1. Many interacting “agents”

2. Individuals and processes influence each other in feedback loops

3. Reactions may be affected by current and past circumstances

4. Influenced by the external environment

5. Events have multiple causes and multiple effects

6. Large events can have small effects and small events can have large effects

7. Events emerge in surprising ways, spontaneously in the absence of a “controller”

8. Events display a complicated mix of ordered and disordered behaviour

9. It is an emotional Issue


Stories can help make our complex world more coherent.