Systems Practice - Choosing a Side

In this post, I am again going to stress this has not been meant to be a substitute for the actual OpenLearning, Mastering Systems Thinking in Practice course or what I have been referring to as SP UK. This is important because my own opinions are going to come into play here even more so than previously.

The SP UK course defines systems thinking approaches as being either ‘systematic’ or ‘systemic’. It has also established a dichotomy between ontological systems approaches and epistemological systems approaches. Most recently, the divide has been set between hard systems thinking and soft systems thinking, though how depends on who is doing the dividing.  

All three categorizations are combined by the course with systematic, ontological, hard systems thinking on one side and systemic, epistemological, soft systems thinking on the other. 

The course favors soft systems thinking, along with an epistemological approach and a claimed systemic perspective, not only over but seemingly to the exclusion of the harder side of the systems thinking coin, involving an ontological approach and a restricted imposed systematic perspective.   

The systematic perspective, as defined by the course, sees systems as ontological devices which are oriented towards goal seeking, assuming that the world contains systems that can be engineered and assuming system models to be models of that world (ontologies). As a result, systems of systematic ontologies are said to speak solely in the language of ‘problems’ and ‘solutions’. The advantage is that this allows for the use of powerful techniques. The disadvantage is that it may lose touch with aspects beyond the logic of the problem situation.

The term “goals” is avoided by the SP UK course due to a claimed propensity by systems engineering and Operations Research (OR) during the 50s and 60s  to define objectives too narrowly. This, as they say, is so last century. I don’t believe we need to be as constrained by it today. It certainly doesn't reflect the work of Donella Meadows. I may have been unfair, due to unfamiliarity, with Sir Vickers in this regard as well as he seems to be put in the ontological camp but works with soft system thinking perspectives.

I can though agree with avoiding the setting of objectives or goals that can be achieved or optimized as being the primary purpose of systems thinking. Goal-oriented behavior can be seen as being unhelpful when dealing with messes.  Instead, there should be a move away from goal-oriented thinking towards thinking in terms of learning. 

The Systemic systems tradition, the course asserts, sees systems as epistemological devices which are oriented to learning. This assumes the world is problematical but can be explored by using the proper system models. It also assumes system models to be intellectual constructs (epistemologies). As a result, according to the course, it talks in the language of ‘issues’ and ‘accommodations’. Its advantage is that it is available to all stakeholders including professional practitioners, keeping in touch with the human component of problem situations. The disadvantage is that it does not produce the final answers meaning that it has to accept that inquiry is never-ending. Those involved in such a process should, I'll also agree, continually learn and develop new understandings about a situation upon which decisions as to what new changes should then be made. 

In my exploration and experimentation with systems thinking, I have leaned towards hard (well, at least leaning towards harder) system thinking but have come to see the need for the inclusion of soft system thinking approaches. Still, though, put myself on the hard systems thinking side, so I have a few issues. 

The first issue is that I haven’t used the word systematic in these pages in the same manner as the SP UK course. The essential dichotomy for me isn’t between systematic and systemic but between complicated and complex.  Systematic and systemic seem to be conflated with complicated and complex respectively by the course. The second issue is that I don’t establish as strict of a dichotomy between ontology and epistemology to the exclusion of one over the other as the course seems to do. Third, I am not willing to accept what seems to be an “it’s its all in our heads, we don’t have to worry if there is actually something out there” model. 

In my view, a system has its own "existence" separate not only from the environment but from the individual components of which it is comprised through emergence. It is my view that it would be impossible to transform what I have called entrenched systems without this perspective. None of this means, however, rescinding George Box's adage of all models are wrong, some models are useful.

The choice of approaches set by SP UK is either a system of interest, as in a systemic process of inquiry as part of a means of understanding a situation experienced as complex or conversely is a system seen as operational parts of a taken-for-granted real world. It is the taken-for-granted real world to which I object to seeing a systematic approach,  in my view, as taking only a complicated, and invariably top-down approach. 

I do agree with taking a systemic approach, involving the use of systems thinking to construct epistemological devices as part of an inquiry process through which to generate fresh and insightful explanations which can trigger new ways of taking purposeful action in the world but there is still an actual ontologically related world out there.  In my view, it is not only physically out there, it is systemically related and has a mathematical foundation and can be dealt with in a systematic manner. Systemic and systematic are not mutually exclusive. 

At the core of managing the complexity of an issue or a situation we are experiencing is the taking of purposeful action. The approach we take is our way of going about taking action required for coping with the complexity of ‘real world’ situations.

In my interpretation, there seem to be two different types of purpose, intended and inherent or what the course refers to as purposeful and purposive. Peter Checkland, credited with coining the terms ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ systems to distinguish two traditions, said that purposeful behavior is that which is willed, involving voluntary action particularly applicable to human activity systems. This is what I would label intentional purpose. 

Purposive is addressed by the course through ‘What would I learn from attributing (externally) purpose to this situation?’ An engineered or even a natural system can exhibit behavior to which purpose can be attributed. This is what I am referring to as inherent purpose or what Donella Meadows termed as function.

The "In reflection, what purpose do I attribute to my own actions in this situation?", could be aimed at intentional but might actually reflect inherent despite espoused declarations to the contrary if defined by institutional fiat.

The SP UK  course asserts then that a key feature of a system defined as purposeful is that people can pursue different behaviors or what the course terms “hows” in different environments towards the same purpose or same “what”. 

The course sees Stafford Beer's: ‘the purpose of a system is what it does (POSIWID)’ as being too constraining and running the risk of objectifying ‘the system’ rather than employing a concept of purpose in the sense of a process of inquiry.  

The SP UK course also credits Peter Checkland with having worked to improve prison management, seeing the purpose of the system as ‘rehabilitating criminals’; ‘training criminals’; and ‘protecting society’.  But when the course goes on to ask yet again, ”What might we learn about the situation if we were to think of a prison as if it were a system to train criminals?”, training criminals’ can take on a double meaning. Are we simply training prisoners to become better criminals or are we providing office space to the heads of criminal gangs? 

What, the SP UK course goes on to ask, if there is no agreement on what is presumed to be a  commonly held system of interest or what purpose it is seen to have an undoubtedly common occurrence. 

People have a general propensity to pursue purposive behavior that assumes both the purpose of a system and setting measures performance of the system without first engaging stakeholders in a dialogue to jointly negotiate a common purpose. Any lack of agreement, or even discussion, about what purpose is being served doesn't serve to limit the number of experts, organizations, agencies, governments, etc who will be engaged in the definition and extraction of targets, principles, indicators and standards, and other performance measures which are then evaluated, monitored and audited, and generally assessed against the presupposed system.

Intended improvements require purposeful action that can be judged by not only those who have the power take the action but should also include those impacted but seldom does. Those actions also, however, need to be tested against the real world environment and examined for any inclination towards unintended consequences. 

Systems of Complexity, Complexity of Systems Part 2

The differences between the various perspectives on systems and complexity considered in the previous post reflect an epistemological approach contrasted with a more ontological one. The SP UK course argues that there are reasons for being cautious in talking about the ontology or the categorization of systems in terms of the language we might use and how that might influence our perceptions. The SP UK course seeks to define and distinguish systems of interest within complex situations as epistemological devices rather than actual ontological things.

There are differences between thinking that systems are ‘out there’, a position reinforced by the naming of ‘recognized’ systems in everyday language; and of seeing those systems as mental constructs useful for helping to explain how complex situations work. These can be configured as explanatory systems, as in ‘it’s the system for making the trains run on time’ with the level of the description being an additional distinction in defining the system.

If, however, as the SP UK course seems to admit, such an explanatory system exists anywhere then, it is in the mind of the individual(s) who conceives of it, being simply a particular way of thinking about selected aspects of the world and how their interrelationships are useful in relation to an individual’s concerns.

This brings to mind Chris Argyris' Ladder of Inference, as well as his theories of action, single and double-loop learning and organizational learning in, "Teaching Smart People How To Learn” considered previously by New Community Paradigms, especially in addressing meta-issues.

Throughout the history of Western thought and practice of science and philosophy, the question whether to focus on parts or the whole has given rise to two different approaches. Emphasizing the parts has been referred to as mechanistic, reductionist or atomistic while emphasizing the whole has been termed holistic, organismic or ecological.

Two distinctive attributes, according to the SP UK course, can be derived from the word system, systemic and systematic. Systemic thinking or thinking in terms of wholes may be contrasted with what the course terms systematic thinking, which is linear, step-by-step thinking. Personally, I would replace systematic with complicated as NCP has used the term systematic in a different manner in the past.

The SP UK course provides a list of some of what it considers some of the characteristics distinguishing systemic thinking with systematic thinking: whole vs parts, abstract (based on perspective of participants) vs concrete, individual perspectives vs non-perspective, greater than sum of parts vs reductionistic, holistic organization vs building blocks, nested systems vs foundation of parts understood, contextual vs analytical, and concern with process vs concerned with entities and properties. One argument by the SP UK course is that systemic thinking is geared towards systems of interest.

As Fritjof Capra (1996) noted: “In twentieth-century science, the holistic perspective has become known as ‘systemic’ and the way of thinking it implies ‘systems thinking’.” Capra also claimed systems thinking as being ‘contextual’ thinking'; as in explaining things in their context which means explaining them in relation to their environment, it is also seen then as being environmental thinking by the SP UK course.

Similarly, it is possible to recognize differences between systemic practice or action and systematic practice or action. With systematic practice the decision-maker claims to be objective and remains ‘outside’ the system, the system is seen as distinct from the environment, perception and action are based on belief in ‘real world’, ethics and values are not addressed as a central theme and traditions of understanding are not questioned although method of analysis may be evaluated.

Whereas with systemic practice the role and the action of the decision-maker is very much part of an interacting ecology of systems, interaction of practitioner and system of interest within a context (environment) is the main focus, perception and action based on experience of the world, especially those that connect entities and meaning generated by viewing events in their contexts, ethics are perceived as being multi-leveled as are the levels of systems themselves and the attempt is made to stand back and explore the traditions of understanding in which the practitioner is immersed.

This leads to important distinctions between the two ways in which the term ‘system’ is used depending on traditions and practices. Some more commonly recognized designations or levels of systems based on Kenneth Boulding’s hierarchy of systems or of complexity, in these instances of more dynamic complexity involving rational-technical levels, including:

• Mechanistic, from static structural frameworks, such as bridges and crystals to simple self-maintaining open systems that such as living cells to lower organisms such as plants that have separate organs but little control over their own development. 

• Animals that have a brain to guide behavior and an ability to learn. 

• A personal level involving humans who exhibit language, self-consciousness, and conscious acquisition of knowledge. 

• An environmental level involving socio-cultural systems whose members have different tasks but shared values, and which have a lot of internal communication. 

• As well as a seemingly added level of spirituality involving transcendental systems such as the idea of God or inescapable unknowables. 

This is not the only way of describing hierarchies as it depends on the purpose of the categorization and the purpose we might ascribe to each (sub) system description. Boulding’s descriptions can then be recognized more as real world systems than as explanatory systems.

The Systems Practice UK course goes on to differentiate between simple purposive systems and complex purposeful systems which begin to integrate type 1 complexity with more diverse social, cultural, psychological complexity with the assumed intention of navigating both with systems of interest. This, however, arguably adds another source of complexity to those considerations for those without adequate familiarity with systems thinking necessitating a requirement to demonstrate the value-added benefit of taking additional effort and ostensibly enhancing the involved complexity.

Systems Practice UK then seeks to use the appropriate language or means of communicating data to define and distinguish systems of interest within complex situations as epistemological devices rather than actual ontological things out there. Casti's (1994) classifying characteristics exhibited by simple and complex systems can be seen as actual ontological things but the SP UK course seems to revise this to address situations regarded as simple ‘purposive systems’ and situations regarded as complex ‘purposeful systems’ again reflecting a view of systems as conceptual epistemological devices.

Simple purposive systems, or what I would term complicated systems, exhibit predictable behavior as with a fixed interest bank account. Have few interactions and feedback or feedforward loops as with a simple barter economy of few goods and services. Power is concentrated among a few decision makers through centralized decision-making. It is possible to look at components, which because of weak interactions are decomposable without losing properties of the whole.

Complex purposeful systems can generate counterintuitive, seemingly acausal (non-linear) behavior that is full of surprises such as lowering taxes and interest rates leading to higher unemployment. It can involve a large array of variables with numerous interactions, lags, feedback loops and feed-forward loops, creating the possibility that new, self-organizing behaviors will emerge. The numerous components generate the actual system behavior. They are irreducible, so neglecting any part of the process or severing any of the connections linking its components invariably destroys essential aspects of the system's behavior or structure resulting in dynamic changes in the system and the environment. Decision-making is decentralized as a result, power, therefore, becomes more diffuse.

This view once adopted, however, has implications for systems thinking and systems practice. Exploring these implications will assist in deciding what course of action works best for any particular practitioner.

The instructor’s perspective is that it is usually more appropriate to approach the task systemically when managing or intervening in complex situations. Systemic thinking provides the context for systematic thinking and action. Both systematic thinking and systemic thinking have their place. It is not that systemic is good, systematic is bad. They are not in opposition in the hands of an aware practitioner and can be complementary in dealing with complex situations. An ideal, aware, systems practitioner then is one who is able to distinguish between systemic and systematic thinking and is able to embody these distinctions in practice. This would have implications for the initial starting conditions for any form of purposeful action as to whether to start out systemically or systematically.

Systems Practice Entwining Complexity with Rationality and Emotion

As was said in the previous post on the ongoing Systems Practice course, difficulties and messes are broad terms and the distinction between them is not clear-cut and categorical. Rather they are on opposing ends of a continuum, with many, if not most, problems lying somewhere in between.

The attributes that distinguish messes from difficulties concern their scale and the uncertainty associated with them and whether these aspects were bounded or unbounded. To describe a situation as messy implies that in some important respects it is unbounded rather than if just a difficulty which then would be bounded. In addition, there is also the issue of complexity including elements of rational and emotional aspects of complexity that need to be considered.

• Difficulties, being well-defined and more limited situations, mainly involve hard complexity. Given a particular view of the matter, what is the best that can be done?

• Messes, on the other hand, are ill-defined; they include large measures of both hard and soft complexity. Of course, this may not be obvious at first and some or all of those involved may fail to recognise the soft complexity: they may initially resent alternative viewpoints, perhaps seeing them as misguided or even wilful attempts to confuse the ‘real’ issue.

According to the current course, complexity is not just a matter of there being many different factors and interactions to bear in mind in a multitude of combinations and permutations of possible decisions and events.

Complexity is also generated by the very different constructions that can be placed on those factors, decisions and events. It is not only a matter of technical or computational issues with which engineers and operational researchers deal or of the uncertainty, even irreducible uncertainty, that must be allowed for, evaluated and selected.

‘Hard complexity’ is defined by the course as generating difficult computational problems as illustrated by the game of chess, the enormous range of possible move and counter-move sequences to be considered and assessed by each of two players. This next portion of the course's definition needs to be quoted.

It is, unquestionably, complicated. Nevertheless, the nature of the game, the moves of the pieces, the fundamental purposes of the players – all these are unproblematic.

NCP has differentiated between complexity and complicated in a number of different venues. One aspect has been to see the connections of complexity as intrinsic and of complicated as intricate. The word ‘unproblematic’ in this context seems somewhat similar to the term ‘trivial’ in more formal mathematics or at least as Richard Feynman saw it. Chess, arguably, could be seen as a hard or complicated algorithm, whether unproblematic or not, from a single-sided, checkmate in 12 moves perspective but with the counteracting feedback of another player seems to me to make it unpredictably complex.

‘Soft complexity’ doesn't arise from the ‘facts’ It arises from the variety of very different (mental) constructions, and how they can be related to alternative explanations for behavior or events. Soft complexity can also feature a high degree of emotional involvement.

The course goes on to quote John Casti (1994), a mathematical modeler and writer on complex systems who links complexity to a more vernacular understanding:

… when we speak of something being complex, what we are doing is making use of everyday language to express a feeling or impression that we dignify with the label complex.

The course sets hard and soft complexity on a graph putting the computational difficulty on the x-axis and the emotional involvement on the y axis. Messes then are situations involving high degrees of both.

Complexity, particularly soft complexity, the course asserts, as far as I can interpret it, then arises from the different perspectives and how they can be interpreted, and equally, perhaps more importantly, the degree of emotional involvement people have in the situation, especially if one has a technical or engineering background making it difficult to come to terms with it.

The current course then does not attempt to address complexity at the level of complexity science as the scientific study of complex systems. It only endeavors to note distinctions between complex situations and complex systems. More about the implications, including the more philosophical, will be covered in a future post. This post will consider more personal connections with past interactions with systems practice approaches.

Despite a hypothesis that systems thinking could serve as scaffolding for deliberative and participatory systems of democracy most past system thinking projects have been solitary explorations or solitary experiments done in parallel but not actually connected with other independent efforts.

The current course raises a number of issues relevant to the interactions with a previous Systems Practice-oriented course, as team leader, of a group of ten which attempted at least by virtual modeling to address homelessness in Portland, Oregon. This was a follow-on to a previous financial modeling course as part of someone else's still ongoing, real world, on the ground effort to address homelessness in Portland, Oregon. It was among the first experiences with a group approach to systems thinking.

My personal reason for the choice was to continue that effort believing that we need to collaborate on larger scales to develop systematic means of addressing systemic wicked problems of which homelessness is one. The systems practice group approach both significantly informed the manner in which I contributed over time inducing me to substantially change my approach in ways during that course that I would not have if I had worked solely on my own.

Systems practice may though be a weaker approach in my view for those with less exposure to systems thinking because it can overly emphasize coming to a consensus. One of the primary issues of systems thinking is the tendency of people to only look at causal factors in immediate or near-immediate approximation whether by time, distance or causal relationship.

I believe that there should have been a stronger foundation in systems thinking provided at the beginning of the course and introducing Kumu at the very start could have helped with that. The challenge was crossing over to a more holistic, systems thinking perspective through a systems practice group process.

Questions of ‘interpersonal relationships’ (i.e. personal evaluations, likes and dislikes) as a contributing factor in the situation didn't really come up as the course was online. It should be noted though that NCP sees face to face interaction as an essential factor in community governance.

The other people on the team saw the situation differently from each other, they also saw many of the Systems Practice terms differently but then sometimes those terms weren't clearly expressed. It is unclear how we saw each other but interactions were done in a positive manner.

The inclusion of ‘political concerns’ were a contributing factor in the way that we all saw the situation but were related more to means than ends. All of the political concerns attributed to the people involved were considered ‘legitimate' by the group. There was likely a pro-liberal selection bias due to the course being sponsored by Acumen. There were no homeless, or homeless advocates involved or even anybody from Portland and the direct involvement of the original social entrepreneur was lost because of conflicting schedules, though she did remain available in an advisory capacity.

The most important consideration that was not adequately represented in terms of hard information and demonstrable facts, in what is now being defined as a messy situation, was the local residential reaction to the proposed system of homeless intervention, the role of residents in deciding the fate of the proposed homeless camp food truck programs. This arose from multiple causes, and was behind some of the disagreements over focus and priorities. My usual systems approach resulted going both further back by causal degrees than my teammates and with what they felt comfortable.

The discussion of what is now being termed soft complexity helped in distinguishing difficulties from messes though we didn’t name them that. We went beyond thinking about difficulties and messes only terms of hard complexity. Others contributed to the notion of trust in our system maps to a much greater extent than I did.

But the more soft complexity there is in a situation, the messier it is likely to be. Working out what to do with a mess is no longer a matter of thinking the situation through, but of rethinking or reframing it as well.

Mapping Connections Between Healthy Communities, Planning, Placemaking and Asset Based Community Development

Now that New Community Paradigms (NCP) has a more effective map with which to find new pathways it is possible to go back and reconnect with some that may have been missed or left behind. In general, the trend has been away from institutions or more institutionally based systems and toward more complex systems of greater community involvement but this does not and should not mean abandoning institutions entirely. A greater emphasis on ground-up community placemaking should not mean an abandonment of a more traditional role of planning. It is the relationship between the two that should be redefined.  

This goes to a wider issue of the difference between complicated top-down management systems and complex community governance systems. Despite an obvious preference, at least if you have been following this blog, for the later, the need and benefit of the former are still recognized under the proper circumstances. It is the correct relationship between the two that needs to be defined. 

One area in which this could be seen as being helpful is Planning for Healthy Communities, a new page under the NCP wiki. We are using the term “planning” in the sense of the American Planning Association, the foundational, professional, educational oriented organization behind city hall planning departments across the USA. It is able to suggest policy on a national scale and in the case of the Planning and Community Health Center, focuses its efforts on projects and policies that prioritize active living, food systems, and health in all planning policies.

Many local governments have begun Planning for Public Health by including goals and objectives that promote healthy choices of where to live and how to get around, the ability to access healthy foods and opportunities for physical activity, which affect broader issues of social equity, clean air, and water, and more into their comprehensive plans. More specifically, Plan4Health Projects and Initiatives are launching across the United States in neighborhoods, cities, and counties. Plan4Health supports creative partnerships to build sustainable, cross-sector coalitions.

“Local coalitions consisting of American Planning Association (APA) chapters and American Public Health Association (APHA) affiliate members are committed to increasing health equity through nutrition or physical activity with each coalition seen as being dedicated to meeting the needs of residents where they live, work, or play.”

The American Planning Association’s Planning and Community Health Research Center has also partnered with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Healthy Community Design Initiative, on the CDC - Healthy Places - Healthy Community Design Checklist Toolkit. This toolkit, which can help planners, public health professionals, and the general public to include health in the community planning process, is composed of four elements that work together to achieve this goal:

1. Healthy Community Design Checklist.pdf
2. Healthy Community Design PowerPoint Presentation.ppt
3. Creating a Health Profile of Your Neighborhood.pdf
4. Planning for Health Resources Guide.pdf

It is still, however, a generally top-down application of policy and may never be initiated or fully realized without the intervention of grassroots efforts as well as, as suggested by Paul Born, grass-top organizational efforts.

“In the early days of a collective impact approach, we often find that one of two mistakes is made. One is that we gather only the grasstops. That is, we think somehow it’s about shifting power. So we bring the powerful players into the room. The other mistake, almost as common, is that we don’t engage any of the power players because we’re afraid that it will be perceived as a grass-tops initiative.”

There is underlying data that can be gathered and used to inform all perspectives, Health-Impact-Assessment-Can-Inform.pdf, the State-of-Health-Impact-Assessment-in-Planning.pdf, and the HIA-Toolkit.pdf. 

Additionally, Project for Public Spaces (PPS) recently released an extensive report of peer-reviewed research and case studies, sponsored by Kaiser Permanente, demonstrating the power of placemaking to improve health. 

"The Case for Healthy Places is already taking the public health world by storm, and we are confident that this is just the beginning of the Healthy Placemaking Movement!"

Before proceeding further, it should be advised that one could reach all of the following points on the Kumu maps and all others from within the New Community Paradigms Wiki Kumu map itself rather than open in multiple tabs or windows from here. Information on how to navigate through the map can be found through the New Community Paradigms Wiki Map Tour.

A new Planning for Healthy Communities wiki page means a new element on the New Community Paradigms Wiki Map. Wiki-pages are collections of resources related to that topic though are by no means exhaustive. In truth, they are merely gateways into essential, more in-depth studies of the area in question. Their corresponding map elements in conjunction with other elements graphically illustrate possible relationships. It will be noticed that some relationships are more explicit in feeding back to each other.  The idea underlying these mapped out relationships is to expand upon the concepts and avoid the siloing of policy thinking. 

More precisely the Kumu map Planning for Healthy Communities is within the Health Communities Kumu map. One can click on the map’s white space to reveal the fuller map underneath. Other Healthy Communities wiki page links are then displayed in the narrative section. 

Planning for Healthy Communities can be seen as a bridge between Healthy Communities and Community Places within the Places map. Clicking the map’s white space again reveals the numerous wiki pages, bridge pages and other related wiki pages from other wiki maps under the full Places map.

One returns to the collection of web links found on a particular wiki page using the URL within the narrative section of that map element, say Community Places, which focuses more on the community (as a geographic place) planning of building by the community (as social structure). 

Mousing over the highlighted Community Place element of the Places map or any map element shows those wiki pages most directly associated, other overlaying concepts of Place, the wiki focus page of Community Design, the closely related Project for Public Spaces, along with Soul of a Community, and the bridge to Healthy Communities through Planning for Healthy Communities. 

A similar set of relationships exists with the Healthy Communities element within the Healthy Communities map, including the bridge Planning for Healthy Communities and the related Asset Based Community Development or ABCD. It is the relationship of ABCD in this context that calls for the greatest need for future exploration. 

A short Twitter-talk with Cormac Russell on the CityLab article, The New Front Line of Public Health, on the growing number of community health workers taking a 360-degree view of the barriers that stand between their patients and better health, revealed an ABCD perspective.

“Relative to current malaise it's a quantum leap; relative to what's actually required, it's a mediocre shuffle in the right direction.”

According to Cormac, a significant shift requires seeing beyond healthcare and the proliferation of initiatives like Every Block A Village-Chicago Westside Health Authority.

All of these perspectives can be expanded structurally even further by going to the Wiki Bridges Map in which Planning for Health Communities can be found under *Places of the map’s narrative section. Again, click any white space to reveal the full map. 

More dynamic, complex relationships can be followed as pathways under the Wiki Bridges Pathways Map. Selecting Places Wiki Bridges, one can mouse over the narrative highlighting relevant pathways within the map connecting Places and its elements to other areas of the complete New Community Paradigms map. There isn’t any predetermined route, each group, organization or community determines its own course, preferably by making its own maps.  

ABCD Conflict Consensus Debate and Systems Thinking 1 of 2

This post is being written immediately after finishing and before publishing the last post, even though the last post is believed to have done an adequate job of delineating the issues of what is now seen as a core debate between what I will call the Scottish conflict model and, to use their designation, the ABCD consensus approach to community development. 

There is still a need to look into both sides more deeply to understand the differences. This post will focus a bit more on the ABCD perspective while still keeping in mind the concerns of the Scottish conflict model but to attain a sufficient enough level of understanding I will need to return to systems thinking. It has taken four posts to get to this point, it will take longer than one standard post, and a good deal will be contained within this space of exploration until reaching what is seen as possible limits and commonalities for the Scottish conflict model, for ABCD, and for systems thinking.

This though may present an issue with some, previously having written Asset Based Community Development Lessons for Systems Thinking to find some points of commonality between ABCD and systems thinking, this post will use systems thinking to understand aspects of ABCD but many in ABCD see systems as synonymous with institutions and tools of bureaucratic manipulation.

This negative connotation associated with systems and especially “The System” is understandable. BusinessDictionary.com's definition of a System takes this top-down management perspective of systems and while there is some truth to this interpretation, it is also limited or constricting in my view.  Particularly when “the” of “The System” is being used as a marker of unconditional preeminence rather than a means for specifying or particularizing. 

According to a more general definition by Wikipedia, and Merriam Webster indirectly:

"A system is a set of interacting or interdependent component parts forming a complex/intricate whole. Every system is delineated by its spatial and temporal boundaries, surrounded and influenced by its environment, described by its structure and purpose and expressed in its functioning. 

The term system may also refer to a set of rules that governs structure or behavior. Alternatively, and usually in the context of complex social systems, the term is used to describe the set of rules that govern structure or behavior."

I lean toward, Donella Meadows, one of the authors of Limits to Growth, who has a similar definition, “A system is an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something…. a system must consist of three kinds of things: elements, interconnections and a function or purpose,” but her definition can be expanded upon from these simple foundational steps to Dancing with Systems. More importantly, in terms of endeavoring to bring about transformation, she identifies points of leverage within systems.

For myself then, the only thing that deserves to be called “The System” is “The Universe” and everything in it is parts of myriad instances of “a system”. Institutions are composed of multiple systems, sometimes espoused systems conflicting with actual in use systems, or systems of administration contrasted with systems of organizational culture. ABCD in my view fits the Donella Meadows’ definition of a system. It is a system, a complex, human based system, that must exist within, and by its purpose interact with the complicated, procedure based, institutional systems aforementioned.

Based on the premise that there is a difference between complicated and complex systems, what I see as the Wikipedia complex/intricate contrast could be replaced with intrinsic as a defining attribute of complexity and complicated as the manifestation of the intricate. For both, there has to be mutual iterative interactions between events. It does not necessarily have to be directly two way, it can be a one-way loop with numerous intervening events or elements in-between. 

Both types of systems, complicated or complex, are developed to influence or manipulate larger complex cultural or social systems. Their approaches to complexity are also different and these differences can be categorized according to Warren Weaver's Science and Complexity.

The rules for complicated systems are usually imposed from without even when those supposedly imposing are elected every four years or so or are placed by circumstances into leadership. An autonomous management entity usually comes into play even with oppositional or conflict models to lead the fight. Even fully human based cultural systems will involve some forms of complicated systems of control, the question is to the level this is true and how effective it works out to be.

The fundamental rules of complex systems arise from within the (particular) system itself. The rules of a complex system are defined by the interaction of the components of the system, intrinsically related to each other. It is this type of relationship which allows emergent properties to arise from a system, wetness attributed to a relationship between hydrogen and oxygen, life from the organic based relationship of carbon based chemicals as contrasted to inorganic chemicals, the emergence of consciousness from the holographically intrinsic relationship of neuron synapses within the human brain, the Arab Spring Uprising.

A conflict model often operates on intricate, complicated lines in opposition to an institutional system which also endeavors to operate imposed complicated systems of top-down control but through intricate lines that are often obscure or hidden. 

A complicated approach to a complex social system can be analogous to Warren’s disorganized form of complexity. As Daniel Bassill writes, after the 2009 Copenhagen accords, makers of a Collation of the Willing in 2013 proposed mobilizing people as a ‘swarm’ suggesting that with the Internet it is possible to create an online hub that could support the growth of the climate change movement. It had the laudable objective ”in order to address the climate crisis we have to first address inequalities”. These type of movements though, in my view, often seem to treat people as the molecules in a chamber of gas creating movement through heat or pressure thereby creating change through external sources of force. 

In outlining ‘12 Domains of People Powered Change’ Russell provides paths for solving some of the most pressing social problems by restoring bonds among people. Rather than finding creative ways to ‘reclaim the state’ ABCD instead seeks to reclaim the commons. This to my mind is more analogous to Warren's organized complexity, later adopted by Jane Jacobs. 

"All of these [referring to a long list] are certainly complex problems. But they are not problems of disorganized complexity, to which statistical methods hold the key. They are problems which involve dealing simultaneously with a sizable number of factors which are interrelated into an organic whole."

As a systems thinking proponent, one common means of understanding the world is through the Systems Thinking Iceberg Model which has been featured before in this blog. The Donella Meadows Institute has its own perspective on the Iceberg Model. I am not going to go into detail about the Iceberg model on these pages but understanding it is important to what follows.

In my view, the Scottish conflict model primarily operates at the Event level and especially at the Structure level. The Pattern level is not necessarily ignored but there is less attention paid to understanding the patterns than there is to identifying and opposing what is seen as components of the entrenched system structure responsible. Mental models are often replaced by imposed established ideology. Patterns, as far as they are seen to exist, are set in terms of a continuing conflict. The question is whether this creates a truly independent system capable of replacing an existing entrenched system or is it rather merely an oscillating system in different states of conflict that never truly transforms? 

ABCD focuses more on the Pattern level and the Mental Model level. It focuses especially on those community generated Patterns ignored by institutional government service providers by which communities focus on their own strengths rather than being defined by others according to their weaknesses. These are the events celebrated and repeated across communities until they become an integrated part of the community. 

More important though is the creation of new Mental Models adopted by those following new patterns. This is not merely positive thinking but taking actions which has community, as well as personal, impact and repeating those actions in a manner which feeds back into the community creating the conditions by which they can be sustained and become resilient.