Approaching a Systems Practice, Yet Again

Before getting started, it seems important to recognize upfront that New Community Paradigms or NCP doesn't have any answers, only possible pathways to answers. The resources or results of explorations and experiments are only road signs or markers that could hopefully prove useful when others create their own pathways.

Another pathway or in this case, online course has been found and started. This one is Mastering Systems Thinking in Practice from the Open University in the UK, taught as far as I can tell by Professor Andy Lane. As usual for this blog, this is not meant to be a substitute for the course. The order here will often be different from the course and differences in perspectives will be noted.

This will be the second systems thinking course, actually third if you count the Systems Practice course but there are still some issues with that course that need to be dealt with which is part of the motivation to take this one. There is also a desire to extend my systems thinking knowledge to better address wicked problems by including a better understanding of the role of complexity.

The course asserts that “complexity becomes frightening when we assume we ought to be able to ‘solve’ it” but then can't. An approach which is deeply entrenched in Western culture. This is in agreement with what has been asserted before on these pages, “Traditional management frameworks and methodologies are based largely on ‘machine" analogies’ taking a reductionist approach to complexity”.

It is an approach that seems natural and obvious to anyone brought up or educated in a Western culture as being the way to tackle complex situations but while the approach is appropriate for many situations, it’s useless for others. Systems thinking according to the course makes complexity manageable by taking a broader perspective instead of breaking down situations into their component parts. The course seems to largely put ‘Systems thinking’ in an organizational setting, though it encourages personal connection as a means of bridging to larger concepts.

The course highlights UK entities such as PwC, NESTA, Forum for the Future, Advice UK and Oxfam. Systems thinking has been used in UK policy making at both the local and national government level. Here in the US, there is the Waters Foundation, the Institute for Systemic Leadership, and the Donella Meadows Institute as well as several educational institutions, book publishers and reports such as this one from the World Health Organization. It has influenced the work of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation on the Circular Economy and is thought to be an important facet of the 17th Sustainable Development Goal that deals with bringing the work on all other 16 goals together as part of a global partnership.

A good deal written here will be based on questions asked by the course such as, “How do you see the role of systems thinking?”. I now see systems thinking as analogous to aspects of a global navigation system for understanding our world using one of my favorite PBS shows, How We Got To Now with Steven Johnson / Time (Emmy Winner) as the analogy. Sailing by longitude in straight-line fashion can be seen as a step by step analytical process found say in writing blog posts. Systems thinking allows one to think more broadly sailing by latitude but this takes new ways of thinking. Both together allow though for a far more expansive view of the world.

The course is presumed to be advanced but seems often to assume minimal systems thinking background. The course seems to be following a system of embeddedness in presenting the material, working from smaller concepts to larger. This blog will sometimes follow an opposite path because it will connect with past learning.

Systems thinking, according to the course respects complexity, realizing that understanding is often incomplete and that we don’t always know what is and is not included in an issue. Any view is partial and provisional and others likely have a different one. It means resisting the temptation to simplify issues by breaking them down. It also means there is more than one way of understanding the complexity of an issue.

According to the course, Systems thinking focuses on connections or relationships between things, events and ideas, giving them equal status. Fundamentally, it is about relationships and processes, it is a framework for understanding inter-relationships.

Patterns become important and the nature of the relationships between a given set of elements may be: 

• Causal (A causes, leads to, or contributes to, B); 
• Influential (X influences Y and Z); 
• Temporal (P follows Q); or 
• Relate to embeddedness (M is part of N) and there are others. 

According to the course, “Thinking systemically about these connections includes being open to recognising that the patterns of connection are more often web-like than linear chains of connection”.

I like that the course explicitly differentiates between causality and influences or what I see for the later as correlation. Relationships between things, events and ideas mean patterns of connection giving rise to larger wholes, and in certain cases, giving rise to emergence.

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.

Systems thinking does not attempt to model reality. One's mental image of the world is a model, a partial representation of reality based on partial knowledge of the external world. An important facet of systems thinking in practice is context.

Each individual's perspective on the world can take one of three vantage points : 

1. Ignore the incompleteness of one’s viewpoints and representations. 
2. Recognize that one’s viewpoint is limited and because it is only partial may be misleading. 
3. Always carry an awareness that one will never know the world or fully the implications of the world’s unknowability. Therefore we must always be trying to account for our own role in perceptions of the world. 

These are all general concepts concerning systems thinking. The course begins constructing a specific understanding of systems thinking by starting with a simpler concept, accessible to being, if not fully understood at least recognizable, “messes” as defined by Russell L. Ackoff’. More on that in the next post. Russell L. Ackoff was the one who admonished us to Never improve a part of the system unless it also improves the whole. It was also Russell L. Ackoff who considered, Why Few Organizations Adopt Systems Thinking. There are two basic reasons according to Ackoff, one the fault of the organizations and one the fault of systems thinking or more precisely systems thinkers.

This was a typical organization, one in which the principal operating principle was "Cover your ass.” Application of this principle produced a management that tried to minimize its responsibility and accountability. The result was a paralyzed organization, one that almost never initiated change of any kind let alone innovation. It made changes only when a competitor made it necessary for it to do so.

We are an introverted profession. We do most of our writing and speaking to each other. This is apparent on examination of the content of any of our journals or conferences. To be sure, some communication among ourselves is necessary, but it is not sufficient.

The course goes on to cite C.W. Churchman (1971), as one of the first people to write about what systems thinking might mean in practice, who said, ‘there are no experts in a systems approach’.

NCP has recognized that a systems thinking approach can take a significantly different path than one dictated by a command and control management approach. A systems thinking approach can call upon the stakeholders of the system in question to take from an investigation resulting from a preceding exploration, found points of leverage so as to craft a strategy which will address the current situation in a manner that is beneficial to the whole system by changing stakeholder and organizational behaviors and avoiding unintended consequences to the greatest extent possible.

NCP sees volunteering through civil society as important to a community because the political institutions and market institutions cannot be expected to be able or to be trusted to fulfill all the needs of the community, especially in addressing Wicked Problems. Our challenges are increasingly complex. Our responses to these challenges cannot be merely simplistic but need to be coherently complex which requires systems thinking.

For the course then at the heart of systems thinking: Essentially it is about using practical frameworks for engaging with multiple perspectives.

The first step in doing this, according to the course, is understanding the difference between dealing with difficulties and dealing with messes.

The Difference between Mapping Pathways and Traveling the Road

During week 5 of Active Citizen in a Digital Age, the course guided us in considering how to allocate responsibilities in addressing our shared social goal. Our team's stated mission was to reduce the economic inequality of low-income people by providing access to affordable healthcare, education with job training, and housing. How we were going to do this was a little less clear.

Our plan was to include advocacy activities such as who would volunteer, donate or seek donations to a particular association or charitable nonprofit. How would this make a difference in achieving our goal? Also, who would spend time or money or both specifically focused on policy change or political action? This could include attending public hearings or council meetings on certain topics, organizing people to vote, participating in peaceful protest activities, or donating or seeking donations.

The plan was intended to focus on the type of influence or change that was to be made in one year's time. The one-year time frame provided the potential for including all aspects including ending up with a vote through an election or action by a political body.

We were to explain how the different tactics are meant to fit together and our reasons for choosing those tactics and any tradeoffs we had to make.

When I looked at the assignment, there were a number of questions that came to my mind. My questions were pretty basic. Were we focusing on all three of our objectives in general or picking one and focusing on a particular aspect of an issue? How were we providing access? How were we making it affordable? What type of influence or change were we seeking? Specifically, what policy change or political action were we going to be focused on?

It also seemed that the theme of the first part of the assignment was concerned more with the civil sector while the second part of the assignment was concerned more with the political sector. Which were we going to focus on, the first, the second bull, or both?

If focused on the civic realm then how would our actions make a difference in achieving our goal? If focused on the political realm then at what level of government? If organizing people to vote then I presumed we were speaking of an election through a vote by a political board was also a possibility. If both, how are they then to be related together to explain how our different tactics are meant to fit together? Peaceful protests would seem to be in reaction to a political action. Seeking donations would seem to be as important as making donations (they have a course on that).The one-year time frame provided the potential for including all aspects including ending up with a vote through an election or action by a political body.

As is often my habit, I decided to create a Kumu map of the course’s state Mission and Actions, based on a self-selected choice of healthcare, to make more explicit the relationships between various factors or elements. Opening the map and mousing over the text in the left-hand column will highlight relevant parts of the map but I will also discuss here. The map consists of a Civil Sector and a Political Sector which is organized in such a way that they are seen as working together. Their limitations are made more discernible when viewed separately. The civil sector has difficulty making fundamental changes being often relegated to merely holding the line in terms of social damage. The political sector can’t access the deeper perspective of civil society.

My own potential personal path of involvement was based in part on my past experience working in city government and past and still, unfinished work exploring Effective Virtual Collaboration and its expanded perspective Community Based Virtual Collaboration.

This was fine as far as it went but I needed to include my path as one component of a Collective Action Plan with the others on the team. I had access to everybody else’s narrative as they had access to mine as well as to the basic map I created. With this information, I endeavored to map out a path for each of the team’s participants. My pathway connections' thicker widths make it possible to see where my pathways and the pathways of others overlap.

The team leader Participant 1’s Path emphasized the political sector more though hopefully growing out of an educated and enthusiastic base of support. The far more challenging undertaking though would be carrying this forward to final attainment of the goal.

Participant 2’s Path incorporated the new platform Educate Evangelize which I came to see as very important. One has to change people's mindset before they can change much else. I put Participant 2's path more on the civil side leaving the subsequently educated and enthusiastic to decide for themselves which political path to take. This doesn't preclude political action by Participant 2 but to educate truthfully about something means to my mind connecting with people in the field.

Participant 3’s Path towards change was seen as emphasizing the civil sector connections with various associations and nonprofits and by working with them to impact policy change by working hand in hand with political change. Again, this did not preclude political action by Participant 3 simply that there was an emphasis on working with groups like the American Medical Association (AMA), American Association of Retired People (AARP), American Hospital Association (AHA) and Federation of American Hospitals (FAH), American Cancer Society (ACS), National Physician Alliance (NPA) and Planned Parenthood through which one can leverage these organizations and participate in their efforts to influence elected officials.

Participant 4’s Path towards change emphasized the promotion of financial contributions expanding beyond personal giving.

Each of these paths is a different story which is not being revealed here. The map simply demonstrates how those stories could interact in creating a larger story. It was interesting to note that despite not having any input into the selection of the team members, the Paths of All Participants covered nearly all of the platforms and actions put forward by the course. The All Paths loop brought together all of the individual paths through collaboration. Besides connections related to Crowdfunding to be discussed below, only one connection was missing and that was spending money to organize people to vote which likely needs another level of organization and effort.

Week six of the Active Citizen in a Digital Age course got into the market sector of democratic advocacy including boycotts. Other advocacy support financial tools cited were Crowdfunding like IOBY (In Our Backyards), impact investing as with B corporations and Embedded Giving.

Crowdfunding which was also included in the Combined Paths map connecting the personal actions of spending money, what the course referred to as political spending and donating or seeking donations, what the course referred to as financial support of civil society efforts with the various platforms for action, working with associations or nonprofits, taking political action, working on policy change, or the added education and evangelizing.

The Crowdfunding element’s influence could then be further extended integrating other elements together. Crowdfunding obviously raises money but it could also work through the advocacy systems connector loop, integrating even further.

We created and I mapped out pathways to achieving the goals for which we were advocating. What became obvious to me is that no one path would be enough. The issue I had is that we had no specific modes of traveling those paths. As has been asserted before, "There is also still the further need to move from basically abstract ideas to connecting ideas together for strategic application, to the why, to begin overcoming what Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton called the Knowing-Doing Gap (page 7)".

Active Digital Citizens Seeking New Community Paradigms pt. 3

Having  now covered weeks one, two and three, the fourth week of the course, The Active Citizen in a Digital Age took a look at volunteering and donating but the focus will be on another concept raised in the material, social capital. There’s a need to differentiate, nuanced though it may be, between the NCP perspective on Civil Society and the Active Digital Citizen Perspective. 

NCP does not see Civil Society as an “institutional manifestation of our basic human rights to peaceable assembly, free expression and, privacy,” but rather as the Australian Centre for Civil Society does as “the relationships and associations that make up our life at grassroots levels of society, in families, neighbourhoods and voluntary associations, independent of both government and the commercial world”. The difference is the level of dependence on institutions not the exclusion of them. Civil Society is the basis for Community Governance in that it recognizes that the right of the community to govern arises from the community itself through civic interactions and is not bestowed by any governmental institution.  As proposed by Laurence Demarco,  The difference between Civil and Civic, Civic refers to the 'local state' — “where citizens participate in local health boards, schools, community councils, planning partnerships and all the other mechanisms ultimately under the direction of the state.”  Civil society means voluntary actions undertaken by citizens, not under the direction of any authority wielding the power of the state which has a tendency to encroach. A similar perspective is presented by Larry Diamond, What Civil Society Can Do to Develop Democracy.

This arguably places civic society between civil society and the political sector of democracy with the institutions spoken of by the Active Digital Citizen being institutional touch points between the community and government power.  The human touch points are volunteers.

Although the course warned of dangers with digital interactions and democracy, one organization seen as utilizing technology very effectively is VolunteerMatch. Greg Baldwin, the President of VolunteerMatch talked about utilizing technology to make the world a better place and how technology has changed volunteering for the better.

The NCP wiki page Voluntary Participation and the related NCP Kumu map, which provides a non-hierarchal graphic representation of the wiki, places Voluntary Participation  as a bridge between Civil Society and Governance.  Another bridge from Civil Society to Governance is Data Journalism and Community Information to help the community keep an eye on the government institutions. Both would arguably be needed to ensure the independence of Civil Society sought by Active Digital Citizen and others. 

The course cites Robert Putnam’s book Bowling Alone, The Collapse and Revival of American Community in which he argues the breakdown of “social capital” because of pressure on time and money, the disintegration of the family unit, media, television, and generational change resulting in the  diminishment of networks of trust and reciprocity that these connections advanced. A sharp decline in neighborhood bowling leagues leading to many more people bowling alone being the illuminating example. 

Putnam’s book was previously included but not cited as part of the Collective Impact Living Cities Kumu project as an extension of How Can We Recapture the Spirit of Community Engagement that Built America?, Kumu map of a Living Cities blog post of the same title. 

The concept of social capital, according to Putnam, depends on people believing that if: “I’ll do this for you, without expecting anything specific back from you, in the confident expectation that someone else will do something for me down the road.”

From very early on with a Second look at Making Cities Work, social capital has meant creating an environment from which there was more from which draw to bring about new community paradigms. This would require a good deal of volunteering from members of the community, as participants actively pursuing their role as the producers of democracy.  Volunteering is not limited though to formal volunteering in a community but all forms of altruistic social interaction. Volunteering at its best is a face to face proposition which means creating social connections within a community, helping to increase the democratic participation being sought. 

Building 'Social Capital' within a  community through community engagement can be seen as the planning process of building both 'Bonding' and 'Bridging'.  One metric whether community engagement has been successful or not is the extent to which the process has helped the community to build social capital, making the community stronger and more connected.  

"Social Capital" can, however, be seen by some as being part of a technical discourse with which the majority of people are not engaged, making it a more useful term when examining community engagement from an exclusively systems perspective. 

The organic based direction a community takes can be diverted by institutions attempting to fulfill what they see as their institutional mission.  Even when well intentioned, professionals whether directly involved in community engagement or more likely indirectly as part of some other function, say economic development, often lack a true understanding or appreciation of what community engagement as a means of building real community capacity is about. Instead of talking about community engagement what should be talked about is an engaged community.

Even if one starts with the right motivations and frame of reference, it is still difficult to work with a community that is disengaged or disenfranchised or with a group that lacks sufficient social capital in the larger community.  This can arguably be widely applicable as many if not most people in any large community feel disengaged, as social capital is only generated where people are actively engaged.  The individual then rather than the organization becomes the most basic component of community engagement.

Stuart Graeme promoted Colin Williams’ ideas of individual community engagement, "Fostering community engagement and tackling undeclared work"  consisting of "spending time, engaged in unpaid activity, doing something that aims to benefit someone (individuals or groups) other than or in addition to close relatives, or to benefit the environment."  

This doesn’t have to happen through organizations but could arise more like a "good neighbor" concept.  Graeme also seemed  to suggest that these 'good neighbors' could be the ones to start in engaging with the community to build the connectedness comprising the Bonding' and 'Bridging' of 'Social Capital.'  It would be based, in my view upon the existence of what has been labeled ‘Civil Society, particularly when thinking of community paradigms as a set of community relations. The connection with Civil Society is made stronger yet in Community paradigms as a set of community relations.

Only later was a connection realized with Asset Based Community Development through ABCD, Social Networks and the Commons connecting Associational Life which looked at evaluating communities on an Asset Based Community Development basis, as a whole, in terms of social capital bonding (connecting neighborhood residents together) and bridging (connecting volunteers from outside the community with residents, or presumably, the community with other communities within a common jurisdiction). 

In a more recent post connected with this course Establishing a Foundation for Democratic Belief, I argued that Brennan was right as he said to have previously written that participation can be meaningful even when its practical effect is nil, because of the social bonding it creates. He assumed though that no comparable duty existed to take part specifically in voting, because other kinds of good actions can take the place of voting, believing that voting is part of what is termed a larger market in civic virtue. Those other components cannot though make up by themselves for the loss of voting from the total civic virtue or social capital created with the inclusion of voting. The overall capacity of civic virtue or social capital is diminished for the sake of administrative efficiency.

The assignment for week four included one question which was:

• Give two to three reasons why you think volunteering is important/effective

Volunteering through civil society is important to a community because the political institutions and market institutions cannot be expected to be able or to be trusted to fulfill all the needs of the community, especially in addressing Wicked Problems. Our challenges are increasingly complex. Our responses to these challenges cannot be merely simplistic but need to be coherently complex. From a systems perspective, we need to focus not only on what Chris Argyris called Single Loop Learning but Double Loop Learning as well. 

I will finish up with Zeynep Tufekci: Online social change: easy to organize, hard to win but in the next post as it deserves its own podium.