Ostrom, the Commons and the Green New Deal

In the course of this effort to find new community paradigms, there has been an ongoing, albeit unexpressed, tendency to gravitate towards what can be viewed as a cluster of three thought leaders, all of whom are women. All three are seen as being clustered around the concept of positively addressing and engaging complexity.

They are Donella Meadows, who has an NCP wiki page, Jane Jacobs, for whom though I haven’t yet built a wiki page, is foundational to Placemaking and the work of Project for Public Spaces particularly her ideas on organized complexity and, although until now neglected despite growing awareness and appreciation, Elinor (Lin) Ostrom.

The initial resource for this post, through Marginal Revolution University, was Elinor Ostrom | Women in Economics. The reason for the current focus, in addition to an understanding that the environmental resources introduced in the last post are not enough on their own to face the wicked challenge of climate change, is due to a question asked on both Twitter and the Facebook group The Ecology of Systems Thinking, “Wondering how Elinor Ostrom's ideas could be applied to the Green New Deal and scaled up to be applied not only nationally but globally?” The result of which was several additional useful resources and an enlightened, educational discussion.

With the world’s climate being considered as the ultimate commons, Ostrom’s Eight Principles for Managing a Commons can be seen as a counter to Garrett Hardin’s more pessimistic perspective on the Tragedy of the Commons problem, which is a systems thinking archetype (number 2 in the list). ”Unnecessary tragedies, like ozone holes and national debts, greenhouse effects and urban air pollution are examples of the Tragedy of the Commons”. In these examples provided by Daniel Kim, two different Causal Loop Diagrams display how the archetype works. As he points out, “Perhaps the trickiest part of identifying a 'Tragedy of the Commons' archetype at work is coming to some agreement on exactly what is the commons that is being overburdened.”

Upon closer examination, Hardin’s approach seems less a top-down means of command and control to the benefit of greedy landlords and more an understandable concern regarding how to address unsustainable population growth. The primary point of disagreement is that Ostrom ”challenged the presumption that rational individuals were helplessly trapped in dilemmas.” 16:04

The above quote is taken from the primary resource for this post, Ostrom’s 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences lecture at Indiana University in which she goes over her basic ideas discussed more fully in her Nobel Prize Lecture paper, on polycentric governance complex economic systems, and the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework (24:14) and of particular note, ”Demonstrated that complexity is not the same as chaos in regard to metropolitan governance” (21:13 & 22:13).

A number of her other ideas expressed in the lecture were found especially noteworthy.

“The rules that we use to govern a university, a private firm, a water resource, or any kind of problem need to fit the socio-ecological area or field that they are supposed to control. Having one kind of rule that will work everywhere is a ridiculous kind of thinking.” (17:05)

“The second is that polycentric systems with multiple scales enable a fit between human action situations day to day situations and nested ecological systems.” (17:34). Ostrom seems to use the term situations and the complex environments in which they occur in a manner similar to Russell Ackoff’s idea of messes and others in systems thinking.

So likely any top-down systems, even those well-intentioned such as the Green New Deal, at least in its present form without far more bottom-up policy and technical input, could be suspect.

“Panaceas are dysfunctional” 17:52 I have no doubt that she would have included any specific instance of her own systemic approach and any derivatives, directing attention to the first principle listed above.

“The internal would be actors who are in positions that can take action in light of information that they have and how much control they can take and their net benefits and outcomes and then choose outcomes.” (26:35)

“And when they made decisions anomalously and there was no communication, they did what the theory predicted Just as we found in the field that when it was very big and they couldn’t communicate they over-harvested. All we had to do was introduce the possibility of face to face communication, which is referred to in-game theory as cheap talk, doesn’t make any difference, that enabled them to increase cooperation greatly, and then we allowed them to design their own sanctioning system and they went up to 90% of optimal, a fantastically positive result…” (36:42)

What has to change then is the framework in which these complex interactions occur making the transformation into new paradigms for communities possible. The most important requirement, trust.

“We find that learning to trust others is central. You cannot have a small, medium or large or very large governance mechanism that works over time when people do not trust one another.“ (41:17) This point was also emphasized within the Ecology of Systems Thinking group. The issue considered by the participants is whether the networks of trust could be expanded or scaled up to be effectual against wicked challenges such as climate change.

“But the important thing was if it didn't work you could exit and exit turns out to be a very important, powerful, possibility for citizens and if you have only big units, how do you exit?” (19:52)

Ostrom finishes with the “idea of reform” (43:55) and in particular for me the idea “We must learn how to deal with complexity, not just reject it”. (45:01).

The Ecology of Systems Thinking discussion extended the political and economic perspective of the Tragedy of the Commons problem to a more biologically based orientation. A recommended article by Dr. David Sloan Wilson connects Ostrom’s work with evolutionary biology and in doing so establishes cooperation as a viable evolutionary strategy and points out major transitions becoming higher-level organisms in their own right, such as the rise of the first bacterial cells, multicellular organisms, eusocial insect colonies, and human evolution.

Part of the debate, delineated by the disciplines of physics and biology, was on the initial starting point and slope of the trend between population, population density, and food that brought us to our current predicament and applying that to predict a future course of either potential transformation or inevitable destruction. Having only cursory knowledge, I did not take a side. Another topic was on the increasing complexity inherent in wider circles, larger groups, or higher levels of polycentric governance which from my perspective I saw as similar to Dunbar's Number. Here is an RSA video of Dunbar explaining his theory.

Past NCP posts looked at the scaling of networks based on Dunbar's Number applied to Asset Based Community Development, as well as the concept of carrying capacity being applied to communities. These will be returned to for closer examination and likely some revision in future posts already begun raising new questions and some simmering old ones.

According to Cormac Russell, Managing Director of Nurture Development, the average person has fifty-one other persons in their associational lives but he argues that we each need one hundred fifty persons citing Robin Dunbar, the originator of Dunbar's Number.

The number of 150, according to Dunbar "refers to those people with whom you have a personalized relationship, one that is reciprocal and based around general obligations of trust and reciprocity." Cormac asserts that these need to be friends and neighbors, not other service users, professionals, or even family. “It comes down to how many unforced and unpaid for relationships of acceptance we have in door knocking distance.” Including ”family” in the latter group should have been questioned back then more closely as kinship is a primary basis for Dunbar’s number.

There is not, however, a single Dunbar Number but rather a scale of numbers, of ever-widening circles of connection constrained by a cognitive limit because this limit is a direct function of neocortex size, and this, in turn, limits group size where stable interpersonal relationships can be maintained. This cognitive constraint or gap needs to be overcome, logically to my mind, by some systemic means. The working hypothesis is that Asset Based Community Development can contribute to this but doesn't seem to solve it on its own.

Elinor Ostrom’s work cannot in my view be said to be mainstream which is actually part of the reason she appeals to New Community Paradigms. Her work continues through the Ostrom Workshop now the cornerstone of the beginning of a new NCP wiki-page.

Environment and Community Ecology Remade as Part of New Community Paradigms

The previous post of this blog revisited and updated the New Community Paradigms (NCP) wiki page Community Arts. The next wiki page to be updated is Environment. Admittedly, Climate Change has not been a primary focus until recently. The focus has been more on democratic community governance. Recently though issues such as the #GreenNewDeal has clearly shown that Climate Change is a manifestation of governance.

As with most of the NCP wiki pages, Environment is a collection of resources gathered over time. It is by no means comprehensive nor is there any assertion of personal expertise in their selection. The sites selected are only a sampling of useful sites that could be applied in creating new community paradigms.

There have been a number of changes since the last time Environment was featured. In addition to the loss of some sites, there has also been a change from the Brain to Kumu as a primary systems mapping tool for NCP. A meta-oriented change made early was moving from a concept of Community Environment to Community Ecology. The word ecology being judged as providing a greater biological orientation to the concept of community than the word environment. For better comprehension, the Environment wiki page has been organized into three sections. The first of which is Community Science / Education / Systems Thinking and Practice.

The latest new resource is the Home of Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) which seeks to improve environmental data stewardship and to promote environmental health and Environmental Justice through the analysis, through Digital Justice, of federal environmental data, websites, institutions, and policy. Towards an Environmental Data Justice Statement: Initial Thoughts - EDGI provides a good introduction of their efforts.

Public Lab, is a DIY environmental science community with a strong democratic ethos as reflected by their Public Comment section. Public Lab injects community knowledge into civic decision-making about local environmental concerns, listing scores of DIY citizen projects on its extensive community populated Wiki website. The Science of Collective Discovery provides Open Source Stories, featuring organizations like Public Lab and others on how citizens are using open hardware to make groundbreaking discoveries.

NAAEE | North American Association for Environmental Education is a force multiplier for environmental education, promoting excellence in the field and expanding the reach and impact of their collective work.

The Climate Leader Climate Interactive tool provides an introductory training series in systems thinking to help fuel the global response to climate change. En-ROADS is a fast, powerful simulation tool for understanding how we can achieve our energy transition and climate goals through changes in our energy use, consumption, and policies.

The next section us Climate Change for the Better. The Citizens' Climate Lobby is a non-profit, nonpartisan, grassroots advocacy organization focused on national policies to address climate change by taking action on climate change solutions.

The Post Carbon Institute is intent on leading the transition to a resilient world providing individuals, communities, businesses, and governments with the resources needed to understand and respond to the interrelated economic, energy, environmental, and equity crises that defines the twenty-first century by envisioning a world of resilient communities and re-localized economies thriving within ecological bounds. The closely related Homepage of Resilience provides not only a community library with space to read and think, but also a vibrant café to support building community resilience in a world of multiple emerging challenges: the decline of cheap energy, the depletion of critical resources like water, complex environmental crises like climate change and biodiversity loss, and the social and economic issues which are linked to these.

The Project Drawdown lists one hundred potential solutions to reverse global warming from retrofitting to refrigerant management. While the Solutions Project seeks to accelerate the transition to 100% clean energy by championing a movement that is more inclusive, more collaborative, and more celebratory through storytelling, grant making, and capacity building and by honoring clean energy leaders, investing in promising solutions, and building relationships between unlikely allies.

Global Green USA works in partnership with local governments and other public agencies that are ready to “do” sustainability. They help create innovative and replicable policies, programs, and procedures so that sustainable practices become standard in the planning, design, construction, and operation of the built environment.

C40 Cities Live - Blog is a network of large and engaged cities from around the world committed to implementing meaningful and sustainable climate-related actions locally that will help address climate change globally.

Taking a more business-oriented perspective is the Portland State College of Urban & Public Affairs | The Initiative on Triple Bottom Line Development. Their Triple Bottom Line Tool is unfortunately on hiatus.

The final section consists of sites seen as addressing Energy & Climate Data. Climate Change being recognized as a Wicked Problem, the data being presented can be particularly complex. This is especially true with USA Energy Data which presents an interactive map detailing America’s daily energy use by Saul Griffith, co-founder and CEO of Otherlab.

The EJSCREEN: Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool is a US EPA developed environmental justice (EJ) mapping and screening tool purportedly based on nationally consistent data and an approach that combines environmental and demographic indicators in maps and reports. Unfortunately, certainty doesn't seem as possible with the current federal administration.

Taking a more expansive approach to the issue and recognize the potential contribution business and perhaps more conservative perspectives, the Carbon Tracker Initiative seeks to align the capital markets with efforts to tackle climate change. The Carbon Disclosure Project - Global climate change reporting system provides a transformative global system for thousands of companies and cities to measure, disclose, manage and share environmental information with the view that market forces can, hopefully, be seen as a major cause of change when provided with the necessary information.

The Greenhouse Gas Data Publication Tool is another EPA tool that explores Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions from Large Facilities. The Home for Environmental software tools for accounting, carbon footprinting & sustainability performance, although located in the United Kingdom, is intended to bring together people needing to do some form of environmental assessment (and particularly quantification) with people that have developed tools to do these assessments and calculations. Their tools vary in format, including documents, spreadsheets, websites, and other software programs.

The Challenge is research published in Nature Sustainability with the vision of, ”A Good Life For All Within Planetary Boundaries” (summarized in The Conversation) that is the first to quantify the national resource use associated with achieving a good life for over 150 countries. Recognizing that no country in the world currently meets the basic needs of its citizens at a globally sustainable level of resource use. The Climate Wizard enables technical and non-technical audiences alike to access leading climate change information and visualize the impacts anywhere on Earth.

The site Bombs in Your Backyard - ProPublica provides a full map of sites contaminated with military toxic waste and explosives some of which are located near schools, residential neighborhoods, rivers, and lakes.

Environment was placed under the Community Ecology map of the New Community Paradigms Wiki map project which can assist in both discovering and communicating unrealized connections and redefining connections. One can get from an element narrative (Environment) to the underlying map (Community Ecology) by clicking the white space of the map. One can highlight and select an element (Environment) in the Community Ecology map by selecting the text in the narrative section and mousing over and clicking or by selecting the element’s colored circle within the map. One can get back to the relevant New Community

Paradigms wiki page using the URL, e.g., newcommunityparadigms.pbworks.com/w/page/44793688/Environment in the particular narrative section of the element.

What the Kumu Community Ecology wiki map graphically reveals is that the concept consists of Sustainability and Environment, as well as Streets and Transportation, each of which can connect back to the NCP wiki map through an On Kumu Wiki Map link. Community Ecology bridges back through Planning the Urban Landscape (formerly Built Environment) to Places and then on to the concept of Livable Communities and beyond.

All of this though only provides resources not answers or solutions which must still be developed by those searching for ways of creating new community paradigms.

NCP Inquiries into Systems Practice - 10th post of 3rd Project

This is the tenth blog post in a series on the Jerusalem Vision Project, which is the third Systems Practice project undertaken through the Acumen course using the Omidyar Group’s approach to pragmatically applying Systems Thinking. 

The project took my rudimentary knowledge of Systems Thinking as a basis for obtaining a better understanding of Systems Practice and applied it to a complex challenge - Israeli/Palestinian relationships in the City of Jerusalem of which I admittedly knew relatively nothing.

This specific blog post is going to again review this endeavor, not of achieving better relations between Palestinians and Jews in the City of Jerusalem but in the utilization of Systems Practice to address such complex challenges. These points have been made before but across disparate posts making their assertion somewhat disjointed.

These continuing endeavors seem to have worked well in attaining a better understanding of the Systems Practice methodology having initially made a late start in properly applying the methodology the first time with an inquiry into food trucks for homeless camps but still having concerns about the process afterward nonetheless. The second time, looking at plastic pollution of the ocean in Bangkok, Thailand, gaining a better understanding and a somewhat more successful application but still having questions that remained or continued to be needed to be tested to confirm certain aspects in terms of how Systems Practice could be utilized in developing new community paradigms.

The difference then between this Systems Practice project and the previous two projects is first, a better understanding of how a Systems Practice approach works and second, instead of focusing on each project step by step this project waited until completion to get a better overall view of the process. Both to determine how the Systems Practice process unfolded and to assess how Systems Practice might be integrated with Direct Democracy and Systems Thinking.

However, endeavoring to absorb the entire process after its completion raised a number of complications particularly when attempting to communicate the worthwhileness of the effort with anyone who has had little to no experience with Systems Thinking or Systems Practice. It is not a difficult challenge to get those interested in Systems Thinking or Systems Practice to take a look at another example of the methodology to either agree with or disagree and critique. You can simply ask them, the community is especially helpful.

It is more of a challenge to get those neck deep in dealing with real-world messes to consider Systems Thinking and Systems Practice as viable approaches to finding solutions. This takes us back to the first paragraph. Any contribution I made to specific projects was not based on my first-hand knowledge of the particular challenge under consideration but my relatively better understanding of applying Systems Thinking and increasingly, a Systems Practice approach to these challenges, in cooperation with others who had committed to trying to apply the approach with their enrollment in the course.

The Jerusalem Vision Project had its own particular challenges being based on both more complicated and conflictual issues, in addition to its complex nature. Complicated and conflictual because of political and historical reasons but also somewhat internally conflictual, though collegiately so, because of distinctions between different mental models used by the project participants. The complex nature of the challenge though may not be as readily apparent because of the confusion arising from the complications and inherent conflict.

While I feel confident that those with whom I went through the three Systems Practice projects found it beneficial, this is harder to convey to those who weren't brought to such efforts for their own reasons. All the harder as both Systems Thinking and Systems Practice can be conceptually abstract when people are often anxious for so-called concrete solutions.

Systems Thinking provides a logical construction in finding solutions but is not always explicitly empirically evident. Further complicating the matter is that Systems Thinking, though it has certain foundational aspects, can be categorized by different approaches and underlying philosophies that seemingly conflict. Conceptual conflicts by Systems Thinkers, seeking a solution to be imposed, that may sometimes be made too readily the crux of the matter rather than the detrimental impacts of the challenges themselves.

This can obscure the viability of System Thinking’s fundamental principles but it isn't the primary hurdle to convincing the uninitiated to make the commitment to a Systems Thinking or more specifically a Systems Practice approach which can be substantial.

The primary hurdle is an essential change to a mental model that is linear, analytical, reductionistic to one that incorporates a perspective that is also non-linear, holistic, synthetic. The basis and need for the change and resulting implications can be easily underappreciated while the siren call to grasp at an immediate concrete solution can be addictive. The basis for this distinction and requirement for convergence is explained, more succinctly than I can, by this video from Complexity Labs.

The Acumen/Omidyar Systems Practice approach overcomes this hurdle by having its implementation be dependent upon the convergence but not explicitly so. It follows the logic of some Systems Thinkers that like Fight Club, Systems Thinking shouldn't be talked about. It does lead those who habitually follow a path by reductionistic, analytical, linear thinking so often used by command and control top-down management to the alternative of thinking defined by synthesis, holism and non-linearity without making the transition too obvious.

The Omidyar Group’s approach to Systems Practice though does not only steer most participants, whose primary experience has been following that habitual path to an alternative one but also navigating those supposedly versed in Systems Thinking away from too quickly determining a final path to a solution to whatever complex challenge is being faced. This was my error with the first Systems Practice project, to immediately begin mapping towards a solution.

While the course does present the case for synthesis and Systems Thinking in a general sense early on by examples, it instead takes participants through a number of steps that unless used and tested can seem contrary to how we usually approach such challenges even when using Systems Thinking as individuals. While their purpose may be explained with each step taken, their cumulative effect cannot be fully appreciated until more fully implemented. Until that occurs participants are encouraged by the course to have trust in the process.

What the Omidyar approach does is take the internal, and usually implicit mental maps of each of the individual participants regarding the system in which the mess or complex situation occurs and asks them to hold it in abeyance then work to first create a common goal through the Guiding Star, Near Star and Framing Question. More importantly, though, is a process of disaggregating those individual maps by collecting the factors making them up without any of the connecting relationships unique to each.

This collective set of factors is then jointly categorized as being either enabling or inhibiting and then rearranged into new collections defined by common traits or themes. This process helps not only to open up pathways to the internal mental maps of individual’s that may have been previously closed but also sets the basis for finding a set of new and collectively determined relationships. This arguably has a far stronger basis for democratic deliberations. At no point in the process so far has a systems map or map of any type been started. This took some personal adjustment.

The next steps in the Systems Practice process, upstream and downstream relationship configuration and S.A.T. (structural, attitudinal, transactional) Analysis were touched upon for the third time in recent posts. Despite having my own ideas on S.A.T analysis and its implications, I have come to appreciate its viability in contributing to the process, having been able to anchor it to basic Systems Thinking concepts such as the Systems Thinking Iceberg model and integrating it into basic Causal Loop Diagrams.

However, it needs to be admitted openly that Systems Practice does not provide a panacea. Surely no surprise on its own but it is important to be clear on why. The first goes back to the beginning of this post. I may have made an abstract, conceptual argument for the viability of Systems Practice but in the meantime, I completely abandoned the challenge it was supposed to address - Palestinian/Jewish relations in the City of Jerusalem.

The individual embedded in the system of concern, be they Palestinian or Jew, needs to be convinced of the viability of the process. That has not been accomplished except perhaps for a few individuals. To be even more honest, none of the projects undertaken so far came up with a final answer to their challenge. These were, to be fair time restricted, limited, basically academic projects taken on by groups of strangers globally separated by different time zones. In those cases were doing more was sought out, the complications and often stochastic nature of the real world hampered such efforts. On a broader and long term basis the challenge though is one of implementation and the problem is a Knowing-Doing Gap discussed in previous posts.

Despite these limitations, I have become convinced that Systems Practice can make a valuable contribution to creating new community paradigms. I recognize though that my rationale as presented will have little potential to influence those living with complex, wicked challenges without at least addressing those challenges more directly. I will attempt that in the next post.

"Dana" Meadows Helps Set Course for Systems Practice Guiding Star

The last three blog posts were a detour from the current look at the Systems Practice Jerusalem Vision project to review underlying Systems Thinking principles through Donella Meadows’ book “Thinking in Systems, A Primer”.  Addressing the two new levels of inquiry that we are asking others to adopt to address wicked problems, the first being the controversial events that describe but don't really define such problems.

Arguably, for many for whom the course is a one-off to address some specific issue, this may not be important but if Systems Practice were to be adopted as a standard means of addressing a host of issues over the long term then a better understanding of Systems Thinking becomes basically essential in my view.

Meadow tells us that all systems are composed of elements, connections and, most importantly, a purpose or function. The fulfillment of that purpose or function is a goal of that system, perhaps subsidiary, perhaps primary. Both she and, especially Stafford Beer advise us that the Purpose Of A System Is What It Does.

With each System Practice course project, we decide that a system, with which we are involved, should have different goals and therefore different purposes and functions. We don't actually know fully the goals, purposes or functions of the system in its current configuration, except perhaps for some that may be espoused, but we are first going to decide what is it, what new state, that we are trying to attain. The Systems Practice course does this by establishing a Guiding Star. 

In each of the Systems Practice projects we did not have a common vision when first thrown together. It slowly came together beginning with either the creation of a Complexity Spectrum or online brainstorming or both to determine whether we were dealing with a complicated (clock) problem or a complex (cloud) one. 

At first, our ideas were often directed at finding silver bullet solutions to the problem rather than developing a better understanding of the system under question. Reacting to the current situation rather than proactively planning to navigate to a desired future states by a Guiding Star. 

The concept of developing a Guiding Star was previously considered in New Community Paradigms with setting superordinate goals as part of the series Exploring with the Dialogue, Deliberation and Systemic Transformation Community to Discover New Possibilities. 

The formal description for that effort was, "What superordinate goal could replicate across the collective set of value systems, and act as a 'guiding star' for systemic transformation?”, which our facilitator paraphrased as, "What everyone wants, but no one entity can do themselves." 

The Guiding Star, according to the Acumen Systems Practice course, is an aspirational state or desired future.

A mistake in the first Systems Practice course, by me, was skimping over the Guiding Star, as well as the Near Star and Framing Question, which were created in large part by the group I was leading. I had a working systems map by that time and thought that I already had the needed insights. My approach saw our role as providing answers for consumption by a community, dismissing any concern for democratic deliberation or diversity.

Our collective vision of what that purpose or goal should be still needed to be developed. It was, and I had some input, but it was the conglomeration of about nine different perspectives. For the group dealing with food trucks for homeless campsites the Guiding Star was:

"A societal structure in which, when a person’s community support system fails, he receives appropriate, sufficient and timely support to prevent him from falling into homelessness through a community system that produces minimally decent shelter, sustenance and healthcare for those who become homeless working to integrate them fully back into the community."

During the Thailand Plastic Pollution project it was as decided by those defining the project:

"We are trying to move the City of Bangkok and the entire country of Thailand from both being blighted by and blighting oceans with plastic pollution to being plastic pollution-free." 

Our course catalyst for the project, Yeu advised us that:

"Guiding stars are best described as a vivid future state that provides a direction rather than measured goals. In that respect, do every member of your team share a common understanding of the difference between a system state that is healthier than a previous state? In your case, a less plastic-polluted state than another? Counting plastic items is not a good idea. So what is?”

The point is that there is more to being healthy than merely not being sick. He recommended, which I have also, the use of the "Systems Thinking Iceberg" Another potentially useful resource "Donella Meadows 12 places to leverage systems", emphasizes paradigm shifts in the beliefs and perceptions of stakeholders. It became the basis for the blog post "Dana" Meadows Helps Find Purpose and the Plastic in a System of Plastic Pollution.”

Based on these insights, I advised the Jerusalem Vision team that the Guiding Star should not be a blueprint of an ideal system. It is more giving reason for you wanting to create the ideal system or what it will be to drive you to want to create it, what you hope to achieve to drive you forward through times of hardship and struggle. Being an ideal, it isn't merely delivering the basics but it also won’t attain a level of finality either.

Our Guiding Star for Jerusalem Vision became: 

• "We are trying to move towards a social system that always strives to achieve win-win solutions for all involved."

• "We aspire to a Jerusalem where every resident has equal access to health services, education, employment opportunities, cultural services and regardless of race, culture, gender, socioeconomic background, or other human difference by fostering mutual trust and respect between all of Jerusalem’s inhabitants." 

• "We aspire to a Jerusalem where all communities have a basic trust in the system and bear a mutual respect for the rights of all other communities in Jerusalem and uphold the value of mutual collaboration." 

• "We aspire to achieve a social reality in Jerusalem where all communities feel secure in their identity while respecting the identities of other communities." 

The Near Star is a more near-term goal of a 5-10 year timeframe, a desired but provisional outcome towards the Guiding Star.

The Near Star, I suggested to the team, is not the most basic or least viable result or one that meets minimum requirements of the system that we have in mind. The Near Star, at least in my view, should be the system that we need to put in place to begin to move towards the Guiding Star, not a lesser version of the Guiding Star. While still being expansive enough that it isn't a clockwork objective.

Our first Near Star for Thailand Plastic Pollution was: 

“Bangkok City actors are able to work effectively toward reducing plastic pollution.”

The term “city actors" sounded too institutional or government oriented. It could include community actors but too often from the perspective of those in power. The more community-based term “stakeholders” with the definition being an entity that can affect or is affected by the wicked problem was used contingent with it being as inclusive as possible which would mean expanding outreach and increasing the complexity of overall interactions.

"Stakeholders, who can affect and are affected by plastic pollution in Thailand are able to work effectively toward the elimination of plastic waste." 

Our officially submitted Near Star for Jerusalem Vision is:

"Creating contexts and environments where members of different communities learn and work together encouraging the growth of mutual respect between them as individuals."

Unofficially, for the Jerusalem Vision project we decided that instead of looking at the Near Star as a stepping stone (milestone) toward the larger target (Guiding Star) we would embrace it as a "sandbox" where we could test our understanding of the system to see if we understood it enough to take even more daring steps to influence it.

"Dana" Meadows Provides a Primary Systems Thinking Review pt 1

During my recent trip to China, I took the opportunity to read Donella Meadows’ book “Thinking in Systems - A Primer”. Despite being featured in an NCP wiki-page, I had procrastinated about reading it. Part of the motivation to finally read it was dealing with the complex and controversial issue of Jewish Palestinian relations in Jerusalem using the still being tested methodology of Systems Practice based on principles of Systems Thinking. Three different levels of involved interaction utilized to deal with a wicked problem. The book reminded me or helped me to better understand or made me realize the importance and relevance behind the logic of a number of Systems Thinking principles and in many ways tie them into other New Community Paradigms efforts. It is what I wish I had known better and for others to know before taking the Systems Practice courses by Acumen. 

This is, however, my own summary of her work and my interpretation which has changed the order of the presentation of ideas, adding others (sometimes in parenthesis) derived from prior inquiries. Meadows provides far more examples. Direct and notable quotes by her are in italics.

The book, as Meadows informs us, is about a different way of seeing and thinking. People are often wary of the word “systems” and, if they have heard of it, the field of systems analysis, despite having been arguably doing some form of systems thinking all their lives. There is both a recognition of and a resistance to systems principles and especially to new ways of thinking. I suspect that it is still more of the later, resistance for most people than the former despite the Editor’s Note suggesting it is widely accepted (certainly not mainstream) making the remainder of the quote all the more frustrating:

”Today, it is widely accepted that systems thinking is a critical tool in addressing the many environmental, political, social, and economic challenges we face around the world. Systems, big or small, can behave in similar ways, and understanding those ways is perhaps our best hope for making lasting change on many levels.”

At the first page of the main body of the book, Meadows starts off with a quote, a previously cited observation that managers confront dynamic situations consisting of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each other. Russell Ackoff called such situations messes, ”Managers do not solve problems, they manage messes”.

”It’s almost irresistible to blame something or someone else, to shift responsibility away from ourselves, and to look for the control knob, the product, the pill, the technical fix that will make a problem go away”. Yet they persist in spite of any analytical ability and technical insights that have been directed toward solving them. They are intrinsically systems problems— characteristic of system structures that produce undesirable behaviors. Except that we too often don't recognize them as such.

Part of the problem is that Western society has so greatly benefited from science, logic, and reductive analysis over intuition and holism solving some serious problems by focusing on external agents and what I would refer to as complicated processes usually involving top-down command management. Past solutions are now though are either not working or are now becoming problems. A systems approach is not meant to be seen as being better though than a reductionist approach in thinking. They're complementary and as a result all the more revealing combined. The problem is that we are not close to being balanced and certainly not erring on the side of systems and holism.

Limiting discussion of systems to only words and sentences, which are restricted to only one at a time in a linear and (set) logical order, can also be a problem. Systems in the real world happen all at once being connected in many directions (along with multiple dimensions) simultaneously making it necessary to use a language (e.g. graphics systems mapping) that shares some of the same properties as the phenomena being examined. This also requires new thinking, a new cognitive grammar capable of inquiring into and understanding systems.

Meadows’ book defines a system as an interconnected set of elements coherently organized to achieve some function or purpose consisting of three kinds of things: elements, interconnections, and, most importantly, its particular function or purpose. Without the interconnections structured to produce behavior that results in a function or a purpose, it is not a system. It is more than the sum of its parts. Water is more than the sum of oxygen and hydrogen. Life is more than the separate inorganic chemical elements of which it consists.

There is an integrity or wholeness about a system and an active set of mechanisms (based on interconnections between elements) to maintain that integrity. Systems can be self-organizing, and often are self-repairing within some range of disruptions. Systems can change, adapt, respond to events, seek goals, mend injuries. They are resilient. A system can exhibit adaptive, dynamic, goal-seeking, self-preserving, and even evolutionary behavior. Even if consisting of nonliving elements, it can still attend to its own survival in ways that mimic life.

Using a slinky, Meadows demonstrates this inherent vitality of a system that some external ”thing” (her hands) manipulates (held or taken away) so as to suppress or release some behavior (bouncing up and down) that is latent within the structure (of the spring of the slinky). It was not some external force within the hands holding the slinky that caused the slinky to bounce up and down. The hand merely acts as a valve to inherent forces (kinetic energy) within the slinky. There is a relationship between the structure and behavior of the slinky, understood here to be an instance of a system.

”The system may be buffeted, constricted, triggered, or driven by outside forces. But the system’s response to these forces is characteristic of itself, and that response is seldom simple in the real world.” The dynamic force of change comes from within the system itself, not externally. We don't impose solutions onto systems we reveal them.

Elements are not only physical entities. Intangibles can also be part of a system. While some interconnections in systems are actual physical flows, many are flows of information —signals sent to decision points or action points within a system which are often harder to determine. ”The interconnections in the tree system are the physical flows and chemical reactions that govern the tree’s metabolic processes—the signals that allow one part to respond to what is happening in another part.” It can be much easier to learn about a system’s elements than about its interconnections. With human-based systems, the information flows can be both formal and informal.

Systems, as a set applicable across numerous categories, biological, sociological, political, ecological, etc., can consist of common structures that repeatedly produce characteristic behaviors referred to as “archetypes”. They are responsible for some of the most intransigent and potentially dangerous problems but could be transformed, with a little systems understanding, to produce much more desirable behaviors by looking for leverage points for change. The problem is that we all too often not only fail to find them, but we also fail to look.

Meadows tells the story of The Blind Men and the Matter of the Elephant. ”This ancient Sufi story was told to teach a simple lesson but one that we often ignore: The behavior of a system cannot be known just by knowing the elements of which the system is made”.

While Meadows states that arbitrarily adding or taking away certain elements of a system can mean that you quickly no longer have the same system, she later explains can have limited applicability, ”Changing elements usually has the least effect on the system". It can be like someone changing their hair color and losing weight, often superficial in reality. They are still the same person. A system can generally remain to be itself, so long as its interconnections and purposes remain intact changing only slowly if at all, even with a complete substitution of its elements.

”Some people say that an old city neighborhood where people know each other and communicate regularly is a social system, and that a new apartment block full of strangers is not—not until new relationships (interconnections) arise and a system forms”.

System functions or purposes can be even harder to determine as they may not be explicitly spoken, written, or expressed. They can be best deduced through watching the operation of the system to see how the system behaves over time. This is similar to Stafford Beer’s POSIWID. Purposes should be deduced from behavior, not from rhetoric or stated goals or as Chris Argyris put it, espoused goals.

Systems can be nested within systems, so there can then be purposes within purposes. However, they don't have to be in alignment with each other, Sub-purposes can come into conflict with each other and the overall purpose of the system, invariably when created by humans. Keeping sub-purposes and overall system purposes in harmony is an essential function of successful systems. Something nature is better at than are humans.

This means that humans can create systems that despite being seen as detrimental manage to maintain their existence regardless of how many times the elements (i.e. people) making up the system are changed. All the more difficult when a small portion of the human population benefits while controlling the inflows and outflows of the system. From the early days of the New Community Paradigms effort, I have labeled these entrenched systems.

My worry is that there is insufficient appreciation as to how difficult it can be to change such systems, all the more so if they are not even recognized as systems or our approach to them is not holistic but remains limited to reductive analysis through imposed top-down control management processes.

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Systems Practice - Practice Can Mean Making Mistakes and Repeating to Learn from Them

The latest Systems Practice project ”Jerusalem Vision” dealing with Jewish Palestinian relationships has been approached from around the edges in the last post and the two preceding. With this post we will begin zeroing in. As always, this blog is not intended as a substitute for the course. Instead, it takes more of a bird's eye view to see how it might relate to other aspects of new community paradigms.

For me, Systems Practice is basically applied Systems Thinking, thought experiments with pictures (graphic systems maps) using alternative forms of cognitive navigation to steer through challenges, especially wicked challenges. This again needs to be recognized as a sizable cognitive shift for many. Though it can be far more intuitive than might be expected. A favorite metaphor of mine for this new thinking is navigation during the Age of Discovery, a paradigm shift as notable as modern man’s mission to the moon as told in How We Got To Now with Steven Johnson / Time (Emmy Winner). We still need all of our existing “sailor skills” but we are adding a new layer of mapping skills based on a new way of looking at the world.

I still consider myself as having a limited background in Systems Thinking. Many if not most people taking the course though were even less familiar with Systems Thinking and far more familiar with the usual linear reductionist approach to understanding which means breaking things up into smaller pieces for ostensibly better control. The challenge then is developing a means of helping others to cross over to a more holistic, Systems Thinking approach or in the case of a systems practice approach through a group process. I still don’t believe that there is a strong enough foundation in Systems Thinking provided at the beginning of the Systems Practice course and introducing the systems mapping tool Kumu at the very start could help with that. Those with less experience in Systems Thinking may have problems with Systems Practice but those with that do have that experience will still need to be open to taking different perspectives.

Despite any issues raised in the last post with the article A Systemic View of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and its related systems map, its author David Peter Stroh is also recognized as the author of ”Leveraging Grantmaking: Understanding the Dynamics of Complex Social Systems”, concerning the Calhoun County, Michigan study, which used Systems Thinking to address homelessness. The report was cited in the blog post Learning to Apply a Systems Practice to the Wicked Problem of Homelessness and has also been cited in the past when discussing Collective Impact and other times since then.

The Calhoun study looked at the “whole system," not one system for funders, one for providers and another for everybody else. The community’s incentives structure existed to provide quick fixes to address the immediate problem, rather than creating sustained change. One study observation was “The most ironic obstacle to implementing the fundamental solution was the community’s very success in providing temporary shelters and supports.” Systems Thinking was used to determine where intervening with higher level approaches such as housing first could effectively occur. This approach worked even with rising unemployment in the area. Stroh also wrote an insightful article on “Exposing the Hidden Benefits of Business as Usual: Why the Status Quo is So Difficult to Change,” which can also be seen as being applicable to a Systems Practice effort.

This is the third completed Systems Practice project. Waiting this time until the end of the Systems Practice course before blogging allows for a bird’s eye view of the entire Systems Practice process. It also allows inclusion of the other past Systems Practice projects found in the New Community Paradigms Systems Practice wiki-page, which include “Addressing Homelessness in Portland, Oregon” and “Addressing Plastic Pollution in Thailand” as well as looking at Systems Practice from a more philosophical perspective categorized as ”Systems Practice UK”.

The SP UK course’s more philosophical indoctrination did help to realize some important insights more fully. One is appreciating the difference between people finding themselves in a complex system and those finding themselves in complex situations, recognizing that these aren’t mutually exclusive. People in the actual applicable problem situation will have different perspectives from those considering the relevant more abstract system in which those situations arise.

The project Plastic Pollution in Thailand and the UK Systems Practice more philosophical perspective gave rise to my own perspective that Systems Practice (SP USA) is not a philosophy. It is a playbook. They actually have a playbook, Systems Practice Workbook Omidyar Group that describes the process undertaken in implementing a Systems Practice approach to deal with wicked problems (the impossible of the course’s title). It has no issues with taking from any of the different Systems Thinking approaches, whether ontological, epistemological, soft or hard explored in the Systems Practice UK series that suits its pragmatic purposes.

The “Addressing Homelessness in Portland, Oregon” project was an extension of the ”Financial Modeling and Last Mile Homeless Food Truck” project and I was the team leader. With ”Plastic Pollution in Thailand, I joined a group, with an already established focus, which unfortunately broke up before the end of the course though I still brought the project to a conclusion. The most recently completed project was the one most in line with the ideas behind ”Direct Democracy and Systems Thinking.” The topic Palestinian and Jewish relationships in the City of Jerusalem was chosen democratically among the eight members of the group out of nine possible topics.

The greatest value the previous two Systems Practice projects brought to the Jerusalem Vision project is what was done wrong or went wrong in those projects. Before the first Systems Practice course, I had worked solo and still tend to do that. Systems Practice though significantly informed and induced me to substantially change the approach I took when working with a group.

My first mistake with Systems Practice was creating a systems map using Kumu far too early in the process before the course had barely started. I came with my cup perhaps too full, putting me out of alignment with the course and with being able to collaborate with the others on the team I was supposedly leading. It took a while to realize that the differences were due to Systems Practice's attempt to focus on group interactions in coming up with solutions.

A primary issue that Systems Thinking seeks to address, because of a tendency of a reductionist approach of breaking systems into smaller components, is to only look at factors in immediate or near-immediate approximation instead of following causal pathways further out to discover hidden relationships. What may be a positive causal force at one point of the system may then become a negative causal force at another point. Systems Practice does address this though perhaps not explicitly allowing its process to reveal any Systems insight.

This doesn’t mean the analysis by reductionism is completely abandoned. The first assignment of the SP course, USA Plastic Pollution in Thailand had us present our system challenge through a Complexity Spectrum, consisting of selecting within spectrums of polar choices.

• Level of Understanding: Well understood vs Not Understood
• Engagement: Consensus vs Diversity of Opinion
• Environment: Stable vs Dynamic
• Environment: Self-contained vs Interconnected
• Goals: Small Scale vs Broad Change
• Goals: Short-term vs Sustainable

Although any relational mapping with Kumu was delayed, using a different mapping program, Plectica allowed for the creation of a map which reflected the Complexity Spectrum’s hierarchical nature and that provided spaces for each of the members of the team to provide their individual input. It fitted rather well with the course assignment proving in this instance, more helpful than Kumu.

The latest “Jerusalem Vision” project didn’t repeat this Complexity Spectrum but we still had an analytical perspective brought to the team through our team leader Yoel Ben-Avraham who has a background as a Systems Analyst. With the latest Jerusalem Vision project, we used RealTime Board as suggested by our team leader Yoel. It had some features similar to Plectica and despite being spread across the globe, we were able to witness the movement of the different factors we had gathered into common themes while collaborating together in real time.

Factors and themes, as well as forces, enablers, and inhibitors, are among specialized terms Systems Practice introduces to help define their group-oriented approach to Systems Thinking. Before, however, getting into that the course first had us establish some common visions of the challenge we were about to address.

Searching for a Systems Map to a New Jerusalem Vision

In the previous post, the systems maps included in the article A Systemic View of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by David Peter Stroh in the Systems Thinker were introduced for the purpose of comparison and contrast with the newly developed Systems Practice Jerusalem Vision systems map, based in part on the article Eastern Jerusalem: End of an Intermediate Era by Dr. David Koren, Advisor to the Mayor of Jerusalem for Arab and eastern Jerusalem affairs.

This post will be focusing especially on systems maps and in particular, the Conflict systems maps by Stroh. Both the Conflict maps and Systems Practice map use Causal Loop Diagrams.

For better explanatory purposes of a complex issue, a Kumu presentation based on the Stroh maps replicated using Kumu is provided below.


Keeping in mind, it is through an explanatory method, graphically organized with certain rules, that cannot be said to be widely familiar outside certain circles and serves as a medium for a formal means of thinking, systems, often even more unfamiliar.

The Kumu version of the A Systemic View of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict maps combines the two maps in Stroh’s article into one map. Other than that, the Kumu map should accurately reflect his map but this claim should also be verified. There are some resulting differences that arise which need to be made apparent since they will be the basis for any critiques.

The +Acumen Systems Practice course uses plus (+) and minus (-) signs in combination to connect two of what Systems Practice calls factors or what Kumu calls elements to reflect the type of change taking place in the causal relationship. Stroh uses a means of connecting factors together that was developed by Peter Senge. Two factors are linked together in a cause-effect relationship with a connection that is designated with either S as in the two factors move in the same direction or O as in the factors move in the opposite direction. What is not made immediately apparent is whether those factors are both increasing or both decreasing for the S connection or which factor is increasing and which is decreasing for the O connection.

This means Stroh’s approach reflects two different possible relationships while the systems Practice approach has four different relationships. The underlying complexity is the same with both just more apparent with Systems Practice.

The differences between the two systems maps range not only from different mapping techniques but also their different approaches to the issues in general, which when combined together tell different stories. The two systems though are still interrelated and their respective maps can provide insights into each other. There are some important differences between the overall scopes of the two maps that need to be noted.

First, the Conflict maps were developed from a single perspective while the Systems Practice map was drawn from multiple perspectives. More perspectives mean more complexity.

Second, the time periods being taken under consideration are different. The actual system being described went through a number of changes between the two periods which is to be expected with a wicked problem.

Third, the boundary of the two systems maps is different both systemically and geographically. The Conflict maps attempted to address a larger more global political issues across a multi-jurisdictional geographic space, while the Systems Practice map addressed factors contained within the neighborhoods, especially the Arab neighborhoods, of East Jerusalem.

The Stroh maps are more institutionally focused and although suggesting to be speaking of people in a general sense, the only agents capable of instituting the recommended changes are institutions or their leaders. Within the Systems Practice map, Dr. Koren’s writing can be seen as distinguishing the differences in the approach for the Jerusalem Vision of the two systems as “Jerusalem of Above” for the Conflict map and “Jerusalem of Below” for the Vision map respectively.

There wasn't any attempt to list Israeli factors on one side of a ledger and Palestinian factors on the other side. The Conflict maps combine both Israeli and Palestinian aspects of the system into single factors. Every factor in the Conflict map is mutually based on both the Israeli and Palestinian aspects of that situation. This means that factors lack situational context or specificity in how they are interrelated with each other creating, in my view, a sense of false equivalency, limiting potential causal pathways and causing confusion when traveling a loop’s path.

Both of Stroh’s maps put the factor or element ”Threats to right of Israelis/Palestinians to exist” as the focus of the maps. The Systems Practice map does not have such a focus on a specific factor. The Systems Practice map does though, in addition to configuring the factors into causal loops as does the Conflict map, also organize factors into what Systems Practice terms as Themes. Themes are basically related factors but not necessarily sharing any causal pathway or set within a causal loop. These themes, with one debatable exception, were not focused on or ranked.

The Systems Practice approach avoids lumping factors by label or blending them together based on different aspects or perspectives to make them more homogeneous. Factors under Systems Practice then retain a certain independence or isolation from specifically serving solely one side of the system conflict or the other until their influences within the larger system are determined. They are often shown to have counterparts that they were either influenced by or that they influenced or both. The Systems Practice approach, as it will be shown in more detail in future posts, disaggregates factors and then seeks to develop fresh connections between them to provide new insights. This also enhances complexity.

The R1 loop, which Stroh presents separately in the article from the other loops, is set as reinforcing, whether or not depends on how it is structured. At least it doesn't have a stated goal as might a balancing loop but its means of continuous increase, of what is unclear, is constantly thwarted in a Sisyphean manner over two opposing hills.

The first hill, Stroh’s Balancing Causal Loop B2 contains two factors or elements, the “Retaliation, containment policies, armed resistance, and incitement” and then the aforementioned ”Threats to rights of Palestinians/Israelis to exist” on one side of the loop which he asserts are causally related or at least highly correlated together and move in the same direction.

The B2 ”Goal of reclaiming all land” moves presumably in the same direction so that an increase in the factor ”Retaliation” (against the other side) means that ”Threats to rights of Palestinians/Israelis to exist” or (the other side) similarly increases until that side’s goal is met. Independently, however, the B2 loop does not achieve that goal.

The next connection, instead, is defined with an opposite O connection, if ”Threats” go up then ”Retaliation” goes down. It counteracts the overall accumulation of the loop, so balancing, not reinforcing so that neither side can reach its stated goal. This means that ”Retaliation” decreases for no apparent reason based on the B2 loop itself. This doesn’t make practical sense to me.

It is the R1 loop that arguably makes the next loop B2 a balancing loop and causes the second half to be set as an O connection. If ”Threats to rights of Palestinians/Israelis to exist” were instead to increase “Retaliation” then the loop would become reinforcing.

It is the ”Loss of life” in R1 that assumedly can be seen as being too excessive by both sides inducing a return to the ”Negotiation” tables, temporarily decreasing ”Retaliation” until the point in the R1 loop that again results in ”Promises are broken” diminishing the ”Effectiveness of the peace process”.

The second hill, balancing loop B3 also has a goal, the ”Goal of Peaceful Coexistence”. It has an O or opposite relationship with ”Threats to rights of Palestinians/Israelis to exist” diminishing it has the result of ”Mutually acceptable agreement for peaceful coexistence” increasing.

The lessening of threats moves in the same direction as ”Negotiations” increasing the chances of the creation of a mutually acceptable (written ) agreement for peaceful coexistence so that the ”Goal of Peaceful Coexistence” is actually met. Again, the loop is influenced by the R1 loop which disrupts the ”Peace-seeking process” with ”Broken promises”, stochastically it would seem, diminishing the ”Effectiveness of the peace process” and returning the system to B2.

The next loop in the Conflict map R4 enhances “Violent response from the other side, hatred, mistrust” raised through “Retaliation” within B2 thereby again increasing the “Threats to rights of Palestinians/Israelis to exist”. It is also the last loop to directly impact “Threats to rights of Palestinians/Israelis to exist”. The remaining two reinforcing loops R5 and R6 are more like negative catalysts, both being initiated by “Violent response from the other side, hatred, mistrust” but moving in different directions against ”Negotiations” and the "Mutually acceptable agreement for peaceful coexistence” respectively.

Stroh passes over examining a number of factors and determining how they might influence the system. Stroh systems strategy to addresses all of this is to have a tipping point of everyone involved unilaterally and completely drop any ”Goal of reclaiming all land” and ceasing all "Threats against Palestinians/Israelis” by eliminating the connections between certain factors but he doesn't provide the factors that would be able to accomplish this.

Stroh’s systems maps work to support what appears to be a predetermined goal making a seemingly intractable problem intuitively accessible and relatively simple to understand. He is correct, the current strategies are dead ends. However, his strategy of systems change has little likelihood to work for those who need them. The Jerusalem Vision systems map will concern itself with a smaller scope of focus and will be far more complex within that focus but will still need to be judged on the same standards of being understandable, comprehensiveness and efficacy.

Reaching for a New Jerusalem Vision using Systems Practice

Recently, the first blog post in a long while was posted on the third effort to use Systems Practice to address a complex issue, this time Israeli/Palestinian relationships in the City of Jerusalem. This post continues in that vein. In truth though, little will be said about the issue itself, despite recognizing that its greater awareness generates greater attraction. Instead, the focus will be on the Systems Practice approach and how it could possibly be related to direct democratic governance.

Seeking to find solutions through collaborative dialogue and deliberations, which are aspects of Systems Practice, can also be seen as components of direct democracy as opposed to more competitive forms of interaction, such as debates within more representative forms of democracy through institutions. This is not to establish that one form of democratic governance is preferable to the other. The Systems Practice approach seeks to examine the system at a level foundational to such a determination. It is not the system though that calls for the resolution of differing perspectives. It is for people themselves to make such a determination.

Before proceeding further, certain points will need to be repeated or clarified. As has been said in other efforts of this type this is not intended to be a substitute for the course. If you become interested in the process then sign up to take the course. An added piece of advice for Systems Practice, plan to take it again a second time, one time will likely not be enough. This is suspected to be true whether you sign up as an individual or start off as part of a group. 

Blogging about this third project was held off until completion of the course. This creates new challenges in presenting the approach to addressing this or any complex issue. With previous projects,  the proverbial elephant could be served in small portions focusing on a specific component of the process. Taken as a whole, it becomes all the more complex. It will still be served in limited portions but there is a greater awareness that there are no aspects of the system that can't be considered from multiple perspectives.

A Systems Thinking/Systems Practice approach can assist in addressing what can arguably be designated as a Wicked Problem.  As has been noted before, if messes, as defined by Russell Ackoff are problems that can be thought of like Frankenstein’s monster then wicked problems are Godzilla. Wherein the potential sources of solutions can seem as complex as the wicked problem itself. 

The full systems map for this project will not be presented at this point.  First, this blog post or even series is not intended to provide a final answer or solution. The focus will be on the process of attempting to arrive at an answer. Primarily though because it is too complex, in at least three ways. 

We are requiring people to address the complexity of the issue itself, the complexity of a Systems Thinking approach to the issue as opposed to the more generally overly used and generally taken for granted reductionist approach and the use of general unfamiliar graphically oriented means of communicating these ideas through systems mapping. If these concepts are to be widely disseminated then all three must be considered together.

I had limited knowledge of the factors involved in the issues making up the system being considered. This was made all the more apparent by working with somebody embedded, as a stakeholder, in that system. It’s important to note that additional diverse stakeholder perspectives are still needed. When dealing with systems, especially detrimental systems, recognizing the particular realities and physical manifestations are as important as the underlying conceptual system of relationships. Without this, it’s impossible to understand the story behind people’s motivations.

The tendency to default to reductionist thinking rose even with the writing of this blog post which was rewritten a number of times to continually expand the scope to a more holistic perspective. The systems map for this Systems Practice project was created largely from other text which is more linearly oriented. Reinterpreting the map back to text doesn’t merely involve retracing steps. Hopefully, there is a solid, functional relationship between the two, though not necessarily direct, allowing for a global understanding encompassing both what has been considered longitudinal and latitudinal perspectives.

Systems maps on their own can serve different purposes, to either develop understanding or to communicate understanding but, at least in my experience, not both. There is, in my view, a sizable gap between the two that must be overcome before accomplishing that. Communicating full understanding is difficult and often the solution is to simplify and omit something. My past tendency has been to concentrate more on gaining understanding, admittedly mostly my own, and less on communicating that understanding to others. Systems Practice extends this potential for understanding to a group. 

There is also a danger with people, even if part of the Systems Practice process, getting the mistaken impression that maps, as presented, are complete discouraging additional input.  A systems map can be seen as being more extensive and coherent in describing a system than it is actually. How extensive a map appears can be an issue in making the challenge seem overwhelming without boundaries or with endless divisions. How coherent a map appears can help give the impression that the factors are related but not necessarily how. Together they seemingly suggest containing and controlling a challenge giving a false impression of finality. The maps, as a result, aren't examined closely enough to be properly tested and require having a guide to assist with navigation to do so. This arose during the process of developing a Systems Practice project dealing with Plastic Pollution in Thailand.

The often cited Systems Thinking principle established by George Box that all models (or maps) are wrong but some are useful needs to be retained. The question of where wrong and where useful must be continually asked. Explicitly contrasting those differences helps test the system to maintain authenticity but not to become over-elaborate.

As was said in the previous post, the particular issue being considered is both complex and controversial so one’s approach could potentially leave one susceptible to a charge of white-knight-savior hubris. So let me be clear, as said previously I did not start with any expertise in the issue. Our efforts did not result in a solution to the Israeli-Jewish/Palestinian-Arab conflict. We did not come up with any solutions. That was never an expectation. What we developed was a deeper understanding of what would become to be termed factors, forces and persistent patterns of causality of the system we were addressing. There are still though potential points of controversy remaining that will arise because of positions that are taken. 

This is not to suggest any intention to choose one side of an issue over another. Recognizing contrasts in perspectives can be seen as an essential component of establishing cognitive diversity. Cognitive diversity refers to the concept put forward by thinkers such as Scott Page. It's not meant as a panacea for a lack of other forms of diversity or to address any differences in the distribution of power. Cognitive diversity, particularly beyond my own, was considered to be an essential component in developing the project. The problem is when contrasts rise to the level of conflicts or coercion. Taking a more reductionist oriented approach, the opposing perspectives could be seen as different and separate competing systems. 

Systems Practice approaches these contrasting perspectives, even if to the point of being confrontational, as being a single system in a state of oscillation between those contrasting perspectives. Even so, positions by necessity must be established which will by their nature not be settled and will invariably be objected to by someone. 

It is not enough though to merely recognize arguments of opposing perspectives in an attempt to provide a so-called balanced view. What needs to be realized is how the different factors making up those perspectives interrelate with each other, creating causal influences beyond the point of direct cause-effect confrontation to attaining feedback so as to understand why the entrenched system despite being deleterious is maintained. 

As a means of transition, another systems map, on the same issue in general, will be considered first. The map being used for the purpose of comparison and contrast is A Systemic View of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by David Peter Stroh in the Systems Thinker. It is arguably far more accessible and comprehensible than our Systems Practice map and purportedly comes up with a solution. 

A large portion of the Systems Practice project to Create a New Vision for Jerusalem, especially for my contribution, was based on an article by Dr. David Koren, Advisor to the Mayor of Jerusalem for Arab and eastern Jerusalem affairs,  "Eastern Jerusalem: End of an Intermediate Era". The next blog post will go into more detail. 

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