When you have to explain something to someone, it puts the acid on you to get your thinking clear. I've had to do this on a live project this week to establish some logic for designing interventions into a system, following some research into a system's challenges and desired outcomes.
The core question is: What actions could trigger system transitions, working from the insights in the research? The use of the transition word is purposeful as it more accurately represents the nature of the adaptation shifts systems go through.
Here's what I said:
In exploring the design of the interventions, we need to distinguish between an intermediate outcome - what needs to change on a transition pathway, and the interventions to realise those outcomes - how change could happen.
Expecting individual actors to change their resourcing, policies, rules, relationships, power, and mental models when homeostasis, or the desire for equilibrium, is considered as a fundamental human mindset in complex systems raises risks.
We instead need to explore how else we could trigger these shifts.
Many models and frameworks exist in the domain of systems practice or systems innovation that point to interventions that will trigger a system to transition to an improved state.[1]
Three of the more relevant models to this work are The Waters of Systems Change, Three Horizons and Multi-Level Perspective.
The Waters of System Change model outlines six conditions that need to be present and, therefore, where systems innovation needs to occur for transition to occur at the structural, relational, and mental model levels. This model's limitation is that it points to the ‘what’ but not the ‘how’.
It is important to note at this point that the term “innovation” used here covers a spectrum of change from incremental improvement to whole new patterns of behaviours, technologies, institutions or economic models in the system. Also included in this context as an innovation is the advancement of knowledge as a resource usually represented by a model or framework and accompanying research paper.
The Three Horizons model outlines the emergence of new patterns (Horizon 3) within the existing system (Horizon 1) that gather momentum and then result in a shift to an altered state in parts of the system. It calls out the role of innovations in this process (Horizon 2).
The Multi-Level Perspective model captures the role of innovations in the system that start out in niches and then how the mature innovations infiltrate the regime or core operating centre of the system to alter its state. The macro landscape sets expectations of the both the regime and of innovators for the need for change.
Another consideration in the design of the interventions is the agency and behaviours of the actors. David Snowden in his blog outlining his PAGODA[2] framework for intervention design makes a point about intervention proximity to actors,
“Emergence happens in a complex system when many rich local interactions between actants [actors] exist; change is bottom-up, although it may be stimulated top-down.”
Lastly, we need to consider the value of relationships, peer-to-peer learning and feedback loops for actors to reconsider their mental models that, in turn, impact all of the other five conditions for systems change. So, our interventions into the system should, to paraphrase the Collective Impact Forum[3],
"Bring people together in a structured way to achieve change around a common agenda...a network who advance by learning together, aligning, and integrating their actions to achieve population and systems-level change."
On one hand, it is true that all systems are in a constant state of flux to varying degrees, with new patterns emerging continuously. On the other hand, it is also true that the system is perfectly designed for the outcomes it is currently delivering, and actors are comfortable with homeostasis.
An actor with an agenda for different outcomes or faster transitions needs to intervene to trigger these outcomes. As discussed, these interventions should be at any level of the system, consider the interrelationships of the various conditions of the system that influence its outcomes and be focused on system innovation on any degree or scale of change.
As always, I'd love your feedback on this.
[1] Models that inform transition trigger development include but are not limited to: Waters of System Change (Kania et al), Three Horizons (Sharpe), Multi-Level Perspective (Geels), Causal Layered Analysis (Inayatullah), Two Loops (Berkana), Systemic Design (Design Council), Estuarine Mapping, ASHEN and PAGODA (Cynefin), Leverage Points (Meadows), Transition Domains (Perez), Transformative Outcomes (Ghosh et al), and the Panarchy model (Collins et al)
Comments