The Water of System Change article and its framework (below) is a brilliant and accessible piece of thinking about system change. I use it all the time.
It may have one flaw, though, depending on how your brain works. This came to me in a conversation yesterday when one of the people shared a triangle depicting tangibility to intangibility.
When you consider the power to transform versus tangibility, the visual of the triangle should be inverted. If you look at the original framework, it has 'transformative change' text aligned to mental models, but maybe the visual of the triangle overpowers this.
If your mind correlates the amount of work or effort of work with the triangle area, then you may believe effort and volume should be focussed on policies and rules, practises and resource flows. In reality, the volume of work and effort needs to be much higher in the intangible space of mental models, relationships and connections, and power.
We love the tangible because the intangible is "hard" or "fluffy".
Plus, we have more power over the tangible. We have no direct power over someone's mental models.
Systems are just groups of people, and people act based on what they think (mental models). Take care with the model.
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