Welcome back to Changemaker Q&A, everyone. I am Tiyana J, the founder of the Humanitarian Changemakers Network, and Changemaker Q& A is the podcast where we answer all of your questions about anything social change related. We have just relaunched the podcast and I wanted to go back and readdress some of the questions that I answered in earlier seasons of the podcast… Just because I am a little bit older, a bit more wise, I have a little bit more experience and I think I can answer them and a little bit more of a nuanced approach. Now, today, we’re going to be going back to one of our top episodes, which really surprised me, actually. It was all about systems thinking for social change.
And that honestly really excited me when I saw that that was one of our top episodes, because I love talking about systems thinking. I have been using systems thinking. As the approach to all of my PhD fieldwork, so I am really passionate about the application of systems thinking for anybody who might be working out in the field in the social change space.
It can seem like a very kind of complex, academic, approach to knowledge, but it does have some really tangible applications and there are so many great tools that we can put in our changemaking toolkit from systems thinking that I think can really make this a lot easier. I will share one of my favorite systems thinking tools or frameworks in this episode.
But if you have any additional questions about anything to do with systems thinking you want to learn a little bit more about something that I mentioned, definitely feel free to ask any questions that you have. You can ask your questions directly via Spotify or YouTube. If you are watching this episode, if you are listening, head to the description below and click on the link to humanitarian changemakers.net. Forward slash podcast, where you can ask your question. It can be asked anonymously and you can leave your details and we will send any questions that are answered on the pod. We will send the asker of the question, some goodies like our change maker code patches. Now, today we are answering the question.
What is systems thinking and when might we need to apply it to social change? And. Without getting too deep, I think that one of the biggest barriers to social change is something so fundamental and so foundational to our thinking that we don’t even think about it. And it is actually the way we think about the world and about different phenomena.
Now, Ever since around the 19th century 20th century, we had philosophers like René Descartes come around and they really changed the way that we approach Knowledge, particularly here in the West, uh, Rene Descartes is the guy you might know. He’s famous for his expression. I think therefore I am, which essentially reduced his entire existence to his knowledge of his existence.
And we saw the emergence of Cartesian dualism. This idea of mind and body being two separate entities, and from there, we really just saw this kind of emphasis on dualisms within not only, I guess, knowledge, but also just how we understand reality. So, some examples of these, like, dualisms that, you know, We probably don’t even recognize is maybe the dualism of theory versus practice of the macro perspective versus the micro perspective.
You can see that these are different ways of kind of viewing reality. in like distinct ways, but they’re not necessarily reflective of how reality actually is. When you think about it, there is no distinction between theory and practice or the macro and the micro. These things exist within and are dependent upon one another.
And even though we can kind of separate them analytically and we can analyze them. as distinct things. They don’t actually exist that way. Now, if you have ever been to university or ever considered studying, the academy and the way that we separate and distinguish, uh, how we approach knowledge in these institutions is another example of dualisms and the way that if you go to university maybe like myself, you would probably study different social phenomena in the social world through a particular lens.
You might study it through the lens of sociology, psychology. anthropology, criminology, these are all different kind of ways of viewing the world and it kind of compartmentalizes them and allows us to take big complex phenomena and I guess Look at them through a very distinct lens, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that.
The problem is when we get so used to seeing things through our particular lens, we can sometimes lose sight of everything else that is going on around us and all of the other ways of looking at it and all of the different interconnections and things like that. And that’s really where systems thinking comes into play.
Systems thinking is one of many ways to kind of challenge our conventional thinking. Another example of a way to challenge conventional thinking might be to look at something like Indigenous wisdom, Indigenous knowledge, which is something that is a lot more holistic than the typical approach that we take in Western societies.
It tends to not fall into this trap of distinguishing between different dualisms and reducing things to small component parts. It tends to be a lot more holistic. So that is one example. But today we’re going to be looking at systems thinking. Systems thinking is, like I said, a, I guess, a way of challenging conventional thinking, and it’s something that emerged in the 1950s
or 60s to kind of directly challenge the conventional ways of approaching something. things within academia. So it kind of emerged in these different waves. So we had general systems theory and from there we ended up with these kind of three waves of systems thinking. So first there was hard systems thinking and hard systems thinking was really looking at kind of more well defined maybe mechanical systems that had very clear inputs and processes and outputs.
Then we went into soft systems thinking and this dealt with a little bit more complex maybe more human centric systems where there was often multiple perspectives and Approaches to looking at things. And there was not really a single right approach or solution. So an example of this is any kind of social system is a great example of a soft system.
So something like the healthcare system, the education system, where you’ve got all of these different stakeholders that have different perspectives and different goals or agendas, and they’re all kind of working together and competing and having a causal effect on one another. So we can look at this from a holistic perspective and that would be a soft systems approach.
Then we have critical systems thinking. So critical systems thinking emerged from soft systems thinking. But it tends to take obviously a more critical approach. It is grounded in the philosophy of critical theory. So you could think of philosophers like Karl Marx Hegel. Philosophers like that were all critical theorists.
And critical systems thinking has this kind of underlying assumption that the system is probably not functioning. as best it should or not functioning to achieve desirable outcomes. So when you look at something like soft systems thinking, that tends to have the assumption that there’s no single solution or no single approach that we should be aiming for.
Whereas if we take a critical systems approach, we’re kind of coming at it from this assumption that there is a better way. We can do things a little bit differently and we should be hoping for better outcomes. And so critical systems thinking really focuses on Things like power imbalances within these kinds of social or soft systems.
It’s looking at and questioning these power structures, and it really considers the interplay of social phenomena, ecological phenomena, economic phenomena, political phenomena psychological phenomena, all of these different Kind of interdisciplinary approaches are really important within critical systems thinking.
So when might we need to use one of these types of systems thinking and In my opinion, the type of systems thinking that we’re probably most likely going to be using in the context of social change is critical systems thinking. We’re probably going to be coming at it with this assumption that we want to make a change because things aren’t working the way that they should or could.
So that would generally require a critical systems thinking approach. And, you know, there’s no kind of right or wrong. Issue that it could be applied to, but generally we would look at applying systems thinking to what we call wicked problems. So wicked problems is a term that’s used to describe problems where there’s no single solution.
There’s a lot of different things to consider, things like human rights, environmental sustainability, there’s ethical questions and dilemmas. They’re really complex and they probably require many approaches lots of different resources. And wicked problems are things like the climate crisis, things like.
Different like human rights challenges, conflict all of these sorts of things are really complex and they’re all examples of wicked problems where there’s no kind of one way of approaching it. And. They tend to be very complex. There’s a lot of stakeholders at play. There’s a lot of kind of root causes and things going on in the background that we’re probably not going to be aware of until we actually kind of analyze and approach the problem from a whole systems approach.
Now, if we are using systems thinking, then. The chances are we are aiming to bring about what I would call systems change and through a systems theory of change. Now, just a little note on the term systems change. Systemic change, systematic change, systems change. They all sound very similar, but they are all very different approaches to change.
So, if we’re talking about… Systemic change, we’re talking about changes to a society’s social system. So legislative and policy changes, formal changes like that within a social system. That is systemic change. If we’re talking about systematic change, that is about our approach to change, the way we are doing it.
And if it’s systematic, it means it’s probably going to be very well thought out. Very orderly. There’s going to be a very clear process and strategy that we follow. We kind of know what the inputs are and we can predict fairly well, what the outputs are going to be. That would be a systematic approach to social change.
When we talk about systems change, we’re talking about changing an entire system, not a. system in the sense of a social system, but we’re talking about a hard or a soft or a critical system that we’re looking at. So when we talk about systems change and we talk about what a system actually is, a system is very hard to define by definition.
It, is hard to define, but it has a clearly defined boundary. So a system is essentially a way of modeling something. It’s a way of modeling complex phenomena. It is a way of applying different frameworks. And when we talk about systems change, the thing that we’re trying to change is the system. But it’s just important to remember that it’s not systemic change.
We’re not necessarily trying to change a specific element of a social system. We’re looking very holistically at this complex phenomena and all of its components and the relationships between things and all of the interactions and the way that they feed back into one another and create new emergent challenges.
That’s what the system actually is. Now, when we’re thinking about applying systems thinking, some things that make systems thinking a little bit distinct from our conventional approach to thinking. First of all, like I mentioned, it takes a very holistic approach to a situation or a problem. So it’s looking at the big picture.
It’s looking at all of the relationships between different elements. It’s looking at the interconnections and all of the different components. It’s looking at the whole rather than isolating into different parts. Now this doesn’t mean it doesn’t look at those individual parts. It just means that when we break things down and we…
look at these individual parts. We’re then taking a step back and we’re looking at those individual parts within the broader context of the system or the system’s environment. Another kind of characteristic of systems thinking is that It’s really about embracing non linearity and non linear cause and effect relationships.
We are so accustomed to thinking about causal relationships in a linear fashion that This is something that takes a lot of practice, I think. And luckily in systems thinking there are some great tools that we can use. But if we think about a linear cause and effect pattern, it’s essentially saying that we have this particular input, this particular process happens, and then we see this particular outcome.
So conventional thinking tends to assume that there is a linear cause and effect for a lot of the problems that we’re seeing. So, for example, We’re currently in the midst of a cost of living crisis a little bit of a rental crisis here in Australia, and a very linear approach to cause and effect would say, well, the reason that we are having we’re in a rental crisis is because there’s Too much demand for rental properties, not enough rentals, therefore too many people and not enough affordable rentals.
If we were to look at this from a more holistic cause and effect approach, we would take a step back and say, well, okay, what are some of the other reasons that This is happening. What are some of the economic factors that have contributed to the rising cost of living? How has COVID 19 changed the way people live and work and how has that affected maybe the need for particular types of housing, the amount of housing that is available, where people are looking for housing.
We would need to ask questions about how other factors are feeding back into this and affecting things like supply and demand. How has… The increase on short term rental properties like Airbnbs contributed to the supply and demand and the cost of housing in Australia. We would need to ask questions about the different taxation laws and how certain tax benefits are impacting investors of property compared to people that are renting…and how all of these different factors come into play. So that’s what it means to take a non linear approach to causation. Now there is also the concept of feedback loops, which I won’t go into too much in this episode. I could do a whole episode on feedback loops. But feedback loops are a really fundamental part of systems thinking.
And like I just mentioned, all of these kind of. Approaches to understanding causality from a nonlinear perspective are very much grounded in the idea of feedback loops, where the outcomes of a particular process or relationship are feeding back and becoming causes. So the effects or the outcomes become inputs or causes.
We have the concept of emergence, which is also really important. Emergence is probably best described by the expression when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And emergence essentially means that we see something emerge, something manifest. in reality that can’t be reduced to its causes or the component parts of it.
An example of emergence would be the production of honey. So, we can take a flower and we can take a bee. We can combine those two inputs or those two components and from the process that happens between those two components, the thing that emerges Now we know honey comes from flowers and a bee, but we can’t actually reduce it to either of those things.
You can’t take a jar of honey and say, oh yes, this part of the honey comes from the bee and this part of the honey comes from the flower, right? It has, that process has led to the emergence or the manifestation or the creation of a phenomenon or an entity that is fundamentally or qualitatively different to the things that created it.
So that’s also a really key part of systems thinking. Some other things include the focus on a long term approach to different issues. Interdisciplinarity also plays a key role. There’s lots of different things that kind of distinguish system thinking from conventional thinking. And there are, of course, lots of benefits from applying this approach to how we think about and intervene with various social challenges.
So… I mentioned this idea of nonlinear causality, and this is really important because when we have a better understanding of feedback and emergence and how different elements within a system can contribute to the outcomes that we’re seeing, we’re able to better address the root causes of change, emphasis on the word causes, there’s almost always multiple causes of complex Problems, wicked problems.
It’s never a single root cause. It’s also really beneficial to identify leverage when we have this more holistic understanding of all of the processes and relationships that are contributing to the problem that we’re actually seeing manifest in reality. We can better identify leverage points or kind of weaknesses within the system, which are sometimes the best way to create significant change.
If you can find the Element within a system or the thing within the system that looks like it’s doing what it should, but is actually like the weakest link. It’s it’s like the one tiny thing that the entire system is dependent upon. If you could alter that, then you have the best chance at creating change.
I could also create a whole episode on leverage. It’s one of my favorite things to talk about in terms of social change. Particularly from my own PhD research, some of the points of leverage for women’s empowerment. Definitely not the things that you would expect could be the most powerful ways of empowering women and creating change.
Yet these leverage points require a lot less effort and a lot less inputs than some of the other things development actors tend to focus on and could lead to much better outcomes. So. I think this is a good place to kind of begin to wrap up. Systems thinking is such a big, broad topic. You know, it draws upon general systems theory.
It draws upon complexity theory. It draws upon systems dynamics. Systems dynamics is a whole other kind of… Field within systems thinking that looks at the behavior of systems and the way systems function over time. And systems dynamics is a really great tool. If you are wanting to look at the kind of typical Ways a system tends to behave.
Once you are able to kind of identify those general patterns it’s a really great way to begin to kind of predict and think forward a little bit about what the future might hold. And I think that systems dynamics, particularly in the context of social change, has the potential to be really beneficial.
We live in a world where. We’re so focused on addressing our immediate problems and the symptoms that we just don’t have the capacity or the resources to kind of take a step back and address the root causes. aNd think a little bit further into the future. I think a great example of this is the way that most of our politicians tend to only really think about addressing issues within the context of the next election cycle.
Very few politicians are actually thinking about what the world is going to look like. 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 100 years from now. Because, A, they probably won’t be alive then, and B, it’s not gonna benefit them, it’s not gonna get them re elected, so… Why would they want to focus on it? And I can understand that for a lot of people and for a lot of voters, you want to have your immediate needs and immediate problems addressed.
And I think that there is a degree of privilege that comes with being able to actually think and take action now to address things that are going to happen very far into the future. But I think that particularly here in Australia, Uh, as a nation, we are very lucky to have the resources and to have, uh, you know, access to the knowledge and the people and, you know, all the resources and things that we need to address our immediate problems and think about the problems that might arise in the future.
And in term enable, sorry, in order to do that effectively, we can apply systems thinking and systems dynamics. So, if systems thinking is something that you are interested in learning more about, like I said, feel free to ask any specific questions. I’m happy to kind of dive into them on the podcast.
We do have a social change handbook. It is called opening the black box. And I wrote this while I was living in India, after I had done all of my field work, I basically took everything I’d learned. From applying systems thinking in my PhD research and particularly in my fieldwork and basically said, okay, if I needed to teach somebody.
without an academic background. Basically everything they needed to understand what systems thinking is and how they can begin to apply it. And I had to put that into a handbook. What would I put in it? And then before I knew it, I’d written this book. Now you can. Download this book currently we are offering it as a free ebook with our Fixing Food online course.
It’s a free online course all about systems thinking and permaculture design. There is a three part video series available in that course of a webinar that I… taught back in 2021 or 2022. I can’t remember now. But it basically looks at some of the kind of introductory or fundamental things in systems thinking.
So it looks at the key components, how we define a system. It looks at modeling systems and systems mapping, systems dynamics all that good stuff. I would really love to put together an online course that basically is like an introductory course to systems thinking. It’s something that I’m really thinking about launching in the new year.
It would be a four or six week online course, potentially live cohort or potentially self develop self, what’s the word, uh, you do it yourself, self paced but. I’m just not sure if I’m going to have the capacity with my PhD at the moment, but I would really like to do that because I have been teaching a lot of workshops and things to teach people systems thinking.
I would like to put my teaching experience and stuff to good use by creating a resource for the Humanitarian Changemakers Network. So that is where I’m at at the moment. If you aren’t subscribed to our mailing list definitely do so on the bottom of our homepage on our website, because if we do launch that course anytime soon, I will be looking for change makers to try it, give me their feedback.
And I will offer a lot of additional one on one support. So you’ll find out about that through our newsletter. Other than that, if you guys have any questions, again, feel free to ask them. I really appreciate if you enjoyed this episode, if you learned something definitely feel free to follow me on Instagram at Tiana J on my YouTube channel.
I have other videos all about different systems thinking tools. I will leave a link to them in the description below. You can follow the Humanitarian Changemakers Network on Instagram at HumanitarianChangemakers. And if you found this episode useful or valuable, I would really appreciate if you left us a review left us a five star rating, anything to help get this education out to as many changemakers as possible, so we can all start thinking about the world better and being more effective changemakers.
