Resources on systems: Communicating the value of a systems approach

How do you describe systems change? What it means, when and why it can be useful? How do you make the case?

Then when you’ve done something; intervened, built a project, had some impact, how do you start to explain what you did in a way that doesn’t confuse everyone? How do you summarize it in a way that is useful to others, so they can build on it?

I’ve been interested in this question for a while. It’s one the reasons we undertook an inquiry in the UK about 4 years ago. Keywords: Building a language for systems change, was a collaboration with ICAEW, The Point People and Oxford Said Business School which culminated in a publication outlining metaphors that help to bring to life the work of systems practitioners. I then spent a painful few months with colleagues at The Finance Innovation Lab writing up a case study of our 8 year old project (A Strategy for Systems Change) which secured my admiration of anyone who makes systems practice clear.

My latest attempt to solve this problem has been a simple intervention- a newsletter. What began last year as an experiment, has become a useful way to spread news about the amazing resources on systems change I come across, to my network in the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. You can check out the newsletter archive here and sign up to keep informed.

Why? Because there is some brilliant stuff out there. People are starting to make the complex, muddy world of systems practice, simple.

I have dug into my archives and over the next couple of months will be sharing the most simple and effective resources I have found on the topic of systems practice in general. This month — how to communicate it.

Introduction to systems thinking

Video: How to start thinking in systems, Systems thinking mindsets, Omidyar Group

Principles of systems change

Articles: Systems concepts and methodology beautifully drawn and described clearly, Tools of a Systems Thinker, Leyla Acaroglu, UnSchool

Video: Principles of a systemic approach, Why use systems practice?, Omidyar Group

Systems leadership

Article: What characterizes a systems leader? The Dawn of Systems Leadership, Senge et al., SSIR

Article: What makes systems leadership so hard? The Challenge of Systems Leadership, me, The Systems Studio

Video: The case for systems leadership Reclaiming social entrepreneurship, Daniela Papi Thornton

Publication: Delving into systems leadership Systems Leadership, GKI

Communicating systems change

Article: How to use storytelling in systems change Using Story to Change Systems, Ella Saltmarshe, SSIR

Article: How to tell stories about complex issues, Annie Neimand, SSIR

If you need help communicating your systems change work, I can help. You can reach me here rachel@thesystemstudio.com

The Systems Entrepreneur: What’s in a name?

This blog originally appeared on the Kumu Medium channel. 

‘Systems leader’, ‘systemsprenuer’, or ‘systems entrepreneur’. Pick your favorite. Regardless of which one you go for, the concept is emerging with SSIR, HBR and MIT all using it, along with a cluster of philanthropic foundations and consultancies.

But what defines a systems entrepreneur?

Their intention is systemic change

Systems theory tells us that we don’t actually ‘change systems’, instead we cultivate the conditions that encourage a system to change itself.Nevertheless, the defining characteristic of a systems entrepreneur is their understanding that things don’t change if we work only on the symptoms of major problems. We have to understand the underlying forces that keep things as they are.

So, rather than take ‘ugly’ fruit that might otherwise be thrown away and turn it into healthy snacks, a systems entrepreneur would ask ‘why is fruit being wasted in the first place?’

They might convene the food industry giants, the policy changers, the social entrepreneurs and ask them to share their experience of the problem. Map the current dynamics together to help the system see itself better. They might use this intelligence to come up with a plan. Find resources to build connections across the system, create documentaries that highlight the current problems of the food system, build accelerators for the most promising alternatives, they could lobby for policy change that will make it easier for these alternatives to emerge. Systems entrepreneurs hold their plans lightly. They take their steer from the community itself, rather than from desk research. They iterate, learn, and change direction as the movement advances and they understand that all of this work takes time.

“Knowing that there are no easy answers to truly complex problems, system leaders cultivate the conditions wherein collective wisdom emerges over time through a ripening process that gradually brings about new ways of thinking, acting, and being.” — Peter Senge.

Their key skill is facilitation

Systems entrepreneurs are often natural ecosystem builders. It’s almost a personality type. They connect unlikely allies, build networks, they help people find others who want to change the same thing. Kevin Jones called these people “Community Quarterbacks”, Geneva Global describes them as “a person or organization that facilitates a change to an entire ecosystem, by addressing and incorporating all the components and actors required to move the needle on a particular social issue.”

Either way, they build momentum by creating and capturing the energy of key people within a system and get them organized in new constellations to intervene.

They are also often natural diplomats. They can wear many hats, talk to senior and junior, activist and executive. They find language that brings people along together, rather than alienates.

As a result, getting good at facilitation is the key skill of a systems entrepreneur. Facilitation is important because it marks the shift in a mindset from us thinking we can ‘make change happen’ towards one where we create the supportive conditions where the people lead change themselves. As Lucho Osorio-Cortes a markets systems specialist at the BEAM Exchange says “Facilitation, is the creation of appropriate conditions for the market actors to change their system, in ways that make sense to them, at their own rhythms and maximizing their own resources.”

They get off their bum and make stuff happen

They initiate. They create projects and programs and coalitions and incubators that didn’t exist before. They are entrepreneurial in nature, even if money isn’t the value they create.

They also take personal risk, sometimes financial risk too. As disruptors of the status quo, their role is often questioned (‘who are you to convene?’). They have to lead strategy that goes against the wishes of powerful actors, without complete knowledge of where they will end up.

So what?

Systemic problems require systemic approaches, but instead we still rely on traditional approaches to social and environmental change, funding ideas that work on symptoms not causes.

There is a growing movement of systems entrepreneurs who have been experimenting with systems change theory and are learning what works and what doesn’t in practice, but their work is often invisible and undervalued. One step away from the impact, it can be hard to fund and as a result the field doesn’t have the coherence nor the visibility to have the impact society needs.

To help them succeed, two things badly need to happen:

1. We need to bring together the systems entrepreneurs. To connect, learn and find peer support.
2. We need to get better at funding them. This is starting to happen. Indy Johar is working on sparking a movement around ‘systems venturing’. Bobby Fishkin and colleagues in San Francisco are convening a growing group around impact investing for systems change and several groups of philanthropic funders have met to start to work this out including a retreat hosted by SiX last year in Canada.

We plan to get organized around solving these problems in 2018. If you are interested in helping to make this happen, please do get in touch rachel@thesystemstudio.com.

Interview: Systems change network builders

Benjamin Taylor

Benjamin has 20 years experience at public service transformation in the UK. As Chief Executive of the Public Service Transformation Academy, a not-for-profit social enterprise awarded the Cabinet Office Commissioning Academy, he is a leading thinker on system leadership, service design and transformation. He is an accredited power+systems trainer, a visiting lecturer in applied systems thinking at Cass Business School, City University, and has lectured at Nottingham Business School and Oxford Said/HEC Paris.

Some things I’ve learnt:

• Learn the difference between complexity and complicated, technical challenges.
• Dealing with complexity requires collaboration. To succeed co-design, enlist discretionary effort, be honest, accept you don’t have all the answers.
• Community is the antidote to uncertainty.
• To get more power, you have to give up control.
• Take time to ‘see’ the system. Think about illuminating the rules of the game, the effort and learning it takes to stay dysfunctional, the power of community.
• Listen out loud, ask good questions, start from strengths.
• Ask: Who do we want to be? What could I do to create a shared view across the whole system for the people in it? What thoughts or questions does this raise for me?
• Confront people with their gifts.
• Think massive, start very small. Help people to explore and experience change and shape it, within limits.
• Make your best prediction about how your changes will land. Take responsibility for all the outcomes, the actual experience of all the people in your organisation and all the people in your community, however great or sh*t it is. And as it turns out different from your prediction (because it will), think about why that is. Then you’ll be working in learning world too.
• Experimentation is the antidote to certainty, confront people with reality.
• Real change is dirty work. Don’t fool yourself you’ve learned anything until you have tested it in the real world. And even in the ‘real world’, don’t think you are learning if you’re not predicting and reflecting. When we take responsibility for learning about outcomes, we will get there

Some of the challenges:

I see the locus of challenges within our communities of systems practice, rather than externally:

• There are a growing number of systems ‘gurus’ who in my view are all about creating ownership to develop power. This is well covered by the title of a blog piece Richard Veryard wrote on a related subject: ‘Wrecking synergy to stake out territory’. (could you share the link, I cant seem to find this)
• There are ‘Systems Curmudgeons’, the people who stand on their expertise and attack those who ‘get it wrong’.
• And early-stage systems enthusiasts who create new movements that follow a ‘hype cycle’ which ends in failure, that is completely predictable to those who know the history.
• Funding can be a problem too – funding initiatives that take systems thinking out of managing business risk. Doing so makes programmes less organic, less well-adapted, and less effective.
• I think that the only way to counteract all of this is to patiently and consistently build network links, explain weaknesses and try to come up with an overarching narrative that talks about what each model explains, explains what they don’t explain, and explains why.

Systems of interest

I work on helping public services in the UK (and Australia) to transform themselves. More broadly, helping to change people's experiences of organisations, as employees and as customers/citizens. And, wider still, helping people to see systems and change them.

My systems change network  

I am a systems change network enthusiast – more of a curator and a learner/sharer than a joiner. I work at the overlap of theory and practical organisational change. Some of the networks I’ve been involved in:

• SCiO – Systems and Cybernetics in Organisations – the best learning group I've experienced. It includes Practitioner development days and Peer speaker days with about 250 people. This is cheap and accessible.
• The London design and systems thinking meetup group (200+ folk)
• On LinkedIn, Systems Thinking Network and on Facebook, The Ecology of Systems Thinking.
• The ISSS and UKSS (International and UK Systems Societies). I am a visiting lecturer on the very interesting Cass Business School undergraduate Applied Systems Thinking course.
• The Public Service Transformation Academy, a not-for-profit social enterprise I founded, which supports capacity and capability building for public service leaders, and the Cabinet Office Commissioning Academy, which we run. The PSTA will publish its first annual 'State of Transformation' report on public service transformation in April next year - collaborators and sponsors are very welcome!
• Model Report is list I curate as a way of organising articles and links on systems thinking.
• RedQuadrant is a network consultancy which very much welcomes applied systems thinking. We work with about a hundred associate consultants a year from a pool of over a thousand.

My inspiration

• Barry Oshry's work –Power and Systems and The Systems Letter. Watch Barry at SCiO and PwC.
• Navigating Complexity, Arthur Battram
• Viable System Model, Stafford Beer – start with the explainers on SCiO then go on Beer, and try Patrick Hoverstadt's Fractal Organisations. Patrick’s Patterns of Strategy, co-authored with Lucy Loh, should transform the field of strategy and is enormously valuable in many contexts. 
• For a 'the process as a system', try Joiner's Fourth Generation Management, Scholtes' Leader's Handbook and Team Handbook, for public services try Richard Selwyn's free Outcomes and Efficiency, dip a careful toe into I Want You to Cheat and other works by John Seddon and from the same stable, but stepping into ‘the community as a resource’ or strengths-based approaches, try Richard Davis' Responsibility and Public Services. 
• For a beautiful little summary that goes way beyond its title, look for Total Quality Management by Develin.
• The Little Book of Beyond Budgeting by Steve Morlidge is another tiny read that sneaks systems thinking in by the back door and makes total sense, and Beat the Cuts by Rob Worth brings us back around to a Deming-esque view of public service processes (not necessarily systems – but critical to know).
• Try anything from Peter Block, especially Flawless Consulting and his work on Abundant Community. Anything from Marv Weisbord, particularly the short Tools to Match Our Values, and some Ed Schein... and I could go on! Adaptive Leadership by Heifetz and Lipsky is valuable too, as is the literature on 'wicked problems' and related concepts. 
• I think there's little more powerful in organisational life than combining the Viable Systems Model with Elliot Jacques' Organisational thinking (updated, and with valuable additions, not all of which I agree with - in the brilliant but very academic Systems Leadership Theory by Macdonald et al). Luc Hoeboeke's Making Work Systems Better is perhaps the only work I know that combines them, as I do in my work.
• Two fairly recent additions are Ed Straw's video Stand & Deliver: How consultancy skills and systems thinking can make government work
• And I haven't even mentioned soft systems method, Nora Bateson's work… or the book I co-authored (not systems thinking in a meaningful way, but opening up thinking) - The 99 Essential Business Questions.

As a systems network builder, how do you fund yourself?

All pro bono! I can't help myself – I just find myself doing it – and I've never received a penny (well, about £150 per 'visiting lecture' – but that means forgoing a bit more income for a consulting day). We don't even pay expenses at SCiO. However, it shades right across my day job(s) at RedQuadrant and the PSTA, so I support myself somehow. One day I would like to make all my living in systems-related work, (though isn't every type of work systems-related?), and I certainly get amazing value from the networks I am in. 

Interview: Systems change network builders

Lucho Osorio-Cortes

A markets systems specialist at the BEAM Exchange and Practical Action Consulting. He has more than 15 years’ experience in international development and specialises in the facilitation of market systems development and organisational learning. Lucho coordinates The Market Facilitation Initiative (MaFI), a working group of the SEEP Network helping practitioners to become more effective facilitators of inclusive market development programs.

Some things I’ve learnt:

• The people who live and breathe in the system are those who have to come up with the solutions to change it. Inputs from external experts are useful but they have to make sense to the people in the system.
• The system, not the poor, must be the unit of intervention if we want sustainable impact at scale.
• You have to listen to the system. Truly listen; without confirmation biases, without ego, without expectations, without intention, listen quietly and openly.
• Market engagement is empowering in itself. We do not always need to empower ‘poor’ people before they are ‘ready’ to engage with other market actors.
• Never trust actors who always say yes and never question you as a facilitator.
• Never underestimate the transformational power of seemingly irrelevant actors. Let them ‘do their thing’ and pay attention to the reactions of the system.
• Every event in the system has the potential to change it, opening new, sometimes unexpected, entry points and closing entry points that we thought were open. Flow with the energy and rhythms of the system.
• Scaling up is a fractal process. The whole system has to resonate with the solutions implemented in a fragment of it. The more the fragment has the properties of the wider system, the easier the solutions from the fragment will be accepted and adopted by the broader system.
• Facilitation is not always equivalent to ‘light touch’. Facilitation is the creation of appropriate conditions for the market actors to change their system in ways that make sense to them, at their own rhythms and maximizing their own resources.  Sometimes intense and long-term investments have to be made to get the system moving.
• Market systems can deliver sustainable impact at scale if three processes take place at the same time: empowerment for engagement, interaction for transformation and communication for uptake.
• We see what we measure; we measure what we value.
• Do your homework to avoid obvious mistakes but then jump in the water and learn as you swim.

Some of the challenges:

• Firstly, in my view there is a huge disconnect between theory and practice.

Theorists often say, ‘we get it’, but they don’t. What they don’t get is that the deeper you get into it, the more counter intuitive this work is. At the same time practitioners in the field will say ‘I have practical experience, I get systems’ and this is dangerous too. The two groups could learn a lot from each other.

• Secondly, people in development are often very keen on the ‘hard’ aspects of systems change; economics, viability, measurement and evaluation, program design.

Bureaucrats can digest this. But when you look at what makes or breaks a project, so often it’s the skill of facilitators. How they see the world and interact with it (e.g. the market actors and the forces that influence their behavior).   

Facilitating systemic change requires skills and attitudes that bureaucrats can’t grasp and or measure easily with their current paradigms and practices. This makes it difficult for donors and other development agencies to invest because they can’t see the importance of the human element and the need to enable flexibility, uncertainty, trial-error-learning, and adaptability in the development process.

• Thirdly, the discourse of value for money dominates donors’ mindsets and is dangerously permeating the perceptions of the public.

But no functional system can be resilient without what I would call “exploratory inefficiency”. There is a risk that if we don’t produce evidence of the effectiveness of the market development approach the fad will go and donors will look elsewhere. But there is a paradox: under the traditional donor-implementer paradigm, the approach finds it very hard to deliver on its promise of sustainable impacts at scale and, therefore, to produce evidence of its success.

As a result of all this, MaFI is currently in the process of evolution from a general focus on market systems development to one on that explores the cognitive aspects of facilitation of market systems development programs. Questions like - how do successful facilitators behave? How do they think? What paradigms and tools they use? How do they identify key stakeholders and engage with them?

Systems of interest

I work on market systems and peer-learning networks in Latin America, South Asia and Eastern Africa. Most of my work is designed to help practitioners gain a better understanding of how to use a systems lens in their efforts to make markets more inclusive, productive and efficient. 

If these practitioners are more effective at facilitating (enabling, catalysing) structural changes in market systems, more people will get out, and stay out of poverty for longer periods of time. This will happen with less effort, less cost and less friction, compared to traditional development approaches that focus on the poor and deliver solutions devised by experts from outside of the system.

My systems change network

The building blocks and principles that make up the field of market systems development have been around for many years, but the communities of practitioners who see themselves as part of this field started to form during the 2000s.  There are many platforms where practitioners connect. I have been involved or participated in the creation of:

• The SEEP Network
• The BEAM Exchange
• The Latin American Network for Market Systems Development
• The Academy of Professional Dialogue

For example, I helped to create MaFI, which aims to close this gap in knowledge by advancing practical principles and tools that assist practitioners working in pro-poor market development to move from market assessments and program design to implementation.

During my time as the coordinator of MaFI (since 2008), the group has produced learning products based on MaFI's online discussions, webinars, and in-person meetings, and also seeks to influence the debate about rules and principles of international aid that hamper inclusive market development.

The value of the market systems development field is relatively big and growing. I would guess that, currently, there are around 20-30 market systems programs running, worth around $3-10 million each. Some people may argue that there are more market systems development programs but I have seen many of them that fail to use the principles of the approach properly. When it comes to the implementation of these programs, the devil is in the detail. For example, how you select and train your staff, how you build a culture that enables open sharing of mistakes and learning, how to change tactics and even strategy quickly, how to use less program money and more systemic resources, how to pay attention to early indicators of change that give you clues about the future behavior of the system; how to select, engage and communicate with market actors, how to help them experiment with new ideas, etc.  

My inspiration

• Quantum physics (the duality of nature -e.g. light- and the need to embrace probability and uncertainty). The Tao of Physics.
• Theory of relativity (the importance of the different perspectives of the observers, the connection between matter and energy – the equivalence of seemingly different entities if we look deep enough).
• History (the non-linearity of cause-effect in society, the importance of small events, the Butterfly Effect in society, the importance of institutions, rules and beliefs, nothing is sacred or fixed -just human constructs that we decide to respect or idealize, the failed war against drugs). Why Nations Fail.
• Behavioural studies from psychology, management and economics. Predictably Irrational, Dialogue and the Art of thinking together.
• Macro-economics (e.g. interest rates and their effects on the economy, connectedness and interdependency in international trade, Ricardo’s ideas about specialisation and trade, effects on taxation in productivity).  The Art of War and the Tao Te Ching.
• A few authors I admire: Bertalanffy, Einstein, F. Capra, David Bohm, Heisenberg, William Isaacs.

As a systems network builder, how do you fund yourself?

I do most of the network building out of pleasure. I love seeing connections happen. I fund this with my own resources and through specific consultancy projects.

My next questions

I am currently exploring how market systems development can contribute to the field of impact investment. Donor-funded programs introduce cultures, procedures and incentives into the organisations working to transform market systems that clash with a more organic, bottom-up, exploratory, endogenous approach. I think impact investment has the potential to do this if companies of different sizes and scopes have the right contextual (systemic) conditions to drive change that makes business sense while adding social and environmental value.

Common challenges in systems change

These are some of the challenges I’ve spotted;

Power dynamics are always at play in systems change work. How do you build enough credibility to convene the best actors in a system? How do you get finance for your work when the people with the money often have a vested interest in things staying the same? How do you accept money from the power brokers of a system and keep questioning its foundations? If you are a funder, how do you get close enough to the actors in a system, to be able to make a fair assessment of the project? 

Building trust To lead systems change you have to be someone who can hold their own with different players in the system. Heads of industry, regulators, entrepreneurs, activists. You need to be able to win genuine trust and build empathy for the different points of view. Sometimes this requires biting your tongue, rather than sharing exactly what you think because it's not helpful to the process. 

Hosting You need to be a skilled convener because the process of hosting these communities is so key. Facilitation can be disastrous if done poorly, how do you get skilled up on this while juggling multiple other balls?  

Measuring impact and securing funding systemic innovation takes time and requires emergent strategy. Funders are still learning how to back this kind of work and need to know outcomes and impact.

Overwhelm Hardly surprising given the above, acting on many places of the system at once and nurturing these varied communities can cause burn out. Your role involves bringing together a dissatisfied group of stakeholders, surfacing that discomfort, motivating others into action, nurturing these communities over the long term, whilst finding the words to report back on progress as it emerges to secure funding. This can be exhausting work and burn out is a common phenomenon.

The art of presence

Don't you love it when someone says to you "just relax and go with the flow", like it's the easiest and most natural thing to do? In today's fast paced society, going with the flow is the exact opposite of our first reaction to change or discomfort, but its crucial.

The sea as a metaphor for change

I recently took a trip to Barbados with my husband to teach a creative workshop on The Art of Presence with a group of theater students. Its a magical place. There is a laid back vibe and hardworking mentality of the people and a continuous celebration of life. I even saw a man who had to be pushing 100 years old, bathing in the sun and laughing as he was knocked down by the tiny waves with only his cane holding him up as it stuck in the sand. I found myself learning more about the art of presence just by being there.

I have the Caribbean in my blood and have been to many islands throughout my life. The first thing that I do when I get off the plane is drop my bags and have what the locals call a 'sea bath'! Letting myself be bathed by the sun and sea, taking the soft sand from the ocean floor and rubbing it on my arms and face. I run straight for the water. It calms me, it grounds me and reminds me that there is little in life that I actually have full control over. The surrender can be so beautiful when you are floating on your back letting the waves hypnotize you.

Overwhelmed  

During the course of this trip I spent a lot of time just sitting and watching the sea in the morning and the word that often came to mind was overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by the vastness of the sea, overwhelmed with gratitude for being there. Overwhelmed  by the power of the waves and by the pulling in and out of the tides. I have become friends with some of the locals and they explained to me how to successfully jump into the oncoming wave and allow it to lift you back up the the surface.

I started to see my life as the water. Ever changing. Sometimes riding high and full of waves and sometimes low and ebbing. What is constant is the change. To think that I can dictate the waves of my life would be like believing that we dictate the flow of the oceans. It's beyond my comprehension. But what I do have control over is how well I adapt to that change. My ability to catch a wave and ride it. To work with it until it brings me to a new place.

A good life is not necessarily an easy one

I’m learning to retrain my mind from thinking that a good life is an easy life. The act of letting go often isn't easy at all, it takes a shift in perspective away from the dream of experiencing no ripples, towards a life full of movement. It takes great presence and constant readjustment because I know what it feels like to both ride a wave and be pulled under by a rip tide. But the sheer presence of the ocean is a reminder to us all that when we let go, life is able to flow freely to us and through us. Its when we start to hold firm in our mindsets, beliefs and ways of being that we begin to sink.

Moments of transition

In my life, I experienced being called into the water a few years ago while dancing on Broadway in the revival of ‘On The Town’. I was in a deep place of wandering and seeking something that I didn't even know I was after, but I knew I was craving change.

As the only black women in the show I was approached to speak out about diversity in theater and creating the change that we want to see in our theater community. I was honored to be asked and in that moment of stepping into the waves of the unknown, I found my voice. I had something to say that was hidden deep inside beneath my drive to simply be in demand and to be included. I was beginning to emerge in a way that I had never experienced before.

Simultaneously I met a yoga teacher and mentor who invited me to dive deeper into my own potential. She saw beyond the credits and success and taught me the principals of yoga and join those understandings with my spiritual upbringing.

I was finding my own unique voice and it was exciting and scary at the same time. I was walking deeper into the water and having to release some stuff to go further. I spent about a year focusing on letting go. Purging everything in my physical and spiritual life that didn't serve. The performing slowed down, the business slowed down and I forced myself to get still and listen.

About a year later I met Rachel at the meet and greet for our daughters nursery school and we hit it off right away. I often say that we were meant to go to that school just so that I could meet her. It was kismet.

We were together with a group of moms the morning after the election. We shared  our thoughts and fears and shed some tears as a community. It was that day that we decided to collaborate on ‘I AM’. This was an event that we co-hosted to bring together people from all different systems and backgrounds to creatively look at the cognitive dissonance that we may felt after the elections. It proved to be a fun, inspiring and safe space to support and ground each other in the process. Since then we have collaborated on another event focusing on letting go. Working through yoga and the discussion on fractal theory.  

Now what? 

I am amazed when you are willing to enter the flow, how it will uplift and support you through all of the “I don’t knows” of life.  

I have been reading the book Presence and diving into it was like air for me. I feel the principles of Theory U deep in my bones. I know that it is imperative in how we see the future in our personal lives as well as collectively in our communities and society.

Rachel and I are collaborating on an event in July supporting leaders to find their voice and to gather the tools to create events that spark change. I will be leading a session on presencing. I'm also excited to announce that SoHumanity is launching The SoHum Series which is a brand new three part integrative approach that incorporates the principles of Theory U (curiosity, compassion, courage). Personally guiding individuals who are ready to take an inner creative journey into the questions that lay at the heart of who they are and into deeper connection with others.

The past few years have been quite the journey. Through all of this, life has thrown in so many waves, but I know for sure that this exactly the kind of flow that I have been longing for.  

“The joy is in the journey”. Really?

What has joy got to do with systems change?

When you think of evolving institutions, professions and organizations, joy isn’t necessarily the first word that springs to mind.

Change is hard. It feels heavy, political, exhausting and serious. 

But at The Systems Studio joy is front and center of what we do. It is our reason for being.

And here’s why- joy is a brilliant strategy for systems change.

What is joy anyway?

I was incredibly fortunate to be invited to a retreat a few years ago in Cape Town, with an organization called The Leading Causes of Life (LCL).

Led by a core team of academics and public health professionals they had been exploring the question ‘What creates a feeling of ‘life’ in the darkest of circumstances?’ We heard from incredible anti-apartheid campaigners share their stories of their lives torn apart, whilst still finding hope.

Over years of research, LCL have distilled their findings into 5 concepts that I use as design principles when bringing people together for systems change.

Design principles for joy

Create the conditions for:    

1. Agency – “I can do something to change this.” “My contribution counts.”  
2. Connection – Skip the small talk- design experiences where people can talk about things you really care about.   
3. Intergenerativity- Passing knowledge up and down the generations. Take this further and allow people of all levels of seniority to share experience.
4. Hope – Create a sense that things can change for the better. 
5. Coherence - Help people make sense of how they think and feel about an issue and create the conditions for them to share this with the group.   

To me joy is distinct from happiness or fun. you can't fake it. It requires facing the fact that things are imperfect. Getting the dirt out the cupboards and looking at it together. Being honest. Being vulnerable and admitting that we don’t have all the answers, even if we’re in charge.  

Joy is a feeling that emerges during a workshop, retreat or gathering where people are able to connect in a meaningful way. It is life affirming, it is inspiring and it creates a bond between people that last long after your intervention. It also motivates participants to work on projects that are difficult and to keep going even when it gets really tough. 

Bringing people together? Put the time into planning

So no it's not frivolous to spend ages working out who will sit where, or thinking through how to make introverts feel just as comfortable as extroverts.

If you want to bring people with you, to inspire and lead change, very often its those details that make your important gathering something they will remember forever, for all the right reasons.  

Strategies for systems change: My presentation @Harvard, in summary

Lorin Fries, Head of Food Systems Collaboration at the World Economic Forum and Ava Lala from Geneva Global and I spoke at the Harvard Social Enterprise conference in March on the topic of 'systems entrepreneurship'. Big thanks to Jeff Glenn for making it happen. 

This is a summary of what I said.

Our audience at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government

Our strategy for systems change: The Finance Innovation Lab

The Finance Innovation Lab blustered into existence on a rainy Friday, as few weeks before Christmas. The financial crisis had just hit and the news was full of people leaving skyscrapers carrying their belongings and graphs with arrows pointing downwards. 

I was working at ICAEW (The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales) and we came together with WWF to host a one off event. A 'Credit Crunch Brunch', as an experiment to see what would happen if we brought our two groups of stakeholders together. We convened them around the question 'how might we create a financial system that sustains people and planet?' 

The event itself was pretty badly designed and badly facilitated. We didn't really know each other, let alone know what we were doing, but it didn't matter, it was totally oversubscribed.

We had brought together shiny suited accountants, lawyers and investment bankers, with environmental activists, corduroy wearing ecological economists who'd taken the train down from Cambridge University and twenty something economic justice campaigners. These were not people used to being in the same room together. They didn't read the same newspapers, their kids didn't go to the same schools, on paper they didn't really like each other very much. But if we did anything right that day, it was that we allowed them lots of time to talk to each other. And they started and didn't stop. By the end of the day we knew this was a project that needed to continue.

Over the next four years or so we worked first with Reos Partners and then with The Hara Collaborative to design a strategy for systems change. Our strategy was in simplified terms to:  

• Convene a diverse group of stakeholders from across the financial system
• Host them at 150 person events
• Use participatory facilitation methods (namely Open Space) to get them organized into groups of people who wanted to change the same thing
• Experiment with different ways of supporting the most promising solutions that emerged from this process 

Lots of these experiments failed of course, but some of them flew. The Natural Capital Coalition, grew from an innovation group in the Lab on 'internalizing externalities', its now a million dollar project supported by the World Bank and Rockefeller Foundation among others. Campaign Lab, designed to support economic justice campaigners, by teaching systemic strategy, is in its fourth year and AuditFutures, funded by the Big Four accounting organizations is innovating the future of the profession for society.  

How did our experiments change the system? 

When we emerged from the most busy period of the Lab and caught our breath, we tried to write it all up (see my blog on top tips I learnt from this painful process!).  We came across Transition Theory and found it a very useful framework to explain retrospectively how our work was working towards systems change in finance. 

Transition Theory (Geels 2002) 

The theory goes that if you want to try and change a system, you should work at multiple levels at the same time. He names three: 

1. Landscape This is the 'climate of ideas', culture, societies' world view. This is the slowest to change.  
2. Regime The Institutions, markets, organizations, companies we have built. The rules, policies and procedures that govern them. This is also slow to change. 
3. Niches of Innovation The pockets of innovation that bubble up and represent alternatives to the current regime. Often built on different values, or with a different culture to the mainstream system. 

Some Finance Innovation Lab interventions 

On reflection we saw that our experiments fitted into these levels:

• Landscape Campaign Lab was changing the 'climate of ideas' by supporting campaigners to be more effective at calling out the deficiencies of the system
• Regime Our Disruptive Finance program, brought together NGOs and think tanks across the system to lobby government to change the rules of the game in finance    
• Niches of Innovation Simply by convening diverse people at 'Assemblies' and drinks we were helping to build a pipeline of new innovation. Helping to inspire and spark new ideas and to connect unconnected innovators. The Labs recently launched Fellowship program gets much more intentional about providing leadership support and community to pioneers who are innovating for good in the financial system.  

Common strategies for systems change

For the last three years or so, I have been actively researching what everyone else is doing to change systems. Aware that we by no means had all the answers, I wondered 'what are other strategies for shifting systems?'.

This I think is a useful exploration because there is growing interest in how to 'do' systems change. A common challenge I hear from potential systems changers is 'The theory is too complex and I have no idea where to start. 

I have convened or been involved in multiple gatherings around systems change over the years (Leaders Shaping Market Systems, Systemschangers.com, Keywords, the SiX Funders node) and I am starting to see some patterns.  Below I share some common strategies I see for intervening in systems, mapped onto Transition Theory. 

Common Strategies for systems change, mapped onto transition theory 

• Landscape Tell stories yourself that point out the problems of the current system and highlight better ways of doing things. Engage the most skilled storytellers to do this for you; the media, campaigners and artists of all types. Create accelerators to support them to do this better.
• Regime Convene actors across the incumbent systems and get them organized to come up with a shared declaration of what they think needs to change. Help them lobby the institutions who set the rules. Support pockets of innovators within the system. Link them up regularly and build programs that make it ok to question the current regime. Take this one step further and build incubators where they can build ideas about how to do things differently, from within. 
• Niches of innovation Convene diverse actors to spark inspiration and build a pipeline for new ideas. Create incubators and accelerators to turn the best ideas into reality. Fund these experiments. Fund an ecosystem of support of new ideas and actors. Build a 'demonstrator', a physical example like a sustainable ship or an innovative school, to 'prove it in a pocket', so it can spread.   

Different types of system

Typically systems entrepreneurs spend a great deal of time connecting actors across their chosen system and use a number of the strategies above to intervene, at the same time. But the interventions they pick vary massively depending on the kind of system they are working on. 

Different types of systems 

You could be looking to shift an oligopoly in say food, finance or energy. You might be doing 'Pro-poor market development', mapping the supply chain of an inefficient market system in the developing world, like milk production, to see where you could fix broken links. You might be looking to shift an existing institution or organization itself, public service department or intergovernmental organization,  or to build a new market system, like Gender lens investing, where one currently doesn't exist. You might be taking on a black market system, trying to uncover how it works and breaking it down. Or you might be convening actors from across all of these kinds of systems, trying to move many of them at the same time. 

Characteristics of systems entrepreneurs

I ended my presentation by highlighting a few personality traits I'd noticed in the best system entrepreneurs I know. They are typically: 

• Optimistic despite most people telling them repeatedly that change was impossible 
• Open-minded a necessary trait for listening to the views of different people within the system, suspending judgment, being empathetic 
• Patient systems change projects are slow by nature. Transformation and glory for a couple of years' work is unlikely  
• Humble they are building a network of brilliant people who can work in new ways to change things. It's really not about one glorious leader, but rather someone who can cultivate the conditions for others to shine. 

I can't help myself slip in a note and say that most of them are also women. I'm wondering whether this is because we are socialized to be diplomatic and patient, or that maybe that our presence in powerful systems is sadly still unusual, so creates a different vibe that allows people to behave differently. I'm not sure. A thread I'm definitely interested to explore in the future. 

 What do you think?

This is obviously an over simplification of strategies for systems change.

But honestly I think I'm on a mission to radically simplify systems change.

I know from my own experience how much potential it holds and at the same time it is so sadly missing from so many social change initiatives. I have seen that one of the most significant barriers to spreading systemic thinking is that currently the books, theories, maps and terminology are completely overwhelming. It's just too damn intimidating.  I don't actually think it is that complex. 

But I would love to hear your thoughts. Specifically: 

• What other major strategies for systems change am I missing? 
• What other kinds of human systems am I missing that are the subject of systems change initiatives?

My aim is to keep working on this and to create a kind of 'beginners guide to systems change' that is so simple that anyone can pick it up and get started. 

Looking to create a strategy for systems change, but stuck? We can help you cut through the noise and develop a clear way forward. Get in touch rachel@thesystemstudio.com

The field of systems change is growing

"If no one shows up, I'm looking forward to listening to you guys anyway" we said to each other. 

The 'we' was Lorin Fries, Head of Food Systems Collaboration at the World Economic Forum and Ava Lala from Geneva Global and I. We had been invited by Jeff Glenn to speak on a panel at the Harvard Social Enterprise conference on the topic of 'systems entrepreneurship'. 

The conference itself was on a Saturday. The Saturday before I moved our family from NYC to San Francisco, our apartment in boxes, the day before 20 4 year olds' were due to descend on my house for my daughters birthday party, and I had to catch a 3am flight to get there on time. Will this really be worth it? I thought to myself. 

My doubt was compounded by what I had to say in my presentation. That social entrepreneurs are a different breed to social entrepreneurs. I described in some detail my experience as Co-Founder of The Finance Innovation Lab. How we had built an infrastructure of support for the social businesses in the financial system, but that when we looked up for support ourselves, we found it hard to find peers, let alone the awards, incubators and conferences the social enterprise movement enjoyed. Bitter? Well yes slightly.

But actually you know, it was worth it. My co-panelists were two sassy women who regaled fascinating stories of convening the CEOs of the worlds biggest food companies for tough talks at Davos and convincing major actors around sex trafficking in India to work together.  

And seventy people turned up. Seventy. This was a major milestone for me. I have been tracking the emergence of the field of systems change practice in earnest for the last four years. You can read a publication I co-wrote with Tim Draimin on the topic last year, Mapping Momentum.

Sure, running the Lab was lonely, but if I was doing it again now, I'm not sure I'd feel so alone. SSIR has published 7 articles this year with 'systems change' in the title. HBR and Fast Company boast another a cluster each. Organizations from Acumen to Skoll to WEF are extolling the virtues of a systemic approach to social problems. Forum for the Futures School for Systems change has launched its Basecamp training program on systems change and funders are getting serious about how to support this kind of work. Things are moving in the right direction and I can't wait to see where we are this time next year. 

Researching the field of systems change? We can help you cut through the noise and develop a clear way forward. Get in touch rachel@thesystemstudio.com

Systems change: What makes it different from the rest of the buzz words?

Is systems change the new social innovation, collective impact, social labs? Is it an unnecessary buzz word that serves to exclude people doing good work? Why are we trying to define another term in the social impact space? And why does this concept have to be so impossibly difficult to get your head around?  

Why do we need a systemic approach? 

As Peter Senge says, problem solving can be like jumping on an air bubble in a carpet, you squash it in once place, only to find it pop up somewhere else.

What characterizes a systems change project?

Systems Change is about seeing a problem from multiple perspectives. Systems change initiatives typically work on many failures within the system at once. They are defined by their focus on the root cause of an issue, rather than solving the symptoms of a problem. They typically employ a combination of many interventions at once because one strategy will rarely solve a complex challenge. 

For example as Co-Founder of The Finance Innovation Lab,  my ambition was to support the emergence of a financial system that was in service of people and planet. To do this we supported new entrants to the financial system whose business' had a positive impact, we had programs designed to evolve mainstream finance and we supported civil society leaders to have greater influence on government policy. We did this all at once.

My brother who works in market system development in Myanmar for UN ILO maps supply chains, identifies weaknesses and creates interventions to bridge these gaps, working on multiple projects at the same time.    

Defining systems change by the alternatives

How does a systemic approach interact with other kinds of interventions? 

Social enterprise: typically a businesses designed to solve a single social or environmental problem. A social enterprise might for example, take food that otherwise would have gone to waste and turn it into products that can be sold. But this approach means that the enterprise is reliant on that waste for survival. If the waste ceases to exist, then so does the business. Taken alone, it doesn’t tackle the root cause of the problem.

These organisations as newcomers, often lack power and influence. They often rely on interventions elsewhere in the system for their success. So a group of social impact peer-to-peer lending entrepreneurs in the finance system for example, need regulation in order to launch and trade. An intermediary like Ashoka or Acumen might take a systemic approach, supporting only those social enterprises who are tackling root causes or by orchestrating collaboration across a complex problem and lobbying to remove market barriers to entry. 

Social innovation: SiG in Canada argue that "For social innovations to be successful and have durability, the innovation should have a measurable impact on the broader social, political and economic context that created the problem in the first place". In the UK social innovation was often used to describe change initiatives in social service agencies in the wake of budget cuts. Others include social entrepreneurship within the definition of social innovation. At its heart, as Stanford University describe "A social innovation is a new solution to a social problem that is more effective, efficient, sustainable, or just than current solutions. The value created accrues primarily to society rather than to private individuals". This can be systemic or not, depending on the nature of the problem at its heart and on solution chosen. 

Collective impact: A tool often used by systems leaders, this is about connecting and coordinating the efforts of a range of existing actors (policy people, social entrepreneurs, government agencies etc) to create more significant impact. The role of the core team at the heart of a Collective Impact project is one of the honest broker, an independent intermediary who bridges silos and brings people together in a way they wouldn't have done, without intervention. Collective Impact initiative helps them set a common purpose and to work towards mutually beneficial goals. See the work of Geneva Global who convened agencies, companies and NGOs around sex trafficking to great affect. 

Design Thinking: A methodology for complex problem solving that famously follows a series of steps - building empathy with the user of the product or service, defining the problem you want to change, 'ideating' a solution (coming up with as many solutions as possible), prototyping the best of these ideas and testing them. Repeating the process until a successful intervention is created.  

Super brain Alex Ryan who is steeped in both traditions described to me the difference between systems change and design thinking. He said something like, systems changers take a birds-eye view, while design thinkers take an ants eye view (I paraphrase!). Design Thinking works in harmony with a systemic approach when it comes after analysis of the dynamics of system you are trying to change. Otherwise you can come up with a brilliant solution to a symptom rather than a genuine root cause issue or a solution that users love, but the stakeholders that surround it, completely reject. See this great blog from Fast Company to read more. 

Campaigning: Raising awareness of a problem that the system is creating or one it is ignoring. The ambition is to put pressure on the powerful organisations’ within that system to change behavior or the law.

This approach created a shift in corporate strategy for example, when companies like Nike were exposed for fostering child labor in their supply chain. Pressure from NGO’s and the media forced Nike to make sure children no longer worked for their suppliers. However the root causes of child labor remain, if this is all that changes. The problem is complex. Children were forced to go to work rather than school to help feed their families. But this choice meant their chances of escaping poverty in the future decreased as they were unable to read or write. Losing their job in the factory could have an even worse unintended consequence, like forcing children into prostitution to make ends meet.

This approach can help solve a single problem in a system, but the unintended consequences of that single change, often lead to further problems that require further campaigns.

Aid is another intervention. Fundraising in the developed nations to feed the poor in developing nations, for example. This approach works certainly in life and death situations, at times of drought or famine.

But the old adage ‘give the man a fish and he’ll feed himself for a day. Show him how to catch fish, and you feed him for a lifetime’, captures the limitations of this approach. Simply transferring funds keeps power dynamics intact with the poor dis-empowered to do anything to get themselves out of poverty in the long-term. You need to build infrastructure that lasts long after your intervention to make this work. 

Thought Leadership initiatives aim to describe the problems of an existing system in reports and books and highlighting them at conferences and events where experts speak at panel sessions and round tables.

This approach is very successful at bringing issues to the attention of power brokers who steward a system and in spreading the idea of change within the different levels of a system. A place to make explicit criticisms which otherwise may go unsaid.

However thought leadership work if often criticized for its lack of action and events given the tag of ‘talking shops’. Ideas themselves do not always lead to change. Someone has to take the responsibility to actually do something differently.

For me systems change is not just about bringing together a range of actors for action, but about bringing together a range of tools to solve the problem in front of you. This typically means learning at some basic level about all of the above and beyond; policy change, to impact investing, to design thinking and everything in between. Or better still, it's about bridging the worlds between brilliant people who are masters at each of these interventions, and about asking for help, regularly. 

Want to create a strategy for systems change and not sure where to start? We can help. Get in touch rachel@thesystemstudio.com