Systems Thinking & Early Stage Ideas
Over a recent conversation with a friend when we were discussing social innovation and early stage entrepreneurship, we disagreed on how organisation building is not equivalent to creating impact. My observation was impact takes longer and is largely a messy process. This article is a first in a series to synthesise my learnings about systems and working with very early stage entrepreneurs.
In the last few years, I have spent some time understanding systems in an academic sense, known about the various schools of thought, ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ systems thinking and so on. What most of the leading system thinkers agree on is desired change in complex systems (made up of many adaptive parts) is a time-consuming process. Think of improving education outcomes for all children in a classroom or shifting relationships in a family (think parents, siblings, father-daughter, mother-son etc)
I have also spent the last one year working with enthusiastic individuals (Teach For India Fellows) who wanted to take their ideas big. (Taking a cue from them and using them as an example) Imagine you are a teacher in a classroom, you come across an issue (sports, gender, art, community violence etc) that bothers you, you create a plan to understand the problem, come up with many ideas, iterate a few of them and see what works. While it may sound simple on paper, each step in this process gives you an evolving idea of the problem — the social, economic, political and cultural factors which have shaped the current reality of the students — the layers of the problem, if I may add.
To truly ‘see’ the “system”, one has to zoom out. Zooming out (10,000 meter thinking) has its upsides and downsides. It helps you appreciate the complexity, prepares you for the many risks involved and has a tendency to build a humble yet deep understanding. Now, some of the downsides can be being overwhelmed, unsure of what do to next, questioning own capabilities of tackling the problem.
The challenge for me then was how to bridge the complex world to the world of enthusiasts (change makers in popular lingo). I have taken a stab at the initial steps you can take to start building an appreciation of the system while not being overwhelmed with it. These are taken from Donella Meadows’ Dancing with Systems (linked under references):
Expand your time horizon: This is the first step in becoming a systems thinker. Taking the example of a teacher, what you can do is look at 5 years on both sides from the present. What was happening 5 years before, what might happen 5 years later. This initial time horizon (equivalent to a decade) provides a lens to account for the many factors one might not see initially. For example, in a career based initiative, a good lens is how have students from the community fared in terms of wages, jobs in the last 5 years? What are current and future economic opportunities available?
Expand your boundary of care: The boundary of care is a boundary we all draw around ourselves for what we care about. I am loosely using see in place of care and for a teacher, their immediate boundary are the students. Expanding the boundary will mean seeing parents, earlier teachers, siblings, community, peers of the students and a whole lot more. This will help you wonder about each of their roles in the outcomes and thereby nudging you to talk and learn from all or most of them.
These steps may seem simple on the surface but when put to practice will help uncover a few aspects of the complexity and pave ways to engage with it. These also help in realising how it all comes together and how your intervention fits with the existing structure. I will be sharing more on the next steps in the process of applying systems thinking to early stage ideas/ventures.
To sum it up, Systems Thinking has lessons on how to view scale in a social setting, how to identify leverage points in the system and most importantly how to be okay with and learn from many of our efforts not leading to the desired outcomes.