4.3 Systems thinking and sensing

What is systems thinking? How could your systems thinking skills help you at significant moments in your creative process?

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It is fair to say that in today’s world almost everything is somehow interconnected. This global world is a very complex system, with so many cause and effect mechanisms, that everything cannot be totally known or managed. But also human body is such a system. Or a family, an organization or any other human community. Climate is a complex system too, with its unforeseen tipping points. In fact, a system can be any kind of entity consisting of at least two parts, the mutual relations of the parts, as well as the relations between the parts and the whole (see Figure 4.3.1. below). 

Why are we talking about systems in this course? Because they are the environments in which the creative work is increasingly done. And if we want to be radically creative and create change in the world, a central skill is to understand how to influence and work with systems.

Systems thinking is an alternative to the traditional scientific method that breaks down complex phenomena into smaller parts and makes it look more orderly, known and manageable. In systems thinking, instead of focusing on just one part or a single event, the idea is to think how different parts interact and influence each other. For example, what happens when AirBnB is introduced in the city? In addition to letting visitors stay in homes and short term rental apartments, AirBnB has, in many locations, affected housing prices, and caused some of the locals move away from city centers for more affordable housing. Surely this wasn’t planned, which is a feature of many systems: their behavior is impossible to predict completely.

Similarly, a positive effect might take place by a change in one part of the system. Take the social media originated #MeToo movement, for example. There was a pattern of sexual harassment within gender and power relations, and one part of the system was that the victims kept quiet, were it for their careers, or reputation. Then one day a single women decided to tell publicly of how they had been harassed, and used the hashtag #MeToo. That begun spreading, and eventually changed the toxic system radically. There are ways to change such huge and powerful systems – and radical creativity helps.

To sum up, systems thinking is about seeing the forest from the trees. It refers to the holistic understanding of the dynamic and complex interactions between you, as a creative individual or group with big aspirations, the domain in which you work, and the field which wants to recognize and validate your creativity.

Changing systems

What to pay attention to?

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When it comes to changing systems, it’s important to look for relations between things, as well as the relations within the system as a whole, rather than only analyzing things only as themselves. Here, one thing to keep in mind is that human systems also often rely on underlying beliefs and values within them. In other words, if you want to change things, you need to be aware of this factor as well.

For example, when we investigate toxic power relations like with #MeToo, this would mean analyzing the underlying system itself, rather than concentrating on a single person in it, when trying to create change. So, in #MeToo, even though only one part of the system was changed initially, it led to a paradigm shift within gender relations.

As systems are in many ways invisible and unknown, creativity is needed in exploring, experimenting and testing how the system can be influenced. Here an open mind for options and other peoples ideas is essential. At the same time, it is best to look for ways to influence the system as effectively as possible. There is some general knowledge about this.

Famous systems thinker Donella Meadows has identified ways to intervene into systems and change them (Meadows 1999). Interestingly, the methods that are usually used in trying to create change, for example, in public governance, like fine-tuning taxes and other such adjustments, are not very effective, according to her. Also, without good systems thinking skills, people often try to change systems by selecting simplistic mechanistic methods of quck fix, that end up exacerbating the original problem.

For example, the practice of wildfire suppression intended to protect communities and resources by stopping all fires quickly has sometimes actually made matters worse by preventing low-intensity fires from naturally clearing underbrush and dead material. In such cases, this has resulted in accumulated fuels for later wildfires, which worsened them.

The problem in changes that don’t really take account of the whole system is that the foundations of the system don’t change, or that the cure ends up working as a reinforcement of a negative phenomenon within the system.

For an effective solutions for changing a system, influencing the beliefs and assumptions that are part of the system is among the best.  This changes the paradigm that the whole system is based on. The #MeToo movement is, again, a good example.

Another very effective way to change a system is to increase the self-organizing capacity of the system, so that the system is able to self-evolve. The system itself is creative. This kind of systems are very resilient. They live from difference and variety. (Meadows 1999.)

‘Self-organization is basically a matter of an evolutionary raw material — a highly variable stock of information from which to select possible patterns — and a means for experimentation, for selecting and testing new patterns. For biological evolution the raw material is DNA, one source of variety is spontaneous mutation, and the testing mechanism is something like punctuated Darwinian selection. For technology the raw material is the body of understanding science has accumulated and stored in libraries and in the brains of its practitioners. The source of variety is human creativity (whatever THAT is) and the selection mechanism can be whatever the market will reward, or whatever governments and foundations will fund, or whatever meets human needs.’

Thus, to grow this kind of creative, resilient systems, we need to favor variety. Also, we need to be able to let go of complete control.

Even with good systems thinking skills, we cannot really predict and control systems, which is a seductive illusion Meadows (2008) has warned against. The real world will remain inherently unpredictable and uncontrollable. Instead of aiming for control, we need to learn to embrace complexity and become friends with uncertainty.

Sensing

Reason and intellect are only part of our intelligence

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Systems thinking is all about analytical and conceptual capacities for understanding complex interdependent phenomena. Systems sensing is more about our intuitive understanding of these complex interdependencies. It is about our capacity to attune to a sense of the whole. Thinking and sensing are operating at all times in all of us, but our formal education and often our experience at work has been biased towards the thinking domain over the domain of feeling. Put together the thinking and sensing aspects form systems intelligence. (From systemsawareness.org.)

Saarinen & Hämäläinen (2010) define systems intelligence as ‘the ability to use the human sensibilities of systems and reasoning about systems in order to adaptively carry out productive actions within and with respect to systems’. Systems intelligence is about human agents as both emotional and rational beings. It utilizes the influence of the senses as well as the thinking when acting within systems. Moreover, systems intelligence is a concept that extends traditional systems thinking by focusing on the opportunity for positive human and systems growth. It focuses its efforts on finding out how people can develop the resources to enhance our lives. (Jones & Hämäläinen 2013)

Theory U

Directing the change from within

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There are many systems thinking schools and theories. We introduce here Otto Scharmer’s Theory U. Scharmer is a senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and one of the founders of Presencing Institute, that works towards systemic transformation. The aim is to help individuals and groups to leap to a new level of thinking and awareness, where the way we perceive ourselves and the world changes. Otto Scharmer came to Theory U by interviewing and listening many change makers and pioneers who have created something new in science, business and society, and by participating himself in many change initiatives. According to Scharmer, to really change the world we first need to shift the inner place that we operate from. This itself is radically creative learning process.

According to Scharmer’s theory, we need to activate deeper sources of knowing than just our minds and thinking. When we start paying attention to feelings, intuition and bodily sensations, we get a more holistic view of things than if we rely only on rational thinking and intellectual reasoning. By combining all qualities of knowing, and all types of intelligence that we humans have, we can connect with the invisible, even unconscious potentials within us that may play a key role in systemic change. We also need to become aware of blind spots in the inner places from which everyone operates. Often it is the unconscious beliefs and thinking patterns that hold us from radically creative positive change.

An open mind is the capacity to suspend all habits of judgment. It is about seeing with fresh eyes and allowing new data to come in. An open heart refers to the capacity to empathize and to look at a problem not from your own angle, but through the eyes and the experience of someone else. An open will is the capacity to let go of all intentions, identities and who we think we are, in order to open up new possibilities. All this constitutes a shift in awareness that allows people to learn from the future as it emerges, and to realize that future in the world.

To effectively sense, the voices of judgement, cynicism and fear must be suspended, and attention needs to be directed from what is to what might be. All this enables us to connect more deeply with the sources of creativity and to sense how we can actualize creative projects.

Social aspect of systems

Seeing the cracks

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Ultimately, it is the human made systems that cause so much suffering in the world. Changing these systems is often an act of radical social creativity. As a musician needs to be intimate with the musical system, the instruments, traditions, sounds and compositions, a change maker needs to be intimate with the social elements of systems.

Systems thinking is essentially about community, being part of a social – or better yet a socio-ecological – system. A a creative agent in a bigger constellation. It is important to align ones vision and values with the common purpose. Skills in relating to others, and collaboration, are essential to work with a wide range of actors and to leverage collective action to address complex issues of radical innovation. 

“I learned, somewhat to my surprise, that ‘the system’ as such does not really exist”, writes Otto Scharmer in the Learning How to be Helpful to Change Makers section of his book The essentials of Theory U.

‘What does exist are coalitions of stakeholders that want to move the system one way, and other coalitions of people that want to move it another way. And many more in between. I learned how to see the cracks in the old system and how to use them as windows of opportunity for experimenting with systemic change.’

Scharmer describes how the way he related to the system transformed from seeing the system as the enemy to connecting to the system, seeing its cracks, and finally learning how to help change the system.

References

Cabrera, D., & Colosi, L. (2008). Distinctions, systems, relationships, and perspectives (DSRP): A theory of thinking and of things. Evaluation and Program Planning, 31(3), 311-317.

Cabrera, D., Cabrera, L., & Powers, E. (2015). A unifying theory of systems thinking with psychosocial applications. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 32(5), 534-545.

Cabrera, D., Cabrera, L. L., & Midgley, G. (2023). The four waves of systems thinking. Journal of Systems Thinking, 1-51.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2015). The systems model of creativity: The collected works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Springer.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. & Wolfe, R. (2015). New conceptions and research approaches to creativity: Implications of a systems perspective for creativity in education. In Csikszentmihalyi, M. (Ed), The systems model of creativity: The collected works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 161-184.

Meadows, D. (1999). Leverage Points. Places to Intervene in a System. The Sustainability Institute.

Meadows, D. (2008). Thinking in Systems: A Primer.  Chelsea Green Publishing.

Poutanen, P. (2013). Creativity as seen through the complex systems perspective. Interdisciplinary Studies Journal, 2(3), 207.

Saarinen, E., & Hämäläinen, R. P. (2010). The originality of systems intelligence. Essays on systems intelligence, 9-28.

Scharmer, O. (2018). The essentials of Theory U: Core principles and applications. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.