Change the World?

I haven’t forgotten my intention to address Henry Mintzberg’s point that the Reformation offers an example to give us hope in these difficult times - when fatalism and laisser-faire seem to have such a grip on our minds. It’s just that – before I try to do his argument justice – I felt I needed to explore my own confusions a bit more….. 

I’ve posted a couple of times about the difficulty I have in getting my head around systems thinking.

I’m never very sure whether to damn the systems thinkers in with the complexity theorists but continue, for the moment, to give the former the benefit of the doubt. It was the title of Systems Thinking for Social Change; David Peter Stroh (2015) which caught my eye - anyone interested in social change, I reasoned, must have an inclination to activism and therefore to resist the siren calls from the agents of laisser-faire. Stroh’s prose is too typically gushy American to attract me to his thought.

Systemic Thinking – building maps for a world of systems (2013) seems a better bet, written as it is by an Englishman (John Boardman) and American - Briand Sauser - with a more friendly presentation, short chapters and diagrams. And its concluding chapter has a nice, clear, summary of the book’s basic argument - 

This is a book about problem-solving, but with a difference. We recognized three vital characteristics, which for far too long have been overlooked or neglected in problem-solving books.

First, we identified that while solutions undoubtedly “deal with” the problems to which they relate, they also create a new wave of problems in their wake. In our complex world, this problem-generating characteristic of solutions cannot be ignored, and problem-solving itself must take care not to become problem spreading in nature. It has been widely recognized for some time that problems themselves can spread or cascade, as in the case of electricity supply networks (e.g., the New York City blackout) or the growth of cancer in the human body (e.g., prostate cancer in adult males). But the realization of problems elsewhere caused by the creation of a solution in some particular area of interest, removed from these affected other regions, is both alarming and unsettling. The way forward that we proposed in this book gives due recognition to this phenomenon.

Second, the emergence of a class of person known as problem solver, identified by skills in problem-solving, has reduced the burden on the class known as problem owner, to the extent that the latter has effectively transferred the problem and subsequently lost ownership, and in so doing has created a false picture for the former who cannot therefore avoid endowing the solution with the problem-spreading gene. This distinction of classes, one that effectively divorces the two, must be overcome, and problem solving in our complex world must restore the vitality of problem ownership among those who sense the problem in the first instance.

The third characteristic is something we can more easily recognize if we stand back from the first two. When a solution to a given problem also leads to a wave of new problems, then problem solving essentially becomes problem spreading. When problem solving attracts a new breed of people who become known as problem solvers, then responsibility for the problem is in effect transferred—from those it first affects or who sense it, with attendant diminution in problem ownership. We might say problem solving becomes problem dispossession. So standing back leads us to conclude that the originating problem is strongly connected to a host of “accompanying apparatus,” including owners, solvers, and problem-solving approaches. It is this connectedness that marks out this third characteristic that we believe has hitherto been sorely neglected and about which this book has much to say. Moreover, this book has much to offer by way of a responsive way forward. Our way forward is what we call systemic thinking. It is a way of thinking that emphasizes connectedness and enables people to see the bigger picture; one in which owners, solvers, solutions, problem solving methods, and problem descriptions are portrayed as a whole system.”

In a sense, however, I don’t need convincing. I don’t think I could live with myself if I didn’t believe in “human agency” – ie the possibility that -  as Margaret Mead famously put it – 

“never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it’s the only thing that ever has”.

 And so far no book has spoken to me on this theme louder than Robert Quinn’s “Change the World” which I summarised here