Subject: How can we make people fall in love with systems ideas?

Posted by Jack Harich on 11/17/2010
In Reply To:How can we make people fall in love with systems ideas? Posted by Richard Hake on 11/16/2010

Message:

Richard,

Thanks for this. The note from Dennis allows us take a different, perhaps curmudgeonic, approach to the topic.

I'd like to put forth the proposition that lack of systems thinking in solving difficult problems is itself a symptom of a deeper issue. That issue is lack of a process that fits the problem. Systems thinking is merely one of the many tools required in process execution. Others might be modeling, experimentation, and comparative analysis.

Dennis' problem is one dear to my heart: the global environmental sustainability problem. The process I've been using on this problem is described at www.thwink.org/sustain/glossary/SystemImprovementProcess.htm

That process starts by dividing one big problem into three smaller subproblems: (A) How to overcome change resistance, (B) How to achieve proper coupling, and (C) How to prevent excessive model drift.

Dennis and millions of others have been stopped cold by the first subproblem. The human system is exhibiting high systemic change resistance. That's the crux of the problem, as "Change resistance as the crux of the environmental sustainability problem" tried to explain. This appeared in the January 2010 issue of the System Dynamics Review. See www.thwink.org/sustain/articles/009/ChangeResistanceAsCrux.htm

"The Limits to Growth" (LTG) identified the sustainability problem remarkably well. But due to lack of a process that fits the problem, the LTG team and subsequent efforts have been unable to go much further. As the "Change resistance as the crux" paper argues, they have settled on intermediate causes as "the cause" and are trying to solve them with what are essentially symptomatic solutions. This has not worked, which explains Dennis' frustration and despondency.

It follows that a productive answer to "How can we make people fall in love with systems [thinking]?" is to first make people fall in love with the idea of process driven problem solving. That is, for example, what all of science ultimately rests upon: application of the Scientific Method. The five steps of that process are:

1. Observe a phenomenon that has no good explanation.
2. Formulate a hypothesis.
3. Design an experiment(s) to test the hypothesis.
4. Perform the experiment(s).
5. Accept, reject, or modify the hypothesis.

Hope this helps,

Jack

Follow Ups:

How can we make people fall in love with systems ideas? - Bill Rathborne 11/17/2010