Tom Wujec has a TED Talk which focuses on systems thinking diagrams. The subject? Making toast. It doesn’t take long to watch, and there’s an accompanying website at drawtoast.com
Some of the key insights are around the importance of links and nodes, and also the ability to rearrange them, say by using cards or sticky notes. Wujec also comments on making systems models as a group, saying that we can handle more complexity because we talk things through, coming up with branches and ways to incorporate different perspectives on the fly.
From the course materials:
From my perspective, I consider the three STiP heuristic activities corresponding to Wujec’s explanation to be as follows:
Understanding interrelationships (uIR): the act of visualisation is key here, though it is of course also relevant to both eMP and rBJ. In order to ‘understand’ how things may connect, it is often helpful to visualise the components that comprise the situation. Various types of ‘pictures’ are one diagrammatic representation. Wujec uses more specific system models and employs the terms ‘nodes’ and ‘links’ to exemplify such component parts of a system.
Engaging with multiple perspectives (eMP): moving from individual to group exercise in systems thinking is exemplified by use of moveable sticky notes or cards to make rearrangements of, and additions to, the nodes and links of the system model.
Reflecting on boundary judgements (rBJ): the term ‘iteration’ comes up frequently, both in relation to initial individual diagramming and to collective group diagramming. The process of iteration is essential in STiP practice. Iteration signals the necessary flexibility required in making boundary judgements, and the need for ongoing reflection of such judgements.
(Open University, 2020)
Also, there’s an element of joy in working visually and gaining a bigger picture. It can also be genuinely interesting to see how others view the world, and to try and combine multiple perspectives — hence my interest in systems thinking!
In my last post, I realised that I might be quite interested in focusing on library provision as my area of practice. The module materials give the following guidance:
interest – the area must invite your own personal interest, which may usefully be an existing or aspiring professional area of practice, but may alternatively be an area of more general interest
practice – the area must have an associated central element of practical change, signalled by an adverb associated with some practical activity such as control, regulation, management or reduction
scope – don’t define an area of practice too narrowly (perhaps use ‘immigration control’ rather than ‘checking passports’), and try to include different hierarchical levels (the practice may have local, national or international ramifications, or may include elements of policy planning, management planning and operational planning)
perspectives – the area of practice should invite different viewpoints and associated meanings
uncertainty – there should be significant possibilities of unforeseen change.
(Open University, 2020)
I have a personal interest due to using the library (I am right now!) and improving use of the library is a management issue. The scope is sufficiently wide, I think, even though I’m tempted only to focus on my local library. There are different perspectives on this issue, as evidenced by the group I was part of that dealt with the problem in the workshop earlier this week. And there is plenty of uncertainty with cuts to council budgets, changing demographics, and an upcoming General Election.
Term
Example
Definition
Area of Practice
Library Provision
Generalised role or area of responsibility, identifying generic types of concerns in library services.
Situation of Interest
Current concerns about use of public libraries in Northumberland
More specific area of concern, situation or event that is perceived by someone as calling for some kind of intervention.
System of Interest
System to increase uptake of libraries in Northumberland
Particular arrangement of activities associated with a situation designed to achieve a particular purpose of boosting library usage.
I’m going to share this idea in the student forums (Activity 1.14) along with the diagram below which I created with Whimsical with a bit of help by prompting GPT-4 (Activity 1.15).
Given a bit more time, which I’ll probably spend when we get to the first assessment, I could spend some time linking and renaming things. But I think this is enough to go on for now.
There are three core activities with Systems Thinking in Practice (STiP):
Understanding interrelationships (uIR)
Engaging with multiple perspectives (eMP)
Reflecting on boundary judgements (rBJ)
These three activities can be translated into a learning system, or ‘heuristic’ which is presented in the module materials in the following way:
Unlike TB872, this module doesn’t have such great diagrams. I’m not so good at making them, but I can’t live my life looking at this one repeatedly! So I’ve recreated it:
There is a video associated with this task (Activity 1.13) which refers to the three areas of this diagram as:
Events
People
Ideas
This is perhaps a more intuitive and easy-to-remember way of referring to the parts labelled Situations, People, and Tools. Here’s an extended quotation from the transcript to the video which helps explain the STiP heuristic:
Real world situations are often rendered intuitively as systems, such as the health system, or the financial system, or an ecosystem. Such renderings as systems can be a useful means for then engineering change. So for example, messy financial affairs might be more formally rendered as a budgeting system, which has clear inputs and outputs that might be more easily managed.
The danger is in fooling ourselves that such rendered systems are the actual reality. It’s confusing the map as a system for the actual territory, the reality of the situation. Like any map, much is left out.
[…]
A starting point for a systems thinking approach is working with complicated and complex issues. So systems thinking might be regarded as an endeavour to render complicated, complex, conflictual situations into bounded, conceptual construct, that is, systems for analysis and design, or more specifically, using systems for making strategy. The Systems Thinking in Practice heuristic, or a STiP heuristic as we will call it from now on, is one such learning system; a mental model or idea used as a device for learning about situations of interest and making a strategy to transform them into something better.
(Open University, 2020)
The rest of the video goes on to explain the difference between ‘complicatedness’ (which I don’t think is an actual word?) and ‘complexity’ and also defines a ‘wicked problem’. I’ve summarised these below:
Complicatedness refers to situations that have many parts that need to be arranged in a certain way. Although it might be tough to solve, it can figure be figured it out with enough expertise or detailed analysis. For example, fixing a broken car is complicated because it requires specific knowledge about the car’s parts and how they work together.
Complexity relates to a situation is one where everything is interconnected and changes can happen unexpectedly as a result of these connections. Small changes or actions can have big, unpredictable effects. For instance, the stock market is complex because many unpredictable factors can affect stock prices. See also the butterfly effect.
Wicked problems are tough issues that are difficult to solve because it involves incomplete or contradictory information and changes depending on how people perceive it. These problems are tricky because they are not just hard to solve; they are hard to define. For example, climate change is a wicked problem because it involves many factors and opinions, and solutions are not straightforward.
In addition, a mess is when several complicated and complex issues are all tangled up together, making it hard to see where one problem starts and another ends. Messes are chaotic and hard to sort out because solving one problem might affect another part of the mess. A city’s transportation system can be a mess because it involves roads, traffic laws, public transportation, and the behaviors of thousands of people.
I’m composing this in my local library, run by Northumberland County Council. It’s housed within the new leisure centre. Earlier this week, I was at a Design Sprint session as part of the Thinking Digital conference which was run by members of the digital team at the council. The situation we chose to address as a team was library provision, with visitor numbers going down.
Right now, as I’m trying to work, there is a group of older people meeting in the study space as part of a social group. They’ve having coffee and tea, which is not usually allowed in this space. Given the noise, I’ll probably end up decamping to a coffee shop and may not return on a Friday. This could be seen as a small example of a ‘mess’ which would also involve opening hours, underfunding, and even popular conceptions of what libraries are for.
In fact, come to think of it, this might be a good topic to focus on for my assessments for this module. I shall ponder that further… 🤔
