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Simple Systems Scoping

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Systems thinking done broadly allows us to take into consideration the various factors — structures, activities, relationships, interconnections — that can influence our organization, market, and domain of inquiry.

One of the fundamental qualities of systems is that they have boundaries. For example, when we consider an organization as a system we need to place boundaries on that organization such as who to include (e.g., all employees? full-time vs part-time? paid staff vs volunteers? settings or sites? etc..). There is no correct choice, just a useful one. Your boundary choices are to reflect what you are seeking to understand and how you’re seeking to act.

But how do you tell? We share with you a remarkably simple, but powerful way to scope your systems and determine if you have set the right boundaries.

Two Criteria

If you set your boundaries of inclusion in the system and find that you are lost and struggling to identify, map, or monitor the various interconnections, actors, actions, and outcomes within a system because there is too much to focus on then that is a sign you have bounded your system too loosely.

If you’re continuously finding yourself trying to explain what happened in the system by things outside of the boundaries, then you have bounded your system too tightly.

That’s it.

It may take some experimentation to get your boundaries right, however these two criteria can tell you if you’re on the right track or not.

Systems-informed strategy, mapping, and evaluation can be complicated, but understanding the boundaries does not have to be. This simple strategy has consistently allowed organizations to focus on what matters and avoid getting lost. The key is to make sure you have the ‘just right’ amount of detail and focus to allow you to make a meaningful sense of things and guide your action.

If you want help implementing a systems strategy for innovation and change in your organization or network, contact us.

Surfacing Invisible Rules

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What often can hold our change initiatives back are mental models about how or why something happens. Historically, many innovations and discoveries were held back or failed outright because people were unable to see or believe what was in front of them. By asking a set of questions at the outset and throughout your project you can avoid many mishaps.

The scene below from Men In Black illustrates what happens when our mental models about the world get upended and ask a simple question about what we know*. (*Just prior to this scene, Will Smith’s character confronts alien life forms for the first time — something that Tommy Lee Jones’ character already knows and lives with.)

One way to surface these hidden assumptions is through an exercise we might call ‘Invisible Rules‘. This three-part exercise can help you surface and uncover those ‘hidden’ rules we live by that might be holding us back from what we are seeking to change.

The exercise involves asking a series of questions in three stages:

1. Assumptions

  • What assumptions am I operating under?
    • Consider things like people (populations, characteristics, traits, knowledge, skills, preferences), time and timing, the likelihood of success, resources required.
  • How did these assumptions come about?
    • Is the evidence based on fact or folk knowledge?
  • What evidence is there to support that these assumptions are true?
    • Is this evidence still valid? (e.g., is it based on a historical or current position? Has something changed considerably since the evidence was first generated to prompt questions about its relevance?)

2. Design

With these answers, we move to a new set of questions tied to the design of your innovation (project, product, service, etc..)

  • Can I modify any part of the design (e.g., remove, reduce, amplify, or replace) that might make it better?
  • What can I learn (borrow, modify, adapt) from other designs addressing similar issues?

3. Future-casting

Lastly, it is useful to ask yourself three “How might” questions about your innovation.

  • How might this project fail?
    • For whom? Under what conditions?
  • How might we learn about what we’re doing while we’re doing it?
    • The evaluation and reflection metrics, measures, and processes in place to learn what works and doesn’t as you go.
  • How might things change beyond our control?
    • Possible surprises that might sidetrack your plans (e.g., pandemic, government change, policy change).

These simple set of questions can produce an enormous amount of data for you and your team. In just a few hours you might save years of pain and problems and see beyond the fence into the pool of opportunity beyond.

Want help in seeing things differently and asking better questions in your work? There are some simple steps that can help your team see things that others can’t. Contact us. This is what we do.

we’d be happy to help.

Sensemaking in Crisis

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Sensemaking is a social process that helps us make sense of data, information, and knowledge in a time of complexity. It’s used often in innovation contexts when we are fitting data to a unique situation.

The RSA (the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) a UK-based charity and think-tank has recently updated and revised its collective sense-making framework which provides a clear example of ways to consider change-making and leading in times of crisis.

The 2×2 framework, presented below, helps to frame activities that may have stopped or started during a crisis and what activities we may wish to amplify, end, abandon, and re-start.

Developmental Thinking

What the RSA framework embodies is what we call developmental thinking. This is the kind of thinking embedded in Developmental Evaluation, design and innovation. This thinking is about taking information and feedback from the activities in the system and making adaptive, strategic decisions to keep the organization developing (evolving) through learning.

Learning is about taking action based on new information and in some cases — such as those in complex situations with lots of change and activity — this learning must come from sensemaking. It tells us when to stop, start, pause, and wind-down activities.

The RSA proposes conducting this sensemaking over time through a process that is akin to developmental design and developmental evaluation through the crisis which, in the case of events like COVID-19, might be protracted and evolve. As noted below, it also recognizes that sensemaking is tied to systems thinking where events (the most visible parts of a system) are actually built upon larger sets of behaviours, structures, and paradigms.

To make use of this requires a monitoring and evaluation system tied to an overall developmental, design-driven process. It’s not difficult, but it does require substantial mindframe shifts and organizational supports. Yet, the payoff is that your organization is adaptive and working with what’s happening and what’s emerging, rather than stuck trying to make what used to work come alive in an environment that has not only changed, but might be different altogether.

If your organization needs help in reshaping your work to make the most of what you have and pivot to what’s needed next, contact us. This is what we do.

Using Theories for Change

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The concept of Theory of Change is meant to provide program planners and evaluators with guidance on how to make sense of the mechanisms that guide how something transforms. Theory of Change as a technique is usually visual, participatory and consultative in nature, and is something that is developed alongside the program itself. What is given less attention are the change theories that underpin a Theory of Change.

Confused? You’re not alone.

Clarifying this is critical if your Theory of Change is to have any meaning.

Change Theories & Theory of Change

Change theories are based (largely) on psychological and sociological evidence applied to human behaviour at different levels. These levels include:

  • Individuals
  • Groups (e.g., teams, families)
  • Organizations
  • Communities
  • Societies & Systems

Some change theories will apply at all of these levels, while some are designed more specifically for a specific level. For example, Kotter’s 8-step model for leading change is primarily an organizational change theory.

Change theories are meant to describe what is to change and explain how change is to come about. These serve as the bedrock for what a Theory of Change is meant to convey. A Theory of Change links the structures and resources tied to a specific program, unit, or process with various change theories to explain why it should facilitate transformation.

Design Considerations

While we might have a viable change theory, we might not have a strong design. We often see organizations that seek to make changes that their programs or policies were not designed to accomplish. For example, cognitive rational change theories are built upon the basic assumption that knowledge informs attitudes and beliefs which influence behaviour.

If your program or service doesn’t have a design that facilitates information accessibility that allows your end user (those who are the focus of your service) to understand and use that information, it’s unlikely we will see change. Just-in-time knowledge delivery (e.g., doing a Google search) implies that people have the means (e.g., tools and technology), the literacy, the skills, and the opportunity to access and use that knowledge, otherwise it’s not likely to facilitate change.

Being able to locate a family doctor isn’t useful if you can only do it at a time and place when such a professional isn’t needed.

Theories of Change can help us plan our programs and service offerings and plot the points of impact, but without good change theories and design considerations it’s quite possible we won’t achieve what we set out to do.

Want to learn more about how to develop Theories of Change and what an understanding of social and behavioural science and design can do to help you learn and create impactful programs? Contact us. We’d love to connect.

What Went Wrong? A Question For Futures Insight

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In five years, what did we get wrong?

This simple question can be a powerful vehicle for understanding the way in which things in the future might — and might not — unfold. Foresight is a complicated process as we are asking to see into a horizon that hasn’t yet taken place. Rather than predict the future, strategic foresight is about anticipating possible futures.

What this means is that it is possible — indeed, quite likely — that what we think will happen won’t come to pass as we thought. However, we might also foresee certain things that allow us to prepare. For example, we might be correct to see the growing trend toward working remotely while being incorrect about the reasons that drive it and the timing (e.g., pandemic).

All of these are based on assumptions about what we anticipate happening.

Asking the question about “what didn’t go right” or “what did we miss?” begins the process of allowing us to ask more detailed questions about our assumptions. It can allow us to identify where the areas of friction might be, the critical and less critical uncertainties about our models of the world lie, and what might have been missed as we envisioned the connection between now and the future.

Asking what we might achieve is useful. Asking what might go wrong is prudent. Ask them both.