These are a few of my go-to systems tools and resources. What are yours?

Off the Shelf

As I scan my bookshelf, I see titles like Thinking in Systems, The Systems Thinking Playbook, Systems Thinking for Social Change, and Designing Regenerative Cultures. The book I linger on is Getting to Maybe: How the World Is Changed by Brenda Zimmerman, Frances Westley, and Michael Quinn Patton. In 2016, I had the opportunity to participate in the eponymous, Getting to Maybe Social Innovation Residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, where over the course of a month I learned from a remarkable leadership team that included Frances Westley, Cheryl Rose, Dan McCarthy, Julian Norris, and Don Ahnahnsisi McIntyre, as well as a brilliant and very fun cohort.

Enduring Impact?

We talked about Senge’s iceberg, resilience and the adaptive cycle, and we connected deeply with the land, ourselves and one another. It was there that David Wagoner’s poem, Lost, gained particular significance for me. (Although the wise counsel, “stand still”, remains aspirational for me!) This residency also introduced me to Liberating Structures, a set of frameworks and tools (like TRIZ) that I carried into my own consulting practice and my work at Mount Royal University’s Trico Changemakers Studio. It has fueled many workshops and lab sessions since and has become a foundational part of the Studio’s toolkit.

Articles, Books and Knowledge Systems

A couple of favourite articles include Houda Boulahbel’s, A linear thinker, a design thinker and a systems thinker walk into a bar… and Courtney Martin’s The Reductive Seduction of Other People’s Problems (which could not be more relevant today). I am forever grateful to Min Basadur for the critical question and process, “How Might We…” , which I have used in countless generative contexts. I also don’t know where I’d be if Lena Soots hadn’t introduced me to Triangles, which can be found in The Systems Thinking Playbook referenced above and is still one of the best activities by which to experience system dynamics.

During the tumultuous days of the pandemic, while working on a social lab with the Winnipeg Poverty Reduction Council, my Winnipeg colleagues, Kahla Pretty, Sarah Duval, and I drew heavily on Priya Parker’s The Art of Gathering and K.A. McKercher’s Beyond Sticky Notes. Lena and I also leaned on these in our recent lab work in Calgary.

While in Winnipeg, I also had the opportunity to work with Diane Roussin, Director of the Indigenous-led social innovation lab, The Winnipeg Boldness Project on a housing lab. Diane and others from Winnipeg’s North End are “centering community perspectives, experiences, knowledge systems and values”, and there is much to learn and emulate from this approach. Diane and (so many!) others also point to Alberta MLA, Jodi Calahoo-Stonehouse, who has done transformative anti-racism work with Edmonton Shift Lab and has written an essential article that speaks to indigenizing and decolonizing social innovation.

Stories, Trees and Power

For the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity to work with and learn from the amazing, Carole Muriithi. Carole has introduced me to countless resources, including Yabome Gilpin-Jackson’s Resonance Stories and Yee Clare, Yu, Page and Preston’s Tree of Oppression. A couple of years ago, Carole, Elder Robert Greene and I drew on learning from this tree and Indigenous teachings to adapt Senge’s iceberg and create the Systems Change Tree. Latasha Calf Robe also recently added to the tree, continuing its evolution. This Systems Change Tree can also be found on Simon Fraser University’s Complex Systems Frameworks site, another useful source for seekers of frameworks! As part of our ongoing work with the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR), Carole also draws on the Wheel of Power and Privilege, originally designed by Sylvia Duckworth and adapted by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). She shares it along with a compelling invitation to bring awareness of our own power and privilege.

Indigenous Roots

Systems thinking is not a Western invention. Rather, it is yet another example of coming to know something that had, in fact, already been known for millennia. It was through my time with Elder Roy Bear Chief at Mount Royal University that I started to better understand this. Elder Roy tells the story of Ani to pisi (spiderweb), gifted to him by his late older brother, Clement. As Elder Roy recounts, a disturbance anywhere on the web creates vibrations that reverberate throughout the entire web. When we feel these vibrations, we are meant to respond - to go and help. Ani to pisi reminds us that we are all interconnected.

Ma Mawi Indendamowin

In the spring of 2021, Elder Roy Bear Chief, Carole and I designed and delivered a workshop for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights that brought together some of these Western and First Nations approaches to systems awareness. Since that time, Carole and I, along with Elder Robert Greene, Lisanne Lambert, and Kimberley Levasseur Puhach have been working together to try to more deeply understand the impact of systems learning and awareness on a large institution like the CMHR. Elder Robert has named this approach, Ma Mawi Inendamowin, or coming together with one mind. Recently, in a powerful moment of Ma Mawi Inendamowin, Elder Robert Greene and Elder Roy Bear Chief came together to share Anishinaabe and Siksika stories of systems and interconnection with one another.

Recent History

Finally, some fabulous Canadian social lab thinkers, including Ben Weinlick, Mark Cabaj and others, put together The Future of Labs Primer Report. This was meant to be a brief for a social labs gathering we were at in May 2024 on Cortes Island. What emerged was so much longer – and so much better – than was initially imagined.

Invitation

I could go on… and on. However, I will pause here and re-extend the initial invitation to share your own go-tos. What do you draw on as facilitators, as practitioners, or as community members committed to deepening our awareness of systems and our inherent interconnectedness to one another and to this planet?

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