The growing popularity of systems thinking

Systems thinking?has seen growing popularity in current times. With world events such as the COVID-19?pandemic, the Ukraine war, the macro-economic uncertainty in the developed world, and the climate emergency, governments, industries, nonprofits, and education institutions have come to realize that everything is connected to everything else and working in silos can be a recipe for disaster.

Several institutions, across the world, offer specialist systems training that span from short orientation courses to certifications to degrees on the subject. Selected institutions that offer short-term courses include the Asian Institute of Management (Philippines), Enlightened Academy Enterprise (UK), Fore School of Management (India), Indian School of Business (India), Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (India), Indian School of Development Management (India), International Centre for Complex Project Management (Australia), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA) and Singapore Institute of Management (Singapore), among others. Cornell University (USA) offers a dedicated postgraduate degree program called Systems Thinking, Modelling, and Leadership (STML) that runs for two years. IDEOU (USA), a specialist creative agency, offers a systems course tailored for creative professionals. The Design Thinkers Academy (UK) runs a program called Systems Thinking Essentials that helps students explore, understand, and make meaningful change within complex?systems. The United Nations System Staff College (UNSSC) offers a free program called Policy Coherence and Systems Thinking for Sustainable Development. Systems education has recently garnered significant traction in the UK. On the 10th of March, 2021, Stephen Richardson, President of the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE), along with Dame Sue Ion, Honorary Fellow of IChemE and Honorary President at the National Skills Academy Nuclear, recommended to a House?of Lords select committee that systems thinking skills should be mandatory in engineering education for effective risk management (IChemE 2021). Leading universities in the UK such as Cranfield University, Open University, University of Exeter, University of Leeds, and the University of Birmingham offer MSc programs in systems thinking and practice.

Several multilateral and development organizations have adopted systems thinking?as their preferred approach in program design, management, and evaluation. The World Health Organization (WHO) applied systems thinking to counter the Ebola virus epidemic in West?Africa between February 2014 to January 2016 (Sambo?and Jackson?2021). Further, the WHO Europe regional office has taken out a whitepaper, Systems thinking?for noncommunicable disease prevention policy, that offers guidance on how the use of systems approaches can potentially contribute to the development of effective evidence-informed policies, encourage stakeholder involvement in the decision-making process, and improve the coherence of policy implementation (Astbury and Penney 2022). The WHO’s progressive work on health systems strengthening has also influenced the approaches being used in sanitation and hygiene (Huston and Moriarty 2019). The World Economic Forum (WEF) is a prominent advocate of systems approaches for its strategies and initiatives. In its 2023 Davos conference, the WEF included systems thinking as one of the four key skills that can “make the world a better place after COVID-19”. In its recent whitepaper, Infrastructure 4.0: Achieving Better Outcomes with Technology and Systems Thinking, the WEF talks about adopting a systems lens to achieve sustainable and inclusive infrastructure development practices (World Economic Forum 2021). Further, Dreier?et al. (2019) report on how the WEF adopts a systems change approach to craft its strategies to engage governments, companies, civil society organizations, worker associations, research?institutions and others towards combining their capacities to achieve shared goals.

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has published a report, Systems, Power, and Gender: Perspectives on Transformational Change, that covers an initiative that aims to support the inclusive transformation of systems, by bringing to the fore the issue of power, specifically as considered through the lens of gender (Colville and Zerouali 2022). The UNDP uses systems concepts and considers boundaries critically to understand power dynamics in societal transformations to make policy recommendations. The United States Agency for International Development (2014) released its Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Strategy (2014–2025) which suggests that systems thinking?can benefit multi-sectoral approaches by strengthening program design, implementation, and measurement. The strategy also presented a Systems Thinking Assessment Tool to improve nutrition. The framework includes seven cross-cutting factors: (1) policies and governance, (2) infrastructure and markets, (3) inputs and services, (4) information and communication, (5) financing, (6) household resources, and (7) sociocultural environment. The Sustainable Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) Systems Learning Partnership and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Local Systems Framework, both developed by the USAID, adopts systems thinking in its framework and strategy (Huston and Moriarty 2019). The United Nations International Children’s Education Fund (UNICEF) has explored systems thinking in the arena of child protection?and through initiatives like Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Bottleneck Analysis Tool (WASH BAT) (Huston and Moriarty 2019). The Department for International Development (DfID) and the World Bank have also made efforts to align their strategies with systems thinking (Huston and Moriarty 2019).

As governments find themselves in a world that is increasingly complex?and unpredictable, policies need to be crafted in a way that can absorb and respond to such complexities. Policies do not exist in isolation but their success depend on their contextuality and agility. With digital infiltration in every aspect of life, newer threats being posed to people at all times, greater expectations of citizens, and newer industry models emerging at the intersection of several erstwhile sectors, governments are dealing with a volatile and shifting policy context. Systems thinking?offers the perspectives and approaches to equip governments to appreciate the demands of this dynamic environment.

The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has partnered with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis?(IIASA), an international research?institute, to craft approaches on how systems thinking?can be applied to make government policy making more effective for the current day. A joint research team consisting of members from the OECD and the IIASA says (T?nurist et al. 2019):

Applying a systemic?lens to complex?problems can help map the dynamics of the system, explore the ways in which the relationships between system components affect its functioning, and ascertain which interventions can lead to better results. Thus, systems thinking?can help clarify the need for innovation in the public sector itself and systems thinking tools and methods could be the solution for 21st century missions, where the public problems and purposes are shifting and methods to adapt the institutions need to also reflect the shifts.

In July-December 2018, IIASA and OECD conducted a gamified participatory capacity building exercise, focused on systems practice, for policymakers and experts from the European Union’s Eastern?Partnership countries that included representation of relevant stakeholders from Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. The exercise resulted in a prototype of a national water strategy. Through the process undertaken, participants acquired a deeper understanding of the role of uncertainty in decision making and how inclusive, flexible, and sustainable policies can be crafted.

In 2022, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the EU Commission, issued a study entitled GreenComp: the European sustainability competence framework (Bianchi et al. 2022). Systems thinking, critical?thinking, and problem framing lie at the heart of this framework that calls for interdisciplinary approaches to understand and address the interconnectedness of economic, social, and natural systems. 12 sustainability competencies are identified in the framework that are inextricably interlinked and should be treated as parts of a whole. In the context of this framework, Systema (2023), a leading European consultancy, notes:

This study is very important in its overall nature but also because it poses Systems Thinking as one of the core competences in the area ‘embracing complexity?for sustainability’. It is also worth noticing that also the very same concept framework is defined as a ‘System’ itself…!

The UK government has made multi-pronged investments in promoting both the education and integration of systems thinking?in its policy making and strategic planning, as evidenced in the recent policy paper by the UK Government Office for Science (2022). The Cabinet Office of the UK government proactively encourages its employees to enhance their systems thinking?skills and apply the same in their work. To this end, the Cabinet Office also runs its own blog dedicated to systems thinking – systemsthinking.blog.gov.uk – with a vision to help people across the public sector to apply systems thinking to complex?problems.

A report from the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA), of the UK government, talks about how the organization has leveraged systems thinking?for its strategy and decision making (McGonigle et al. 2021). Driven by systems thinking, DEFRA has adopted a multidisciplinary and research-led approach to problem solving that is already shaping innovative and well-informed solutions to some of the UK’s greatest environmental challenges. The UK’s Government Office for Science (2022) actively promotes the use of systems approaches in public services to address the complexities of the current times. Out of the several documents it has released to orient civil servants to systems thinking, The Civil Servant’s Systems Thinking Journey: weaving systems thinking throughout the policy design process outlines how systems thinking complements and strengthens existing guidance and approaches of the government. The Civil Servant’s Systems Thinking Toolkit provides a step-by-step guide to an accessible selection of systems thinking tools. Additionally, The Government Office for Science has produced a bank of case studies that contain testimonials from a diverse range of civil servants across government on their experiences of using systems thinking.

Finally, several professional, research, and industry bodies across the world work towards promoting systems thinking?research and application. Such bodies bring like-minded systems enthusiasts together and engage in a range of initiatives such as organizing conferences and seminars, publishing journals, offering consultancy, and general activities towards popularizing the discipline among the publics. Some prominent bodies are listed below (in alphabetical order):

·?????? Cabrera?Research Lab

·?????? Centre for Systems Studies (Hull)

·?????? Critical Systems Forum

·?????? Cybernetics?Society

·?????? Global Institute of Flexible Systems Management

·?????? International Federation for Systems Research

·?????? International Society for the Systems Sciences

·?????? Operational Research Society of the UK

·?????? Systems and Complexity?in Organization

·?????? System Dynamics?Society

·?????? Systems Innovation Network

Systems thinking?can be a powerful cognitive?capability to help us to deal with complexity and fathom the state of the world. It provides us the approaches and tools to untangle and address them. However, very often, we fail to make progress because systems thinking?and its methodologies can come across as too academic or idealistic. Further research and advocacy is required to make systems thinking more accessible and pragmatic?and accessible.

Stay tuned for my latest book where I will elaborate on this topic at length.

References

Astbury, C. C. and Penney, T. L. (2022). Systems thinking for noncommunicable disease prevention policy. World Health Organization. https://apps.who.int/iris/rest/bitstreams/1438221/retrieve

Bianchi, G., Pisiotis, U. and Cabrera Giraldez, M. (2022). GreenComp: The European sustainability competence framework. In: Punie, Y. and Bacigalupo, M. (Eds.), EUR 30955 EN, Publications Office of the European Union. Luxembourg.? 10.2760/13286.

Colville, J. and Zerouali, K. (2022). Systems, Power, and Gender: Perspectives on Transformational Change. United Nations Development Program. https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/files/2022-11/Systems%20Power%20Gender.pdf

Dreier, L., Nabarro, D. and Nelson, J. (2019). Systems leadership can change the world - but what exactly is it? World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/09/systems-leadership-can-change-the-world-but-what-does-it-mean/ [accessed 08 January 2023]

Huston, A. and Moriarty, P. (2019). Building strong WASH systems for the SDGs. IRC. The Hague. https://www.ircwash.org/sites/default/files/084-201813wp_buildingblocksdef_newweb.pdf. [accessed 08 January 2023]?

IChemE. (2021). “Make systems thinking education mandatory”, IChemE President advises Lords committee. Advanced Chemical Engineering Worldwide. https://www.icheme.org/about-us/press-releases/make-systems-thinking-education-mandatory-icheme-president-advises-lords-committee/ [accessed 12 January 2023]

McGonigle, D. F., Berry, P. and Boons, F. (2021). A Primer for Integrating Systems Approaches into Defra. Report from the Defra Systems Research Programme. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/integrating-a-systems-approach-into-defra/integrating-a-systems-approach-into-defra [accessed 12 December 2021]

Sambo, L. and Jackson, M. C. (2021). Empowering health systems research to engage with technical, organizational, social and economic forces: Lessons from the 2014 Ebola epidemic. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 38(3), pp. 307-320.

Systema. (2023). Systems thinking at the core of the EU Competence Framework for Sustainability. https://www.systemaerasmus.eu/wp/systems-thinking-at-the-core-of-the-eu-competence-framework-for-sustainability/ [accessed 23 January 2023]

T?nurist, P., Rovenskaya, E., Mechler, R., Wagner, F. & Linnerooth-Bayer, J. (2019). Systemic Thinking for Policy Making : The Potential of Systems Analysis for Addressing Global Policy Challenges in the 21st Century. Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/3a9acaa6-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/3a9acaa6-en [accessed 10 January 2023]?

Government Office for Science. (2022). The Civil Servant’s Systems Thinking Journey: weaving systems thinking throughout the policy design process. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1079383/GO-Science_Systems_Thinking_Journey_2022_v1.0.pdf. [accessed 15 July 2022]