Using systems science approaches in practical implementation

By Dr. Sobia Khan , Director of Implementation, The Center for Implementation

Systems thinking has been on people’s minds lately, particularly because many of us are working on large scale change in incredibly complex circumstances. There has been such a steady flow of questions about implementation in systems that we are developing a special training series about it.?The challenges we have heard from people who are trying to enact large scale change are numerous and important. One of them is how we effectively work with one another across sectors, levels, organizations and teams; connectedness is a fundamental component of systems and a principle of systems thinking, and collective action is paramount to meeting implementation goals.

Systems thinking: The role of collaboration and partnership

In Partnering for implementation: The need to place partnering more centrally in our implementation planning and evaluation efforts, we talked about the importance of partnering, and we highlighted a project that was taking a deep dive into collaboration strategies as implementation strategies. You can also read my blog post on partnering on PubTrawlr.? It helps to know what can foster better partnering. It can also be very helpful to deeply understand and assess relationships that are fundamental to implementation. Just like a program, relationships between multiple actors in a system have a structure, process and outcome. Structures are dictated by who is connected to who, and in what ways. Relational processes are the things that make the relationships transpire, sustain, or dissipate. Relational outcomes are the end state of relationship building – the level at which you work together that can lead to effective implementation in the long run. We will be discussing trust (a relational process) in a future bulletin, and are developing a new course on relationships in implementation that will be released in the fall.

There are tools from systems science (i.e., the science of measuring system patterns and actions within systems) that can help us better understand relationships. Social network analysis is a great example of a tool that can inform and enhance implementation efforts. This type of analysis can be very illuminating to help understand relational structures across multiple people/organizations/entities in a system. At the same time, the practical utility of classic social network analysis is limited.

How adopting a network mindset can enhance implementation

Often my advice to people who want to better make sense of their system is to adopt a “network mindset”. This means defining the boundaries of your system (i.e., how big of system is implementation going to take place in), thinking about who is important in this system, what their roles are, and how they are connected to one another. Talking about these relationships means that you can think beyond structures to describe process and outcomes. This sense making exercise can really help you understand which relationships to leverage, which ones to build, which ones to repair, and what the purpose of different relationships are to make implementation happen. Adopting a network mindset and discussing and analyzing relationships more frankly can highlight the trust, power and fairness dynamics that affect implementation.

Working on a complex problem in a complex system, and want to understand the different ways in which people/organizations can work more cohesively with one another? Our course Embracing Complexity opens for enrollment in two weeks on June 13!

Note: An earlier version of this article originally appeared in the May 2021 issue of our Implementation in Action bulletin.?Subscribe here to receive our next issue.