Why and how do we ‘see systems’?

Over the last month I've worked with three groups in leadership programmes in which we've been practising the art of seeing systems.

The benefit of ‘seeing systems’

Learning to see systems allows us to perceive and understand the world differently to how we’ve been taught throughout our lives. Those of us raised in a modern Western society are traditionally taught to perceive the world through the lens of a paradigm sometimes called the Newtonian, or Scientific paradigm. It’s a paradigm that emerged from a belief that the universe is a clock and that God is the omniscient clockmaker.

Applying the Newtonian paradigm to machines like clocks is entirely appropriate. If a machine isn’t working, we take it apart, fix or replace the parts that are malfunctioning, then put it back together and it will return to its intended function.

However, the Newtonian paradigm and its mechanistic understanding of how things work has been unconsciously and unwittingly over-applied to other types of systems including social systems and ecological systems – all with increasingly apparent unintended consequences emerging.

“The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think.” 

- Gregory Bateson

When faced with complex problems like climate change or child protection, we need a different approach. Trying to reduce these problems down to composite parts to solve bit by bit will not work.

Looking at the image above, the Newtonian paradigm is zooming in to examine the cicada by itself. Whereas a complexity approach is to understand how the cicada functions within the ecosystem - its role, its relationship with other cicadas, what it eats, what might eat it... how does all of this contribute to the functioning of the ecosystem?

The challenges in your organisation may not be a global, but they are very likely to include elements of complexity because they will inevitably include people (which are about as complex as you can get!).

To resolve these challenges, it’s important to ‘see systems’ and understand more about how to ‘change them’ or influence them (because that is all we can do!)

In my next newsletter, I'll explore one way to begin seeing systems.

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