Systemic Design summer school

Namahn Design Studio organized a Systemic Design summer school recently. We joined to learn more about the Systemic Design methodology and its potential use for TNO.

What was the experience like?

The 3-day course was held at the design studio of a small company called Namahn. They are a ‘human-centered design agency’, their services include the design of digital products, (work)spaces, service experiences, and strategy. They have developed the ‘Systemic Design’ methodology which they often adopt for their clients to draft strategic roadmaps, and to guide public authorities, NGOs, and social enterprises, towards identifying what they call “systems interventions”.

The goal of the Systemic Design methodology is to merge the benefits of Systems Thinking and Design Thinking into a method that is easy to apply, especially in workshop settings.

This methodology is rooted in Industrial and Service Design and builds upon the last century's theoretical tradition of systems thinking (e.g., Donella Meadows, Peter Senge). Most of the 12 participants had in fact a design background. The studio itself is clearly designed for workshops. There is an almost endless supply of sharpies, markers, post-its, magnets, white boards, poster templates, and other design materials. Despite their design and practicality, the thinking behind the methodology is quite rigorous and sophisticated. Most, if not all the tools, are inspired by work done by scholars and thought leaders in diverse fields. For example, one tool builds upon the system architypes as described by Peter Senge. The' ‘intervention strategy’, included in the toolkit, is based on the famous leverage points by Donella Meadows. The Ecosystem Governance tool is based on the Viable System Model by Stafford Beer. These are just 3 examples of about 40 tools, each with a custom designed template.

We have spent most of the three days engaged in workshops alternated by morning lectures – aimed at introducing the tools needed for the day –and some guest lectures –aimed at showing relevant applications of systemic design. The purpose of the workshops was to practice the various stages and tools of systemic design, illustrated by the accompanying book. The topic chosen as case study, was ‘how to reduce youth unemployment in Brussels’.

One highlight

The first day included a field trip at "BeCode”, a social enterprise that trains young people in IT skills for which there is large market demand. They represent an important stakeholder because their target group consists of young people looking for a job in IT – thus representing a significant example of a problem owner of the system issue chosen for the course. The objective of the field trip was to practice one of the most important steps of systems analysis: listening to the system. By following the template for the Casual Layer Analysis (included at the end of this post), the course participants were able to ddraft a series of questions to interview students at “BeCode”. This step is crucial to draw a good system map (the core practice of applying systems thinking). The outcome of the interviews represents the main input of a systems map for which it is important to gain enough insights to recognize feedback loops, and thus identify leverage points. Subsequent systems interventions depend heavily on these leverage points. A shallow analysis is risky, as it will result in designing interventions that will either not solve the problem, or worse, might lead to perverse outcomes (negative unintended consequences) by reinforcing negative feedback loops.

What did we like?

From what we have experienced, the book/method strikes for a good balance between applicability on the one hand and staying true to the intellectual tradition of systems thinking on the other. Which is no small feat, given that the latter mostly consists of rigorous academic literature that speaks of complex systems, normally to a small audience of theorists. Previous attempts to make systems thinking applicable have resulted in dangerous over-simplifications. We believe Systemic Design is one of the very few tools that does not oversimplify systems thinking. It embraces its complexity, yet in a user-friendly manner. The tools are intuitive thanks to good explanations and graphical design, yet the rigor of the original theory appear largely intact.¹

One of the book’s/method’s strengths is supporting facilitators. Every ‘tool’ is accompanied by an indication of how to design a workshop for it and the templates are free to download and look good. Throughout the book the use of the tools is explained for two audiences: the beginning systemic designer and the more experienced. This means that little to no training is required for TNOers to start experimenting with this toolkit.

What didn't we like so much?

The course revolved around the topic of youth unemployment but the data we had at our disposal was limited. Initially, we struggled with the method and tools. This might be due to what we mentioned above with respect to the importance of doing a thorough analysis at the very beginning in order to draw a sound system map and to identify promising leverage points. Since we have not tried this methodology in other contexts it is difficult for us to conclude whether this is resulting from a limitation of the toolkit or from the little time at disposal in the education-setting we were in. We do worry, that a “quick and dirty” systems map might be a dangerous simplification and therefore would have liked to spend more time on the first two steps – yet we do see the challenge of doing so in a workshop setting, with limited time.

Also, some of the theories derived for the method seem to have been a matter of personal preference/philosophical stance of one of the authors: Kristel van Ael. Although we see no reason to criticize her for any of her tool choices, it does seem to lean towards the System Dynamics school. From a TNO perspective, what might be missing is a link to other notable systems thinking schools of thought, such as Systems Engineering or Transition Studies. For TNO this is important, not just because scientific rigor demands it, but because there are many TNO experts whose intellectual lineages trace back to these other traditions. By embracing a System Dynamic tradition only, we might risk not resonating with some TNO employees who instead identify their approach with a different school of thought.

How is it applicable to TNO

We believe Systemic Design is applicable at TNO in many ways.

This training has changed our perspective on the TNO internal Systems Innovation program. In the short term, Systemic Design could be used to:

1. Understand what systems thinking means to TNO at large –and its employees at different hierarchical levels;
2. Identify feedback loops and leverage points within TNO to start planning interventions;
3. Draw a roadmap to achieve a desirable future, envisioning TNO as an organization that embraces a systems approach in its research, practice, and organizational structures.

In the long term, we hope systemic design offers a strong basis for TNOs researchers and consultants. We would like to highlight that Systemic Design is both a research method and a strategy method to adopt a holistic approach to the grand challenges our society is facing today, and to mitigate unintended consequences.

Recommendations

As mentioned, Systemic Design appears well suited to organize the TNO Systems Innovation program. This program could be an experimental playground and thus a learning opportunity to test whether and how systemic design can be integrated into TNO's research and practice. Some suggestions to do so, derived from the course:

1. Make use of the roundtable discussions as an opportunity to ‘listen to the system’ (see template at the end of this note); since language shapes cultures which shape organizational practices. What metaphors are participants using when referring to systems thinking and innovation? What does ‘systems' mean to them, before we impose our own definition on everyone? We know already that some refer to a ‘value network’ as a system, others, to a ‘group of stakeholders’, while others to ‘user centric’ solutions. Others think about operating systems and a set of variables. These are precious insights to understand how to successfully plan a system intervention.
2. Create systems maps to understand TNO's pain points and barriers to implement a systems innovation approach. What are reinforcing negative feedback loops that might inadvertently incentivize TNOers to adopt a reductionist approach to innovation as opposed to a holistic one? To what extent is this behavior related to competences, skills, organizational structures, projects structures, budget constraints, or others? Without understanding root causes it will be difficult to identify ‘leverage points’ for positive change in TNO.
3. Co-create experimental systems intervention with managers and employees. Once a systems map has been drawn it is possible to start identifying intervention to allow TNO to adopt a systems approach. However, as with any form of intervention, it will not happen if not endorsed by its users. Therefore, it is important to design these interventions adopting a bottom-up approach rather than imposing them top-down. To conclude, we wish to emphasize that we are very keen to share what we have learned with our colleagues since we are thankful for the new insights acquired during the course – and would not want to keep them to ourselves! We hope these insights will be useful to the team to adopt a system perspective in this program to achieve a positive impact.

---

1. This is from our experience of the methodology during the course. Of course it’s possible that a more thorough reading of the book will change our mind.↩