Tag: systems thinking

Five easy pieces

“The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.” ~ William James

Purpose of a community

Quite simply, the purpose of a community is to provide its members with the quality of life they want. If what the community provides either drifts or jumps away from what they want, people leave. We’ve seen this response to “defunding the police” in too many of our great cities – LA, San Fran, Portland, New York…. This mismatch between what people want and what the community provides leads to hollowed out cities. Those who can (esp the middle class), leave. The community’s remnant is a powerful elite and a struggling underclass. Some expect unearned benefits. All are crushed by the taxes and fees and other dictates exacted and enacted by the elite.

Business of a community

Quite simply, the business of a community is to increase its “community capital” so that it can maintain, and perhaps improve, the quality of life it provides. When people leave, they take capital with them. If there is a net out-migration, the community has less capital to fulfill its purpose. As we’ve seen with the Rust Belt cities and others such as St. Louis, this becomes a vicious cycle: fewer resources leading to a poorer quality of life, incentivizing people to leave, reducing the resource base even further. Conversely, communities that are growing have more resources – and more discretionary resources – to fulfill their purpose. This can lead to a virtuous cycle. There’s nothing inherently evil in “the rich getting richer;” but those caught in the vicious cycle of a crumbling community may be easily persuaded that it is so.

Knowledge and community decision-making

In 2007, Sarewitz and Pielke wrote an interesting article on “reconciling the supply and demand for science” in policy-making. They focused on research to guide policy formulation. I’ve generalized their work to “knowledge-gathering” to support community decision-making. For example, this would apply to expert advice.

S and P start with an often-overlooked aspect of decision-making – the need to engage the decision-maker when gathering knowledge to inform decisions. The decision-maker has to identify both the drivers for making a decision and the information needed. This led me to a useful (at least to me) set of 3-D cartoons that sort of predict/explain what “works” in providing information for decisions:

• A decision-maker who can communicate information needed for decision.
• A decision-maker engaged with those gathering information.
• The information provided is both relevant and comprehensive, i.e., all of the information available that helps the decision-maker make a good decision.

Each of the planes (Engagement-Knowledge, Engagement-Relevance, Knowledge-Relevance) can throw additional light on what leads to U3 advice (useful, usable and used!). In the following, the blue lines point toward the quadrant most likely to lead to U3 advice.

Human action

For many years, I have looked at communities through the lens of systems. In this age of specialists and technocrats, I’ve found this a very useful way to begin to solve a community’s problems – not just those that are obvious, but those that cascade through the community. Systems thinking lends itself to ferreting out the linkages – the interdependencies and couplings – that are key to avoiding unintended consequences.

Occasionally this approach has been criticized as too mechanical, and that it ignores the “human in the loop.” Actually, human action is at the core of my thinking. I define my systems in terms of people, and a system’s processes in terms of the actions that the people who make up the system take. So, for me, the “transportation system” isn’t roads, bridges, airports and so on, but rather the people who ensure that people and goods can safely and expeditiously go where they are needed. The people in these systems have fixed (infrastructure) and dispatchable (e.g., skilled technicians, maintenance equipment) assets that they use to take action – to achieve the system’s purpose.

This approach provides the context within which human action takes place. Too often we look at results as simply manifestations of the skill (or lack of skill) of those who are taking action. That misses the point that the results are also conditioned by how the system is connected, or wired. Skilled people usually overcome bad wiring, but at the cost of efficiency. The efforts of the less skilled are likely to be negated by bad wiring. Context counts!

Systems thinking also forces me to focus on linchpins and their connections. These are members of one system who link their system to others. In particular, these linchpins are crucial to the success of efforts to transform a community. In fact, my experience indicates that a community cannot positively transform itself without a tight web of linchpins who can work together.

“Wilding” and communities

After almost every plague in history, there has been a period of “wilding” – during which many survivors threw caution to the winds (France after the Terror may be another kind of example.). In the 1920’s, after the Spanish flu pandemic too many people invested money they didn’t have. Inevitably, this led to an economic crash but with socio-political impacts as well.

During the recent pandemic, many local governments intensified the social damage (via lockdowns and fear-mongering) caused by the pandemic which has led to a more severe “wilding” than we saw in the 1920’s. The riots of 2020-21, the public excesses of the LBGTQIA+ … are manifestations of this “– survivors”wiling.” In the 1920’s, the inevitable crash was more economic (reflecting the major mode of “wilding”?). This time, I fear, the crash will be more socio-political, and probably violent. Communities need to prepare for a crash, whether it is the violence I fear or whatever their guts tell them it will be.

Communities’ responses will likely be hamstrung economically, but good leadership can overcome that. The question we must then ask is – have we elected effective leaders?

Featured

Embracing Complexity

… actually a complex, adaptive system (CAS) which is constantly evolving, never in equilibrium.

Wiliam White


William White has been called the “Central Banker for Central Bankers.” I first became aware of him when I read the transcript of a speech he gave in Philadelphia. His understanding of practical macroeconomics is probably second to none.

Many of his writings in the last few years have been focused on the global economy as a complex adaptive system (CAS). However, his insights apply just as well to communities as economies. As some of you know, I’m hip deep in a book-writing project on systems thinking for community professionals. One of its themes is that communities are CASs, and have to be understood as such. What distinguishes “complex” from the merely (!) complicated is that the system’s behavior can’t be predicted from that of its parts. CASs web of interdependencies and their open-ness mean that their behavior can be spectacularly non-linear. CASs – as their name implies – also have the ability to adapt. They can change their structure and thus their behavior in response to stress.

In the following, I’ve provided excerpts from White’s “Simple Lessons for Macro Policymakers from Embracing Complexity,” and suggested what they mean for community leaders.

Policymakers’ multiple objectives make trade-offs inevitable. Ultimately, the job of a community leader is to provide their community’s residents with the quality of life they want. Without infinite resources community leaders must make choices – balancing priorities.


Policymakers can affect structure, and structure matters. As I’ve posted previously, “Form Follows Function.” But the converse is true, as well. Changing “form” – how the community is wired – leads to changes in what the community can do. When some new problem arises, one of the knee-jerk reactions of community leaders is to add a new organization to deal specifically with the problem. Unfortunately, that makes the community as a CAS more complex, and even less predictable. Whether recognized or not, this creates new interdependencies and a high likelihood of unintended consequences. This is what I see when I look at a city like New Orleans where it seems that no one is responsible anything but everyone has veto power over everything.


Policymakers should minimax not maximize. When we want to introduce new policies (e.g., “Defund the Police”) we need to think in terms of the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm. We can’t predict how a system may adapt to a change, but we can foresee negative ways it may do so. Community leaders need to find ways to protect against them.


Policymakers should act more symmetrically. Simply put, avoid both the high highs and the low lows. Build up rainy day funds in good times to tide the community over in bad times.


Policymakers should expect the unexpected. Stress can come from the darndest places. And its impacts can resonate throughout the community’s web of interdependencies.


Policymakers should focus on systemic risks more than triggers. Quite simply, “follow the trend lines not the headlines.” Rather than trying to guard the community against every possible stressor, focus on inoculating the community against changes in its environment, loss of community capital, changes in demand for its common functions, new constraints imposed by state or federal governments, and, of course, against entropy – the ravages of time.


Policymakers should be guided by multiple indicators. Communities adapt by a “Learn-Plan-Do” process. An important part of learning is gathering information about potential stresses. Since there are many sources of stress, community leaders need several ways to look for them.


Policymakers can’t forecast. Community leaders are as unlikely to accurately predict the future as economists. What they can do, however, is to use trends to develop scenarios of what the future might be, and then shape their communities to be Future Fit.


Policymakers should be prepared for breakdowns. Crises are built into the DNA of a CAS and a community. Communities in which leaders work through various scenarios to minimize pain and eliminate suffering are the ones which are truly resilient. It’s not so much that they develop specific plans to deal with each scenario but that they build the collective experience of working together for the community. This is cultural capital of the highest order!


No policymaker is an island. In the modern world, every community is connected to others. Every community is embedded in a state or province, and that in a nation. Every community is made up of neighborhoods and other community systems, many of which are also complex. Ultimately, each of these is a group of people bound together for a common purpose. Thus, when community leaders take action in their community – hopefully to improve it! – the impacts may be felt in their residents’ homes, in neighboring communities, and up to the halls of government. Thus, evaluation should be part of action, especially looking for unintended consequences.


A community’s resilience resides in its ability to adapt – both to the stresses inherent in its connections to the rest of the world and to the Wild Things it faces – those extreme events that can permanently alter a community’s quality of life. White’s “Lessons” make the point that communities as CASs may be unpredictable, but that policymakers – community leaders – can devise means to see where the community is going, and to influence the outcome. Ultimately White’s most important lesson is for community leaders to embrace the complexity of their communities. His “Lessons” provide community leaders with a practical playbook they can use to build their communities’ adaptive capacity and to make their communities more resilient.