Tag: Design

• Theory of Systemic Change and Action

  Last updated Mar 7, 2023 | Originally published Mar 7, 2023

  Theories of Change are one of the fundamental tools of changemakers and program evaluation (Mackinnon, 2006). However, when addressing wicked problems (Rittel & Webber, 1973), theories of change are too reductive and linear to properly account for the systemic phenomena, structures, and dynamics that perpetuate the issues we’re trying to address (Murphy & Jones, 2020).

  Theories of Systemic Change and Action (ToSCA) are a systemic design tool that combine theories of change with systemic understanding. The result is a theory of change that is useful for understanding, communicating, and evaluating systemic change projects.

  Here’s a rough guide to develop a ToSCA:

  1. Model the system (e.g., with causal loop diagrams; Kim, 1992).
  2. Develop systemic strategies from the model.
  3. Reorganize the modelled phenomena. From left to right:
     1. Capability building and resource mobilization for the initiative (Inputs)
     2. Inteventional activities the initiative will take on (Activities)
     3. Immediate outputs of those activities (Outputs)
     4. Results of those outputs on the overall system (Outcomes)
     5. Downstream effects of those outcomes on higher-system structures (Impacts)
  4. Reiterate on step 3 as necessary.

  The resulting diagram will look somewhat like an iceberg model (Stroh, 2015, p. 46] on its side: visible events and behaviour are on the left, while the actual patterns and structures in the system fall to the right.

  The ToSCA can then be simplified as necessary to suit different needs. For instance, if presenting the model briefly to a potential funder, you may want to collapse major feedback loops into one element on the model with a “loop” icon. This way you can still show inputs and outputs on that loop while obscuring the complexity within it for the purposes of the presentation.

  • Systemics
  • Design
  • Systemic Strategy

• A Case Study of Theories of Systemic Change and Action — The Ecotrust Canada Home-Lands initiative

  Last updated Mar 7, 2023 | Originally published Mar 7, 2023

  In this presentation, we reported on a case study of the Ecotrust Canada Home-Lands initiative. Lewis and I worked with Ecotrust Canada to understand the challenges they were addressing from a systemic design lens and, using that approach, to develop a theory of systemic change and action for the initiative.

  An interesting development in the work was the development of a novel systemic evaluation technique: resonance and dissonance tests. The tests were designed as a way of testing our understanding of the system without interrupting or intruding on the processes of the initiative. The general idea behind resonance and dissonance tests is to identify a set of phenomena in your understanding of the system and to search for disconfirming evidence that those phenomena are complete and accurate. So, for instance, if you think a key phenomenon in the system is “community distrust of bureaucracy”, look for examples of the community trusting bureaucracy. If you can’t find any, it increases the integrity of the theory you’ve created.

  • Systemics
  • Design
  • Systemic Evaluation

• Systemic Evaluation

  Last updated Mar 7, 2023 | Originally published Mar 7, 2023

  Systemic evaluation is the developmental evaluation (Guijt et al., 2012) of systemic change.

  Techniques for systemic evaluation combine conventional principles and tools of developmental evaluation with concepts from systemic design. These techniques provide changemakers with the ability to assess the accuracy and completeness of their theories of systemic change and action (Murphy & Jones, 2020). They also allow evaluators to examine the progress of systemic strategies (Murphy et al., 2021).

  • Design
  • Complexity
  • Systemic Change
  • Systemic Design
  • Systemic Strategy

• Leverage theory

  Last updated Mar 7, 2023 | Originally published Feb 24, 2023

  We seek leverage to find the best ways of making change.

  Leverage points are places in systems where a little effort yields a big effect (Meadows, 1997). They are also ideas that help us grab on to strategic ways forward when we’re working in complexity (Klein & Wolf, 1998).

  Acting on leverage points may accelerate systemic change towards progress and reform, but acting on the wrong ones may instead accelerate systemic change towards regression and deformity. Well-designed leverage strategies may be catalyzing or even transformative, but poorly designed ones may merely be futile (figure 1).

  

  One way of finding leverage points is to think through your system with reference to Meadows’s (1997) 12 types:

  Table 1. Twelve types of leverage points, in order of increasing power (adapted from Meadows, 1997).

  Twelve types of leverage points, in order of increasing power	Example
  12. Constants, parameters, numbers (such as subsidies, taxes, standards)	Wages, interest rates
  11. The sizes of buffers and other stabilizing stocks, relative to their flows.	Current levels of debt/assets
  10. The structure of material stocks and flows (such as transport networks, population age structures)	An individual’s financial structure (e.g., fixed costs and incomes)
  9. The lengths of delays, relative to the rate of system change	How long it takes to find a higher-paying job
  8. The strength of negative feedback loops, relative to the impacts they are trying to correct against	Rising costs of living vs. fixed income
  7. The gain around driving positive feedback loops	Recession causing reducing spending
  6. The structure of information flows (who does and does not have access to what kinds of information)	How aware you are of impending recession/future rising costs
  5. The rules of the system (such as incentives, punishments, constraints)	Who suffers as a result of poorly-managed recessions
  4. The power to add, change, evolve, or self-organize system structure	Central banks, Ministries of Finance
  3. The goals of the system	GDP Growth
  2. The mindset or paradigm out of which the system—its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters—arises	Growth above all
  1. The power to transcend paradigms	Sustainable development, flourishing

  Another approach, which may be complementary to the above, is to model the system as a causal loop diagram (e.g., Kim, 1992) and then to conduct leverage analysis (Murphy & Jones, 2020) on the model.

  An understanding of leverage in a system allows us to generate systemic strategies (Murphy & Jones, 2020). These strategies can also be adapted into Theories of Systemic Change (Murphy & Jones, 2020).

  # Background

  Donella Meadows (1997) popularized the idea of leverage in systemic change with her essay “Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in Complex Systems.” She proposed a typology of phenomena in a system, suggesting that acting on certain types of phenomena are higher-leverage than others.

  In an article published in the Contexts journal of systemic design, I challenged Meadows’s (1997) paradigm, proposing a few other possible ways of viewing leverage. My aim was to link the search for leverage directly to the design of powerful strategies for systemic change, and to propose a few ways forward in advancing our understanding of leverage in complex systems.

  # Related

  • Leverage analysis in systemic design
  • 𖠫 Towards Systemic Theories of Change- High-Leverage Strategies for Managing Wicked Problems - Murphy, Jones - 2021

  • Strategy
  • Systemic Change
  • Systemics
  • Design
  • Systemic Design
  • Leverage

• Sample design theory - Using time tracking to improve the intentionality of time at work

  Last updated Apr 11, 2024 | Originally published Feb 17, 2023

  A design theory develops and describes the rationale for and principles of a design. This example prescribes an approach to tracking time to try to help the user become more intentional and professionally engaged.

  • Design
  • Workflows
  • Design-Science
  • Design-Theories
  • Design-Principles

• Why the grass is greener: Making sure that shiny new alternative tool is actually going to help you

  Last updated Nov 3, 2022 | Originally published Nov 3, 2022

  “The grass is always greener on the other side.” The popular idiom discourages whoever’s listening from seeking out alternatives, suggesting that other options always look better from wherever we’re currently standing. But it has a funny problem: nobody ever explains why the grass is greener on the other side.

  That’s because it isn’t. The truth is that your side is just yellower/trampled on/eaten… and that’s because you’re on it.

  Moving to a different place will be fine at first. Then you’ll use it, too, and eventually it’ll look the same as where you started.

  (In this metaphor, you’re a goat. 🐐)

  In workflow design, in addition to the novelty of “shiny new object,” new and alternative tools are great simply because they don’t have the cruft you’ve built up in the old tool. That cruft might be noisy notes, a lifetime of guilt-inducing task management, or even just bad habits and behaviours. The problem isn’t the tool. It isn’t you, either. It’s you and the tool.

  So, after switching, the problems seem to go away… only to re-emerge (possibly in a new form) later because the issues are generated by your usage, not by the tool.

  The solution is to fall in love with the problem, not the (shiny, potential) solutions.

  1. Determine what your issues actually are, and try to figure out why they’re happening.
  2. Then, abstractly identify how you might be able to mitigate the problems.
     • Don’t say “I’ll use Bunch,” say “If I standardize certain work spaces on my computer, I can develop muscle memory for using those workspaces, reducing distraction and allowing me to spend less cognitive energy on finding everything I need to get engaged.”
  3. Last, identify some tests or success conditions that will tell you whether the solution is actually working. This’ll help minimize irrational perspectives on how well the honeymoon stage is going.

  Only after taking those three steps should you choose a tool. Find something that can implement the abstract principles you’ve articulated, and be sure to follow-through on the tests.

  In doing this, you’re actually creating and implementing a rough design theory. You’re using design science to make your work as easy and engaging as it can be! High-five for that.

  • Workflows
  • Tools
  • Design
  • Apps-or-Tools

• Using leverage analysis for systemic strategy

  Last updated Mar 7, 2023 | Originally published Jun 21, 2020

  The map represents your current mental model of how this system works.

  Leverage analysis examines the patterns of connection between phenomena (using algorithms adapted from social network analysis and graph theory) in order to present relative rankings of the phenomena of the system.

  These rankings are entirely dependent on the structure of the map. All phenomena are equal, and all connections are equal. It is theoretically possible to encode the degrees to which one phenomena influences another in strict mathematical terms and formulae. In turn, we could represent the map as a systems dynamics model and use it to simulate the behaviour of the system. However, this is usually impractical, especially with imprecisely-understood or hard-to-quantify concepts (e.g., what exactly is the rate of change in wildlife due to climate change, or how exactly does culture influence conspicuous consumption?)

  For this reason, using leverage analysis is a fuzzy procedure. It depends on your intuition. Fortunately, the goal of leverage analysis is not to inductively estimate how the system will change, nor deductively falsify hypotheses about the system. Instead, using leverage analysis for strategic planning involves abductive logic: the generation of creative, useful conclusions from a set of observations.

  The goal here is to look at the model as it is rendered and to think creatively about strategic opportunities. Broadly, this means asking several questions:

  • “What is missing?”
    • If some major gap in the logic of the model is missing, it means that the associated phenomena haven’t been adequately discussed in this process. Why is that? What might it mean for strategic planning?
  • “What must be true?”
    • If this is how the system currently works, what must be true about how it should work?
  • “Where do we work?”
    • Based on your organization’s strategic capabilities and advantages, what phenomena do you hold influence over? How do the effects you have on the system relate to these phenomena?
  • “What do we aim to influence?”
    • In other words, what phenomena do you really want to change? In what way should they change?

  These questions can be answered via the following process.

  # Developing Systemic Theories of Change

  The systems map represents a kind of high-complexity theory of change: it describes how all of these phenomena interlock and respond to one another. We can therefore use leverage analysis to weave systemic theories of action:

  1. Identify the goal phenomena. What do we want to influence? What’s the ultimate impact we aim to have?
  2. Identify the opportunities within our control. What phenomena are we already influencing? What could we be influencing without developing a lot of new capacity?
  3. “Walk” the paths on the map between your chosen opportunities, any possible high-leverage phenomena, and your goals. As you do:
     1. Identify any key strategic options along the path. What kinds of activities or programs could you engage in to influence these phenomena in the right way?
     2. Identify any feedback loops. How do these paths grow, shrink, or maintain balance over time?

  The chains of phenomena (and any loops they connect with) that result from the three steps above are the seeds of systemic strategy. Use them to identify key intervention points for programming (e.g., how might you take advantage of high-leverage phenomena? how might you address bottlenecks?), signals for monitoring and evaluation, and to communicate your theory of change/theory of action to others.

  • Design
  • Complexity
  • Systemic Design
  • Systemic Strategy
  • Leverage

• Systemics and design principles in support of Tiago Forte's PARA framework

  Published Mar 29, 2020

  Tiago Forte's PARA system is a popular new approach to organizing your digital materials. I explain its usefulness with reference to some principles from systemic design.

  • Articles
  • Personal Knowledge Management
  • Productivity
  • Systemics
  • Design

• Beautiful is good and good is reputable

  Published Jan 23, 2020

  # Beautiful is Good and Good is Reputable: Multiple-Attribute Charity Website Evaluation and Initial Perceptions of Reputation Under the Halo Effect

  The halo effect is essentially how positive—but irrelevant—traits influence our perception of what the thing with the halo actually says or does. These authors explored how charities manifest the halo effect on their websites, and find evidence for four varieties of halo effect.

  this study employs charity websites as a multi-attribute donation channel consisting of three attributes of information content quality (mission information, financial information, and donation information) and four attributes of system quality (navigability, download speed, visual aesthetics, and security). Based on the proposed framework, this study proposes four types of halos that are relevant to charity website evaluation —collective halo (attribute-to-attribute), aesthetics halo (attribute-to- dimension), reciprocal-quality halo (dimension-to-dimension), and quality halo (dimension-to-dimension)

  • Highlights
  • Research
  • Psychology
  • Design

• Keeping the buzz in buzzwords

  Published Jan 23, 2020

  A thought-terminating cliché limits conversation by capturing a complex (but potentially debatable) subject within a reductive term or phrase. Merlin Mann references this idea in episode 164 of Back to Work when discussing curiosity and buzzwords.

  Thought-terminating clichés can be used to avoid discourse on a subject: by never unpacking the components of an idea that are debatable, those components go unexplored. They can also be exploited to veil ignorance or illogic—the speaker can state the complex term and allow the implication to have impact without contextualizing/explaining it while the intimidated audience shies away from critique or questioning.

  This explanation makes the phenomena seem villainous, but many of us are prone to committing these crimes—through buzzwords! Buzzwords are terms that catch on because they represent something exciting to a discourse. Then, because they’re popular, they get used frequently, by many people. Because they are somewhat novel, these different uses attach slightly different meanings to the same word. Eventually the buzzword’s overused (reducing the novelty, and therefore the impact of its meaning) and/or overloaded with meaning.

  Most of our buzzwords were real things at one point (and sometimes they still are). When buzzwords are used effectively they allow a good conversation to move faster between speakers who have the same mental models about the buzzwords.¹

  Sometimes, however, buzzwords are said to represent concepts that aren’t fully understood by everyone in the conversation. When my meaning of the word “design thinking” differs from yours, but we both refer to design thinking in conversation nonetheless, we can run into trouble.

  In these situations, buzzwords obfuscate the ideas we’re actually talking about. In my experience, we also know when we’re using buzzwords. We can guess at when others are using them, too. As a result, the conversation loses meaning, and we lose trust in the conversation.

  

  # Dealing with buzzwords

  So what can we do?

  Well, the easy thing to do is to clarify. When you use a phrase with many potential interpretations, try to clarify how you’re using the phrase. When others use words that may have multiple meanings, ask specific questions about what they actually mean. This clarification might seem like extra work, but it only needs to happen when terms are first invoked—and it’ll prevent lost time and energy due to the consequences of thought-termination later on.

  More importantly, though, we should try to avoid thought-terminating clichés altogether. Take time to break down the concepts you’re talking about in concrete terms. Explain them in ways you haven’t heard before to avoid relying on trite metaphors and anecdotes. If you can really get at what you mean, your language will be minimally re-interpretable: that is, it should be near-impossible to understand your explanations differently from how you intended.

  As a result, your communication will become more impactful. The conversations you participate in will have more novelty, too, making it more exciting to discuss the ideas you’re sharing. This may result in more buzzwords emerging, but that’s okay—use the same approach to break those down, too.

  ---

  1. See the excellent Notes on the Role of Leadership and Language in Regenerating Organizations for more on this. ↩︎

  • Articles
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