Systems Thinking Principles for Making Change

Abstract

Traditionally, systems thinking support has relied on an ever-increasing plethora of systems tools, methods, and approaches. Arguably though, such support requires something different from, and more accessible than, detailed instruction on somewhat abstract laws and detailed principles and/or constitutive rules associated with conventional systems approaches or systems ‘tools of the trade’. For busy managers and decision makers working in often-stressful conditions, what is perhaps more valued are simple principles for enabling systems thinking in practice. Such principles should acknowledge and build on existing (multi)disciplinary skill sets and expertise, allowing for more meaningful interdisciplinary support amongst professions, as part of a nested transdisciplinary support for addressing wider social challenges. This monograph offers three principles of systems thinking in practice (STiP): relational STiP, perspective STiP, and adaptive STiP. They each have two sets of operational principles applicable to first-order and second-order practice, respectively. The three general principles are nested in an overriding principle of STiP as praxis (theory-informed action or thinking in practice) manifest in the need for being both systemic and systematic. The three principles represent a distilled expression of a systematic literacy of systems thinking, a literacy that speaks to the systemic sensibilities of Inter-relationships, Perspectives, and Boundaries (sometimes referred collectively as IPB), associated with any area of intervention. Drawing on metaphors of bricolage, conversation, and performance, and building on philosophical foundations of boundary critique, the three principles provide for a requisite systems literacy (as an emergent property of systemic sensibilities and systems thinking literacy) for enabling appropriate STiP capabilities to flourish when making a meaningful change.

1. Introducing a Systems Thinking Practitioner

“It is fairly easy to introduce people to different kinds of hammers and chisels, but much, much harder to turn them into good craftspeople who know how to work with wood! … 99% of the tool is in the tool user!”

(John Martin, Pers. Comm. to author, 25 May 2021)

This comment comes from a participant in response to a webinar session that I was chairing, hosting the American systems thinking practitioner, Glenda Eoyang—Director of Human Systems Dynamics Institute. The presentation was on the use of a systems approach developed by Glenda—the Containers/Differences/Exchanges (CDE) model—for managing strategic change [1]. John’s comment was not a criticism on CDE specifically but rather, it captures the more general point that the practitioner role is often sidelined in discussions around issues of systems thinking support for management. Traditionally, more attention is given to decontextualised tools (methods and methodological approaches) rather than how the tools might be used and adapted by the aptitudes of the practitioner as part of situated praxis (thinking in practice).

Increased attention to the systems practitioner role has emerged in the UK and beyond since the 2020 approval by the UK Government parastatal—Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE)—for a new Systems Thinking Practitioner (STP) Level 7 (postgraduate) Apprenticeship Standard. The STPA Standard comprises a set of fifty-four KSBs (Knowledge, Skills, and Behaviours), key performance indicators associated with being a professional STP.1 However, such indicators—as with other forms of ‘competency’ frameworks—on their own provide little insight other than a nominal checklist of externalised attributes. They provide prompts towards learning the constitutive rules necessary to practice established systems approaches, along with some of the numerous systems laws and detailed systems principles (cf. Hoverstadt, 2022 [2]), but limited guidance on what might be required to enact the craft skills of doing, for example, strategic management or being a strategic manager, with systems thinking tools.

In 2023, The Open University (OU-UK) launched its own STP Apprenticeship programme, providing an opportunity to explore and develop more the role of a STP in terms doing bricolage and being a bricoleur (cf. Weick, 1993 [3]). The French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss identified the bricoleur as a wandering craftsperson in 19th century rural France, using the tools at hand in villages alongside past experiences and craft skills to address and help resolve localised issues [4]. I will claim that the metaphor of being a bricoleur and doing bricolage, coupled with appreciating systems thinking in practice as a metaphor of conversation, best captures the peculiar transdisciplinary (with nested (multi)disciplinary and interdisciplinary) support to decision making offered by a systems thinking approach.

This paper first introduces a tension between two prevailing approaches of providing systems thinking support caricatured in terms of an emphasis on either recovering systemic sensibilities or deepening a systems literacy, terms introduced by Ison, and further explored by Ison and Straw [5]. I will suggest that a duality between the two can generate a requisite systems literacy in the form of three principles. Before explaining the principles, the paper consolidates some basic ideas underpinning a systems literacy for a practicing bricoleur, including the operational distinction between first-order and second-order systems practice. A mental model of bricolage in terms of a systems thinking in practice (STiP) heuristic is then introduced to illustrate three levels of STiP using the metaphor of ‘conversation’ ras developed in teaching of STiP at the Open University (OU) [6].2 The set of three core principles of STiP—relational, perspective, and adaptive (thinking in practice)—are then described with their theoretical underpinnings associated with boundary critique, principles that have emerged in the more recent development of the STP apprenticeship programme at the OU [7]. The principles are an expression of some basic systems thinking literacy (or systems literacy3). A suggested enactment of the principles is then explored through a generic activity model used by the programme for evidencing STiP. Such principles can be used across different sectors for different situations of transdisciplinary support.

Postscript disclaimer (and acknowledgements)

Following helpful feedback from reviewers of an earlier version, it is perhaps important to emphasise the distinctive aim, nature, and limitations of this monograph in order to secure reader expectations. The aim of the paper is not to proffer some universal STiP-informed ‘methodology’but rather to provide an accessible set of guidelines that can be adapted for different levels of STiP support across different sectors and according to different sources and levels of expertise. The three principles have emerged from the author’s work with a multitude of practitioners including STP colleagues at the OU and beyond in developing and iterating upon the postgraduate programme in STiP launched in 2009 and the STP Apprenticeship programme launched in 2023. OU colleagues include Christine Blackmore, Sue Holwell, Ray Ison, Andy Lane, John Martin, Magnus Ramage, Rupesh Shah, and Helen Wilding. A succession of action research projects involving alumni from the STiP programme beginning 2014 [8,9] have also shaped the development and iteration of the three principles.

Beyond the reified Systems world of official publications lies an undercurrent lifeworld of systems thinking practitioners (many of them STiP alumni), who are typically mature-age, often senior-level experienced managers, having studied part-time with the OU programme and undertaken programme-assessed projects involving bricolage and elements of STiP principles. Readers will not find published case studies demonstrating the integration of the principles as currently consolidated. Rather, it is this lifeworld repository of practice, including my own personal applications of the principles in many outreach ventures supporting experts from professional groupings ranging from healthcare to engineers (some of which are referenced), that provide my source of evidence for the reliability, resonance, and relevance [10] of the principles described here.

2. Making ‘Systems’ Work: Systemic Sensibilities and Systems Literacy

Conceptions of ‘system’ used by practitioners from different traditions can themselves be confusing and alienating, particularly amongst practitioners coming from possibly less systemic traditions of any professional practice. The lack of traction for systems thinking approaches amongst professions that can clearly benefit is evidence of possible confusion about what constitutes a systems thinking approach and possible disagreement amongst STPs on how best to encourage STiP. Two distinct pathways towards supporting systems thinking in practice have emerged and recently surfaced in a debate hosted by the European Evaluation Society between two highly respected STPs: Michael Patton from the tradition of evaluative practice, and Mike Jackson from the tradition of management studies [11]. The contrasting pathways can be identified, respectively, as comprising what can be called an orientation towards: (i) recovering systemic sensibilities; and (ii) deepening systems thinking literacy (cf. Ison, 2017 [12]).

Patton [13,14] champions an encouragement towards recovering systemic sensibilities through a defence of generic systems thinking concepts of Inter-relationships, Perspectives, and Boundaries (IPB). Jackson [15,16] critiques this approach with a preference towards a deepening systems thinking literacy, manifest in promoting his long-standing approach of critical systems practice (CSP). Box 1 outlines the key features of each orientation and corresponding flaws as viewed by the rival perspective.4

Box 1. Two orientations of supporting systems thinking in practice.

Adapted from Reynolds, ref. [17] drawing on Patton [13,14] and Jackson [15,16]

Orientation 1: Systemic sensibilities using Inter-relationships, Perspectives, and Boundaries (IPB);

Orientation 2: Systems thinking literacy using critical systems practice (CSP).

Systemic sensibilities orientation: A core feature of IPB is the looseness and variable ways in which the concepts might be deployed for an evaluation. Used as stand-alone nouns, the concepts remain essentially undisciplined—part of what might be called a lifeworld of systemic sensibilities. Focus here has been on promoting systems thinking techniques and core ideas such as seeing the bigger picture, holistic thinking, rich pictures, systems mapping techniques, causal loop diagramming, influence diagramming, participatory diagramming, and a whole range of other types of visualisation techniques and interactive strategies associated with action research for deliberative action.

• Possible shortcomings

(a)

Too opaque/vague/anecdotal: concepts of IPB appear to be too shallow, lacking depth in theoretical tradition and weak in robustness and rigour.

(b)

The free-standing nature of loosely defined concepts allow them to be captured by less-systemic practitioners, adopting and adapting bare sensibilities of IPB, and deploying IPB to defend and perpetuate conventional over-systematic practices.

(c)

Relating to (a) and (b), there appears little definitive guidance on how to deploy IPB in an intervention.

Systems thinking literacy orientation: Practitioners need to gain skilled know-how in the systems approaches associated with Jackson’s five prescribed ‘systemic perspectives’ on problem situations: machine, organism, cultural/political, societal/environmental, and inter-relationships. Two directives of CSP include “To provide an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the different systems approaches [and] …to take appropriate systems methodologies, models and methods and use them together in an intervention that will improve the problem situation” (Jackson, [15] Appendix A).

• Possible shortcomings

(a)

Too complicated/expert-driven/time-consuming: practitioners have limited capacity to engage with varied lineages of systems thinking literacy associated with STiP.

(b)

Systems literacy associated with grammar of constitutive rules and philosophical traditions underpinning systems approaches may provide a trap against exploring innovative systemic sensibilities.

(c)

Relating to (a) and (b), there may be a built-in tendency towards marginalising (which can sometimes be experienced as ‘gaslighting’) existing tools and practices that may actually be helpful in securing systems thinking in practice.

The two approaches towards supporting systems thinking in practice may appear quite polarised.

In a conciliatory note at the end of the published exchange of viewpoints between Patton and Jackson, Jackson expresses the possibility of having some ‘golden mean’ between the two orientations [16]. But rather than having to search for some magical fixed point between perceived polar opposites, an alternative is to appreciate more the need for a continual ‘golden dynamic’. The dynamic would give primacy to retrieving systemic sensibilities continually, but with a requisite degree of appropriate systems thinking literacy in order to make these sensibilities work in particular situated practices. The requisite level of systems thinking literacy can vary depending on the circumstances, including the existing experiences and skill sets that practitioners bring to a situation from their own professional backgrounds.

Before exploring the notion of bricolage and ‘conversations’ as a vehicle for delivering on the three principles of requisite systems literacy, some initial core ideas of general systems literacy need attention. These include (a) notions that systems are actually human simplifications of reality; (b) ‘system’ devices can be used ‘as if’ representing situations (first-order ontological devices) or as devices for learning about situations (second-order epistemological devices); and (c) systems thinking as praxis- involves both systemic and systematic thinking.

First, it is important to appreciate that ‘systems’ are essentially conceptual devices, ways of thinking about reality. To paraphrase an adage from the semanticist Alfred Korzybski, systems are best considered ‘maps of the territory, not the territory’ [18].

With this conceptual notion of ‘system’ in mind, there are two ways in which the ‘systems’ idea can be deployed as ‘maps’ in supporting systems thinking in practice: (i) systems as ontological devices; and (ii) systems as epistemological devices (Figure 1). The distinction follows Peter Checkland’s original distinction between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ systems [19].

Figure 1 illustrates both uses of the systems idea, but it also hints at how systems can be (mis)used in treating a situation of strategic interest exclusively as something (or some things) to be engineered through making strategy.

Box 2 explores the two uses of the systems idea in relation to what can be referred to as ‘first-order’ and ‘second-order’ systems practice. The more common ‘ontological’ device is used for capturing the reality of a situation of interest (first-order orientation). A wider endeavour of using an ‘epistemological’ device enables actively learning about, and thereby more proactively shaping, a situation of interest (second-order orientation).

Box 2. Using the ‘systems’ idea in systems thinking literacy—first- and second-order practice.

The following is adapted from Reynolds [17], and drawing on Bell and Morse (1999 [20]), Morris (2005 [21]), Blackmore et. al. (2015 [22]), and Ison (2017 [12]).

“A system is a collection of entities that are seen by someone as interacting together to do something.” Morris, (2005 p. 16). In actively doing something, a system can also be regarded as a ‘model’, either modelling an aspect of reality (ontological use) or modelling an inquiry into reality (epistemological use).

(i)

Ontological use of the systems idea: first-order systems practice;

(ii)

Epistemological use of the systems idea: second-order systems practice.

First-order ontological use of the systems idea: ‘Systems’ are commonly used in general language as ontological devices. There are three general manifestations of such ‘systems’:

(a)

Natural systems: (with or without some believed teleological end-purpose), e.g., human and non-human organisms, ecosystems, solar system, planet Earth…etc.

(b)

Mechanical systems: (‘purposive’…human-ascribed fixed purposes), e.g., machines, cars, software, irrigation, central heating…etc.

(c)

Social systems: (‘purposeful’ though often erroneously regarded as ‘purposive’…variable human-collective purposes subject to change), e.g., healthcare, education, finance, economy, family, community…etc.

Using ‘system’ as primarily an ontological device in examining situations can lead to generating isolated reified systems prone to exclusive systematic analysis (in identifying sub-systems, etc.) and risking criticism of reductionism, attracting derogatory stigma of being narrow-minded or blinkered, etc. There remains a possible lost opportunity in the potential for regarding the ontological device as part of a wider learning system using an epistemological perspective.

Second-order epistemological use of the systems idea: A transformation of awareness required from practitioners of first-order to practitioners of second-order practice involves: “… the transition of oneself from an observer of a reality which is considered to be outside oneself, to a participant in the same reality, and then towards being a co-creator of that reality…” (Buddrus, 1996, quoted in Bell and Morse, 1999 p. 85. [21] My italics). Three features characterise the use of ‘systems’ with second-order systems practice:

(a)

Praxis: Systems thinking in practice involves being both systemic (i.e., thinking) and being systematic (i.e., in practice), working in a duality rather than dualism. Second-order epistemological use of the systems idea does not negate the first-order ontological use but requires some transparency regarding how ‘system’ as a conceptual construct is being used.

(b)

Situated praxis: Practitioners will always need to retain some sense of having ‘skin-in-the-game’ when practising their STiP as part of their epistemic responsibility. Systems thinking practitioners are not ‘external’ to the systems being constructed but are integral players having effects on such systems.

(c)

Primacy of systemic: Practitioners should always start their praxis in any endeavour with a systemic outlook, exploring the question of ‘why’ with respect to a particular system, rather than immediately launching into the more systematic ‘what’ and ‘how’ questions.

Viewing strategy making as a learning system here involves the core relational dynamic between being both systemic (recovering systemic sensibilities, including anticipating and interrogating longer term outcomes and wider impacts of making strategy) and being systematic (engaging with the inevitable ‘reductionist’ step-by-step endeavours required of any intervention). Whilst there is a need to address both systemic sensibilities and systems thinking literacy, the core driver towards STiP support surely lies with continually appreciating and dealing with systemic dimensions of any intervention where strategy for improvement is needed. An appropriate literacy may not exclusively rely on existing lineages or traditions of systems literacy in order to be effective. There needs to be an appropriate systems literacy that primarily deals with systemic sensibilities amongst those practitioners in different fields of professional practice.

Using systems as primarily an epistemological device has benefits in securing not only better outcomes of an intervention (first-order benefits) but also greater learning amongst practitioners (second-order benefits). Such learning from the epistemological use of systems can, in turn, secure better ongoing systems thinking in practice.

Making systems work requires having a requisite level of systems literacy to capture and nurture the systemic sensibilities manifest amongst practitioners from many different professions grappling with ever-emergent situations of complexity and change. An initial glossary of ideas around the meaning of ‘system’ and some appreciation of its application for first- and second-order practice might be particularly helpful in avoiding confusion when encountering commonly used phrases such as ‘(whole) systems change’ and ‘systems transformation’, and ‘systemic causes’ and ‘systemic failure’ etc.5 A requisite literacy based on Box 1 and Box 2, however, is not by itself sufficient to guide praxis.

The ensuing sections provide two models of support for working with the duality between recovery and nurturing of systemic sensibilities and using requisite systems thinking literacy. One is a mental model of a STiP heuristic (a learning device) based on metaphors of bricolage and conversation; another is a simple activity model based on the metaphor of performance to help enact the duality in praxis. As a bridge between the more systemically inclined ‘mental’ model and the systematically inclined “activity” model, and core to this monograph, I introduce three key simple principles underpinning systems thinking in practice support.

3. (Mental Model) Bricolage and the Systems Thinking in Practice Heuristic

The most common form of what might be called ‘mental models’ are metaphors. Indeed, the systems idea itself, whether used as an ontological or epistemological device, can be regarded as a metaphor, i.e., a way of examining a situation (often complicated and complex) as if it is a system (a ‘map’ of the territory but not the actual territory). A ‘system of interest’ provides a more focused attention on some aspects of the territory, similar to the metaphor of ‘zone of interest’ [23].

Other metaphors can also be helpful in STiP. Two such metaphors—bricolage and conversations—are used to generate a more precise mental model of STiP in terms of a learning device or heuristic.

In the second edition of the book Systems Approaches to Making Change (Reynolds and Holwell, 2020 [24]), we used the motif of an artisan on the front cover (Figure 2) to depict a particular view of systems thinking in practice (STiP).6

The new image accompanied a change of title (from the first 2010 edition) from ‘managing change’ to ‘making change’. Together, the changes mark a significant shift in attention to how we might envisage STiP-informed practices like change management or strategic management. First, STiP is seen as an artisanal craft practice dependent on the ever-developing capabilities of the practitioner in the search for improvements in situations of interest—similar to notions of ‘expert intuition’ [25]—rather than as a science dependent on foundational immutable laws and heavily prescribed rules in the search for ‘truth’. Second, STiP-informed support is regarded as an essentially ongoing constructivist activity (making change or making strategy), implicitly involving the practitioner as an integral part of the process (always with ‘skin-in-the-game’).

The artisanal craft of STiP can be captured through the art of ‘bricolage’. Karl Weick, in a publication ‘Organizational redesign as improvisation’ [3], draws on Levi Strauss in describing bricolage as the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things that happen to be available. Weick identified four attributes for successful bricolage (paraphrased with STiP relevance below):

(i)

Careful observation and listening: the bricoleur works with others in the village (or situations of interest) where they visit.

(ii)

Intimate knowledge of resources: each situation is different with different resources, human and non-human; the bricoleur must be adaptable to the resourcefulness of the situation at hand.

(iii)

Trusting one’s own ideas. whilst situations vary and are always in a state of flux, the bricoleur remains self–confident, though not arrogant, in the tools and experiences gained.

(iv)

Self-correcting structures with feedback: bricolage is adaptable to change, accepting a safe-fail environment which allows for errors and experimentation, but embracing the learning emerging from such situations.

STiP, as an artisanal craft of bricolage, involves the following:

• Reusing artifacts that are readily available in a particular situation, including past and local expertise;
• Drawing on a personal repertoire of expertise and experiences to complement rather than replace tools from systems thinking approaches;
• Improvising and experimentation as key aptitudes of STiP capability, involving humility, empathy, and acknowledged fallibility.

Ken Bowen (1998 [26]) portrayed an intuitive sense of bricolage amongst systems practitioners in an earlier critique of Jackson’s emphasis on having to learn constitutive rules of established systems approaches: “I hazard a guess that rather than shift between methodologies, most will choose to weave ideas which they wish to borrow into their own preferred overall pattern, especially if they are the designers of the methodology.” (p. 174).

The systems thinking practitioner can practice the art of bricolage through three levels of conversation based on three activities associated with concepts: interrelationships, perspectives, and boundaries (IPB). Box 1 revealed an important shortcoming in the systemic sensibilities orientation: the free standing nature of loosely defined concepts of IPB. The adding of verbs attached to the concepts provides an important corrective. This is expressed in the mental model of a systems thinking in practice (STiP) heuristic [27,28,29]. The heuristic comprises three entities: one, the reality of ‘situations’ of interest that need to be changed; two, the ‘practitioners’ or change agents dealing with improving such situations; and three, ‘systems’ of interest as conceptual tools used as the agency for supporting such change. Associated with the three entities in the heuristic are three activities (as illustrated in Figure 3).

The three STiP heuristic activities can themselves be associated with the metaphor of ‘conversation’ operating at three levels:

Conversation level 1 (conversing with reality): understanding inter-relationships (associated with the situations of interest); ‘getting the bigger picture’ or ‘seeing the forest through the trees’ (in avoiding reductionism).

Conversation level 2 (conversing with other practitioners about reality): engaging with multiple perspectives (amongst practitioners); ‘joined-up thinking and practice’ and not ‘talking at cross purposes’ (in avoiding dogmatism).

Conversation level 3 (conversing internally with reflecting on the two prior conversations): reflecting on boundary judgements (of the systems constructed); adjusting viewpoints on previously treasured framings of reality and treasured ‘best’ practices or preordained ‘targets’ in dealing with reality (in avoiding managerialism).

In academic discourse, the three levels correspond, in turn, to the kind of systems thinking support to (multi)disciplinary practice, interdisciplinary practice, and transdisciplinary practice, respectively.

Together, the three ‘conversations’ of STiP bricolage speak to the dimensions of systemic sensibilities that need to be addressed with any intervention. Having some image in the mind (mental model) of how STiP may offer professional support can be helpful as a point of reference (or checklist) of systemic sensibilities but may have more limited use in guiding actual practice. To shift from a (systemically oriented) mental model of imagery towards a (more systematically oriented) activity model to support practice, some principles of STiP, based on core elements of systems thinking literacy, are introduced. The model below can be compared with a similar model for applying systems thinking based on the notation of DSRP (Distinctions, System, Relationships and Perspectives) developed by Derek Cabrera and colleagues [30]. There is not space here to make that comparison though I have earlier contrasted the theoretical lineage outlined below, based on American pragmatism and critical social theory, with that of DSRP based on the theoretical lineage and traditions of cognitive sciences [31].7

4. Three Principles of Systems Thinking in Practice

One overriding principle of systems thinking literacy is that practice is a form of praxis—theory-informed action—where neither thinking or practice is exclusively privileged in terms of a conventional (either/or) dualism, i.e., ‘thinking or practice’. Rather, praxis is regarded as a continual (both/and) duality, hence, ‘thinking in practice’. The duality of praxis in STiP is manifest with the interplay between first-order and second-order practice.

Box 3 summarises the three principles. The underpinning theoretical foundations of the principles are then outlined before elaborating on how each principle informs operational imperatives in supporting both first-order and second-order practice.

Box 3. Summary of three principles of systems thinking in practice (STiP) using metaphor of ‘conversation’.

• Relational STiP: (disciplinary) conversation between practitioner and real-world situations of interest through collating and making factual judgements;
• Perspective STiP: (interdisciplinary) conversation amongst practitioners about reality using and cultivating value judgements;
• Adaptive STiP: (transdisciplinary) conversation about changing nature of reality and need for requisite change in systems through curating changing boundary judgements.

Principles draw on a tradition of critical systems thinking known as “boundary critique” involving the systemic interplay between factual judgements, value judgements, and boundary judgements (Ulrich, 1996 [32]; Reynolds, 2011 [27]; Ulrich and Reynolds, 2020 [33]).

The praxis of STiP draws on traditions of American pragmatism, using ideas of boundary critique and systemic triangulation first described by Werner Ulrich [32] and later developed for teaching STiP [27,33]. The triangulation is between three sets of judgements in continual interplay: judgements of fact (‘evidence’) are coupled always with value judgements and mediated through boundary judgements. In short, and contrary to popular tropes, evidence (or ‘factual judgments’) can never ‘speak for itself’.

Any system of interest—including that representing an intervention (for example, a plan, project, programme, policy, strategy, or evaluation)—can be regarded as a bounded entity actively constructed through boundary judgements (…of a ‘system’ and its sub-systems), constituting an interplay between ‘factual’ judgements (statements of raw ‘evidence’ of situational reality informing the system) and value judgements (“perspectives” on the situation informing the system).

In later renditions of boundary critique, two endeavours are identified [33]: (i) boundary reflection deals essentially with first-order issues associated with inevitable partial understandings of any situation of interest (i.e., however comprehensive our claims to bounding knowledge might be, there can never be comprehensive factual judgements on all factors and actors involved); and (ii) boundary discourse deals with second-order issues associated with partiality amongst different stakeholders or practitioners (i.e., all practitioners inevitably have partial or biased viewpoints informing value judgements). Systems thinking is necessarily partial in both senses of the term.

Figure 4 depicts the interplay between the three judgements as corresponding with each of the three principles which, in turn, correspond, respectively, to the three entities of the STiP heuristic (introduced in Figure 3): (1) situations of interest (relational STiP); (2) practitioners with interests (perspective STiP); and (3) systems of interest (adaptive STiP).

The three principles of STiP are further described in Box 4. Each principle provides two operational sub-principles, one relating to the first-order engagement of the systems idea (more systematic, ontological use of systems as if representing situations of interests) and one relating to the wider second-order engagement of the systems idea (more systemic, epistemological use of systems as learning devices—which may or may not include ‘systems’ as ontological devices—to explore situations of interest).

The principles are not tablets of stone but rather simple guidance frames, a form of literacy that helps with enacting practice. They are designed to speak to systemic sensibilities associated with practitioners of different professions. They are founded on systems thinking literacy, specifically on ideas of systemic triangulation with boundary critique.

Box 4. Three principles of systems thinking in practice (STiP).

Note: the term ‘intervention’ is understood here as any process that has intent to improve a situation of interest, including the design and implementation of policy, programme, project, plan, strategy, etc.

• Principle 1: Relational STiP

“Only Connect” (E.M. Forster in the book Howards End)

Principle 1 appreciates (multi)disciplinary efforts towards framing an understanding of the inter-relationships and interdependencies of the complex realities in the real world, with a primary aim towards collating ‘factual’ judgements.

Attending to inter-relationships between and amongst entities (relational thinking) rather than entities in isolation (‘residual’ thinking) avoids narrow-minded reductionism. Systems thinking is itself a relational duality between the systemic and systematic. Being both systemic and systematic in practice is a core part of the wider logistical need to address inevitable non-linear dynamics involved with any intervention. The systemic ‘connecting’ for STiP praxis involves not just the connecting of entities in an often presumed externalised world but the wider connecting of ourselves as practitioners in making those connections.

Relational STiP enables practitioners to have greater agency—a power-within’—to understand inter-relationships, including relational features between the practitioner and the area of practice, i.e., an intervention.

• Operational principles

First-order practice: STiP involves first-order reflection on the relational dynamics between factors and actors within any given situation of interest, typically using a variety of mapping techniques for capturing the complicatedness, complexity and often conflict. Techniques can include a range of systems diagramming including rich picturing, influence diagramming, or causal loop diagrams and/or devices like metaphors and other techniques from different disciplines and traditions of practice.

Second-order practice: STiP involves second-order reflexivity, capturing not only the varied dynamics (factors and actors) but the role and responsibility of the practitioner as an integral part (actor) of such dynamics, a situated practitioner with inevitable ‘skin-in-the-game’ and therefore having an explicit transparent role in the situation. The second-order practice should nurture humility with the constraints to performing holistic practice.

• Principle 2: Perspective STiP

“Systems thinking begins when first you see the world through the eyes of another.” (Churchman 1968 p.77)

Principle 2 practically helps to engage multiple perspectives with endeavours of interdisciplinarity towards framing some sense of mutual understanding across different disciplines and perspectives; with a primary aim towards cultivating value judgements.

Attending to multiple perspectives rather than adhering to a single perspective avoids tendencies towards dogmatism. Systems as fundamentally conceptual constructs to both represent realities of any situation (‘as if’ constructs), and to actively shape realities invokes ethical responsibilities (e.g., what is ‘good/harmful’ and ‘right/wrong’) on the part of practitioners as situated practitioners.

Perspective STiP provides practitioners with agency (power-within) alongside power with other practitioners to communicate more effectively when intervening. ‘Systems’as conceptual constructs in systems thinking, provide tools as constructive agents for not only understanding inter-relationships (capturing systemic sensibilities) but tools as agents to enhance more meaningful conversation.

• Operational principles

First-order practice: STiP involves co-creating ‘knowing about the world’, determining values with other practitioners about the situation of interest through capturing perspectives as simple purposive systems modelling (analysing ‘what is’ the situation from different perspectves). Multiple ‘systems’ with a range of relevant ‘purposes’ collectively provide different stakeholder and/or disciplinary viewpoints on the situation. Simple systems comprise responses to questions of what, why, and how [34] and can be mobilised with other disciplinary forms of storylines, similarly reflecting on prevalent value judgements.

Second-order practice: STiP involves co-creating ‘knowing how to work (in) the world’, developing fresh perspectives through more normative purposeful models (co-designing what ‘ought to be’), whilst intervening with other stakeholder groups and mediating with different cultures of practice, co-developing value in the process [35]. The second-order practice should nurture empathy with contrasting perspectives and constraints to pluralism.

• Principle 3: Adaptive STiP

“No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it. We have to learn to see the world anew.” (Albert Einstein 1879–1955)

“…if a system [an intervention] is to be able to deal successfully with the diversity of challenges that its environment produces, then it needs to have a repertoire of responses which is (at least) as nuanced as the problems thrown up by the environment. So a viable system [e.g., an intervention] is one that can handle the variability of its environment. Or, as [Ross] Ashby put it, only variety can absorb variety.” (adapted from Naughton, 2017 [36])

Principle 3 transcends (multi)disciplinary and interdisciplinary boundary judgements through both (i) boundary reflection, i.e., checking on the inevitable partiality of understanding judgements of ‘fact’ through any one disciplinary framework; and (ii) boundary discourse, i.e., checking against the partiality of value judgments that inevitably informs any normative model of strategic intervention. The transdisciplinary principle has a primary aim towards curating boundary judgements.

Attending to change in relevant inter-relationships and relevant perspectives in a situation of interest requires continually adapting boundaries and avoiding what might be called systems fetishism (devotional retention of existing bounded thinking or practices), or what some might call managerialism [37]. Boundary judgements, whether at firstst- or second-order level, are always provisional, transitional, and impermanent.

Adaptive STiP invites development of learning; that is, systems that are agile and responsive to the changing lifeworlds of sensibilities and literacies in which ‘systems’ inhabit. Intervention, regarded as if a purposeful learning system of interest, may also be regarded as a political tool, a sociotechnical construct that has power over situations as well as power with other practitioners/stakeholders. Together, these two relations of power work as a powe to transform situations. Conversely, interventions as systems have also the power to maintain business-as-usual relations of power, with either benign or malign socioecological effects.

• Operational principles

First-order practice: STiP involves identifying and anticipating incidences of institutional constraints to, and enablers of (affordances for), more effective capabilities. Practice here examines the realpolitik of power relations helping and/or hindering logistic and ethically effective practice for ecosocial betterment, linking to ideas of double-loop and triple-loop learning [38,39].

Second-order practice: STiP involves orchestrating a practitioner performance that maintains and/or renegotiates relationships (e.g., with a colleague, a co-worker, a commissioner, a funder, project or programme manager, etc.), creating (i) effective action in situations of interest as well as (ii) actions to reframe the situations in ways that enable more effective STiP performance, inviting revised views of ‘rigour [10]. The second-order practice should nurture both confidence as well as an embracing of fallibility in STiP.

The three principles of STiP described in Box 4 are theoretically informed guidelines capturing the spirit of systemic sensibilities of the mental model of the STiP heuristic (Figure 3). The principles draw on the use of some basic systems thinking literacy as guidance for generating interventions as systems of interest. Principle 3 on adaptive STiP refers more to the actual challenges of enacting the STiP heuristic in the real world of interventions supported by STiP. Reference is made in Principle 3 to the idea of developing STiP capabilities. The next section examines how this activity of developing STiP capabilities can work with activities of recovering systemic sensibilities and deepening systems thinking literacy in flushing out an activity model for enacting STiP.

5. (Activity Model) Performance and Enacting STiP Capabilities

The task here is to move from a mental model of the STiP heuristic to an activity model of STiP support. To briefly recap, the STiP heuristic captures the range of systemic sensibilities of understanding inter-relationships, engaging multiple perspectives, and reflecting on boundary judgements, drawing particularly on the metaphors of ‘bricolage’ and ‘conversation’. The metaphor of ‘conversation’ (disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary) provides the rationale for expressing the three principles of STiP using basic ideas drawn from systems thinking literacy. A third metaphor of ‘performance’—as introduced by Ray Ison—can be helpful in appreciating how STiP might then be subsequently enacted [12].8

When performing, actors do not just rely on a script or plan of performance but are dependent on the peculiar circumstances of the performance, including uncertainties and vagaries of any audience at a particular time and place. Likewise, the performance depends not just on any ‘certified’ aptitudes and skillsets of the performer but also the particular capabilities drawn from prior experiences in being able to adapt the performance to the peculiarities of the circumstances in which the performance is taking place. The systems thinking practitioner, as a bricoleur, can be likened to a supporting actor in the performance of an intervention. The practitioner requires capabilities beyond certified competencies [40].

Drawing on the work of Amartya Sen [41], exercising capabilities involves making reasoned choices on practice about situations to enable freedom from predefined practices that may not be appropriate for the practitioner. In the context of systems thinking in practice, a capabilities approach prompts questions about the processes of reasoning that enable particular sets of potential freedoms.

“Developing capability is an ongoing practice of enabling a purposeful practitioner the freedom (emancipation) to choose reasoned pathways of action that may be different from pre-determined (purposive) systems of action associated with the situation at hand. Such expressions of capability may involve emancipation from others’ (extrinsic) definitions of competence (e.g., a ‘competency framework’) if they choose it to be the right thing to do under the circumstances. Capabilities are, by definition, less easy to frame. They relate to personal learned experiences of applying tools in different circumstances and being able to adapt and adjust to a particular situation by nurturing a wider variety of choices available. For a systems thinking practitioner, the reasoning can be benchmarked according to principles of systems thinking in practice.”

(Adapted from a glossary item on ‘capabilities’ associated with OU STiP curriculum [6]).

There are several ways in which such freedoms of a capability approach can be experienced by a systems thinking practitioner (bricoleur), as expressed through systems thinking in practice (bricolage). For example, the STP may want to challenge common use of ‘targets’, prevalent particularly in public sector management. Targets are derived from measures of success associated with some particular system design that may have been legitimate for one time and place. Another example is the prevalent use of ‘best practice’ as a blueprint for one ‘correct’ way of doing things that can then be applied in many different contexts. Business As Usual (BAU) is a colloquial term implying the pursuance of a ritualised practice or carrying on doing the same thing with the same tools despite changing circumstances. ‘Best fit’ is a similar though more nuanced manifestation of BAU. Best fit can assume that one particular tool is best fitted to one particular context, again fetishising tools outside the user’s use of the tool. This is an example of a shallow contingency framing to managing situations common in mainstream management sciences and consultancy work [42]. A generalised notion of STiP capability is one that seeks freedom from managerial traps, not only of reductionism and dogmatism in conventional practices, but also of systems fetishism, expressed as holism (connecting all entities) and/or pluralism (inclusive of all perspectives)

Figure 5 is a generic purposeful activity model of STiP support for interventions. It is based on a STiP heuristic that captures systemic dimensions—interrelationships, perspectives, boundaries (IPB) of any intervention, whilst recognising the importance of some baseline systems literacy, enough to give appropriate expression to systemic sensibilities whilst being of requisite use to the particular intervention.

Requisite literacy of a system for intervention for practitioners will vary depending on three factors: the area of intervention for which systems are used; the experiences and traditions of practice (including aptitudes and proficiencies) of the practitioners as users; and the particular usefulness of tools being deployed. STiP support should not demand use of tools exclusively from existing lineages of systems thinking approaches; rather, it should welcome tools from other traditions of practice (including all other disciplines) for adaptive use in the spirit of experimental bricolage. The measures of success associated with the model is ultimately based on the opportunities and affordances provided in terms of enhanced STiP capabilities—capabilities associated with both the primary site of intervention (first-order practices) and the intervention practitioners themselves (second-order practice).

6. Concluding Comments

Traditional systems thinking support for interventions has arguably been constrained significantly by difficulties amongst practitioners in understanding the plethora of approaches and tools and associated language currently available, as well as the necessary or requisite craft skills required to enable their potential support. This paper suggests an alternative to a prevailing divide between either an over-systemic emphasis on general ideas of inter-relationships, perspectives, and boundaries, or an over-systematic emphasis on acquiring a more thorough systems literacy regarding detailed laws and principles of systems thinking (cf. Hoverstadt, 2022 [2]) and/or constitutive rules in the practice of systems approaches (cf. Jackson, 2024 [43]).9

The three principles represent a distillation of systems thinking literacy, providing a requisite systems literacy focused on generic systemic sensibilities around IPB. A requisite systems literacy remains true to the spirit and legacy of STiP as a transdisciplinary endeavour (whilst encouraging multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary collaboration) that is more compliant to the needs and circumstances of practitioners working in a variety of often-stressful professional domains. The requisite literacy offers an alternative to privileging tools of the trade being used over the experiences and potential of tool users. For example, in both best practice and best fit, there is a tendency to reach for the safety-net and comfort of existing tools, and the associated ‘instruction manual’ for using them, outside of the context of use. This is in contrast to the notion of bricolage, which involves the often-less-comfortable novelty of adapting tools to the specific context of use. The context of use includes not just the particular purposes being framed or used (for making strategy) but also the experiences of the user (in making strategy).

A century back, Mary Parker Follett powerfully expressed the need for a recalibration between practitioners’ lifeworlds and their tools:

“Experience is the power-house where purposes and will, thought and ideals, are being generated. I am not of course denying that the main process of life is that of testing, verifying, comparing. To compare and to select is always the process of education […]. When you get to a situation it becomes what it was plus you; you are responding to the situation plus yourself, that is, to the relation between it and yourself… Life is not a movie for us; you can never watch life because you are always in life… [T]he ‘progressive integrations,’ the ceaseless interweavings of new specific respondings, is the whole forward moving of existence; there is no adventure for those who stand at the counters of life and match samples.”

(Follett 1924, pp. 133–134 [44])

The requisite literacy is founded on the type of second-order practice more eloquently described by Follett. This literacy is an emergent property at any one time of the duality between the recovering of systemic sensibilities and the deepening of systems thinking literacy. The activity model giving expression to this requisite literacy is based on three principles, namely, relational STiP, perspective STiP, and adaptive STiP, collectively giving expression to systemic sensibilities associated with a STiP heuristic, understanding inter-relationships, engaging multiple perspectives, and reflecting on boundary judgements. Helpful methodological notions of ‘bricolage’ and “conversation” are complemented by the further metaphor of ‘performance’, a notion that entails the drive towards developing STiP capabilities for enhanced support for interventions.