Month: December 2019

It’s neither a new or nor a groundbreaking statement that traditional development efforts are inappropriate and/or ineffective. They impose a Western worldview on someone else, and functionally, most traditional development interventions exist in siloes. Even the term “development” itself is a Western construct that implies a certain type of improvement that follows a relatively specific agenda – “we think you need this” (sanitation, industry, energy, etc.).

Traditional development in terms of infrastructure projects imposed by multilateral companies on local communities “for their own good” are clearly models of the past. Even institutions like the World Bank have for many years acknowledged the failure of “traditional” development and at least on paper, are looking for alternative models and ways to engage with civilians and civil society through innovative partnerships. We are now arguably in a transition space where we are not only redefining what development actually is, but who it serves, why it is done, and what the overall goal is.

I would argue, we’re taking – or we should be taking – a systems view of development to understand its effectiveness, or as Donella Meadows would say, the “leverage points” for change. Systems thinking is something thrown around in development spheres and in academic institutions – although not as commonly as you would expect, and definitely not applied as the norm.

Although it sounds somewhat complicated, systems thinking is really simple – I like to think of it as a puzzle – the system is the whole puzzle together, the final picture that you see on the box from the beginning and have to work on various sub-puzzle sections to complete. In terms of development, the whole puzzle is the end result – what sort of reality are you helping a locality create? Are the local community members in the picture? Are the most vulnerable members of the local community in the picture?

The main issue with my puzzle metaphor is that it implies a two-dimensional picture, and one of the key components of a systems perspective is that it includes the interactions between different parts of a system – the feedback systems and loops that influence each other. So perhaps a 3D puzzle is more appropriate…

Regardless, people complete puzzles differently – some start on the perimeter, forming the border. Others work on a certain corner section. Others start from the middle out. But the key is that they are all working towards the same ultimate vision.

A puzzle is a relevant metaphor for change in terms of identifying leverage points for key interventions, forecasting interactions between interventions and formulating a picture of the final objective. For instance, a common first step of puzzle making is finding the corner pieces. These are “keystone areas” for change.

At Windly, when we look for organizations to support, amplify, or partner with, we look for organizations that embrace this systemic perspective or are working towards key pieces of this system that we have identified, even if they don’t realize it themselves.

As an individual, even if you aren’t a humanitarian, development, or environmental practitioner (although I would argue that everyone can and should be J), there are easy ways to begin to see things from a systems perspective. Some of these include:

• Understanding the historic context something operates in is an easy first step towards systems thinking. This basically helps the brain start processing in a way that looks beyond what’s directly in front of you.
• Look for big impacts made by something seemingly small. In the natural world, keystone species are species that hold a seemingly unlikely influence on their natural environment – in other words, without them the ecosystem collapses or changes drastically. Bees are a keystone species.
• Begin looking for interactions between different things. In climate change studies, we can look at increasing atmospheric temperatures from a systems perspective, particularly a positive feedback loop. A useful example is when temperatures rise in the atmosphere due to greenhouse gas concentration, permafrost melts in the artic, releasing more greenhouse gases and further increasing the atmospheric warming and releasing more permafrost, and so on and so on. A positive feedback loop is a self-reinforcing cycle.

Systems thinking is not a “new age” or ultra-liberal approach to change; rather it’s a pragmatic and strategic assessment of a situation that is dynamic and multifaceted. It allows for creative innovations to emerge as solutions are explored and it can include a variety of sectors and stakeholders. In short, it’s a necessary model for complexity – and it’s the way we approach every project here at Windly.