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Systems Thinking in sustainability, projects and communication

Systems Thinking in sustainability, projects and communication. Sustainable Development: Project Management & Communication September 10, 2013. Systems Thinking. Systems thinking  is the process of understanding how things influence one another within a whole. ( Wikipedia)

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Systems Thinking in sustainability, projects and communication

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  1. Systems Thinkingin sustainability, projects and communication Sustainable Development: Project Management & Communication September 10, 2013

  2. Systems Thinking Systems thinking is the process of understanding how things influence one another within a whole. (Wikipedia) Systems thinking is a way of understanding reality that emphasizes the relationships among a system's parts, rather than the parts themselves. (Pegasus Communications)

  3. Intuition & Analysis Right brain & Left brain Complexity & Simplicity Structure & Behavior

  4. Aim Using systems thinking to manage and communicate projects that contribute to a sustainable development

  5. Aim - rephrased Causing organized whole bodies to appear to oneself, in order to handle, and make common, something thrown forth that contributes to a bearable unfolding.

  6. Exercise: Paper Tear

  7. Sustainable Sweden?

  8. Dialogue • Listen more than you talk • Speak with Intention • Listen with Attention • Speak from Experience • Listen to yourself • Build on each others ideas • Around the campfire

  9. Ways of explaining reality

  10. Ways of explaining reality

  11. Events Patterns, Trends Systemic Structures Mental Models Ways of explaining reality What just happened? What’s been happening? Have we been here or some place similar before? What are the forces at play contributing to these patterns? What about our thinking allows this situation to persist?

  12. Events Patterns, Trends Systemic Structures Mental Models Ways of explaining reality Drought Declining Water Table

  13. Mental Models – Patterns of Thought ”Without changing our patterns of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems we created with our patterns of thought” Albert Einstein ”Our life is what our thoughts make it” Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

  14. ISIS

  15. Events Patterns, Trends Systemic Structures Mental Models Ways of explaining reality Drought Declining Water Table

  16. System a set of things – people, cells, molecules, or whatever – interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern or behavior over time. (Meadows, 2008) a group of interacting, interrelated, and interdependent components that form a complex and unified whole. (Pegasus Communications) an entity which maintains its existence through the mutual interaction of its parts. (www.systems-thinking.org)

  17. Systems • Sweden • Uppsala • Uppsala University • The Geosciences building • CEMUS • Sustainable Development: Project management and Communication • You

  18. The Sustainability Compass

  19. Systems (S) Sources, Stocks, Sinks and flows Feedback Delay Non-linear effects Thresholds Positive and negative casual relationships

  20. Cause and Effect Typical approach then B If A Systems approach

  21. Positive and negative causation? If A goes up, then B goes up If A goes down then B goes down If A goes up, then B goes down If A goes down, then B goes up

  22. Exercise: Living Loops

  23. Casual Loop Diagrams A causal loop diagram (CLD) is a diagram that helps you visualize and understand how the different key parts and elements in a complex system interact.

  24. Causal Loop Diagram Causal - refers to cause-and-effect relationship Loop - refers to closed chain of cause and effect

  25. Conceptual modell on a village & landscape scale

  26. Sahel Reforestation Process 1975 2003

  27. Drawingcasual loop diagrams Draw a causal loop diagram (CLD) that portrays how your chosen indicators interact in a systematic way. Start with the indicators you have and add indicators that you think are important for the dynamics of the system.

  28. LEVERAGE POINTS Places within a complex system where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything. Points of power.

  29. Identified leverage points depend on • What system we are looking at • How we are looking at it • How we have conceptualized it • Our mental models And they are often counter-intuitive (J.W. Forrester)

  30. Places to intervene in a system 12. Constants, parameters, numbers 11. Sizes of the buffers and other stabilizing stocks, relative to their flows 10. The structure of material stocks and flows 9. The length of delays, relative to the rate of system change 8. The strength of negative feedback loops, relative to the impacts they are trying to correct against 7. The gain around driving positive feedback loops

  31. Places to intervene in a system 6. The structure of information flows (who does and who does not have access to what kinds of information). 5. The rules of the system (such as incentives, punishments, constraints) 4. The power to add, change, evolve, or self-organize system structure 3. The goals of the system 2. The mindset or paradigm out of which the system –it’s goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters – arises 1. The power to transcend paradigms

  32. LEVERAGE POINTS Try to classify the levarage points that you have found by using Dana Meadows categories

  33. CLOSING WORDS

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