Is Systems Thinking the same as Complexity Thinking?

Path Notes #4

No!

And kind of…

But not really.

And….why is this important anyway? Do we really need yet another academic distinction? Who cares what we call it as long as we’re ‘doing the work’?

But if you are serious about honing your craft as a systems seer and shaper, I invite you to bear with me for a moment and venture down this rabbit-hole together. There’s some kind of care or clarity I’m on the trail of; a quality of precision that seems to be shared by master magicians, scientists, navigators, facilitators and chefs alike.

The journey of a thousand miles always begins with a single step. But get that first step wrong, and you’re going on a whole different journey to a whole different place.

And so are your fellow travellers.

First steps and foundational principles are always prophetic.

Systems thinking and the various complexity sciences are close relatives; complexity, after all, is a language for describing the properties of particular kinds of systems. Both are meta-disciplines; they study phenomena that span multiple fields. They overlap in many areas, but have distinct origin stories, theoretical ancestors and areas of study. The terms are often used interchangeably – especially by people trying to influence social systems – but for our purposes, I think there are some useful distinctions.

Systems approaches are generally trying to direct a particular system towards some desired outcome or optimized state.

They focus on trying to understand and map the dynamics, structures, feedback loops and properties of the system, and in social contexts, there is often a strong emphasis on collaborative leadership skills, design thinking processes, convening and coalition-building with diverse stakeholders, the use of change labs, action learning initiatives, collective system and outcome mapping, sense-making and goal-setting activities.

Complexity approaches generally begin with the assumption that it is not possible to direct a living system along a linear pathway no matter how desirable the potential outcomes.

They often work with small interventions and local interactions, attempt to learn what is happening, model what is possible or probable, and then respond by nudging the system towards or away from emerging patterns of coherence through the use of attractors, boundary management, pattern amplification/dampening/disruption, network linking, connection and strategies of diffusion or contagion.

While they may use the language of systems change, from where I’m sitting, most systems approaches use systems thinking to engineer ‘better’ or different outcomes to social or ecological challenges without seriously trying to fundamentally change systems dynamics. This can range from ‘joined-up’ thinking and inter-agency collaborations in government, to multi-stakeholder consultation processes, to co-management agreements and cross-jurisdictional conservation initiatives to cloud seeding and carbon capture, to open-source platforms such as Wikipedia or Bellingcat.

For anyone interested in systems change, it is important to remember that systems approaches can just as easily be used to deliberately strengthen existing system dynamics from integrated citizen surveillance technologies or military systems targeting, to complex supply-chain, logistics and integrated marketing strategies. History is littered with supposedly radically transformative technologies and processes that were going to change the system – but ended up reinforcing it. Systems thinking is a tool that can be applied to diverse ends, and while systems approaches may inadvertently catalyze systems change, for the most part, that is not their primary intention. More on that in future posts.

Another way I’m finding useful to think about the distinction is in their relationship with emergence [I am drawing directly from Patrick Hoverstadt’s excellent work here 1] - a phenomenon that is worth holding up as a lantern to illuminate the underlying assumptions of just about any theory of change, tradition or theology.

Most so-called ‘problems’ that systems thinkers are trying to address are emergent properties – the emergents – of a particular system. Systems approaches typically ask ‘what’s the system of this emergent?’ They then create ‘maps’ that work backwards to understand the nature of the system that is generating the problematic emergents – the system’s structures, boundaries, drivers, relationships, properties, dynamics, causal loops etc. The idea is that once you understand the relationship between the system and its emergent property, you can intervene in the system to change the emergent.

Complexity approaches on the other hand typically ask ‘what’s the emergent of this system?’ What’s really emerging and what’s likely to emerge? They typically build ‘models’ that work forwards allowing us to test assumptions, make predictions about the impact of our interventions and learn about potential system dynamics or properties that emerge unpredictably within complex systems characterised by multiple dimensions, feedback loops, inter-connections and agency. In this way you might discover outcomes – e.g. related to the dynamics of an epidemic or a planetary climate – that would otherwise be unanticipated. What can we actually influence and what are the emergent properties of our efforts to influence the system?

It is rare to find a ‘pure’ complexity-rooted approach to intervening in - aka manipulating - social systems. Hedge funds and intelligence services have been amongst the early adopters. It’s more common in the pure sciences and the world of ecosystem management. But some of the most interesting and practical approaches are found at the intersection of complexity and systems thinking.

But if someone tells you they are bringing a systems approach to solving complex challenges, your alarm bells should start ringing. The words knife and gunfight might reasonably jostle for your attention. At minimum you might ask some hard questions about problematic assumptions:

Problematic assumption # 1: the ‘control’ fallacy: Complex phenomena are inherently ecological, relational, multi-dimensional and historical. They resist control. Any approach that works towards some ideal solution or structure without paying attention to the unknowable and emergent qualities of the landscape should be viewed with suspicion. The most graceful paths through complex landscapes are seldom straight lines. Systems approaches that remain rooted in paradigms of management and control run the risk of both self-delusion and the tendency to offer overly technical or engineered solutions to inherently adaptive challenges – which scholar Ron Heifitz argues lies at the heart of most leadership failures.

Problematic assumption # 2: the ‘solution’ fallacy. Complex reality is not a ‘problem’ that must be – or ever can be - solved! It’s an ever-evolving dance to which we must continually adapt and align. It’s a living mystery not a puzzle. Don’t get me wrong; positive, proactive, radically-accountable, get-it-done problem-solvers are a breath of fresh air in any organization. And of course, many technical and boundary-constrained ‘problems’ do indeed have ‘solutions’. Sputtering engines, squeaky wheels, leaking roofs, broken legs, inefficient supply chains and bad code can all be ‘fixed’. There’s usually a right answer, a best practice and a clear result. But in complex social and ecological contexts, a focus on ‘results’ can just as easily end up displacing or strengthening whatever dynamics are generating the particular outcomes you seek to address. The mindset of ‘problem’ and ‘solution’ not only becomes less useful as complexity increases; it can be the very ‘problem’ that needs to be ‘solved!’

And you just know somebody is out there making good money out there hawking solution-oriented mindset training programs to the gullible.

And given that this is an opinionated blog, here’s another opinion:

There are a whole lot of what could generously be termed systems-adjacent approaches out there. Things that claim to be – and genuinely believe themselves to be – in the business of systems change. The best are genuinely systemic initiatives that are operating within ‘anti-systemic’ boundary constraints. The worst are simply co-opting the language and tools of systems thinking in service of reductionist goals and mindsets.

The same old shit masquerading as a new paradigm.

Such approaches may incorporate sophisticated systems analyses to understand and critique entrenched social dynamics, use tools, concepts and social technologies drawn from the systems thinking world or even express a deep commitment to some form of systems change. However, they often also hold perspectives – mostly unconsciously – that are partial, siloed, reductionist, simplistic or over-emphasize linear causality.

And they are often under pressure to demonstrate measurable short-term progress in the face of long-term problems. That pressure is often amplified by polarization, political contestation, the need to increase shareholder value or produce tangible results and ‘solutions’. And that in turn tends to lead to more linear, forceful and one-dimensional intervention strategies which then generate unanticipated and often undesirable consequences.

Some of the places where I’ve seen systems-adjacent thinking thriving include most (not all):

• Change management initiatives

• Single-issue or narrowly focused social advocacy and environmental campaigns

• Viral social movements

• Community responses to ‘displaced’ systems challenges (i.e. ones that cannot be ‘solved’ at the scale or location at which they are being most keenly experienced)

• Ideologically-driven educational, social welfare, healthcare, public-service or just about any other kind of reform

• Monetary and trade policy

• Most nation-state’s economic, foreign, defence & immigration policies

And the common factor shared by every one of these examples?

Artificial boundaries.

Because, as we all know, there’s actually no such thing as a system! It’s more of a way of looking at the world than an objective reality. It’s the map we draw to represent a set of related variables – not the territory itself. A ‘system’ is nothing more a myth we tell about a group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent parts – a web of relationships - that seem to form a coherent whole. And it always exists in relation to some kind of boundary - the (almost always) subjective place where we draw the line that defines a system and sets it apart from its environment.

What we call systems are not just stories about webs of relationships; they are also stories about boundaries and where we decide to draw them.

Stories about how we conceptually chop up the world while paradoxically glimpsing its irreducible wholeness at the same time.

Human digestion, national parks, the ‘economy’, the coastal temperate rainforest, the galaxy – these are all ‘systems’ defined by the boundaries we have drawn around them. Such boundaries may be spatial (the line around a park or state), bio-regional (the boreal forest ecosystem) functional (the ‘immune’ or ‘justice’ systems), temporal (post-apartheid South Africa), conceptual (the ‘progressive’ movement) or a mixture of all (the European Union). When approaching challenges through a complexity lens, it is invariably instructive to identify where a boundary has been drawn, what it has included or excluded, and what happens when you modify it in some way. Boundaries get drawn for reasons that are unconscious, ideological, habitual, political, funding-related or simply convenient.

And the primary challenge with systems-adjacent approaches is that they draw – or necessarily operate within - boundaries that do not correspond with the reality of the phenomena they seek to address.

Maybe another way to say this is that systems-adjacent approaches fall - or get pushed by their patrons and funders - into the trap of treating open systems with porous boundaries as if they were closed systems with fixed boundaries. And thereby treating complex meta-systemic phenomena as if they were engineering challenges.

It’s incredibly common.

Land and wildlife management regimes that stop at some arbitrary park, state or national border. Opioid and addictions strategies that operate at the level of city, province or state in places that also have relatively free movement of people and goods. Any social strategy that draws an ideological red line to exclude one or more contributing variables related to the issue. Family violence strategies that must spend their funding on services for primary victims while spending nothing on therapeutic programs for the male children of victims - in a context where witnessing family violence as a child remains the most accurate predictor of someone becoming a perpetrator later in life. National recycling or pollution policies that send the toxic by-products of economic affluence to poor neighbourhoods or countries. Systems of repression and control hard-wired into national policy. The list is endless.

Of course we do the same thing in our own lives.

There is some kind of boundary that we draw to distinguish the ‘I’ from the ‘not-I’. ‘Ego’ is another way to describe everything that currently falls within that boundary and it shifts and expands over the course of our lives. The Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez put it beautifully:

I am not I. 

I am this one 

walking beside me whom I do not see, 

whom at times I manage to visit, 

and whom at other times I forget; 

who remains calm and silent while I talk, 

and forgives, gently, when I hate, 

who walks where I am not, 

who will remain standing when I die.

We might say that the ego or ‘self’ itself is a kind of artificial boundary – one that has been shaped by culture, ideology, life experience, belief systems, family traditions etc. And those boundaries generate both certainty and suffering for we are invariably much more complex than the lines we draw to define ourselves. Much of what we experience as ‘transformation’ involves some stretching or shattering of an artificial and often brittle boundary in moments of expansive awakening.

This of course is the critical intersection between ‘inner work’ and ‘systems work’. The unconscious boundaries that shape our self-understanding will invariably be reflected in the way we approach complex living systems. Like any good piece of music, the core theme will recapitulate again and again at all levels. And it fundamentally shapes our capacity to ‘see’ systems – to be a systems ‘seer’.

Unfortunately, much of what gets called ‘inner work’ – like much of what gets called ‘systems change work’ – ends up reinforcing rather than stretching those boundaries. You can do a lifetime of inner work practices and still display a startlingly bovine incuriosity when faced with anomalous data and complex phenomena that lie outside the boundaries of your existing worldview.

Opium for the people indeed.

Those who retain a fidelity to the data – a loyalty to the imperatives of Mystery – eventually seem to get pushed out of the confines of their particular discipline or worldview. Scientists who become mystics. Psychologists who become systems thinkers. Engineers who become poets. Those who have dwelled in the house of religious or ideological certainty only to become wanderers with no fixed home. I think that’s what Rumi[2] was alluding to when he wrote

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.

For me, a ‘complexity approach’ is like the experience of ‘awakening’. Both are simply ways to see and experience reality more clearly.

And the reality is that – despite our sincere desire for ‘systems change’ - you can’t really change a system.

Complex living systems cannot be changed the way you change your outfit or the operating system on your computer. They are resistant to control and can rarely be directed along predictable linear pathways. We could say one reason that most systems change initiatives fail is precisely because living systems can’t be changed; they can only ever be disturbed…which is very different. A complexity approach invites us to do so artfully, mindfully and humbly. We are looking for attractors and patterns of emergence within a system that hold the potential to organize energy, provide adaptive pathways, reconfigure properties and generally shift its relational dynamics. As a result, and over time, the system evolves (or regresses) towards a new state of being.

In the end, I’m not trying to create some false distinction here and suggest that complexity thinking is somehow better than systems thinking. It isn’t. What I’m trying to explore are some of my own biases, delusions and assumptions. To see and experience reality more clearly. There’s some kind of sweet spot that is at once rigorous and graceful. That isn’t burdened by the mindset of fear and control that has probably been around since the Neolithic Revolution and the division of the world into binary opposites. A place where the illusory boundaries that leave us feeling severed from each other and the living world no longer have us in their carceral grip.

That’s the place – the ‘field out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing’ - I think so many of us are trying to live and work from.

I’ll meet you there!

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[1] Hoverstadt, P. (2022). The grammar of systems: from order to chaos and back. SCiO Publications

[2] In the spirit of complexity, let’s acknowledge that this is of course the American poet Coleman Barks’s “translation” of Rumi’s words!