How to Find Non-Obvious Solutions

Insight

A complex system is made up of many parts that interact in ways that create surprising, unpredictable outcomes—like societies, economies, or ecosystems.

The more complex a system is, the more counterintuitive it becomes.

This means that solutions to problems in complex systems are rarely obvious—and when they seem obvious, they often fail.

Stephen Hawking famously said that the 21st century will be the century of complexity, and so far, he’s been proven right. As our world becomes increasingly interconnected and unpredictable, our intuition alone can’t keep up.

The challenge is designing solutions that solve today’s problems while helping systems adapt and thrive in the long term.

Insight in Practice

Systems thinking is an approach to understanding how parts of a system interrelate and how systems work over time.

Effective intervention begins by seeing what’s hidden beneath the surface of the system.

Here’s what to look for:

• What systems actually are.
  Systems are relationship structures—not just collections of parts—that produce consistent patterns of behaviour. It’s the relationships, not the parts themselves, that drive outcomes. This is why shuffling personnel, for example, rarely fixes systemic problems.

• What drives system behaviour.
  Incentives and information flows drive the outcomes of a system much more than its stated purpose. A policy might intend one outcome, but people will follow the incentives that actually reward their behaviour.

• What makes a system resist change.
  Systems resist change like an immune system resists a virus. When designed for stability, they self-correct to preserve the status quo. The deepest resistance comes from mental models—the invisible assumptions about "how things work around here.”

When you operate from a systems perspective, your solutions become more strategic, resilient, and impactful.

Perspectives

Even when our intuition successfully detects a leverage point within a system, without an in-depth system analysis, we may push that leverage point in the wrong direction.

“Asked by the Club of Rome to show how major global problems — poverty and hunger, environmental destruction, resource depletion, urban deterioration, unemployment — are related and how they might be solved, (system scientist) Jay Forrester made a computer model and came out with a clear leverage point: Growth. Not only population growth, but economic growth. Growth has costs as well as benefits, and we typically don’t count the costs — among which are poverty and hunger, environmental destruction, etc. — the whole list of problems we are trying to solve with growth! What is needed is much slower growth, much different kinds of growth, and in some cases no growth or negative growth.

The world’s leaders are correctly fixated on economic growth as the answer to virtually all problems, but they’re pushing with all their might in the wrong direction.” — Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System, Donella Meadows

Policy is a lever for systemic change. Even small shifts can unlock more effective, lasting solutions. A good starting point is to identify a past policy that worked—then adapt it to meet today’s conditions and goals.

That’s how systems entrepreneur Evan Marwell succeeded in doubling the share of U.S. school districts with broadband internet access.

“Marwell saw this opportunity early on, and he set his sights on updating the Telecommunications Act of 1996’s “E-Rate” discounted pricing provision, which had been wildly successful bringing internet access to 99% of public schools and libraries, but hadn’t kept pace with internet advances. He leveraged his network and was able to start building his case for change in meetings with FCC and White House officials.”—Why Social Ventures Need System Thinking, HBR

If you want to go deeper into applying systems thinking to real policy challenges, join our upcoming talk “Adaptive Policy Design for a Changing World” at IPAC’s Annual National Public Service Symposium. We’ll share practical tools to design policies that work in complex environments and evolve as the world changes.

Question to Consider

What mental models are keeping your system stuck in the same old patterns?

Quote of The Week

“Today's problems come from yesterday's solutions.”
— Peter Senge