Master Innovation
Using Systems Practice to Tackle Difficult Problems in Complex Environments
Learn how a systems approach can help you unite a community around an issue, map a system for change, and design a strategy to shift the status quo.
19 minutes
“I used to take baths and swim in the river when I was a kid. Now, when my son comes with me, he’s not able to swim in it because it’s so dirty. When my son goes there when he is my age, it will be a cesspool.”
Compelled to take action, Acumen India Fellow Raja Muzaffar Bhat started writing to shed light on the scars poor environmental management was leaving on his beautiful country. He penned over 60 articles on waste management alone.
Shifting a system takes more than a mighty pen, but writing content to catalyze awareness is just the beginning of Muzaffar’s action plan. If the trajectory of this waste management campaign follows that of his previous efforts, the Kashmir rivers are in good hands.
In 2006, Muzaffar witnessed a woman purchasing rice from a government store. He watched as an official charged her the higher price even though she held a card entitling her to the more affordable subsidized rate. Unaware of her rights, the woman - and countless others - suffered the pain of unjustified extra cost.
This moment lit a fire in Muzaffar that is still going strong today, over ten years later.
First, he filed a case against the corrupt official, then he organized people in nearby villages around the cause, lobbied the government to enact a stronger version of the right to information law and documented the entire issue and process through his own writing and pieces in the media. In March 2009, this advocacy led to the enactment of a new Right to Information Law.
Since 2009, Muzaffar has been leading the movement to uphold the new law. Most recently, his inquiry into financial reporting from India’s JK Bank (where the state’s 59% stake qualifies it as a public authority) exposed a layered corruption scandal. The bank’s persistence in avoiding the request for information led to the dismissal of the Chairman and national coverage shed light on information’s role in holding government parties accountable.
Much like the degradation of Muzaffar’s Kashmir rivers, the repercussions of a system at work might be easy to see, but the combined forces that create them are not always so clear.
A system is characterized by a series of discrete yet diverse forces -- whether it be people, policies, or perspectives -- that interact in complex and unpredictable ways. These forces are interdependent and in constant motion; this fluidity makes it hard to predict how the whole system will react and shift as forces evolve over time.
Intervening in the forces shaping a system requires patience, grit, an objective eye, and the emotional intelligence to rally a network into frank conversation, and later, action.
If you strive to effect systems-wide change, consider yourself a ‘system investigator’. Convene stakeholders to gather clues together and unearth the system’s shared story.
When you take this approach, it’s possible to build a shared understanding of the system together. With all parties aligned and working toward the same vision, you will achieve leveraged results.
RURAL OPPORTUNITY INSTITUTE TAKING A SYSTEMS APPROACH
Vichi Jagannathan and Seth Saeugling are co-founders of Rural Opportunity Institute (ROI), a social innovation lab that strives to support people's healing from adversity by educating community, reshaping systemic practices, and fostering deep-rooted connections.
After nine months and with over 300 people engaged through interviews and community workshops, the Edgecombe County community in North Carolina arrived at what ROI calls a ‘shared truth’.
People could then see themselves in the systems map and say, “this is my story.” Grounded and aligned in this shared truth, the community members identified a united strategy of ‘shifting from punishment to healing’ in order to shift issues stemming from unaddressed trauma experienced by members of the community.
The alignment around the idea of “shifting from punishment to healing” served as a North Star, a shared understanding and language the community can all speak about, and a shared vision for how to move forward in the most effective way. The community felt empowered to uncover the deeper root cause - if they can name it, they can predict it - and then work to prevent the pattern from repeating.
Both trained in human-centered design by leading firms IDEO and Frog, Vichi and Seth met as high school teachers in rural Eastern North Carolina. They did not begin this work with the purpose of addressing trauma and were inspired by the children and families they met teaching. They took their knowledge of human-centered design and began speaking with residents to unearth community-identified priorities.
ENGAGING THE COMMUNITY
Conversations with community members began with interviews; they conducted over 30 with local parents and other teachers. Although previously not named or seen, the theme of unaddressed trauma began to emerge in common from the initial interviews. To gauge the validity of this initial insight, Vichi and Seth invited invited representatives from the schools, health, law enforcement, and faith communities to a meeting to share the results.
The response was overwhelming. People were starting to see how this root cause of unaddressed trauma might be showing its face in their particular work. For example, emergency room staff were seeing the link that unaddressed trauma might be the cause of unexplained chest pain and gastrointestinal issues where no physical causes could be identified.
More than anything, community members began to see that something larger was at play underneath the surface. Many issues were symptoms of a larger and more complex challenge.
Seth explains how this realization shifted the energy of the community: “Removing individual blame created a shared opportunity to maybe do some things differently, and to work together in new ways. I think it’s energizing to people and gave us all energy or hope, this idea that there is evidence and answers to some of the challenges of trauma that seem intractable. People who were working in systems and feeling isolated or down started to feel more hopeful.”
BUILDING A SYSTEMS MAP
ROI engaged the community in several 8-week sprints over the course of nine months. Attendance was initially encouraged through invites from the trusted school district, and then began to spread through word of mouth. The conversations shared during the sprints were resonating so strongly that the insights themselves started to spark interest in participating.
Armed with only a draft systems map, each sprint asked community members to view the map and share which parts felt truthful and which still seemed incorrect. Together, community members discussed the possible ‘core story’ as well as the upstream and downstream forces at play in the system.
There was no set number of sprints planned, but eventually Vichi and Seth got to the point where meetings were 80-90% people pointing out which parts the map were accurate and asking, “Now what can we do about this?”
ROI knew it was time to move into the next phase.
To review the map in detail see: Rural Opportunity Institute’s completed systems map.
BUILDING A LEVERAGED STRATEGY
ROI contracted with Engaging Inquiry, a consulting firm that supports systems mapping efforts across the world. “Having the direct support of Engaging Inquiry’s team took our community’s systems map to a whole different level. Karen’s (CEO) facilitation and Bailey’s (Principal, Community Health Systems) constant guidance led to a systems map that reflected community member’s stories in a deep and truthful way. This led to buy-in and support from community members and leaders to really engage with the map as a tool for building a community-wide vision for action,” said Vichi.
With a more complete systems map, the community gathered for a full-day workshop with the goal of starting to imagine a strategy to shift the system. Seth notes how it was critical to have community members with lived experience in the room to share their perspective as options were discussed. This prevented those working in the system from arguing about ‘what’s real’ and instead centered everyone around the lived experience of those most influenced by forces in the system.
Demetric "Deko" Lancaster, a lifelong Tarboro resident, who was an integral part of the leverage workshop, shared, "I was traumatized in the past as a child, I grew up, I made mistakes. Since I got a second chance I’m trying to reach out to people before they even have to go through what I went through.”
At the workshop, ROI used the systems map to discuss where the system was frozen or hard to move, where there might be bright spots where efforts would be most effective in shifting the status quo, and where there would be ripple effects after action was taken.
The result was a leverage map pointing to the areas of the system where there would be most potential for change given limited resources, and a shared hypothesis of how to move forward into actionable strategy.
The community now had a three-step strategy for becoming trauma-informed:
#1 - Learn about what trauma is and how to respond differently.
#2 - Heal through shifting practices and habits to create less punishment
#3 - Connect people to each other, and to meaningful education, employment, and leadership opportunities
#2 - Heal through shifting practices and habits to create less punishment
#3 - Connect people to each other, and to meaningful education, employment, and leadership opportunities
OUTCOMES OF A SYSTEMS APPROACH
ROI and Edgecombe County are starting to shift the system around unaddressed trauma in their community. The first step is working in coordination to better educate all involved in identifying trauma and learning to respond differently.
In alignment with the systemic strategy the community has built, ROI has already provided 70 awareness building presentations for 2900 people. Additionally, over 140 people including teachers, social workers, nurses and non-profit staff from across sectors have gone through a 2-day, 14-hour evidence-based curricula that educates about trauma and equips people to build resilience. ROI also supports the use of biofeedback to balance stress and build the health for students in school.
The systems approach has also garnered attention and support to the tune of nearly $500,000 in funding. Vichi explains the funding has come as a result of, “the clarity that systems mapping provides, The community engagement work of the systems mapping resulted in a community-built systemic strategy. We can now begin to execute this community strategy. The clarity has built positive momentum, we can feel the result of systems mapping.”
