There is increasing recognition that our world’s problems are complex, interconnected, and deeply rooted in systems. From climate change, to reproductive justice, to income inequality, we know that these issues require more robust, lasting interventions than what has been tried in the past. In order to create effective and sustainable impact, we have to change the system behaviors and patterns that keep problems stuck in place.
One practice for developing and learning about such interventions is systems mapping. Systems maps are visual representations of complex systems, highlighting underlying forces, how those forces connect into patterns of feedback, and overall system behaviors. It can be a powerful tool for system sensing, helping teams:
- Create a shared understanding of the systems they’re working with and in;
- Surface assumptions and gaps in team knowledge;
- Understand the dynamic trends, patterns, structures, and mental models that drive the system’s behavior.
Ultimately, systems mapping is a useful practice to step back and see a whole system, design interventions that take into account the system’s contexts and motivations, and use it to learn about impact over time.
Simply mapping a system, though, isn’t a straightforward practice. If done with care, it is an intentional, thoughtful process that can build relationships, catalyze learning, and strengthen your team’s equity practice and process.
A critical practice for bringing more intention to your systems mapping process is Emergent Learning—a set of shared practices and principles that fosters collective learning across teams and systems amidst complexity.
Emergent Learning principles, when applied to the systems mapping process, can support more equitable and robust systems mapping, strategizing, and learning, and thus a more accurate representation of the system you’re working in.
These two practices fit together because they both carry learning at their core. They’re each appropriate for working in the complexity of systems change, where we cannot know with total certainty whether our actions will be effective. Applying the principles of emergent learning to the mapping process can help steward teams through this uncertainty.
Four key principles of emergent learning can support the systems mapping practice:
- Maximizing freedom to experiment
- Inviting diverse voices to the table
- Holding expertise in equal measure
- Stewarding learning over time
If applied with care, these principles can create a systems mapping process and practice that is as robust as it is equitable and rooted in curiosity and learning.
Principle #1: Maximizing Freedom to Experiment
Maximizing freedom to experiment refers to “allowing every actor in a system as much freedom as possible to choose the path—or hypothesis—that, on the basis of their experience and perspective, is most likely to achieve their outcome.”
When applied to collaborative work, this emergent learning principle enables greater buy-in and understanding by giving people the chance to advance ideas they’re most passionate about, while also working toward a joint goal.
We simply do not know with certainty what actions will lead to change in complex systems. By allowing the freedom to experiment, and thus the freedom to fail and learn, we open our work up to a catalytic curiosity that can transform our systems in ways we have yet to imagine.
A key part of mapping complex systems is sitting in the discomfort of the unknown and uncertain. Systems sensing and transformation are rarely linear, hard to monitor, and can challenge our ideas and beliefs. Layering this principle onto your systems mapping process can create a space for your team to experiment with that uncertainty and transformation. This might look like your team trying new, creative ways of mapping or visualizing the system, bringing in different ways of learning, or trying on new assumptions or connections.
One of the core purposes of creating a systems map is to use the map to develop your organization’s strategies and learning plans, identifying areas in the map where you will intervene and creating pathway hypotheses about the impact you will have. When you maximize the freedom to experiment at this stage, you enable your team to be curious with their learning and passions, trying out new interventions and seeing what happens.
In maximizing the freedom to experiment, you will ultimately create a culture of emergence and equity—crucial to any systems change efforts. Because systems are not static, we must be able to be resilient and adaptive to their changing dynamics. Applying this principle will allow your team the freedom to try new ways of actions and to fail, cultivating patience and curiosity. As adrienne maree brown writes in Emergent Strategy,
“Everything we attempt, everything we do, is either growing up as its roots go deeper, or it’s decomposing, leaving its lessons in the soil for the next attempt.”
Principles #2 & #3: Inviting Diverse Voices to the Table & Holding Expertise in Equal Measure
Inviting diverse voices to the table while also holding expertise in equal measure are two different principles that are in close relationship. Bringing in diverse perspectives allows for “robust insights to be developed—insights that hold true across a variety of situations,” while also recognizing that “expertise can come in many forms—from academic research as well as from years of lived experience.” These principles necessarily should not exist without the other.
These principles enable a level of intentionality and belonging into collaborative work that disrupts white, dominant work culture practices by valuing different forms of knowledge, collective learning, power -ceeding and -sharing, and slowing down. It requires a level of awareness around power, privilege, and positionality that is required in order to bridge systems change with deep equity.
Applying these principles to systems mapping requires more than having diverse representation at the table. It’s about creating the conditions for different types of knowledge to be valued, honored, and seen in the map. To do so, building relationships that feel safe is crucial to level power dynamics and also create a systems map that highlights how power exists in the system. For instance, if you’re inviting an entire organization, how might hierarchical power differences show up? If you’re a foundation inviting grantees, do you have a strong enough relationship where they would feel comfortable voicing dissent? Or if you’re doing this with a diverse group of community members, how are they connected and what are they walking away with from the process?
Weaving these principles into your mapping can deepen your relationships and strengthen your proximity to the systems you’re working with(in) and mapping. By bringing diverse voices to the table and holding their expertise in equal measure, the systems mapping process will be shaped by building trust and deep listening. Systems mapping can create a level of transparency among participants that can lead to deeper understandings of one another’s perspectives, experiences, and assumptions.
A crucial limitation to systems mapping is that you will never have a full view of the system you’re working within. There will always be perspectives left out and connections and dynamics missed. Yet, bringing in diverse voices and holding all perspectives as expertise can allow for a more full picture of the system while also building collective knowledge. A powerful element in this process can be for allowing these perspectives to clash, and to hold and represent all truths—even if contradictory—in the system. This will paint a clearer image of the system that, when designing interventions, can anticipate impact and consequences more accurately.
Principle #4: Stewarding Learning Over Time
Stewarding learning over time refers to learning practices that “have their greatest, most visible impact when they are done iteratively, over time, focusing on the questions that matter the most to a group.”
Applying this principle to collaborative processes will embed learning in a way that is cyclical and constant, strengthening teams’ ability to evolve over time and deepen their impact. It focuses groups’ intentions on building learning as a regular practice.
One of the most prominent critiques of systems mapping is that teams will spend huge amounts of time and energy creating them, using them to develop their strategy, and then they are set aside never to be seen again. It can feel like a heavy lift for just one use. Plus, complex systems are dynamic and always changing which is rarely reflected in the current use of systems mapping.
Applying stewarding learning over time as a principle focuses on creating conditions for groups to learn over time. Doing so aligned with systems mapping can transform the mapping process from a one-time strategy tool into an emergent, systems sensing learning tool in three key ways:
- Making sense of complexity: Systems mapping can help us turn overwhelm into clarity when it comes to working within complex systems. Because systems are always changing, we have to continue to learn about them to hold onto our understanding. By stewarding learning over time, teams can continue using their maps to draw boundaries (What are we including? What are we leaving out?), determine their focus (What parts of the system are we uniquely positioned to work with?), and see patterns across issues and systems.
- Revisiting regularly to test for accuracy and changes: Rather than setting maps aside after they’ve been used to determine a team’s strategy, returning back to them as a learning tool can help teams determine if their understandings of the system are accurate and how systems have changed. Applying this principle can enable teams to track how their understanding of the system has evolved and continue to bring together diverse knowledges to better represent the system.
- Use as a hypotheses and assumptions tool to build a learning agenda: The process of building a systems map can illuminate assumptions your team holds about the system and be used to make hypotheses about how interventions will affect change. Systems maps can also be used to build learning agendas—identifying systems change goals, sparking ideas for learning questions, and identifying places in the system where there are knowledge gaps and where information to answer learning questions might live.
Systems mapping is as much about what we do as it is how we do it. Taking a principled approach is key to developing a robust understanding of the complex systems we’re working in. Applying the thoughtful principles from emergent learning can provide us with direction for shaping the systems mapping process and allow for necessary emergence, adaptation, and resilience in an undoubtedly uncertain practice.
This piece is possible because of the Emergent Learning community and faculty who develop and practice the principles outlined below.