you
it's clear that we need radical new
ideas about how and why we work to do so
we need to adopt a wider perspective
about what the future of society will
look like and how we can get there we
had Paul Wally go talk to Duncan green
at Oxford about how systems thinking can
allow us to do just this
can I just start by asking you to tell
me what you see systems thinking as so
in Oxfam I think systems thinking is
about pulling back the the lens on the
camera and looking at the whole of the
context so you're saying okay we look at
you know the classic metaphor as we look
at teaching the fishermen to fish and
then we now look at what's the state of
the water in the river is it the
fishermen of the fish and women what's
the state of the care economy in which
they are living whose governing the
rules on on the catches are they gonna
have to pay a bribe when they catch some
fish and try and sell it can I even get
it to market so you zoom out and sudden
you see it's much more complex system in
which your intervention your project is
supposed to achieve impact and unless
you think about the whole system it's
quite likely your project will achieve
very little okay so what kinds of
examples can you give me of action
applying systems thinking to projects
well often I think Oxfam staff don't
consciously apply systems thinking it's
just that the good staff do it naturally
and that's one thing I've noticed so for
example in Tanzania if it came to us and
said we want you to try something
different on governance and
accountability getting local government
to listen to local villages and we had
this genius kind of local program person
who said okay well we don't know what to
do so what we'll do is we'll try eight
different approaches everything from
street musicians to a radio show to
school management committees and then
after after nine months we'll sit down
with the local communities and local
partners and say which ones would work
best and we'll scale those up and we'll
close down the ones that are not working
so well so actually she'd kind of
reinvented evolution because she was
doing variation selection amplification
which is the kind of core process of
evolution and she just worked it out
from first principles which always just
amazes me when people come up with this
kind of thing
I think stakeholder management squat an
important aspect of systems work isn't
it absolutely so we we get people to
stand back and typically in in the aid
NGO sector people have start off with a
very limited sense of stake
you know the state and the people and
then when you start talking to them they
obviously they have a much more nuanced
understanding and you start unpacking
the ecosystem and start thinking okay so
there are these 20 stakeholders who will
affect whether that fishing community
can fish yeah one of the things that
struck me with a lot of the systems work
in this kind of area is how the
beneficiaries of some of the aid or
treated as an equal stakeholder in many
instances on a good day okay I don't
want to oversell what all time does or
what other NGOs do there's always a
problem that you know in many cases we
have a clash of accountabilities so we
are accountable upwards to the people
who will it give us the money I'm more
accountable downwards to the people
we're trying to help and if those two
come into tension often money talks so
there is always a real tension to try
and be accountable to the communities to
have proper consultation just as in the
research world you know it's very easy
to say I'm going to have participation
of local communities but there's no
budget to go back and many present the
findings of the research and you end up
just being quite extractive so there are
always these clashes of incentives which
stop you doing what you want to do yeah
I do think sometimes that there's a
there's a temptation to impose a Western
solution on a non Western situation and
there are temptations in all directions
and so that one temptation is I've got
this great idea I'm going to impose it
another one is Oh everybody knows their
own answers we're just going to uncover
the richness which is partly there but
actually people want new ideas and new
technologies and new things so there's a
danger of being wrote over romantic and
being over sort of and be very arrogant
that they're equal they're not equal but
they're both they're both risks I think
okay and what about the challenges of
implementing this kind of systems work
do you can do seem many lots so I mean
there's chat there's external challenges
so yeah you're we're in a world now
where the funders will say what are you
going to do and they want to know pretty
much you know but what you want to do
they want to know what results you're
going to get and then they want you to
measure those results and to be able to
attribute any improvement to what you
did now a lot of that is actually an
affirmative
thinking so if there are multiple
feedback loops numerous stakeholders
everybody interacting with everybody
else
a it's very hard to predict the change
and B it's very hard to attribute any
change to one particular intervention so
you're in a situation where people are
asking for the impossible in some cases
and that can distort what you do in two
ways one it means you actually look for
the places which is simple where you can
get in vaccinate some kids get out again
before the system sort of collapses on
you or you actually just well lie to be
honest you you do complex interventions
you improvise you surf the tide of
events and then when you report by to
head office you say now the project went
great project went to plan and there's
been some really interesting
anthropological work looking at how aid
workers live this double life of facing
outs in complex systems and placing back
in simple linear systems and and doing
both at the same time I think it's a
monumental waste of effort and that part
of the reason I'm publishing and writing
and thinking about this is to get people
moving to a more engaged approach with
system yeah it changes the style of
working and in particular than the way
that things are managed yeah I mean
there's a wonderful book by woman called
Donella Meadows called thinking in
systems who says we have to learn to
dance with the system so I always tell
our staff that you know you need to be
fundamentally curious about how the
system is changing before you think
about what you're going to do you have
to want to dance with the system and
then you can think of your own moves a
bit but it's it's that curiosity and
wanting to find the answers that are
popping up anyway in the system and
build on those rather than think I am
you know I'm coming in from the outside
with these great ideas and lucky old
people they're going to just absorb them
and that's that's the worst way to do it
yeah what do you think of the main
benefits that you get out of this
approach the main benefits is if you
caricature the old way of doing aid it
was I'm gonna do all my thinking upfront
I'm then gonna spend three years
implementing the plan I came up with
through all that thinking and then at
the end of three years I'm going to
evaluate right and then typically when
you do the evaluation you find that
either all or some of it didn't work so
one major benefit is that you realize
what's not working my
and you think as you go and you learn as
you go it's as if you know I if I ride
my bicycle across London and I set out
in advance the direction of travel and
the velocity at all points for the way I
get across London I'm gonna die before I
get to the end of the road you've got to
respond to the traffic the situation and
you adjust so we're trying to make
projects and interventions by
organizations like Oxfam smart like
riding a bike rather than trying to
drive a tank get more from the Open
University check out the links on screen
now