Tell me, in what subjects are you literate? 

Sounds like a question a college interviewer might ask.  To be literate of course, means you have a good understanding of a particular subject, like a foreign language or mathematics. If you’re reading this, you probably have good English literacy.  For others, science or engineering, or even our woodworking or gardening literacy is particularly strong.

If you listen closely to folks like Thomas Friedman, Michael Pollan, Nicholas Kristof, Wendell Berry and others, you’ll hear them asking for a new kind of literacy, one I call systems literacy. 

This new literacy calls for us to “connect the dots”,  to look at not just the parts but the interrelationships, patterns, and dynamics as well when faced with complex issues, or what Russ Ackoff use to call “wicked messes.”  When we think in terms of systems, we toggle our focus between parts and wholes, between open loops and closed loops (where waste from one source can be “food” for another), between microcosms to macrocosms. We learn to see recurring patterns that exist among a wide variety of living systems and we use our understanding of those patterns to correct actions, anticipate unintended consequences, and produce learning.*  

Why do we need another literacy?  My favorite agrarian poet Wendell Berry says it so well:

“We seem to have been living for a long time on the assumption that we can safely deal with parts, leaving the whole to take care of itself.  But now the news from everywhere is that we have to begin gathering up the scattered pieces, figuring out where they belong, and putting them back together. For the parts can be reconciled to one another only within the pattern of the whole thing to which they belong.” (from The Way of Ignorance, pg. 77)

Most Americans, including our industry and government leaders, were taught that the best way to understand a subject was to analyze it or break it up into parts.   Where were we taught the skills of seeing and understanding systems of complex causes and effect relationships and unintended impacts? 

Yet these are the skills we need to create sustainable communities, and to address pressing issues such as vulnerable food systems, global warming, childhood obesity, unstable energy relationships, environmental degradation and more.

When we are systems literate, we can…

… stop jumping to blame a single cause for the challenges we encounter and instead, look for multiple causes, effects and unintended impacts. 

…move beyond laundry lists and bullet points, to seeing patterns of interaction that more closely match the more interdependent, complex world we live in.

…get off that problem solving treadmill, where our “solutions” often only create more problems or make the original problem worse.  

When we are systems literate, we look at the economy, the climate, education, energy, poverty, waste, disease, sustainable communities as systems issues. We see that nothing stands alone, which means that my climate is your climate, your infectious disease is my infectious disease, your food shortage is my food shortage. 

Where do you start?   Perhaps you pick up a copy of Donella Meadows book “Thinking in Systems” or Peter Senge’s classic The Fifth Discipline, or Fritjof Capra’s The Web of Life or the just released systems education book, Tracing Connections. (For other suggestions, look at the systems literacy resources on my site).

Or you simply try adding the word “system” as you talk about everyday issues, big and small, such as laundry (system), family (system), classroom (system), food (system), waste (system), climate (system), and so on.  By adding the word system, we begin to look for interconnections, closing loops of  material and information flows, anticipating time delays and the inertia created by stocks (or accumulations).

When we think of the laundry as a system, we shift our focus from the pile of laundry to the many interrelated factors influencing that pile:  children, dogs, towels that could be used more than once, etc.  

When we think of farms as living systems, we see the parts and processes of a farm include the farmer, animals, crops, insects, soil, weather and natural cycles, such as the water cycle, as connected to and nested in each other. 

We also see  the farm as part of a larger food production system that includes natural and human resources, waste, food processing, distributors and consumers, and we see the farm’s role in influencing other systems such as health care, energy independence and climate. 

Everyday, I see more opportunities for developing systems literacy.   In the last fifteen years, a growing number of schools in the U.S. and around the world have begun in earnest to teach students systems thinking.  Several State Departments of Education are including systems thinking and “Education for Sustainability” (EFS), or learning that promotes understanding of the interconnectedness of the environment, economy, and society, as a requirement for middle school science standards. The MacArthur Foundation just awarded a major grant for a project focused on developing systems thinking in middle school students and developing new curriculum for teachers across disciplines. 

Just as our nation has improved its math literacy and science literacy, the time has come for us all to support efforts to develop systems literacy.

*Scientists and educators in the burgeoning field of systems science describe a living system as patterns of interrelationships among parts that continually affect one another over time. Increasingly, a systems approach is driving the search for solutions for the problems we face in the environment, engineering, and in human societies.  Systems literacy combines conceptual knowledge (knowledge of system properties and behaviors) and reasoning skills (the ability to locate situations in wider contexts, see multiple levels of perspective within a system, trace complex interrelationships, look for endogenous or “within system” influences, be aware of changing behavior over time, and recognize recurring patterns that exist within a wide variety of systems. See here for more on the principles and habits of mind related to systems literacy.

It’s 4 am.  Except for the gentle rainfall outside and the creaking bones of  this old house, all is quiet.  

I returned from Hungary last night and I can’t sleep. 

 I spent the most extraordinary week with the Balaton Group and my mind is like a sour dough starter that has just been fed:  bubbling, expanding and overflowing.  

During the week, I was immersed in a host of new sustainability ideas in social science, politics, education, and economics.  There was  Tim Jackson’s proposal for a new type of economics that brings “prosperity without growth, a community biogas project in Indonesia run by Any Sulistyowati that uses a biodigester to turn cow manure into biogas (energy for cooking and organic fertilizer), thus transforming the energy equation for rural people in Indonesia, and Emelia Arthur, the young, vibrant newly elected “mayor” or  District Chief Executive of the Shama District,  who by demanding bribe-free, sustainable development, is creating ripple effects far beyond her region in Ghana.  

There is of course, much more to tell about this meeting, but it is a story about my flight home that I most want to share with you.  

I flew home on Lufthansa via Munich.  As I settled in for the seven-hour second leg, the person in front of me did what most people eventually do:  she pushed her seat back.  I, in turn, reclined my seat so to have more space to work on my laptop.  This simple act sent the person behind me into a tizzy!

She began bumping and pushing and pulling on my seat.  I was on such a high from the meeting in Hungary that somehow I convinced myself that she was just getting herself “settled in.”  After an hour or so, the bumping and thumping continued. It was clear she wanted my seat out of her “space”, ASAP!  

It did cross my mind to just “give in” and put my seat back fully upright,  but honestly, I was so cramped by the seat in front of me,  it just wasn’t a reasonable option.  As the tension in my own body began to rise, I thought to myself, there has to be some lesson here!  

And then it dawned on me:  when we are living in systems, it is often challenging to see more than your part of the system.  So, we make decisions and take actions that make sense for our part, not necessarily understanding or inquiring into the impact on the other parts, or on the whole.  

It did occur to me to turn around and try to talk this through with my fellow passenger but I lost courage.  Why?   She seemed to be speaking only in German and I was sure my two years of college German wouldn’t carry me through the conversation.  

I also knew  it would be a difficult conversation.  Perhaps I should talk to my friend Sheila Heen, co-author of the book, Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most, about partnering on a new book:  How  to have the difficult conversations that emerge when we attempt to reconnect the parts to the whole.

The bumping, thumping passenger behind me had actually given me a gift:  an insight about why it can be so difficult to think about systems. As soon as that insight showed up, I relaxed.  Eventually, I put my seat half way up.  

And the thumping stopped.

In a recent New York Times Op-Ed,  Thomas Friedman argues that the second most important rule to energy innovation is “a systemic approach.”  

In this article, Friedman talks us through a recurring “play,” in which gas prices, consumer demand full-efficient cars and “petro-dictators” all play a part.  According to Friedman, the play goes like this: 

“Which play? The one where gasoline prices go up, pressure rises for more fuel-efficient cars, then gasoline prices fall and the pressure for low-mileage vehicles vanishes, consumers stop buying those cars, the oil producers celebrate, we remain addicted to oil and prices gradually go up again, petro-dictators get rich, we lose. I’ve already seen this play three times in my life.  Trust me: It always ends the same way — badly.”

OK.  So, let’s look at the system (or set of interrelationships) behind the “Win, Win, Win…” play.  Friedman identifies several interconnected elements:

Gas prices (go up and down)  

Pressure for more fuel-efficient vehicles (goes up or down)

Here is a very simple map of the system: 

If we walk around the loop, it reads like this: 

As gas prices go up, pressure to increase fuel efficiency goes up.*   In the short term, the reduced demand on gasoline, means more supply and eventually gas prices fall. 

What happens to the demand for more fuel-efficient cars when prices fall?

It falls off.  And for those who may have been driving less, start to drive more.  Why?  The pressure’s off. 

Where else have you seen this kind of pattern? 

It reminds me of the ups and downs of dieting and exercise.  You exercise and loose weight.  Great.  End of story, right?  Well, not usually. Often, when we lose the weight, the pressure’s off, so we ease up a bit.  And over time,  we gain the weight back and we start to diet again. 

If we go back to our occasional gasoline “diet”, there’s more to the story. Our dependency on the symptomatic solution, in this case, foreign oil, keeps us in a state of addiction, and so, less focused on more fundamental solutions, one of which is getting off foreign oil and onto clean energy alternatives.  If we look at this pattern through the lens of a system archetype called “shifting the burden” it might look like this: 

Here’s the rub:  The upper loop (the short-term solution) works, in the short term. It’s insidious though. Because it works, it takes us away from more fundamental solutions. A classic example of a shifting the burden archetype is alcohol and drug use.  Feeling stressed?  Have a glass of wine.  Or two.  Over time however, this response to stress can have unanticipated side effect, such as greater fatigue, poor health, and addiction.  The burden for solving the problem or making the pain go away is shifted onto the upper loop.  

What might be a longer-term, more fundamental solution to stress?  For some, it may be making an adjustment to workload, or getting more sleep. For others, it might mean increasing how much they exercise or reconnecting with friends.

So what can we do?  Perhaps one step is to remember what long-term solutions look like.  Look at older people in China practicing Qigong in the parks, day in and day out.  That’s a long-term, mind-body health solution.  Hiring in outside consultants can be a short-term solution.  Developing skills and leadership capacity in existing staff is a long-term solution.  

So what else can we do?  Another simple step is to start paying attention to the recurring patterns, or the “plays” as Friedman calls them.  If we’re able to see shifting the burden patterns, or a host of other recurring systems patterns around us, for what they are, we’re more likely to be able to step out of the habitual patterns of thought and action associated with them.  When we can do this, we’re more able to work with and eventually change those patterns.   

To explore these dynamics further, check out the Friedman project netsim created by myself and my colleague  Chris Soderquist.

*Prices need to stay up a while for this pressure to have a significant and lasting impact.  

— Thank you to Dave Smyth for creating these wonderful  illustrations.