Earlier this week I was fortunate enough to attend the Annual Mike Jackson Lecture, hosted by the Centre for Systems Studies at the University of Hull and witness a fascinating lecture given by Charles Foster.  Charles has spent time being a badger, an otter, a fox, and a stag as well as “living” in the Upper Palaeolithic, Neolithic, and Enlightenment era’s, with a view to trying to understand how to be a human.  Pretty cerebral stuff, very thought provoking, and he managed to talk for over an hour without trying to be evangelical about it.  Rather than trying to go into any more detail I suggest you try and discover more about Charles using his website as an entry point.

Anyway, afterwards, I got talking to an expert in complexity, an expert in the viable systems model (VSM) and the inventor of the Vanguard Method.  If that sounds like the start of an academic joke then it’s not meant to, however as Terry Pratchett once said, “at least I know I’m bewildered about the really fundamental and important facts of the universe”.  Oh, and I don’t think any of them had a doctorate, although the expert in VSM appeared to be having the title of doctor forced upon him.

And the conversation was fascinating, even if I wasn’t really equipped to take part.  Systems Dynamics came under criticism, how many ways there are to talk about VSM was considered, the difference between complexity and systems thinking was discussed as well as a myriad of systems adjacent topics.  

But the conversation about methodologies really struck a chord with me.  After all, do you need to know about methodologies in order to be a systems thinker?  In a recent blog I made the suggestion that, “in order to define yourself as systems thinking an individual needs to know multiple systems thinking”.  But what exactly is a systems thinking methodology?

Let’s consider Systems Dynamics.  It’s relatively well known and some of its ideas underpin the governments systems thinking toolkit and yet is it a systems thinking methodology or is systems thinking merely a subset of Systems Dynamics as some proponents of Systems Dynamics suggest (Stave and Hopper, 2007)?

Or what about VSM.  Many universities and apprenticeships teach VSM and yet is it a tool or is it a methodology?  I would argue, probably badly, that VSM is a tool based on the methodology of cybernetics.  In ‘Brain of the Firm’ Beer makes the point that “we need a new insight, which the science of cybernetics can provide” before going on to explain that from chapter two (of Brain of the Firm) onwards the reader will start to be provided with the tools needed.

But then there is the question of Critical System Heuristics (CSH) which can be misinterpreted as simply a set of questions to ask as part of a systems thinking enquiry, when it is in reality a methodology.  Jackson makes his perspective on CSH clear by writing, “’The Critical Heuristics of Social Planning’ (Ulrich’s major work on the subject) provided a methodology, “critical systems heuristics” (CSH), which can be used by designers and concerned citizens alike to reveal and challenge the normative content of actual and proposed systems designs”.

However, is SODA a systems thinking methodology or not?  The Open University certainly consider it a system thinking methodology as it is one of the five “approaches” that underpin the M.Sc. Systems Thinking in Practice, and Lane (1994) also includes it in his framework of systems thinking approaches (figure 1).  But Jackson (2019) see’s SODA not as a systems approach but a belonging to management science, which makes it impossible to get a definitive answer to the question, is SODA a systems thinking methodology?

Figure 1 Systems ideas mapped on the paradigm framework developed by Burrell and Morgan (1994, p.111)

So, as often seems to be the case, there is no clear way to assess what constitutes a systems thinking methodology.  But does it really matter if a methodology or approach is labelled systems thinking if it can help an individual “better understand the deep roots of these complex behaviours in order to better predict them and, ultimately, adjust their outcomes” (Arnold and Wade, 2015)? If an individual wants to be considered a systems thinker (rather than just someone that uses systems thinking) then knowledge of multiple approaches, whether they are “official” systems thinking methodologies, or not, is a must.  Because only by knowing multiple approaches can we choose the most appropriate tools and ensure that work is undertaken in a systemic, rigorous, and objective manner.

Afterword

In my last blog I suggested I would attempt to solve an easier question, “what is love”.  Research is ongoing and currently consists of listening to a lot of records.

References

Arnold, R. D. & Wade, J. P. (2015) A definition of systems thinking: A systems approach. Procedia Computer Science

Beer, S. (1995) Brain of the firm, 2. ed., paperback ed., Reprinted edition. Chichester [u.a.]: Wiley.

Jackson, M. C. (2019) Critical systems thinking and the management of complexity. Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley.

Lane, D. C. (1994) With a little help from our friends: How system dynamics and soft OR can learn from each other. System Dynamics Review, 10 (2-3)

Stave, K. and Hopper, M. (2007) What constitutes systems thinking? A proposed taxonomy. 25th International Conference of the System Dynamics Society