Creating a systems canvas
Cat DrewFollowing
Why do it in the first place?
Towards the end of last year, I asked the Point People Whatsapp channel, does anyone know of a ‘systems canvas’ that I could use on a project? I was after something that people and organisations from across a system could work together to create which would serve as a visual reminder of the ingredients they needed to take a wide and sustained approach to achieving their goal (increasing physical activity).
It is of course, not as simple as that. Systems change is complex, ever emergent and is forged in relationships rather than setting out a nice, rational plan on a piece of paper. However, in the same way as mapping is valuable in creating a shared understanding of what is going on, it is similarly important to communicate a shared sense of where we are going to.
There are many tools, guides and articles out there (including Systems change: a guide to what it is and how to do it by NPC & Lankelly Chase, Systems Changers by The Point People, the Systems Changers Programme designed by the Point People & Lankelly Chase, Systems Practice by the Omidyar Group and Putting the system back into systems change: a framework for understanding and changing organisations & community systems by Pennie Foster-Fisherman). This exercise was not to duplicate these, but rather to draw on this work, and bring together the conclusions into one place to share with the system you are working with.
How did we do it?
We have been developing this together over the last couple of months. For those involved, it has been a learning journey. It’s been a fascinating process to identify our different needs for a canvas type tool, and to understand our different systems practices (ranging from design approaches to soft-systems methodologies) and define them more collectively. It’s a small symbol of how we are greater than the sum of our parts. Some of our different collective practices include:
Thinking about different lenses through which we view the system, importantly starting with ourselves, and reflecting on the type of system we are working in, our role and authority within that and our personal motivation to act.
Thinking about different flows of activity and demand around the system (e.g. feedback loops and delays) and the more ‘invisible’ dynamics that are holding the problem in its place (e.g. values, behaviours, mindsets).
Thinking about what gets lost and intentionally putting in place a process for dealing with grief.
A focus on flipping the principles or paradigm of the current system on its head to create those for future system.
Developing a community, thinking about what the experience of being in that community feels like, and how our role can be to empower the community to take action and reinforce itself)
The use of design prototyping to test out the new principles. Principles are quite easy to sign up to when nothing sits behind them. Identifying ‘the greatest possible expression of a new principle’ and testing it will help move more quickly into action, will bring to life more intangible principles, and will also surface resistance and other invisible dynamics that have remained unspoken thus far. This is something we have used a lot in the Systems Changers programme we run with Lankelly Chase, where we frame it as “systems prototyping.”
Different methods of asking questions, for example using rich picturing or the use of metaphor in order to explore what the system looks like from different perspectives and where there might not be the right or easy words to describe what is going on.
The ‘canvas’ page of our systems canvas which brings together the findings of many question prompts
This was not just bringing together a list of tools from our various practices, but trying to create a more collective process which we could share for others to use. We’ve been listening to each others’ practices, reflecting on what is important, how much we need to ‘expose’ the process to stakeholders involved, how much you can codify up building relationships and the things that sit outside what is written down. We’ve also been trying it out on real projects, for example work I’m doing at the moment with FutureGov and Camden Council on bringing together the ecosystem of organisations and businesses to get more long-term unemployed residents along the journey to good work, or the training Jennie Winhall and I are doing for the Skoll Foundation’s Social Innovation MBA students.
Personally, in my role collecting together this knowledge, I have learned a lot. As someone who thinks systemically but has had no formal ‘systems thinking’ training, it’s been an unusual approach to learning: listening to practitioners I admire talk about and gives examples from their practice, playing back and sense-checking what they have said, trying these approaches out and then (finally) going back to the theory (rather than the other way around).
Some of the challenges
One of the challenges has been about trying to boil down an understanding of complex systems to a series of questions and boxes on a ‘canvas’. The nature of systems change is more messy and nebulous than a business model, around which the first innovation canvas, Strategyzer’s Business Model Canvas grew out. Our canvas is more akin to those that don’t just help you bring together the essential components of a new venture (whether it be a business, policy idea, open data project etc), but which act as prompts to help you work out what they are. So it is a canvas, linked to lots of other tools to help you paint it, or rather work out what colours and medium to use.
Another has been about language. Systems language — like innovation language — can be quite jargony. There is a question upfront about how much the people you are working with know about systems change. If only a little, it’s really important to understand their language and talk to them in their terms.
Both of these challenges point to the need for conversation and questioning. It is not a case of filling out the canvas = systems change. Using these questions as prompts for discussion and reflection, giving it the time it needs, is crucial.
So while my initial ‘need’ was to be able to have something I could use to work through with a group, I suppose — if I’m honest — to ‘show’ I was doing systems change. Through the process of developing it, I’ve learned the power of opening up questions rather than immediately pinning down the answers.
Use the Systems Canvas we’ve created — You can find it at the link here.
Making the canvas involved so many rich conversations that it is also useful to see how these evolved it. You can see previous drafts here.