Thinking about how we think: a first step to changing the world?
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Have you ever asked yourself why we keep producing outputs no one wants? No one wants the extinction of species, no one wants to deregulate the climate, no one really wants such a striking inequality. Yet, that is what we get. That is what we end up with, over and over again.
“Structural problems”, some people may respond. But what does that really mean? And why is it that we cannot get the structure right in the first place?
I would argue that part of the answer to those questions can be found in the way we think. And the way we think could be split into the way we biologically think, due to the mechanisms in our brains, and the way we have been taught to think.
Let me start with the first. A few people know a lot about it, most of us know very little about the way our brain works. And indeed, we often consider ourselves to be more rational, less influenceable, and more impartial than what we really are.
We rarely think about the way we think. But how does the way we think impact the reality we observe? Does what our culture considers as ‘normal’ determine what we accept without question? Are we really impartial? Do we pay the same attention to information that reinforces our beliefs and information that questions them? What role do emotions play in our reasoning? How do we take decisions anyways?
Being a critical thinker starts by asking some of these questions. Critical thinking is about being aware of our limitations, and our biases, of how certain things that we take for granted may bias our analyses. It is about being reflective about the way we think, as to get better at it. It is about being aware of how the mechanisms in our brain affect our reasoning.
Our brain likes habits for example, as through habits we automatize certain functions and thus consume less energy. And our brain loves to save energy. That is why changing habits is so difficult: our brain literally fights against it.
Habits imply that it is more likely that we think the way we are used to thinking. The way we are used to thinking is in turn influenced by the way we have been taught to think. How have we been taught to think? Unless you went to very specific schools, it is highly likely that you learned the analytical process of reasoning. The analytical process of reasoning implies that, when confronted with a problem, no matter how complex the system you are analyzing is, you try to break it down into pieces. You divide it into parts, you analyze the properties of those parts, and you put them back together, as to get an understanding of the problem or system as a whole.
The analytical approach is taught as the way of thinking, there is however another way: what we call a systemic or holistic approach. Rather than breaking the system apart and analyzing its individual parts, through a holistic approach, we focus on the way elements are organized or arranged. We focus on the interconnections, rather than on properties of specific elements. On the whole, rather than on the parts.
Ministries or companies' departments are the result of the analytical approach. With this mindset, it is easier if someone takes care of housing, someone else of transportation, and someone else of health. Even though the housing system, the transport system, and the people in a city are all part of the same system. They are all interconnected and affecting each other. But analyzing such interconnections is complex. We thus organize in silos to “escape” from seeing and thus dealing with, that complexity.
Is this problematic? It is. It is if you are analyzing complex systems, which is very likely the case if the title of this article caught your attention. A complex system is a type of system with the properties of having parts that are highly interconnected and interdependent. We often say that globalisation has made the world more complex today for example. And it has, by increasing, significantly, the number of interconnections and the interdependencies between countries, industries, markets, or people : the COVID is a good example of just that!
The functioning and outcomes of complex systems are primarily defined by their interrelations, by the way the parts are arranged, and not by the properties of the individual elements. By breaking a system apart through an analytical approach, we limit the analysis to the parts properties, and ignore what really defines a complex system’s outcome : its interactions, the relations within the system and with its environment.
By tearing the system apart, we also assume that the whole is the sum of its parts. However, in complex systems, the whole can be more or less than the sum of its parts, depending on which synergies — i.e. non-linear interactions — take place. This sheds light on another assumption of the analytical approach : the assumption of linearity. The analytical approach assumes linear causation : A impacts B. Stop. B does not impact A in return. B does not feed back into A. Also, both A and B are independent from other parts of the system. This implies that the output of a system is directly proportional to its inputs, and thus, that the sum of its parts must be equal to the whole (which is not the case when synergies are accounted for).
Analyzing complex system with an analytic approach is like trying to see — and thus hope to understand — bacteria with a telescope or with a naked eye. In the same way that you need a microscope to see bacteria, you need a holistic approach to analyse complex systems. The microscope is not better than a telescope or your naked eye, but their usefulness depend on the context, on what you are trying to analyse. The same applies to holistic and analytical thinking.
We would not use a telescope to analyse bacteria, yet we use analytical thinking to analyse complex systems all of the time. While one approach is not better than other, there is an imbalance in our way of thinking. An imbalance that comes from the way we have been taught to think, an imbalance that is reinforced by mechanisms in our brain that fight against questioning what we think we already know. An imbalance that is at the source of the undesired consequences that we observe and that no one really wants.
Narrowing that imbalance is at the core of what systemsinnovation.io (SI) does. In addition to providing eLearning courses, SI will launch, this September, a Hub in Paris. The SI Paris Hub is a place to learn system’s thinking, to connect with practitioners at the local level, and to foster systems’ change.
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Author: Mariana Mirabile
