Lessons from a Systems Thinker | The Mobilized News Network

What problem was Yvoke created to solve — and why is “systemic strategy” becoming essential now?

Many organizations still make plans as if the world is stable. What changed?

In the words of one of our clients “Systems thinking used to be optional. But in a world where every business, and every person, is increasingly affected by global events, systems thinking and analysis becomes a prerequisite to do anything that needs a chance to succeed.”. Systemic strategy is the actionable application for organizations to apply systems thinking into an operational reality. To make it practical, and integrate it into the every day reality of organizations that have to deal with increasingly unstable, unpredictable, and disruptive markets.

Yvoke says it works with companies whose business depends on systems that are no longer behaving the way they used to. What are the clearest examples you are seeing right now?

There are some areas that are obvious and lie on the surface. For example, anything impacted by global logistics and trade. Shipping route disruptions, jumping shipping costs and delays, and the policies that influence this area like protectionism, tariffs, and regulation. Agriculture and food, and weaponization of hunger, are also obviously clear and present. Then there’s less visible, but not less impactful, areas. Rare earth and shortages of what we assume are commonly available materials, like sand for concrete, metals, certain chemicals, etc. Lastly, there’s technological and sociological disruptions that affect nearly every industry right now. Obviously AI itself but also the (often bad) decisions on how AI is (non)implemented. But also the shifts in generational demographics, living patterns, consumer behavior. Often these areas connect to make a point of ‘perfect storm’. These can cause far-reaching risk profiles, but also opportunity gaps.

What is the difference between a sustainability strategy and a systemic strategy?

A good sustainability strategy is a systemic strategy. However, since ‘sustainability’ is often poorly understood, and relegated to CSR or ESG reporting, in reality these are often far apart. You can only make a good sustainability strategy by using a systemic approach. Understanding that aspects such as energy, supply, human resources, market growth, etc are all related. For the company to be able to sustain itself, it requires an understanding of the world it operates in. A systemic approach, mapping the world around us and its dynamics, is the most effective way of doing so.

You talk about resilience, regeneration, and systemic strategy as three core terms for an unstable world. How do these three ideas work together?

In an unstable world, resilience is the only strategy that can lead to success (as opposed to a growth based strategy). When those unexpected events hit, will the organization dapt and go on, or break? Regeneration is how practically that approach touches the road; leaving the trail better than you found allows you to build primary and secondary value, not just for now, but also going forward. This affects the supply chain, human capital, and lowers risk. Regenerative practices are most literally applicable for organizations that are somewhere along the chain of products and services that use ecological services. Food, construction materials, cosmetics, land use, etc. However, since they’re so ubiquitous, most other industries are at least tangentially related, and can investigate how regenerative practices can help them as well. Systemic strategy is the roadmap and blueprint to make these terms concrete for your organization. Not just for tomorrow but for the years ahead. So you know what way you’re going, what dot on the horizon you are navigating towards, and not just be reactionary.

How do you help leaders see the whole system instead of optimizing isolated parts?

We work with cocreation, together with the internal team within organizations. We’ve developed these practices over 25 years in working with teams; we don’t do the work for them, we collaborate in a tight unit for 6-12 months, co-developing, training, implementing. That makes it cost-effective but most importantly, it embeds the knowledge on how to develop the systemic strategy and the roadmaps in-house. It then becomes part of the everyday reality, everyone knows what to do, and collaborates towards the same goal. Specific tools in there include visual system mapping of the company’s stakeholder structures, supply chains, systemic vulnerabilities, and market landscapes. These visual maps make complex networks simple to understand and create shared knowledge across department teams.

What is the smallest move that can shift the largest variable?

It’s easy to think that systemic impact can only be made by large organizations that have a global presence. Nothing can be further from the truth. The speed and creativity of small organizations can also manifest great ripples. An example of what is a very small organization, in this case a family sushi restaurant in New Haven, Connecticut, is exemplary. Their ambition was to become the most sustainable sushi restaurant in the world. Nice ambition, but how? We worked with them, doing the systems analysis and building a strategy and implement it over just a few weeks. From the intricacies of the system came a solution nobody expected or saw coming. The obvious largest negative impact of a sushi restaurant is the fish it serves.What can you do beyond minimizing harm by buying ‘sustainable’ fish with a label, or becoming a vegetarian restaurant and throwing the concept of ‘sushi’ out of the door with it? We found out by going through the analysis and discovered there are fish we can eat that actually benefits the ecosystem; invasive species. By recruiting the local fishermen to target these, and the chef Bun Lai crafting masterful recipes around these, a new precedent was set. This idea rippled over the world, and led to hundreds of news articles in New Yorker magazine to the Wall street Journal, and impacted how we see and work with sustainable food around the world. It also changed the landscape for the restaurant, suddenly launched to national fame, and winning the ‘Most sustainable Restaurant’ in the US prize.

What are the biggest barriers to systemic change: money, politics, outdated business models, institutional fear, or lack of imagination?

There’s not one answer to that, as it depends on which change you seek to make. Different systems, different context, different reasons. Often though, it is the lack of knowledge and tools to even be aware of the fact that most organizations can and will benefit greatly from using a systemic strategy. That it does not need to be expensive, and actually creates clarity that has many beneficial side effects for all who participate in the trajectory. As with many things, step one is to actually get started. Don’t wait around too much, stuck into the top down orchestrator role. The bottom-up action part is just as important. A good systemic strategy is one that quickly focuses on action. Not just a single action though, an orchestrated series of actions, but actions nonetheless. A big mistake is to hang around talking and strategizing too long. Systems and organizations will change and respond to the actions, so you need to build in feedback loks so you can steer, adjust, learn and adapt. Any successful systemic strategy is driven by daily, concerted actions.

Yvoke’s work includes cases involving IKEA, Heineken, the IKEA Foundation, Pizza 4P’s, the Dutch carpet sector, and Orchid City. What do these cases teach us about how systems actually change?

Each case has a different story to tell. And many lead us to understand more about how we can look at, understand, and work with the idea of driving change in complex systems. There’s 12 rules of systems change on the website where we capture some of these. We also wrote several books over the course of our decades of work, and our strategic framework, Symbiosis in Development, is published entirely free in book form and also with online learning modules on www.thinksid.org. They are being used by universities around the world to teach about systemic change management, risk, strategy, and design thinking.

How should communities and smaller organizations apply systemic strategy when they do not have the resources of a multinational company?

It does not require large resources to develop a systemic strategy. If there are zero financial resources to get professional support, they can start with all the tools, handbooks, learning systems we published open source and for free. Even the video training is entirely free on www.thinksid.org. But, of course, learning to paint yourself is a very good idea if you want to have nice paintings, but you will not get a Rembrandt without getting help from the masters to learn. For that, Yvoke is available with our experts. We guide, support, develop, in whatever form or structure fits and has the most positive impact.

If the future belongs to those who understand networks, what should media, education, business, and government do differently right now?

Start learning the basics of systems thinking and systems mapping. It’ll open eyes, visions, insights beyond any other approach that we know of. It’s no surprise this lies at the foundations of some of the most important work done worldwide. Most climate science, the UN, most successful global businesses… it’s just a surprise it’s not yet a foundational element in schools and universities. But that’s coming, slowly, as it’s becoming increasingly obvious that our globalized society cannot be understood without it anymore.

What would change if every organization stopped asking, “How do we grow?” and started asking, “How do we become resilient, regenerative, and useful to the whole system we depend on?”

We start building a world where we can continue into the future without destroying ourselves, and to have businesses that can help develop value while also becoming foundational in our transition towards new, sustainable, and socially beneficial agencies. Many companies that have been around for more than 100 years have always known this. Now, for all the new ones, they will either learn this, or wash away with time.