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I found an interesting course at the MIT web called Applications of System Dynamics spring 2004.

This is the course description:

… a project-based course that explores how organizations can use system dynamics to achieve important goals. In small groups, students learn modeling and consulting skills by working on a term-long project with real-life managers. A diverse set of businesses and organizations sponsor class projects, from start-ups to the Fortune 500. The course focuses on gaining practical insight from the system dynamics process, and appeals to people interested in system dynamics, consulting, or managerial policy-making.

The course shows a process for using system dynamics to solve problems. Prof Jim Hines calls it the standard method, because it is the approach used by most SD (system dynamics) practitioners. The course shows how you can plan you work and how to organize your meetings with your client week by week. He uses a fictitious case all the way up to the final Vensim model and even supplies suggestions for power-point presentations to the client.

His approach briefly looks like this:
1) Problem definition: list of variables, reference modes, problem statement
2) Momentum policies
3) Dynamic hypotheses
4) Model first loop
5) Analyze first loop
6) Model second loop
7) Analyze second loop
Etc.

The interesting thing about this resource is the generous online lecture notes. I found the guidelines (pdf) very useful because of the practical advice therein and I will definitively use the guidelines as a starting template when doing consultant work in the future The entire course material can be downloaded here.

There is another SD course at MIT OpencourseWare called System Dynamics for Business Policy. It uses Sterman’s book Business Dynamics as textbook and does not have extra lecture notes. You can download the assignments of the course and they might be of some interest.

Peter Senge, a well-known professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management and founder of the Society for Organizational learning (SoL) was interviewed in Jakarta Post recently.

We got two curves that are creating big problems. One is the growing interdependence of the world…and a diminishing capacity to understand interdependence.The further human society drifts away from nature, the less we understand interdependence.

So if you deal with tribal cultures, prior to the agricultural revolution, many of them don’t even have a sense of themselves as separate from nature. They usually don’t have even a word for nature. You don’t have a word from something that’s not separate from you.

Agrarian societies developed a slightly different attitude, believing it was humans who initiate the “natural” systems, which were often highly religious, and that humans are separate and superior.

During the industrial revolution and the subsequent urbanization process, human beings began to ignore nature. “There’s a lot of American kids think their food comes from the grocery store and the concept of seasonality has no meaning to them whatsoever.”

The further people are from nature, the more they lost the ability to understand interdependence. “Nature is our teacher to understanding interdependence

Other posts about this subject you might want to read:
The partnership paradigm
Ishmael
The necessity of diversity
Connecting to nature

In an interesting article in Culture Change called “Living now, naturally and sustainably via relocalizing“, Dave Ewoldt traces the root of our global crisis back to a fundamental disconnection from the natural world.

He describes the dominator paradigm that our industrial civilization has been built upon.

The systemic root of our disconnection from nature can be directly traced to the dominator paradigm which started conquering and subverting egalitarian cultures 6-8,000 years ago, and was firmly ensconced by 2,000 BC. As detailed by author Riane Eisler, this paradigm consists of force-based ranking hierarchies of control (humans over nature, men over women, one race over another) that are built on and maintained by fear.

In this paradigm individualism reigns and “the others” are thought of as inferior and thus morally acceptable to exploit for personal profit. We in our civilization, even assume that we must use this control for the sake of human progress and prosperity.

The root has to be removed. A fundamental change of paradigm is needed.  The antidote is to reconnect with nature in a systemic way.

Healthy ecosystems can be looked to for providing the models and metaphors humans require for becoming sustainable and creating mutually supportive relationships.

Sustainability is a key. The author defines it as

integrating our social and economic lives into the environment in ways that tend to enhance or maintain ecosystems rather than degrade or destroy them; a moral imperative to pass on our natural inheritance, not necessarily unchanged, but undiminished in its ability to meet the needs of future generations; finding, and staying within, the balance point amongst population, consumption, and waste assimilation where bioregions, watersheds and ecosystems maintain their ability to recharge and regenerate.

The other antidote is to relocalize

In the human built environment and in the social institutions we create, the process to become sustainable — to holistically integrate our activities with the natural world — is provided by a systemic concept known as relocalization. This is the antithesis as well as the antidote to corporate globalization. Relocalization includes the concepts that we must rebuild our local economies to be self-reliant; recapture our sense of place and belonging; reclaim our sovereignty; and restore our communities of mutual support.

The author describes the need to return to local autonomy, to bio-regional networks of interdependence where production and distribution of food, goods, services and energy is as close to the point as consumption as possible. Living organisms have a strong tendency to self-organize into mutually supportive relationships. Nature is resilient and we need to build our society that way.

Using the four core Natural Systems Principles — mutual support and reciprocity, no waste, no greed, and increasing diversity — to inform the process of relocalization, we can replace the dominator paradigm with a paradigm of partnership, and we can overcome and heal our disconnection and separation from the web of life.

Reconnecting to nature and relocalizing are effective strategies for the future, according to the author. The dominator paradigm should be changed to a partnership paradigm.

Here are some more articles published by Dave Ewoldt.

I believe the main reason we have to start thinking in this direction is that we live embedded in a larger system. Our civilization is part of something bigger, whether we like it or not. We can perhaps create our own rules to a certain extent and for a period of time, but sooner or later the laws of the surrounding system will enforce themselves.

We like to look at things in small and understandable pieces and we trace simple paths from cause to effect. We see the causes of our problems as something “out there”, instead of something “in here”. In reality our band-aid solutions only creates further problems, because our perspective is too narrow. Our only real option is to see ourselves in a bigger context and find out, cooperate with and learn from the surrounding system..

How could relocalizing be expressed concretely for a country or a city? What steps could we take to realize it?

Other posts about this subject you might want to read:
Ishmael
The necessity of diversity
Connecting to nature

One important thing to remember about our mind is that it interprets and colours our perception of the world. We might think that our inner world is a representation of what is out there, that our senses are like a camera displaying images and this is what we experience. But that’s not the case. Science have shown how our perception is deeply coloured by our emotions and preconceptions. This colouring and interpretation happens before we are consciously aware of it. The pathway of a visual image for example goes through parts of the brain that handles emotions and the ability to form concepts.

You might have heard of the experiments when people watch neutral images that are mixed with images with strong emotional content for a very short period of time. This is called subliminal emotional stimulus. The observer is not aware of the mixed-in picture, but they react to it subconsciously. If he afterwards tries to draw what he saw, the mood of his drawing is affected by the mixed-in picture.

You might also have seen those visual illusions where several images are hidden in a single picture. While watching them, our mind subconsciously tries to interpret and fill in what is missing and suddenly we see the image. The mind flips back and forth between possible interpretations.

In the picture to the right, even though we know that the pillars are equal in size, we strongly feel like the rightmost pillar is the longest. Our brain interprets the lines as parallel lines going away in distance from us instead of converging lines on a flat sheet of paper. This is mostly a learned and a cultural behaviour.

Our mind is creating an inner world that is a mix of what is out there and our own ideas and emotions that seem fitting. This happen more rapidly that we can consciously notice. Our mind strives to interpret what we perceive in familiar terms for us to make us feel safe. More often than we realize we see what we expect to see and the unexpected pass unnoticed.

We need to be aware of this behaviour of the mind. When we try to learn new things, this filter is active. When we try to communicate, the difference in interpretations easily leads to misunderstandings. If we are asked to describe facts about an event we often jump to interpretations quickly..

It is quite possible to learn to know your own perception and conceptualization process and recognize more of the “raw” data that comes from your senses. You can train yourself to separate observation from interpretation. You can make regular reflections a frequent habit. Probably you have to slow down your life also.

We live in an information age in which conceptualization is a prominent ingredient and it is deeply rooted. Our lives are crammed with activities and we are easily fooled by mainstream messages. We follow our common “culture” almost blindly. Let’s assume responsibility of our minds and actions.

Other posts about this sbuject you might want to read:
Humanness and conversation
Your thoughts are not you

A few days ago I found a parcel from the System Dynamics Society in my mailbox. No surprise, because I can’t stop looking for interesting sources regarding systems thinking. The System Dynamics Society has a DVD series with a PhD seminar in System Dynamics with Jay Forrester from 1999. The series consists of 11 sessions, one DVD for each session. Each session is 3 hours long. You also get a CD with recommended readings (pdf format) for each session. Jay Forrester is the father of System Dynamics, which is in many ways, is foundational to systems thinking. This first DVD was very interesting. The series will be a nice complement to the course from UNESCO which is very hands-on. I like to hear and read about a subject from different viewpoints.

The series consists of
A  What is System Dynamics?
B  World Dynamics
C  Corporate Growth
D  Non-linearity
E  Theory Underlying Modeling
F  Group Model Building
G  Confidence in Models
H  The National Model
I  Ethics in Modeling
J  System Dynamics in Management Education
K The Future of System Dynamics

We have many interesting initiatives in Sweden; I have written about Tällberg Foundation earlier. We also have the Stockholm Resilience Centre, which was started in January 2007. It is an international centre that focuses on research for governance of social-ecological systems with a special emphasis on resilience. The term social-ecological means that humans  must be seen as a part of, not apart from, nature.

What is resilience? Wikipedia says:

Resilience is the property of a material to absorb energy when it is deformed elastically and then, upon unloading to have this energy recovered.

Stockholm Resilience Centre defines it this way:

Resilience refers to the capacity of a social-ecological system both to withstand perturbations from for instance climate or economic shocks and to rebuild and renew itself afterwards.

A resilient system is prepared for change and can deal with it and survive. It bounces back after challenges and shocks. Its goals are sustainability. Nature is designed this way.

Most of our man-made systems have developed in the other direction. We desire efficiency, maximized production and monetary profit. Diversity is suffocated. Healthy buffering is removed and just-in-time is what counts. The result is short-sightedness. We get fragile and nervous systems. In economical turbulence, when one fall – many others fall. We have to identify the dangerous policies and exchange them for resilient policies, whether it be in the social, economical or any area.

Stockholm Resilience Centre have a lot of interesting videos at their site, many interviews and some seminars. For example, have a look at an interview with Buzz Holling, a well-known researcher on this subject.

I have been busy the last weeks studying. Every minute I could spare during the holidays I would jump into the System Dynamics course and work with modelling. It’s so incredibly interesting! I decided that I didn’t want to stay on the level of just knowing about systems thinking and appreciating a fine theory. I wanted to go deeper and get my hands dirty with system models. I believe that not until you have wrestled with dependencies, feedbacks and non-linearities and tried to describe their behaviour and consequences, you begin to realize the true meaning of  a system.

I have worked with growth models and spent some hours fiddling with exponential simulations and suddenly I realized that I had not understood the impact of exponential growth. We look at an exponential curve and really see and act as though it was a linear one, with sometimes disastrous consequences. Most of us are untrained when it comes to complexities and feedback, how the world really works and this is reflected in the policies that are made.

I have taken yet another step into applying systems thinking. You can gratulate me to becoming a student at the Catedra UNESCO de Sostenibilitat at Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya in Barcelona. The System Dynamics Group have distance courses and I have started with one of them. I did some research and found only two places (in the world) offering distance courses in this subject. Reading books is a good way to learn, but now I have a professor to discuss with!

Astrakan

Some weeks ago I attended a 3-day course in process modelling and modelling facilitation. It was at Astrakan in Stockholm. This particular way of modelling is called the Astrakan Method and is used by many in Sweden. It is also used by one of my customers in Umeå. The course was very interesting, but I became aware of how much systems thinking in general and system dynamics in particular can enhance a discussion and a modelling session.

Systemic thinking

The purpose of process modelling is to identify the core processes, concepts and “value objects” of a business. The “value objects” are the products or services that are valuable for the customers. You divide each process into sub processes and note how each sub process adds value to the “value objects”. But as soon as you begin to divide into smaller units you risk losing sight of relations and emergent properties. Also each process lives in a context and is related to other sub contexts, which is important to keep in mind. A modelling method is a way to look at the real world and create abstract concepts and structure out of what you see. The method gives you tools to capture certain perspectives. The systemic thinking has to be part of your approach or you will miss a very important perspective.

Dynamics

When working with change, you model the current situation of the business and the desired future. From these two process maps you design a path of change. The problem is that as you begin to move toward your goal, step by step, by changing parameters, your  current situation also changes. Not only that; what surrounds you, the whole context probably changes. Surprising side effects show up after a while. The world is dynamic and complex with a lot of interdependencies. We need tools to model the dynamic dependencies in order to understand change. We need a way look at the dynamics and create an abstract model that helps us to get a better at navigating. We need the dynamic modelling approach.

My decision

So I decided to go deeper into this subject. The last weeks I have studied Sterman, Business Dynamics and Morecroft, Strategic Modelling and Business Dynamics. Both are great books that complement each other. Sterman’s book is thick (almost 1000 pages), comprehensive and with numerous examples. Morecroft is more pragmatic, he shows how to build  real models with calculations and all from practical cases. The book uses the software iThink and on the accompanying cd there are several real models to learn from and play with.

It seems that people has problems understanding the seriousness of global warming. We look at exponential curves in diagrams, but somehow perceive them as linear. When we have found one cause to a problem, we stop searching and we believe that by resolving that single problem everything is OK. Our common way of thinking is linear, simple cause and effect, while reality is circular dependent and complex.

We have a hard time imagining even the simplest feedback loop system. Why is it so? Because we have not been trained in this way of thinking, systems thinking. The human being is good at conceptualizing, but we have been walking on the wrong path here. I find this challenge of training people in systems thinking so interesting. From pre-schooling to university studies, this way of thinking should penetrate our conceptualization, because this is how the world works.

I came across this very interesting blog called Climate Interactive – vigorous sharing of user-friendly simulations. What a great initiative! Making climate simulators easy to understand and accessible to a larger audience. These fellows arrange workshops with decision-makers, where a key ingredient is role-playing, giving simulated but first-hand experience what will happen. The organisation behind this initiative Sustainability Institute is working on a simulator called Pangaea that will be available on-line soon as it appears.

Simulators and games are a great way to learn in an easy way. I will continue to search for more of this and give you a report. Imagine having first a thought-provoking, engaging and participative simulation/gaming-session and after that a  world cafe conversation sharing thoughts and feelings.