Architecture and Archetypes for Systems Transformation

The authors Christian Seelos and Johanna Mair have extensive experience with global, national, and organizational change initiatives.  Writing in the Stanford Social Innovation Review they provided recommendations for working in systems based on a model of social systems architecture fortified by archetypes of successful improvement initiatives.  

Setting up his model of social systems architecture, Seelos writes:  “System work seeks to address social problems by making substantive and lasting changes to the system in which the problems are embedded. Doing such work requires thinking about causal architecture. To reform a system necessitates understanding and then transforming the causal processes that constitute those systems.”

Causal processes are embedded in a layered architecture where observable phenomena at the top of the architecture are driven by hidden dynamics that lie below observable system features.  The layers of architecture defined by Seelos start at the top with a Problem Space. The Problem Space that we are working in involves diversity of preferences, priorities, expectation, attention, resignation, voice, perceptions, and vulnerabilities that require identification and investigation.  This Problem Space lies on top of the Situation Space that we seek to improve.  Perhaps the situation involves jobs, crime, health, discrimination, hunger, literacy, pollution, addiction, or other wicked situations embedded within which are numerous causal pathways. But lying covertly beneath the Problem and Situation Spaces is a layer of Behavioral Architecture that gives rise to the problems and situations that occupy our attention and define our foci.  The Behavioral Architecture refers to the difficult-to-observe patterns of economic, cognitive, normative, and political/power dynamics that shape what is observable and what is possible in a given time.  The true causes of factors observed in the Situation and Problem Spaces lie in the Behavioral Architecture of systems.

Seelos teaches that to truly transform a system people must focus on the causal pathways embedded in and emanating from the Behavioral Architecture.  Focusing on factors in the Situation and Problem spaces relegates our work to addressing symptoms rather that root causes of social problems, and will most likely not produce sustainable, desirable change.

To redirect and strengthen our capacity for meaningful change, Seelos and Mair go on to suggest a language shift. “The term ‘system change’ may not, it turns out, be a good way to articulate our ambitions and potential for improving systems. Complex systems change all the time in a dynamic manner without our interventions. Therefore, change per se is neither interesting nor difficult to achieve. In fact, creating a temporary change by providing food, schooling, loans, and medicines or changing the behavior of some actors is often relatively easy. But if an intervention withdraws without having robustly transformed the causal system architecture, things may be as bad as or even worse than before.”

They identify from their experience two archetypes for systems transformation that might serve as models for groups attempting to make sustainable, desirable change.  

1. Change a System by Building a System.  Instead of identifying and changing the current system state, develop a new system that disrupts reliance on the old system components and interactions.

2. Change a System by Isolating a Sub-system.  Work in specific geographic locations or organizational locations rather than trying to address large systems of systems.  Intervene, observe, and learn in the sub-system and examine how sub-system changes influence elements of the larger system.

Seelos and Mair admit that other archetypes for systems change might and most likely do exist.  What other archetypes for sustainable change have you observed?


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