Casual Causal Loop Diagrams

Donella Meadows book “Thinking in Systems” explores complex relationship and discusses them in an easy to understand language. She examines why oil fields are not completely drained before companies move on to the next one (dynamics of depletion), what incentives make illegal drugs obtainable even with strict government policies that discourage drug-use (balancing loops), and why pest attacks on fir forests reak widespread havoc (non-linear feedback loops).

This weekend I learned that Ms. Meadows is a gifted storyteller and that systems thinking is not straightforward. I’ll be honest, my first foray into actually diagramming systems was tough. It’s one thing to read a story and see a systems diagram and a whole nother thing to make one. What is a stock and flow? Where do the little faucets go? How are bad loans from Washington Mutal like a bathtub?

I think one of the main reasons it was hard to get a handle on systems diagramming is that is part of a larger process. In fact it is step 5 of a 6 step process.

Going over Marsha’s slides again I tried to understand what is going on. This is what I figured out thus far:

Systems Thinking focuses heavily on exploring and framing the problem.

Step 1 - Tell a story and frame the issue. What’s happening? What’s observable? Who’s involved? Who’s impacted? How can we frame the issue without couching it in a biased solution?

Step 2 - Sketch the trends. How is behavior changing over time? Do the trends repeat every day, week, century? Do we need a short amount of time to see the trends, or a long amount of time?

Step 3 - Name the variables. What is measurable and affecting or affected by the changing behavior(s) over time? Cast the net wide!

Step 4 - Set boundaries to the problem and identify stakeholders. What are crucial elements in telling the story for the point of view and context already selected? Like a photograph, stories can always be zoomed in and zoomed out. The important thing is to capture the essence of the issue and ensure everyone (stakeholders) who will impact potential changes in the system are identified and brought into the process.

Step 5 - Make the system visible! Finally, after all that research and work distilling down issues and variables it is time to draw the boxes and arrows to make stock and flow diagrams or causal loop diagrams!

Step 6 - Determine the leverage points. Once the system is visible it is possible to see where and how solutions can create change.

Seeing it all laid out like that helps me understand what systems diagramming is about and makes me realize that during the intensive I focused much of my attention on step 5. No wonder I was frustrated. I jumped into the middle of a process without setting the groundwork.

In fact, it seems that systems thinking is a step-by-step process to thinking about a problem. As Albert Einstein once said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first fifty-five minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.” If Mr. Einstein is right, then spending 5 out of the 6 steps understanding the problem is a smart approach.

This all brings me back to the mistake I made when I first saw the phrase “causal loop diagram”. I read that to be casual, not causal. After spending a weekend wrestling with these diagrams I realize that these are not “casual” diagrams that you can just sit down and quickly sketch out. You can’t start one whenever you like. They require commitment and are the fruitiation of many prior steps of work. There is nothing relaxed, unconcerned, or casual about them.

Listening to the news about government defaults, budget negotiations, and health care issues I see systems at play all around me. So many of the commentators want to make the connections within the system “casual”. We tend to want quick fixes based off quickly gathered, casual information, “Let’s put a quick band-aid on this issue and get back to it later.” Pretty soon we have impeding doom all around us with systems that have never been truly changed. As my teammate Justice Reign reminds us, “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” So let’s spend time understanding the systems, change them and get the results that we truly desire.

I can’t wait to dive in with my team and see what interesting insights we can glean from a systems thinking process and what system changes we take on!