Without Systems and Complexity Thinking There Is no Progress - or Why Bureaucracy Needs to Become Curious Comment on "What Can Policy-Makers Get out of Systems Thinking? Policy Partners' Experiences of a Systems-Focused Research Collaboration in Preventive Health".

Joachim P. Sturmberg

doi:10.34172/ijhpm.2020.45

Abstract

The bureaucracy’s goal is to maintain uniformity and control within discrete areas of activity and relies on hierarchical processes and procedural correctness as means to suppress autonomous decision making. That worldview, however, is unsuited for problem solving of real world VUCA (Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) problems. Solving wicked problems in the VUCA world requires curiosity, creativity and collaboration, and a willingness to deeply engage and an ability to painstakingly work through their seemingly contradictory and chaotic pathways. In addition, it necessitates leadership. Leaders require a deep – indeed academic – understanding of the nature of the problems and the veracity of various problem-solving approaches. Leadership after all means "[facilitating] the necessary adaptive work that needs to be done by the people connected to the problem." That are the people at the coalface who understand and have to manage the complexities relating to problems unique to their local environment for which of the shelf solutions never work. Systems and complexity thinking is more than a tool, it is – in a sense – a way of being, namely deeply interested in understanding the highly interconnected and interdependent nature of the issues affecting our life and work. Hence, system and complexity thinking is, contrary to what Haynes and colleagues state in their "summation for the public reader," neither "overwhelming and hard [nor difficult] to use practically ." Such a view is as much misleading as selfdefeating.

Highlights

People often say that I’m curious about too many things at once
Best-possible solutions to such problems can only arise from the continual engagement and adaptation of its stakeholders. This commentary firstly provides a brief background to systems and complexity thinking and its application to problemsolving in an uncertain environment
Systems and Complexity Thinking – A Different Way of Seeing the World Max Planck famously said: “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

Summary

Introduction

People often say that I’m curious about too many things at once. But can you really forbid a man from harbouring a desire to know and embrace everything that surrounds him?. It describes the nature of adaptive leadership and highlights that true leaders engage in the problem-solving process (rather than prescribe their solutions).

Results

Conclusion