Lineages of Systems Practices

A couple of years ago, us two – Saskia Rysenbry and Laura Winn – working together at the School of System Change - spent a few months in Aotearoa New Zealand. In the swirling energy of a post-cyclone summer season, we started to visually explore our understanding of how different currents of systems change thinking had come about, the lineages they have formed, and where the tools and frameworks of this field situate themselves in wider origins of practice. The image we created – beautifully drawn by Saskia – has now had the chance to be socialised with multiple groups of people, and we would like to share it more widely.

We had a conversation last December to reconnect with this work and structure ideas for this piece of writing, which you can listen to here:

The ground for this piece of work goes back to several previous iterations of visualising and organising the frameworks of the field, as understood through the multi-method approach of the School of System Change. Whereas these earlier iterations were looking to organise how these tools and frameworks were used, the more recent visual reflects thinking on where they come from. This was in response to a growing concern that when systems change frameworks are used without connecting to their deeper, wider lineage of understanding and working in the world, they are at best less powerful, and at worst they perpetuate ways of thinking that are part of the problem people are looking to address in the first place.

We are aware that this visualising work draws on our own experience, practice and knowledge of systems change thinking and methodologies, and our understanding of their inspirations. It therefore holds strong biases and does not seek to map everything, so much as give a sense of the interconnections, cross-pollination and co-existence of multiple currents and schools of thought in the field.

We did this before AI was widely available for this kind of mapping exercise, through a very careful and caring process. We were asking ourselves in a very human way: How do you visualise something that is so much about honouring the lineages and what went before us? We went through several versions before we felt this one come alive for us.

We hope that this image may inspire others who are looking to deepen their systems change practice to question the lineages of thinking they are working within, seek further understanding of the currents their practice is drawing from, and broaden those currents.

We would like it to inspire people to see frameworks and tools as instruments of coherent lineages of practice, and take care to not use them purely functionally – uprooting them in an extractive manner – but rather with an understanding of the philosophy they are wielding and the ecology of ideas they belong to.

As we have been working with this image over the last couple of years, a few principles have emerged for how we might engage with it as a living resource:

An example of engaging in this way with the image comes from an experience with someone in a School of System Change workshop. They were excited to see indigenous practice on the image, having never considered this as part of systems change before, being themselves steeped in systems dynamics and complexity science which are in a very different zone on the lineages image.

The invitation they sensed from being with this image was to move from where they were towards indigenous practice through an exploration of living systems thinking and regenerative development, which could enable them to grow ways of thinking adjacent to indigenous knowledge and therefore their capacity to engage more fully with what might be on offer. This could also include better understanding the foundations of the schools of thought they were familiar with, to grow discernment as well as a wider toolkit of frameworks.

Working on this image over several months, and then working with it iteratively has helped us own and lift up the wholeness that we bring to our work as systems change practitioners. We find ourselves asking: What does it mean to feel into lineage? For Laura, this means continuing to converse with indigenous thinking – particularly Maori because I was born in Aotearoa New Zealand, while also asking what it means to be indigenous to Europe where my ancestors are from, and France where I live. I am also actively renewing my eco-feminist thought and bringing it more openly into all my work, which is taking root in regenerative development practice.

For Saskia, this means exploring between places and lineages. Growing up in Aotearoa New Zealand shaped an ongoing relationship being Pākehā (a New Zealander of European ancestry, in relationship with Māori as tangata whenua, people of the land), consciously engaging with what that identity carries and with being in relationship with people, land, culture and time. Now living in Europe, this inquiry continues through being amongst ancestral lands and reconnecting with European lineage. Across her work, Saskia explores how change happens, moving between different change ecosystems and designerly ways of being and knowing.

When sharing this visual now, we notice that we’ve named currents but not people. There is a living body of work behind this, and it would be nourishing and honouring to establish a bibliography alongside the visual. Perhaps there is also an anthology to publish? We had a book project alongside this visual, coming alive again now!

As we offer this visual out into the world, we’ve crafted a few questions for you as you engage with the map. Rather than thinking about what is in the map we invite you to explore what the visual reflects about what is in you?