15 Minute Foreplay™ Conversation with Rika Preiser (PhD).

In this conversation Tumelo Mojapelo talks to Dr Rika Preiser about what systems thinking is and why it’s important to use this approach to face uncertainty.

Tumelo Mojapelo: Hi everyone, my name is Tumelo Mojapelo. Today we are having a 15 Minute Conversation with Rika. Rika, please just introduce yourself and just tell us a bit about what systems thinking is for all our viewers who don’t know what it is.

Dr Rika Preiser: Thank you very much Tumi, for the invitation to join you. My name is Rika Preiser. I’m based at the Stellenbosch Centre called the Centre for Sustainability Transitions. It’s an interdisciplinary research centre where I’m an associate professor and where I’ve been working on using systems thinking since, I would say, 2009, in respect of how to solve problems better and how to understand change. 

So I have a background in philosophy and anthropology and I think my ideas were, what kind of inspired me, is how these ideas were represented in the field of science. And of course then with the birth of our centre, we drew people who were, I would say, working at the coal face. People who are activists, change makers, decision makers, NGO owners and activists. I would say industry, parastatals that all thought that engaging with sustainability and decision-making in this time of uncertainty needs a new perspective. 

And so all our ideas that we had and the ideas of systems thinking that were born, I would say, after the Second World War and kind of became a body of knowledge around about the 1950s, are challenged really to engage with these current, I would say, challenges that we have in the world, mainly that has to do with how things change, the kind of, I’d say the fact that it’s…  nothing is really predictable, the uncertainty, but also understanding that the models and the methods and the decision-making models that we’ve had about how to engage with business, they don’t hold anymore for the times in which we are living. 

So really systems thinking and my work around that is to explore how a better understanding of systems thinking or understanding how that works could help us inform decision-making in a better way and making interventions in a way that acknowledges how things are interrelated with one another. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: So for someone who doesn’t know, especially, like, a leader who’s just trying to figure things out, what is system thinking? Especially now that you mentioned that you are trying to focus on your approaches within systems thinking that deal with uncertainty as well as making decisions in a world full of complexity and uncertainty. 

Dr Rika Preiser: Systems thinking emerged after the Second World War, like I mentioned, when researchers really were, I would say, forced to work together to solve problems. In this space, physicists had to work with economists and sociologists and government policymakers to kind of see how to restructure the world after that time and drawing on knowledge  that came out of neural network, understanding the brain and how the brain operates and how we can model that, understanding, a deeper understanding of the biosphere and ecosystems and then combined with, I would say, advancements in computer technology and cybernetics as they call it. 

This idea of systems thinking emerged and really the core idea is that we rethink that reality doesn’t exist out of little small building blocks that kind of stand foreign by themselves, but actually that we see reality emerging as how these different components are actually linked with, together and that these components interact on each other in specific ways. And the way in which they interact on each other is not like what they call very linear, so the amount of input, so if you would push a little block, the amount of effort you would exert on pushing the block would, according to kind of Newtonian laws, you could kind of then make a little equation about that and say the amount of effort you put into moving the block would make it predictable how far the block would move. So that’s because very predictable Newtonian mechanisms and the science that influences that is that once we have all those criteria, we can make predictions and we can put them into the system and we can predict how big or far the move would be depending on the weight and the speed of the block at which it moves. 

But living systems work with a different kind of a logic. We say that they have nonlinear interactions, so if you think about, for example, using nitrogen in the earth or putting compost in the earth, the amount of nitrogen that you put into the soil might have some kind of consequence that you could measure plant growth, maybe not totally directly to the amount of compost you put in the soil, but at some stage if you put more compost on the plant, it will even die. So it means that our input and output models work in a different way and that there are cumulative effects and those cumulative effects… they produce what we call emergent phenomena, unexpected outcomes and they have what we then call cascading mechanisms. So those effects, they don’t just work on the things that we are operating at right now, but they have cascading effects into the whole system. 

So and we saw that very nicely, well in a very bad way, I would say, but in a very spectacular way with a Covid pandemic where something really small that happened in a local market in Wuhan had cascading effects right until where we sat in our living rooms and had to be locked in thousands of kilometres away. And once we understand that actually each interaction in the world operates like that, that challenges how we think about the future, how we make decisions, how we think about our organisations and often we define organisations as something that’s quite a closed unit and that we want to well define it, that we have our operations inside that. But what the system’s thinking tells us… that we are actually context specific, we are contextually located and everything we do in a specific context will have these cascading effects into other contexts. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: That’s very interesting. So what makes it different to other decision making models or frameworks? 

Dr Rika Preiser: I think from what we’ve inherited from, I would say, traditional scientific methods that stemmed from I would say science that was born in the 19, well in the 16 somethings, in the 1618. Our understanding of the world at that time really assumed that we were kind of what we call systems in equilibrium, meaning that things were well defined and we could understand them if we knew what the parts were, what the interactions were. 

But the science really that informed systems thinking is what we call the science of non-equilibrium. And that’s a kind of an understanding of reality and how things work in organisations that says that something always has to be out of balance for it to be alive. And that these changes that happen in how we engage with information or energy or how we interact that can never be in equilibrium or in a kind of a stasis. And when things are out of equilibrium it means that our economic models have to change. Our economic models today, the idea of capitalism, the idea of neoliberal economic modelling assumes a kind of an equilibrium, I would say, status of the world. 

But really if we understand that the world is a complex system and systems thinking can help us understand that we need a new economic model for understanding. There isn’t something like a rational agent that makes decisions based on some kind of understanding of equilibrium, status of the world, and also individuals aren’t the same. We make decisions really based on all other kinds of things. So how do organisations make decisions? So how do we think about risk? How do we think about strategy? All these models that we currently have were informed by a certain understanding of the world that is in stasis, well defined and predictable. The idea of a management organogram for example assumes that there’s a leader and then there’s departments and then there’s workers. It assumes that leadership or decision-making can be concentrated in one specific spot. But systems thinking tells us that actually living systems have what we call a way of organising themselves in a way that the leadership or agency can be located in any place of the system. And if we can start activating those capacities, we’ll have a different understanding of an organogram or leadership even. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: I like this talk about leadership and how sometimes the assumption is that there’s a structured approach to who has power or who has the potential to mobilise or give people a sense of agency. And also the idea that sometimes leadership is not, especially in an organisational setting, is not always an allocated way. You would assume it would be allocated, which brings me to my next question. If you are a leader and you want to maybe use the principles or the principles of systems thinking to be able to make decisions and maybe also give agency, right, to your team, how would you go about that? How would you integrate those principles into your organisation or not even your organisation? Let’s start with yourself into the decisions that you make because it seems like you’d have to have a mindset shift from where you move from thinking that things are linear and predictable to where you understand that in a complex environment uncertainty can come from anywhere. 

Dr Rika Preiser: Absolutely. I think that’s maybe the beginning, to expect uncertainty and to not be surprised by it and know that we should be calculating expected, you know, that into our kind of understanding of the world and that things are more fluid than they are stable. 

But I would say also, to kind of embrace the fact that context matters and that context isn’t just the backdrop into where our organisation is based, but context actually plays a very positive role into how the organisation is shaped and emerges. So once we also shift to understand that context is something that’s alive, that’s a constant, there’s a constant feeding back and forth and also kind of a, I would say, a mutually constituting element of context to what the organisation is. We have to think differently then about, you know, how do we think about import, export, how do we think about structuring an organisation, what kind of incentives do we offer and what is the role and the function of that organisation within the context once again. So these things are mutually constituting, so that changes our idea of how we are situated. 

And I think also to kind of allow for positive learning to happen all the time, reflection, if things are, if complex systems are constituted through relations, it also means that we have to actually invest a lot more in relationship building, understanding that relationship building is about building trust and that these relations is actually what keeps our business alive. It’s not an add-on, it’s not an extra something that we kind of put into the budget when we have  time and capacity, but fostering good relations within the organisation and within the context of the organization is quite key. 

And also I would say then to actually start thinking about what are those small things that we could do and this is what the idea of leverage points, what are the small things that we could do that might have a large effect. Often we think we need a lot of money and huge budget to bring about change, but if we understand this idea that small things can have large effects, we can actually optimise in a much different way than what we think at, you know, often we say we don’t have resources, but actually we have to start reading the system and see where are those leverage points that can be a small change that could have a large effect. And I think that that doesn’t have to cost the world in a sense and we can optimise on that. 

And then also the idea of optimisation is challenged because if we look at our supply chain systems these days, they are so optimised that they make the system quite rigid and when something is rigid it’s very brittle and breaks easily. So to build in some slowness or some reserve or some kind of redundancy so that we don’t optimise to such effect that we actually kill the system instead of keeping it alive. 

So I think that those are the small things that we can start implementing.

Tumelo Mojapelo: I like this idea of doing small things. Have you ever had an instance and maybe you can share an example where you’ve seen people do small things but they were disastrous and how do we avoid that using systems thinking? Is there, like, I mean, I’m so sorry. 

Dr Rika Preiser: Yeah…

Tumelo Mojapelo: No, sometimes you do something and what basically happens is you’re doing this small thing and you think it’s got a positive effect but it’s reinforcing a cycle that when you add its compounding effect is actually negative. So I mean how do you firstly, decipher and how do you avoid those cycles where you just literally go into the spiral where you’re doing these little things and you think they’re good but they’re actually negative? 

Dr Rika Preiser: So, like, meaning I would say, like, microaggressions in the workplace where these these kind of microaggressions, you kind of just ignore someone all the time or you speak up in the wrong way or you show up in the wrong way but people have to work with you – that adds up and people feel excluded in, experience racism or sexism in a very large way. That’s, I would say, a really good example of how small things can have large effects in a negative sense. So that’s I think…  that’s quite, that’s coming quite to the fore these days, you know, that how do we, you know, how do we…  so that’s the other side of it that, you know, that just because something is small it doesn’t mean it does, you know, those effects can’t compound and bring about huge experiences of exclusion, inequality, feeling unsafe in the workplace and also the effects of privilege, for example, I would say are such kind of micro, you know, aggressions. 

So understanding those things I would say is really a space for ,for people then to start putting effort into that as well, you know to say, well how do we, you know, how do we…  what are the things that we can do to start seeing those things, become aware of them, understanding that they, these…  have cumulative effects? And on the other side it is also those are the spaces where this… where it’s the most exciting I think to start conversations and to say well, you know, if this is, you know, these are, we can actually change that through having different kinds of conversations. We don’t have to build a new building or you know build a new institution to change those things, we actually have the power and can empower ourselves to connect with each other in different ways, it wouldn’t cost a lot, it will just take some kind of willingness and awareness and people that are, that actually have the courage to, you know, to be vulnerable with each other in a way that that can hold that space for each other so, so those are also what we call…  so we work with this notion of what we call transformative spaces and where we become very mindful about what are the small signals that we can bring to this, to a space that … that might bring, might make people feel more welcome, more at home and it doesn’t cost much, it just really… it costs…  it takes more like a courage and will to to be able to expose our humanity a bit more rather than, you know, hiding behind our structures that we have.

Tumelo Mojapelo: I like this, what you’re talking about and I just want to ask you one final question because I think you’ve answered so many of my questions. How does, then, a leader using systems thinking, right, decide on wise actions for the future? Because I love the way you talked about creating transformative spaces, so in the case of transformative spaces… so, working with the example that you’ve given, how does the leader start? So if I needed, like, the five steps of integrating systems thinking into my approach or let’s say, the five steps of creating a transformative space, where do I begin and how do I do it?  

Dr Rika Preiser: That’s the Holy Grail you’re speaking about and I think there isn’t a recipe or a, you know, a quick fix for any of these or a best practice book. Even I think it starts really with awareness, understanding that we impact on each other in ways that we might have intentions about but also those intentions would have unintentional consequences and having an awareness or understanding that we will always be in trouble and for that reason we actually have to exert more effort in, like I say, building relationships, creating spaces where people can show up differently. Allowing spaces for people to show up through diversity and respect. 

Those things seem so minimal and so small but it has…  it opens up, I would say… often when we come to work we just assume that we are roles, that we are, you know, that we show up in roles that are functional and purposeful but actually we show up as whole people so allowing people to show up in a whole way where they can bring their embodied selves to a space, already, I would say, opens up a beginning for relational, you know relational, I would say, competency, relational awareness to warm up, you know, a room or a working environment and from there on I would say reflexiveness, honesty, courage, willingness to be open-minded, to change often, willingness to reflect critically on privilege, critically on who’s included/excluded and is important but then also thinking that not everything that can be measurable, speaking of KPIs, actually can’t…  so creating other kinds of mechanisms and incentives that recognises the labour of love and the hard work that people bring to a space to make a space what it is, I would say, is really one of those more intangible things but they are so important.

Being able and willing to learn, adapt, be inclusive and get everyone’s voice in the place, I think, allows us to show up as humans and for me, you know, we’ve actually lost how to show up or create spaces for that because when we only are interested in KPIs or measuring outputs or to optimise [then] the warmth of your humanity has to kind of go out of the window, so how do we bring that recognition back into a space, I would say, is one of the the key things for me. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: Thank you so much Rika for your time. I’m just gonna maybe just wrap up what you said basically in a nutshell. Systems thinking is an approach that basically humanises the way we look at uncertainty and make decisions and it’s actually a method or let’s say, framework, that is very necessary in today’s world because, like you say, we’re not one dimensional rigid individuals but when we come into a space regardless of whether we are facing uncertainty or complexity we come with our whole selves, not just one dimension of ourselves and those, and the way we show up actually has an impact on the results or the outcomes of what happens within a setting or an organisation. 

Dr Rika Preiser: Absolutely…

Tumelo Mojapelo: Thank you so much, thank you so much for your time. For those who are watching, please continue to stay tuned to our 15 minute conversations. There are a few previous conversations that you can look back on that built on this concept. Like, subscribe and join us for future conversations, Thank you, thank you, Rika. 

Dr Rika Preiser: Thank you very much.

By Flux Trends 

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