See It! Days 20-24

This post is part of a series showing my working through the 2025 Advent of System Seeing exercises set by Ruth Malan. For background see the introduction.

As we reach the final few days of exercises we're into reflection and consolidation of ideas.

Day 20

Task: (1) Look across the past 19 days and draw out concepts related to systems (2) Consider what else you'd like to add (3) Jot down some questions (4) What topic would you like to add, as the focus of another page on your System zine?

Components: parts, relationships, boundaries, effects, feedback, change over time, inputs and outputs, failure modes, context, constraints.

Tools: zoom in/out, follow a specific path, take actor perspectives, use multiple models, identify needs (and who they belong to), identify causes (and the causes of the causes), focus on the parts of the system that matter today, don't forget how we got here, identify constraints and assumptions.

Questions/Missing:

Seeking/exploiting existing perspectives
Comparing and contrasting models
Consolidating insights from different models
Maintaining (or not) models over time
Driving towards the most important information
When to use what type of model
Provide ways to understand the value of different kinds of model
More focus on collaboration
Where do feeling and instinct come into this?
Do more on changing the system
Why is this still an art rather than a science?
Graphical models for exploration vs for sharing information
We covered causal loops but there was nothing on stocks and flows?
No acknowledgement that we might be part of the system? (Our investigations might influence actors.)
Unintended/unexpected/unwanted consequences
Models are there to explore what matters to you. It's fine to model a subsystem. Just be aware that's what it is.
Judging the trustworthiness of a source

For the zine page, I chose exploration because investigating a system is exploration.

Day 21

Task: Create a zine page on your topic from day 21, capturing related ideas, concepts, using expressive visual analogies and sketches to make ideas vivid.

I wanted to get across the idea that you will need to explore the system you are looking at in order to understand it.

I wondered about using quotes like "the map is not the territory" but decided to try to keep it simple. There is no room for subtlety in this page: I would have liked to have talked about the constant change, the need to be clear about what you're trying to accomplish, focussing on the relevant pieces and so on.

Day 22

Task: Identify a challenge in the situation you have been exploring, and frame a goal related to that challenge where various people need to play a role. What would you do next?

This is a nice exercise, a different dimension to the ones we've covered in the earlier days. It's striking to me that it doesn't explicitly call out politics as a factor.

Day 23

Task: Shifting perspectives is one way to notice what we are missing or adding. Pick an important conversation you've recently had, and record what you said against what you were feeling at each stage.

There are, unsurprisingly, differences between the internal monologue and the external dialogue and, given the context, I think it can be instructive to take a systems view of that. Some initial thoughts on a difficult conversation between colleagues:

The participants are players in a shared system (actually, in shared systems)
They will be conscious that the productivity of the system as a whole depends on them having a smooth (enough) interaction
Stating bluntly what each of them feels might add friction to the system
... so social norms form part of the context
Social norms can vary significantly between team members (e.g. from different cultures)
Many factors might influence the interaction, e.g. office politics
... personal interest
... relative position in the company hierarchy
... historical interactions between these participants
... the subject matter, and relative levels of expertise, ownership, or interest in it
... responsibility for the outcome
... how busy the participants are
... how often they've had some version of this conversation
... how invested they are in the success of this project

And so on. For what it's worth, some of the most valuable training I ever had was in assertiveness, which collapses all of that stuff into a big blob, and focusses on being able to drive the conversation to the topics that are most important whatever the context. I wrote about it here.

Day 24

Task: Wrap up the Advent(ure) in System Seeing by pulling some of your work into a zine. It's neat to create a physical memento and it's your gift to yourself for completing the Advent(ure)!

As I had already made 8 zine pages I thought I'd finish off the exercises by making a cover. I've already said that this kind of work is exploration for me, so it didn't take long to decide to steal the cover of Explore It! (Sorry Elisabeth!)

And the full zine:

Image: Inspired by Explore It! by Elisabeth Hendrickson. Pragmatic Press

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Hiccupps

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