One day, took a wrong turn and quite literally fell off the Hinesville grid. A series of wrong turns landed me in the middle of a vintage Southern downtown so perfect it could have doubled as the set of a Southern gothic movie. Wide, tree-lined sidewalks bordered a commodious thoroughfare with herringbone parking. A courthouse, the largest building on the downtown square, was flanked by a couple of churches and a long commercial building with street-level retail spaces and offices above. And a block off the square in either direction was residential housing, large houses at first, tapering down to modest but lovely homes beyond. Compared to the rest of Hinesville, the old downtown was a treasure and a relief. Sadly, it was also as dead as a doornail. Nothing moved … there was nobody there. The storefronts were all empty. So were the offices above them. The churches were shuttered, and even the courthouse looked abandoned. It was midday in April, a lovely time of year in Georgia, and Hinesville was dead.

Downtown Hinesville is no longer a place. A place has life, and living things have flow. Their multiple systems are switched on and interdependent. They can sustain themselves to a large extent, and their purpose is built-in and obvious. None of that was evident in downtown Hinesville. And what about the rest of Hinesville? That isn’t a place either. It is a colossal machine, a vending machine, kept going by massive, artificial infusions of federal cash. People live there, of course, but they relate to each other in much the same was as people in a supermarket. There are the usual courtesies, but they could just as easily be at the Piggly Wiggly up the road or the Whole Foods a thousand miles away. There is no shared history or identity, no common future or enduring value in the experience of living there. Hinesville is a postal code and a name on a map, but it is no longer a “civitas,” a place.

In geography, a confluence is the point at which two or more flowing bodies of water meet. The Ohio River is born at the confluence of the Alleghany and the Monongahela Rivers, and ends 981 miles later at its confluence with the Mississippi River. Confluence is present when flows meet and join.

Water isn’t the only thing that flows, of course. Anything that mimics fluid dynamics can be said to “flow.” Data moves in a flow from node to hub to node. When joined to other flows, data becomes information, knowledge, even wisdom. Money flows from many different sources, joining with other flows to become productive capital. Energies of all kinds can be said to flow, from electric power to creativity. Commerce has a flow, discernable in the movement of goods and services. Even crowds of people move in a flow, both on foot and in vehicles.

A living city is a confluent city. It is a place that flows. More precisely, it is where multiple flows converge to create a dynamic, creative, prosperous, attractive, and sustainable place. It is our contention that economic development and isn’t about designing end-states. Planners are not and should not pretend to be Master Architects because planning isn’t a utopian enterprise. The planner’s job is more like a plumber: understand the flows that make up a particular place, and work to optimize their creative and complimentary convergence.

One of our interests has been in creating whole-places that nurture creativity and innovation. To that end, we have recently begun experimenting with a paradigm for placemaking and economic development that we term Econogenesis^™ ─ literally, the creation of an economy. Econogenesis is still an intellectual medley of particular ideas and approaches, including the “economic gardening” model pioneered in Littleton, CO; the “enterprise facilitation” of Ernesto Sirolli (Ripples on the Zambezi); Muhammad Yunus’s ideas on microfinance and microcredit; elements of Distributism, the “third way” economic system; a whole lot of Jane Jacobs and the New Urbanism movement; the “small is beautiful” work of E. F. Schumacher; and Peter Senge’s ideas on “the learning organization.” There are dashes of Richard Florida, Fritjof Capra, Richard David Hames and Donella Meadows in the mix, too!

Although Econogenesis is still nascent, we believe it already contradicts conventional thinking about economic development, which views natural resources as the basis for economic growth. Once identified, natural resources are then exploited by the deployment of financial capital, often without regard to impacts on human ecology.  In contrast, we consider human persons themselves to be the true engine of economic development because it is people who supply value, both as the producers and users of goods and services. Not surprisingly then, our primary focus is on the development of human capital, and especially the creation of conditions in which human ingenuity can be unlocked and unleashed.

What we hope to avoid at all costs is the kind of automobile-centric, one-dimensional “development” seen so often in the United States, where land is cleared, highways built, and dense pods of housing are erected around a central commercial strip. This kind of flat, featureless “crudscape” – to borrow a term from James Howard Kunstler, the author of The Geography of Nowhere – is antithetical to real placemaking, which has as its object the cultivation of richly creative and concordant human social environments. What we hope to achieve is not just housing, and certainly not just “development,” but place … and community.

First, though, it is important to outline some of our foundational principles.  Wherever this exciting project takes us, and whatever ideas are crystallized and enacted, these criteria must be met, or at least not contradicted in practice.

Oriented Toward Whole-Place

Most of the problems faced by communities represent interrelated components in broader, more complex systems. These problems cannot be solved in isolation apart from their impacts on the rest of the system; and attempts to craft such isolated solutions often only leads to greater problems elsewhere.  A ‘whole-place’ orientation will drive placemakers to solicit the perspectives of all stakeholders, including those whose relationship to a particular community is attenuated by geography or culture. This “borderless” mentality enables communities to zoom out on the wider system, and to gain an appreciation for particular challenges and opportunities as manifestations of wider, systemic perturbations. Such zooming in and out is the very heart of whole-systems thinking.

Resilient

We define resilience as nothing more than the ability to adapt to changing conditions in a flow. The model par excellence for resilience is nature itself, which obeys an immutable process of growth, conservation, release, and reorganization known as the “adaptive cycle.” This process is non-linear and dynamic. It embraces complexity, traps and distributes knowledge, conserves energy, is self-organized and self-healing, and is directed toward outcomes that benefit the whole.

Man-made systems tend to be linear, mechanical, and goal-directed. Pumps, pencils, and power plants are examples of linear systems. We need them and they have value, but such systems are highly vulnerable to shocks, both internal and external. In intensely human environments like businesses and communities, where complexity, not simplicity, is the dominant feature, linear systems tend to break down because they simply cannot survive the rate and magnitude of change. Human environments, like natural ecosystems, are resilient to the extent that they obey the adaptive cycle.

Sustainable

To “sustain” means, among other things, “to support, hold, or bear up from below; bear the weight of, as a structure,” and “to supply with food, drink, and other necessities of life.” A sustainable place develops local strategies for providing water, waste conversion, food, energy, recreation, transportation and other critical community needs. While the notion of complete self-sufficiency directly contradicts a whole-systems view of the world, it is possible to establish a level of local sufficiency that is robust and reliable.

A sustainable place is also self-organizing, which is a characteristic of distributed, decentralized networks. A self-organizing community is one in which members are empowered to learn independently, take the initiative, communicate freely, exchange incentives and resolve conflicts. Such communities share common values, which act as mediums of social exchange and provide a baseline for defining whole outcomes.

Human-Scaled

Human-scaled places are those fitted to the social, emotional, physical and intellectual needs of people, not the other way around. This means built-forms – buildings and streetscapes – that are walkable, livable, and encourage cooperative social activity. It means commercial, government, education, and civic arrangements that are comprehensible, accessible, and user-friendly. Human-scaled places offer people a sense of dignity and control, which in turns fosters individual initiative, creativity and innovation. They reduce or eliminate the social and psychic isolation that afflicts high-entropy industrial societies.

Human-scale also demands that places be created with a high degree of inculturation, a fancy word denoting consonance with the embedded culture and ethos of a people. This is especially true in the field of international development, which has sometimes been associated with a kind of cultural imperialism that effectively alienated people from their own traditions, folkways, and beliefs. Human-scale means recognizing that Iraqis or West Africans will simply never be Swiss burghers or Vermont farmers, nor should they be! There is more than enough good “stuff” in every indigenous culture for locally attuned development to work, especially if one brings to the task a whole-place orientation.

Person-Focused

While human-scaled places are fitted to the social, emotional, physical and intellectual needs of people in the aggregate, person-focus means erecting systems that empower particular human beings to realize their potential. Practically, person-focus means building “learning communities,” where education of the young is a given, and opportunities for lifelong learning are available. It also means racial, cultural, religious, and ideological pluralism, equal justice under law, and universal access to basic health care. Most of all, person-focus means providing pathways for persons to learn and practice trades, to create successful businesses and build some measure of economic independence for themselves and their families.

Ultimately, person-focus means achieving the widest possible social distribution of the ownership of productive property. This includes land, but also homes and family-based cottage industries – including crafts, transportation, retail and light manufacturing – as well as cooperatives, guilds and trade associations, with ownership spread equitably among the freemen and women who participate.

Organized for the Common Good

Because human beings flourish within the context of community, and community is rooted in place, the concept of the common good is fundamental to both placemaking and community-building. The common good does not mean privileging the group over persons. Nor is it simply the assertion of individual “rights.” And the common good is not reducible to the utilitarian formula, “the greatest good for the greatest number of people.” The common good means engaging and empowering the range of stakeholders to achieve what we call Win³ solutions: Is it good for you? Is it good for me? Is it good for all our neighbors? Viewed this way, the common good is simply whole-systems thinking crystallized.

These principles are the physics of Econogenesis, the boundaries conditions within which we hope a new and exciting approach to development will blossom; and through that approach, whole-places that are resilient, sustainable, human-scaled, person-focused, and organized for the common good of the people who live there and the planet they live on.

“Ask the people who live there.” So much of what planners and regulators do and have done over the past several decades has missed this very simple point. Oh sure, there are countless charettes and public hearings on the latest proposed zoning changes or development schemes. There are websites and surveys for offering input. But are the people who live there really being heard? More importantly, are the questions being asked, not to mention the solutions being offered, based upon a whole systems understanding? We would suggest that they are not, at least not to the level needed to flow with the rapidly changing conditions we face today.

We have written repeatedly about the convergence of massive global change that is upon us. These conditions bring with them major environmental and health impacts.  They also provide new opportunities that we haven’t even thought about yet (i.e. alternative energy sources/technology, new economies).  But in order to deal with these and many other immediate and emergent conditions, communities must possess an understanding of those conditions, capabilities and the networks at play, not only at their scale of operation but at multiple scales above and below them.  This level of understanding can only come from a process that meaningfully engages key stakeholders in a whole systems dialogue that embraces the complexity and diversity of the community.  It is through this engagement that stakeholders become not just participants but champions and custodians of the projects and initiatives identified during the process.

Just like a ‘good’ engineer must fully understand the conditions within which she is designing, planners must likewise understand the conditions, resources and capabilities of the place for which they are planning, at multiple scales.  Planners are the designers/engineers of places.  Like the good site engineer goes through a thorough analysis of the conditions of a given site, the planner must do an even more in-depth analysis before ever even considering development of a plan.  Unfortunately, most planning today is either very reactionary (to the crisis du jour) or based upon past events and compartmentalized data.  The thinking that is used to solve the major problems of the day is the very same thinking that created most of these problems.

Resilience means the ability to proactively withstand or recover readily from shocks, and to flow with changing conditions. We use the term because we believe it best describes what we are aspiring to create: places and organizations that are resilient. Most planners today are trying to achieve resilience, but they lack the processes required to fully understand (or at least more fully understand) the conditions and capabilities at multiple scales that affect the complex adaptive systems they call their communities.  Traditional visioning exercises and community charrettes are tools that, at least as currently utilized, fall short of reaching the level of understanding required to plan for resilience. What is required is a higher level of understanding, a systems level of understanding.

As already stated, this is a critical point in our history.  Communities and organizations that best understand the complexities inherent in the conditions that are unfolding before them will be the ones most likely to survive and thrive in the years ahead.  Those that do not understand those complexities will not react fast enough or intelligently enough to avoid massive disruptions. The movement towards the whole-systems approach is not realized overnight, and may in fact never be fully realized by any given community. But it is the forward progression towards this level of understanding that will create towns and cities that are able to flow and adapt to change.  In the profiles below we introduce you to a number of towns and cities doing just that. None are perfect in their zooming but each is making major strides towards a whole systems level understanding, and that is enabling them to adapt to change and grow.

Late on September 21, 1989, a formerly Category 5 hurricane, Hugo, slammed into the South Carolina coast with winds of over 135 mph and an unprecedented storm surge. To this day, Hugo remains the second most intense storm to strike the Atlantic coast.

In an eerily similar scenario, on the morning of August 29, 2005, a previous Category 5 hurricane, Katrina, struck the Louisiana coast with winds of over 125 mph and an unprecedented storm surge. Katrina remains the fifth most intense hurricane to strike the Atlantic Coast of the US and is currently the costliest storm in US history.

Perhaps the most appalling similarity is the response to both events of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Following Hugo, then-U.S. Sen. Ernest ‘Fritz’ Hollings of South Carolina called the agency ‘the sorriest bunch of bureaucratic jackasses I’ve ever worked with.’  And of course FEMA’s complete failure following Katrina is still fresh in the minds of most Americans, particularly those along the Gulf Coast.

Shortly after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, the Birmingham News reported on the similarities of this poor federal response, noting, “After the storm smashed into Charleston on Sept. 21, 1989, it took the Federal Emergency Management Agency ten days to open its first disaster application center in the city. There were tens of thousands of claims and too few FEMA workers to handle the crunch.”

But this is where comparisons of Charlestown after Hugo and New Orleans after Katrina come to a screeching halt, because although New Orleans experienced far greater damage as a result of its failed levees, it was the anticipation, preparation and response of these two cities, as well as the state governments of South Carolina and Louisiana, that were tragically different and have had lasting implications for all involved.

Zoomers see all events as conditions. They look at the situation from the 30,000-foot perspective, devise a course of action, take action and adjust course as necessary to adapt to current conditions and prepare for future (emerging) conditions. Their goal is always forward progress. Linear thinkers, by contrast, tend to see events – especially catastrophic events – as isolated, external singularities, as something happening to them. This is a key distinction, because if events are just conditional changes in the systems we inhabit as complex adaptive beings, then we have the capability to adapt and flow with those conditions. If events are seen as something outside of us, then we can tend to see ourselves as helpless victims.

As Hurricane Hugo approached Charleston, long-serving Mayor Joseph Riley understood this thinking at a core level. For years, Riley had been preparing his staff for the possibility of just this emerging condition. A detailed yet flexible plan had been devised to deal with the impact of a major hurricane, and the plan put a premium on finding opportunities in the chaos to propel the city forward. Riley had considered the emerging condition of Hugo much as a general considers his attack on an enemy position. He divided the City into three sectors and pre-positioned key personnel and equipment in each sector, with orders to be ready to mobilize once the storm had passed. The aftermath was characterized by a volley of decisions and acts that nearly matched the intensity of the storm itself, as plans were constantly assessed and adjusted to suit emerging conditions.

In the years since, Mayor Riley has often testified that he was continuously pushing his people to their limits, setting goals and demanding that those goals be surpassed. Everything had to be better, get done faster and the people had to be apprised of progress at every stage. The result was that Charleston’s rebound from Hugo exhibited resilience the way Zoomers use the word. Charleston didn’t just return to its former state, but emerged better and stronger than it had been before Hugo.  Mayor Riley believes that in many ways, Charleston is today far ahead of where it might have been had the storm never struck. That is due in large part to the city’s systems-based approach to rapidly changing conditions and an insistence on seeing opportunities, no matter how dire the situation seemed.

New Orleans, as we know, was a much different story. While failure of the levees certainly added a major destructive element that Charleston did not have to face, many knew that it was only a matter of time before a major hurricane hit New Orleans. And they knew that in all likelihood the levees would not survive a direct hit by a serious storm.  In retrospect, while the federal response in both cities was grossly inadequate, the City of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana seemed even less prepared to deal with Katrina than the federal government.

Sadly, there was no Mayor Riley in New Orleans. Instead, The Crescent City, under the ‘leadership’ of Mayor Ray Nagin, not only failed to adequately prepare New Orleans for the disaster, but in the storm’s aftermath showed a total inability to zoom.  Many of the basic human services that took only weeks to be restored in Charleston were still not operative in parts of New Orleans months and even years later. Where Charleston thrived in the aftermath of catastrophe, New Orleans foundered, and for a while serious people even considered the possibility of a future without a City of New Orleans. Now, years after the storm, media accounts leading up to the New Orleans Saints Super Bowl victory in 2010 still focused on remaining problems left by Katrina and referred to the city and its people as victims of Katrina.

So, how could New Orleans have been better prepared? To answer that question, consider what might have happened if Mayor Nagin and others there had viewed the potential aftermath of a major hurricane as an opportunity? How might the population have responded if a military-like approach to recovery and rebuilding had been planned and executed with precision and force, where fast was not fast enough and better was not good enough? The complexity of these two scenarios and their inherent differences makes it too difficult to draw any firm conclusions or answers to these questions. But we should not forget that Hugo had hit Charlestown 16 years prior to the Katrina event in New Orleans. That’s 16 years of lessons not learned or simply ignored by responsible authorities in the federal government, the City of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana. If the right people had taken the wider view – if there had been a Zoomer like Riley in a position to make a difference – the preparation, recovery and rebuilding of New Orleans might have been very different.

Okay, now we probe to the very core of systems thinking: connectivity.  You’ll recall that in our first discussion, we defined a system as “an integrated set of elements that perform a desired function.” That’s not the only definition of a system, but it shares with all others some critical pieces. First, there are parts, a “set of elements” in our construction. Second, the parts relate to one another in some fashion; they are integrated. Third, there is a rational logic to the integration of the parts; a common purpose or function. If something is comprised of all three of these – parts that relate to one another for a common purpose – we are in the presence of a system.

• Parts
• Relation (or connectedness)
• Purpose

If indeed these are the three critical elements that comprise a system, let’s further note that it is the second element – relation – that gives a system coherence and therefore meaning. A faucet, a hose, and a sprinker head are three parts manufactured separately. It is only when the three are connected that “they” become an “it.” A sprinkler system. Parts. Relation. Purpose.

What is true for simple systems is also true for complex systems. The human body, as we’ve noted, is a classic system of systems. But we can’t really conceive of a human body in which one major part – a principal system – is present but not another. Imagine a body with all the major systems – cardiopulmonary, nervous, endocrinal, digestive, circulatory – minus one, the skeletal. Remove one system from the network that is the body and our very notion of the human being quite literally collapses in on itself. Parts. Relation. Purpose.

Networks

In our earlier discussion of systems, we noted that another word for a system of systems is a network. Interestingly, although the word ‘network’ has a modern technical connotation, it’s provenance is actually the mid-1500’s. It’s a compound word made up of ‘net’ (”a bag or other contrivance of strong thread or cord worked into an open, meshed fabric”) and ‘work’ (”an exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something”). Let’s unpack the definition quickly: A network is a contrivance of strong thread worked into an open, meshed fabric  -  a web – and directed to accomplish something. Do you see it? Parts. Relation. Purpose. Based on both the textbook definition and our own discovery about parts, relation, and purpose, we can say that a network is a web of parts connected for a common purpose.

Nodes

Okay, let’s move beyond definitions and begin working directly with connections. As we’ve noted, connection gives a system coherence and purpose. But how? Clearly, by acting as a conduit for the flow of a stock between parts. That stock may be water (in the case of the sprinkler system), gasoline and air (in the case of an automobile engine), or data, as in the case of a digital network. In a digital network, the connection points – the parts – are called ‘nodes.’ It’s a useful word because while “part” can have multiple meanings, there really are no nodes apart from networks. So let’s use it.

In a network of human relationships such as a family, each member is a node. Stocks – love, memory, information, money, time – flow from one node to another in order to achieve a common purpose. (And not always “good” stocks, either. We all know, for example, that families can also channel resentments, jealousies and other less than desirable substances.) But not all connections have the same strength or efficacy. In the family network, a son may be estranged from his father. There is still a connection, but it may be weaker and less fruitful than the connection, say, between the son and his mother, which may remain strong. In this instance, we can say that the father and son are loosely coupled while the mother and son are tightly coupled.

Coupling

So, nodes on a network may be tightly coupled or loosely coupled (or any degree of coupling that falls in between!). A tight coupling means that the connection is strong and stocks move efficiently between nodes. A loose coupling means that the connection is weak and stocks move sluggishly between nodes. This is simply the description of a relative condition, not a value judgment. In some cases, a loose coupling may a good thing. In others, a tight coupling may be a bad thing. It really depends on the quality of the substance being moved through the connection. If I have a connection to someone from whom I receive gossip and disinformation, it is probably to my advantage to make or keep that connection a loosely coupled one. By contrast, if I am only loosely coupled to someone who can provide me with a steady stream of solid, useful information, I may be missing an opportunity by not tightening that coupling.

Hubs

In specialized digital networks, some nodes are designed as unique broadcast devices that convert mulitple inputs into a single stream of data. These devices, known as hubs, serve an important routing, amplifying and filtering function. Thinking creatively, we can see that all networks, whether by design or evolution, likewise contain nodes that serve the same function as hubs. In a family network, it may be the one person everyone confides in and trusts unreservedly. In a small business, it may be that key player whose advice everyone, including the owner, seeks and of whom it is said “the place couldn’t run without him/her.”  Hubs connect discrete or isolated portions of the network to the broader complex itself. They are sources of diverse, filtered, and authoritative streams of data. In human networks, we might call that data “information,” or even “knowledge,” or even “wisdom.”

Diagnosing Failure

Whenever any system is experiencing poor performance, there are two possible causes: component failure or connectivity failure. In an automobile engine, for instance, a difficulty may be caused by a piston rod (component failure) or a hose (connectivity failure); a pump (component failure) or just a relay switch (connectivity failure). In human networks, the components are much hardier, more durable than even those found in an automobile engine. So it makes sense to begin any diagnosis of poor performance in a human network by examining connections rather than components. Are key connections present and operating? Are they bi-directional? Is there a critical mass of tightly coupled connections within the network?  Are there working hubs, and are they receiving diverse streams of information?

We’ll return to our discussion of connections in later posts. In fact, it’s fair to say that in one form or another we will return to connections in every subsequent post, and whenever we discuss systems thinking in any form. Because systems thinking is all about connections: understanding how the parts of a system relate to one another in order to acheive the purpose for which the system was designed or evolved.

As we noted in our discussion of shocks, systems exist and operate within a broader context characterized by changing conditions. To return to our familiar example of an automobile, the surface beneath the vehicle may be bumpy or smooth, but there is always a surface (since cars don’t levitate, fly  or float). The surface, then, is one of many conditions that together form the context in which the car exists and operates. Others might be wind speed and direction, traffic density, the amount of available gasoline in the tank, the skill of the driver, the speed of the vehicle, etc. Each of these conditions (e.g. traffic density) has a present value (e.g. heavy or light) that produces an effect upon the system (shock). So, when we use a term like “changing conditions,” what we really mean is that the value of a given condition changes. Roads go from being smooth to bumpy; traffic goes from light to heavy; the wind picks up; gas runs out; etc.  This is important, because while underlying conditions will change, they are more stable than their values, which, as in the example of wind speed, may change from moment to moment.

Emerging conditions

In addition to present value, conditions also possess emerging values that can be forecast and planned for. An example: As an automobile moves down a road, the present value of the traffic density condition may be “light.” But ahead, the driver can see the distinctive blue lights of police activity, along with dozens of flashing red brake lights. This tells the driver that the emerging value of the condition known as traffic density is “heavy,” which in turn allows him/her to adapt the system to that “condition.” Although the emerging condition-value “heavy” will only be the present at some point in the future, assessing that emerging value is not an exercise in prophecy or guesswork. By looking at the whole system as a whole, not as particular parts, it is possible to make a rational estimate of the character of an emerging condition.

Conditions at scale

You’ll recall that our discussion of scales began this way: “All systems operate at scale, and all scales are relational.” In that discussion, we proposed four scales: the Me Scale, the MyScale, the Us/Them Scale, and the One Scale. If systems operate at scale, and if conditions are the context within which systems exist, then it makes sense that conditions must scale, as well. To illustrate conditions at scale, we park the car and find a new example.

Let’s use your personal finances. At the Me Scale, your financial system operates within the context of such conditions as your household income and expenses, your career, your marital and tax status, etc. Each of these has both a present value and and emerging values. For instance, your household expenses this month may be higher than they were last month due to an unexpected repair bill or a quarterly tax payment. Depending on how much higher those expenses are, your personal financial system may experience quite a shock.

At the My Scale, your financial system is or may be affected by the local economy, your employer’s revenue, the relative prosperity or want of family members, and so forth. For instance, let’s say your brother-in-law loses his job and is in danger of missing a mortgage payment before his unemployment compensation kicks in. This is an emerging new condition, arising from the My Scale, that may have an impact on your personal financial system. One evening the phone rings. You answer and it’s your brother-in-law  asking for help paying this month’s mortgage. An emerging condition has just become a present condition. What’s more, he wants to borrow the entire amount. Now not only has the condition gone from emerging to present, but the value of that condition has gone from unknown to expensive.

Now let’s look at how events at the Us/Them Scale can give rise to conditions that affect your personal financial system. Let’s say that the government of China decides it can no longer purchase American government securities. As a result, the American government can no longer find enough buyers for it’s debt, forcing it to either raise taxes or cut spending in order to close the gap between revenue and expenses. So, let’s say the government does a bit of both, raising the marginal tax rate across the board by 5% and announcing that it will not fund a planned extension of unemployment benefits to Americans who’ve been out of work more than six months.

You now have two emerging conditions arising from the Us/Them Scale, both of which are likely to create shocks to your personal financial system. First, the tax hike goes into effect on the first of next month. Every paycheck after that will be 5% lighter, which means you will have to adjust the amount of pre-tax money you route into your 401K plan. It’s not a big deal, but there will be some pain. For our purposes, a condition which began way out in the Us/Them Scale – in a government meeting room in Beijing, to be precise – has just become an emerging condition affecting you in the Me Scale. But there’s more. Your brother-in-law is now four months into unemployment. He’s had no job offers and even interviews have dwindled away. In just two months, you are going to be faced with providing your sister and her family with regular assistance, or watch them lose their house. It’s yet another emerging condition arising from the US/Them Scale, but one that threatens severe shocks that will test the resilience of your personal financial system. Fortunately, by assessing conditions at scale, you are aware of the threat and still have plenty of time to begin adapting your system to meet it. That’s the goal of whole-systems thinking!

Seeing patterns in the chaos

Do you detect a pattern in the examples above? Doesn’t it seem clear that conditions usually arise from the outer scales and move toward the Me Scale? Think about your brother-in-law losing his job. We identified that as a product of the My Scale, and in fact in relation to you it was just that. But if we had looked a little closer at the circumstances surrounding his unemployment, we might have seen that his industry was the financial bellwether that convinced the Chinese to stop purchasing American securities in the first place! So, we say that as a general rule, conditions arise from remote scales and remain emergent until they reach the Me Scale, when they become present and interact with our personal systems.

So, there are conditions, and those conditions are always changing. We refer to the effects of changing conditions upon systems as ”shocks,” as in the common phrase “a shock to the system.” In the first example above, for instance, the bumpiness of the road is the condition, while the jolting of the chassis is the shock. Again: shocks are the effects of changing conditions upon a system.

Shocks, like conditions, are both internal and external. For instance, when thinking about the global ecosystem, we note that average ocean surface temperature is  affected by both changing industrial CO2 emissions (internal) and variations in solar flare activity (external).  Typically, a system’s feedback and control mechanisms are designed to deal with shocks arising from changes in internal conditions. How the system reacts to external shocks is determined by the relative adaptive capability of the system overall.

The goal of whole-systems thinking is to enable practitioners to smoothly adapt to changing conditions, and thereby minimize the impact of shocks upon their own lives. When we say the goal is to “never be blindsided by change again,” we don’t mean getting rid of change. That can never happen. Nor would we want it to happen, because change is what makes life worth living. What we mean is that the shocks that result from change won’t paralyze or devastate us any longer.

The “Me” Scale

The “Me” scale refers to systems and networks of which you are the central and essential part. Without you, nothing in the “Me” scale would continue to exist. So, for instance, your health, your job, your relationships, your intellectual development, your spiritual life, your Facebook page, etc.

 The “My” Scale

The “My” scale refers to systems and networks in which you are an integral part, but not an essential one. In other words, if you no longer existed these systems and networks would be significantly altered, but would continue. Examples of the “My” scale include your extended family; your company; your immediate faith community; your civic or social organizations, especially local chapters; perhaps even your town or neighborhood.

The “Us/Them” Scale

The name of this scale is not intended to refer to a duality in opposition. It refers instead to systems and networks in which you participate, but are not an integral or essential part. For most of us, this might mean the city or state in which we live;’ our country; the economy; the Internet; the environment; large institutions in which we play a negligible role, such as unions, the military, political parties, church denominations, and very large employers.

The “One” Scale

The “One” or global scale refers to the scale at which everything is connected, the universal plexus. Recall that in “Understanding systems …  in plain English” we talked about …

• A system as an integrated set of elements that perform a desired function.
• And that most complex systems are really systems of systems working together.
• And that when systems of systems interact with each other – as when human beings form friendships – we have networks.
• And when multiple networks interact with each other, especially when they predominate a given field or scale, we have a plexus.

Okay, so the “One” scale is the entire architecture of existence, the universal plexus, the “Whole System” on a cosmic scale. Now, at PathTree we don’t tell you what to call the “One” scale  (beyond the “One” scale) because we’re about a process, a methodology, not religion, or even – strictly speaking- science. Some people call the “One” scale ‘God.’ Others call it ‘The Universe’ or ‘Creation’ or the ‘Cosmos.’ What you call the “One” scale or how you choose to think about it is your business. We just want you to be aware of a scale in which everything is connected. That’s the point.

We began by noting that all scales are relational. This is an important point to bear in mind, for reasons that will become clearer when we talk about assessing conditions, both present and emerging. For now, though, consider that while Barack Obama’s “Me” scale may be remarkably similar to yours or mine, his “My” scale is dramatically different. If one is the President of the United States, one’s “My” scale – the scale at which one is an integral, though not essential, part  -  includes the entire nation and much of the global political and economic system. On the other hand, the President’s “Us/Them” scale is by definition far smaller than yours or mine.

In the next post in this series, we’ll look at shocks and disturbances.

Although systems vary in complexity, they all share some basic elements. A stock flows into the system and is subject to some form of control, such as rate or temperature. The stock is then catalyzed or depleted in some form, which results in an outflow from the system, usually in the form of energy. At the same time, one or more sensing mechanisms monitor the process and provide feedback to the control elements, which tune the system’s performance in order to achieve optimal performance.  

Basic systems include switches, signals, and most pumps. A classic system (and a fairly simple one, too) is an automobile engine. Gasoline flows into the engine at a rate determined by the driver’s speed. The gasoline is mixed with another stock, air, and undergoes combustion. The resulting energy is outputted to the drive train, which propels the car. Inflows of gasoline are regulated by valves which are themselves controlled by the driver’s brain (as it perceives the speedometer or road conditions) and foot (as it depresses or releases the gas pedal).

Complex systems include the human body, the environment, digital networks. In fact, while simple systems are pure – one input, one purpose – all complex systems are really systems of interlocking sub-systems. Systems of systems, if you will. These systems tend to have redundancies or multiple feedback mechanisms built into them to prevent failure, but all of the components of a system, whether redundant or not, are important, or else the system is poorly designed and wasteful.

Look more closely at the human body. It is truly a system of systems. One body housing the respiratory, circulatory, musculoskeletal, digestive, and nervous systems, as well as many others, in order to achieve a desired objective: life. Many of these systems are independent of each other – the endocrine system isn’t apparently connected to the skeletal system, for instance – and yet they must all work, and work together,  for the body to survive.

When  systems of systems interact with each other – as when human beings form friendships – we have networks. And when multiple networks are interacting with each other, especially when they predominate a given field or scale, we have a plexus.

As human beings, we inhabit multiple concurrent systems, networks and plexuses. Social systems (family, friends, associations, clubs, churches), the economic system (at various scales), the political system, the built form (physical infrastructure), digital networks, the ecosystem, and more. In fact to the extent that our lives and identities are relational – that is, to the extent that we are defined by reference to others, such as brother, mother, wife, worker, citizen, friend, etc. – we are integral parts of systems.

Next up in this series, we’ll talk about scales.

Flow: What It’s Not

First of all, flow isn’t apathy. It doesn’t denote a withdrawal from the world. Quite the contrary, in fact. A lack of passion, apathy, is one of the spades we use to dig the holes in which we find ourselves stuck. Whole-systems thinking is about climbing out of those holes, so flow isn’t apathy.

Flow isn’t fatalism or Stoicism. It’s not a surrender to God’s will, if by that one means a detachment from our responsibility to cooperate in making the world a better place. Flow isn’t a false or forced irenicism in the face of impending catastrophe or in the aftermath of tragedy. Flow isn’t fairy tales about how wonderful – or how terrible – things are. It isn’t a posture or a pose. It can’t be feigned (well, it can, but if it is it’s not ‘flow’). Flow isn’t a knee-jerk response based on ideology, tribal identity, class, or religion. It isn’t a set of rigid, linear, zero-sum plans.

So, you’re wondering, what the hell is it? What is ‘flow?’

Flow: What It Is

The greatest point guards in NBA history are those who excelled in what is known as the “transition game,” the quicksilver switchover from defense to offense, usually marked by fast breaks and quick scores. Players like Magic Johnson, John Stockton, and Oscar Robertson all managed the rapid, unpredictable series of events between steal or rebound and goal in an effortless way that suggested almost supernatural powers, as if time slowed down for them, or they possessed more than the ordinary five senses.

Of course, there was no supernatural power involved. These players had natural talent, yes, but they also worked hard to achieve the court vision that allowed them to smoothly negotiate the most difficult part of a difficult game played at the highest level.

Flow is the full range of sight, both in space and in time. It is ‘whole sight.’ It is life’s court vision.

Watch old film of Magic Johnson in transition. His head is up at all times. He’s simultaneously using both his peripheral and direct vision. As he takes the ball he mentally maps his spatial relationship to the other nine players on the court. As a leader, he knows how his teammates will react without observing them. Having studied the opposition, he knows how they will react, too. And as a student of the game, he knows how basketball happens, how points are scored.

We see ten large bodies moving down court in a desperate, chaotic scramble to score or defend against scoring. We can’t take it all in, and don’t even appreciate the moment until it’s over, when we can see it replayed in slow motion. But Magic is flowing. He seems to know where everyone is, and how they’ll all react. He does exactly the right thing with the ball at the precise right moment. And when the basket is scored, he’s the least surprised person in the building. It’s as if he saw it all happen the moment he touched the ball.

That’s flow. And that’s something that whole-systems thinking can help us achieve in our own lives (if not on the basketball court). By mapping and updating our conditions, both current and emerging, on a constant basis; by re-training our minds to think in terms of scales operative in time; by assessing our networks and the strengths and weaknesses they represent; and by consciously practicing the kinds of feedback loops that keep our whole sight clear; we can learn to flow with change as effortlessly as Magic Johnson.

Life is one big transition game; and the movement from offense to defense and back again occurs many times daily, and thousands of times throughout our lives. Obstacles appear, only to mysteriously dissolve. Clear space opens and then closes. Time seems limitless one day, and impossibly compressed the next. Rarely do we have the luxury of playing a set-piece, half-court game. We need court vision. We need whole sight. We need to learn to flow. By practicing whole-systems thinking, we can.