Summarized Highlights from “How Do We Know Where There Is Potential to Intervene and Leverage Impact in a Changing System?” | Anna Birney

Anna Birney’s article explores how to effectively identify and leverage potential for change in complex systems. The author challenges traditional notions of “leverage points” that imply linear, mechanical change, arguing instead for understanding systems through a living systems perspective:

“However despite Meadows’ deep systemic understanding, the metaphor of leverage, as I have seen in practice, can imply the possibility of linear change affected in a physical way rather than being applied to a moving dynamic world.”

The paper identifies four key qualities of living systems that help practitioners understand how systems change:

“This is the premise behind the need for systems change practices: we need to work with the way the world works, as a complex adaptive, social, physiological, ecological, connected world.”

“This paper aims to help change makers seeking to cultivate systems change to both identify where the potential is in their diagnoses and highlight implications for how they might respond… by presenting four levels of potential in changing systems—reconfiguring structures and flows explores, re-patterning of relationships, cultivating systemic ways of organizing, alignment and coordination towards whole system goals and shifting paradigms.”

A critical insight is the need to focus on relationships rather than just parts:

“We often focus on the parts of the system and say that they relate to the other parts of the systems… but we need to look at *how* they are relating—the flow of water, nutrients – and the exchanges that are taking place. As we draw and imagine systems, we need to see what is flowing and how the movement is taking place. This is more than seeing things as having a relationship but seeing them as constantly relating.”

The author emphasizes that change happens through emergence:

“The way the world changes is through emergence”

“Systems keep changing through dynamic interrelating so that new self-organising structures emerge at different multi-fractal levels, creating new ways of relating.”

This suggests practitioners should work with emergence through “creativity, experimentation and probing the system and learning what works.”

“We might start to answer these questions by looking for where things are moving, where areas are opening up and energy is building towards something new. We might see new shoots or lots of forces converging, or nodes of flows coming together.”