READING 3

Explore Forces in Your System

Systems Practice | The Omidyar Group


“Forces are ways of thinking
and acting that give rise to
patterns and events.”  with a Guiding Star, Near Star and Framing Question to guide
-Zaid Hassan in “The Social
Labs Revolution”
“Systems Thinkers work from a
central premise: If you don’t
know how you’re producing
certain outcomes, you’ll have
great difficulty determining
how to produce better
outcomes.” 
-Daniel H. Kim in “Introduction
to Systems Thinking”
EXPLORE
FORCES IN
YOUR SYSTEM
What enables or inhibits change?
Welcome to Module 3. Last week, you should have come up
your Systems Practice inquiry. Now it’s time to get down into
the details of the forces that are at play in your system. This
whole section is about understanding the current state of your
system. So when doing the exercises in this Module you should
be thinking of what exists and is observable and evidence-
based – rather than the desired or future state.
At the most elemental level, systems consist of forces. Forces
are the elements that either enable change or inhibit change.
You uncover them by interviewing people who are directly
affected by the system, consulting with experts, reading about
issues affecting the system, and working from your own
experience.
 In this reading we’ll:
•  Show you how the U.S. Education team, the Vibrant Public
Square team, and the Transforming Peacebuilding teams at
Omidyar Network, Democracy Fund, and Humanity United
uncovered forces in their systems
•  Help you distinguish between forces in your system that
enable change and those that inhibit change
•  Differentiate between structural, attitudinal and
transactional forces so that you can begin to understand
how they cause certain dynamics in systems
Systems Practice | The Omidyar Group 1
ENABLERS,
INHIBITORS
What prevents change? REFLECT ON YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE
Think about some of the most complex social
To make this concept very concrete, think
challenges that we identified in Module 1—things
about your own experiences:
like the refugee crisis, homelessness, and income
inequality. Why haven’t we been able to solve these •  Getting out of bed this morning.
issues? What has prevented positive change? Any What were all the factors that enabled
factors that obstruct change are called inhibitors you to start your day? What were all
and are things like: the factors that inhibited you?

•  Finishing school. What were all the

•  Poor quality of infrastructure (e.g. roads, water
factors that enabled you to graduate
systems) from high school? What were some of
•  Limited availability of job training the factors that might have inhibited
•  High crime rate you?
•  High rate of drug use
•  Low levels of literacy
•  Impact of generational poverty

TIP: There will be steps in the workbook

What enables change? to help you generate a list of enablers
Factors that foster change are enablers. These and inhibitors for your system and to
could be forces like:
help you lead a brainstorming session
with others.
•  High level of funding for public service
•  High quality of hygiene
•  Increased innovation
•  Raised minimum wage

In the Workbook for this module, you’ll practice

casting a wide net and brainstorming all of the
forces that could enable or inhibit change in the
complex system that you’re grappling with.
Eventually, you’ll chart which of those forces are
causes and which are effects and then you’ll classify
them as either being structural, attitudinal or
transactional in nature.

Systems Practice | The Omidyar Group 2

CLASSIFY
YOUR
FORCES
Structural, Attitudinal, Transactional
As we mentioned, forces can be structural,
attitudinal or transactional in nature. What does
that exactly mean?

Well, complex social systems are made up of three

distinct but interrelated dimensions:

Structural: refers to the physical and social

environment in which people live; both the natural
environment (things like air quality or drought) and
built environment (housing, a transportation
system) as well as political, social and economic
institutions and infrastructure (the electoral system,
legal system, economic policy, labor unions, church
associations).

Attitudinal: refers to widely held beliefs, values,

norms and intergroup relations that affect how
large groups of people think and behave (ethnic
tensions, social capital, fears, group trauma, TIP: The workbook for this module will share
religious beliefs, and attitudes like trust in additional guidance on how you can perform
government or a belief in ‘rugged individualism’). an “SAT Analysis” to classify the forces in your
systems as being Structural, Attitudinal, or
Transactional: refers to the processes used by and
Transactional.
interactions among key people (leaders at all levels)
as they deal with important social, political and
economic issues (important negotiations, violence,
problem solving, influence, leadership). Key
transactional factors might include things like
lobbying by human rights activists, the influence of
a community elder, mediation by a member of
Parliament, or extreme political rhetoric by a
religious leader.

Systems Practice | The Omidyar Group 3

CASE STUDY 1
Uncovering Forces in the U.S. Education
System at Omidyar Network
In the last module, we described how Isabelle,
Ashley and their team at Omidyar Network came
up with a Near Star, Guiding Star and framing
question to orient their approach to
understanding the U.S. education system.
Now, they needed to figure out what forces were
at work in this system. To do so, the team
decided to engage external stakeholders. For
their next session they invited approximately 40
people who worked at varying stages of the
education system—from early childhood to K12
and postsecondary—and in various roles—from
program officers to entrepreneurs to school
employees to policymakers—to participate.
Collectively, this group was asked to brainstorm
the forces at work in the U.S. education system.
They started with the Framing Question we
highlighted in the last module:
Framing Question: What are the forces that
affect the ability of U.S. children to build the
foundational literacies, competencies and
mindsets that enable them to learn and thrive
in life and work?
And then they asked more specifically:
•  What enables children in the U.S. to build
foundational skills (e.g., foundational
literacies, competencies and mindsets)?
•  What inhibits children in the U.S. from
building these foundational skills?
Systems Practice | The Omidyar Group 4
CASE STUDY 1
Uncovering Forces in the U.S. Education
System at Omidyar Network
Exploring Enablers and Inhibitors
The group jotted down their responses to these
questions on individual sticky notes, which they
then put up on a huge wall. People independently
and then together clustered the sticky notes into
themes. Then, they self-organized into small groups
to dive into some of the themes. Each group took
one theme and then were asked to begin
identifying upstream causes and downstream
effects of the theme and analyze whether they
were structural, attitudinal or transactional in
nature. Next the teams were instructed to pick a
factor and work both backwards and forwards—
asking both what that factor causes and what
causes that factor—to assemble them into feedback
loops. After building these preliminary loops, the
internal team at Omidyar Network took the lead on
analyzing the information after the workshop.
Although the large group had made good progress
towards building many preliminary loops, Isabelle,
Ashley and their core team now had to undertake
the difficult work of refining them and filling in
information gaps.
After that first brainstorm, Ashley and Isabelle held
over 200 individual feedback sessions with external
stakeholders. They started with people who were
already familiar with Omidyar Network’s work and
gradually moved to others they had not worked
with before.
“The tough issues people
don’t want to tackle get left
on the wall. Sometimes
groups just don’t have the
energy or expertise to dive
into sorting out the really
thorny issues. After the
workshop it’s up to the core Becky Richeson
Systems and
team to dive into them and Complexity Project
fill in any other information Manager, The
gaps that were identified.” Omidyar Group
Typically, they structured these sessions so that
they would talk through their current work at a high
level and then ask for feedback in the individual’s
area of expertise to help them understand how
forces in the system were connected. “If we were
speaking to someone working in early childhood
education,” Ashley explains, “We would go deeper
into that area with that person.”
The team did consider whether it would be more
efficient to use surveys to collect input, but
ultimately decided to stick with interviewing other
stakeholders. “The conversations were great
because we wanted a participatory approach that
fostered relationships and to get a really deep
understanding of individual perspectives,” Ashley
says.
All of these conversations were helping Isabelle,
Ashley and their team prepare for the critical work
of uncovering the system’s deep structure, which
you’ll learn about in the next module.
Systems Practice | The Omidyar Group 5
CASE STUDY 2
Working Towards a Vibrant Public Square
at Democracy Fund

Over at Democracy Fund, Tom’s team began
understanding the forces at work in their system
by sending out a survey to key external
stakeholders. This survey presented their framing
question, which we previewed in the last module:
Framing Question: “You can’t understand how
local journalism enables or inhibits a healthy
democracy unless you understand…”
Then they invited 35 external stakeholders to
come to their first workshop to start
classifying these forces as upstream causes or
downstream effects and pulling them together
into loops. Eventually, they ended up with 43
loops which the core team then tried to make
sense of. You’ll learn more about this
sensemaking process in the next module.

They asked respondents to fill in the blank. Using

all of the responses they collected, they were
able to generate 10 core themes that represented
the forces that shape the markets, missions, and
practices of those providing news to inform
participation and democratic decision-making in
cities and states.

Systems Practice | The Omidyar Group 6

CASE STUDY 3
Transforming Peacebuilding
at Humanity United

Elise’s team at Humanity United began to identify Specifically, the team started to brainstorm
enablers and inhibitors by using events in the forces that had enabled and inhibited change
Central African Republic as a jumping off point. from occurring in the Central African
Although they eventually wanted to generalize and
Republic that included things like:
understand the dynamics of the entire
peacebuilding system, the team found that
thinking about forces that had enabled and
•  Powerful institutions like the UN

inhibited change in one situation would keep their

•  Violent extremism

analysis concrete and grounded. •  Social media and connectivity

  •  Migration
“Our thinking started around that specific
compelling and disturbing case,” Elise said, Then they began to construct loops to knit
“Starting from that example, we tried to identify those factors together with the goal of
the major dynamics of failure. We found it was identifying the system’s core story. You’ll
much more achievable to identify forces at work in learn more about how they did this in the
the conflict and peacebuilding system by looking next module.
at one example. So we started just by mapping the
dynamics that drove that crisis, and then as our
work has unfolded we broadened our
understanding by integrating other contexts and
bodies of work.”

Systems Practice | The Omidyar Group 7

LESSONS
FOR YOUR
TEAM
You can start your brainstorming by REFLECT ON THE CASE STUDIES:
thinking about one specific context
rather than trying to wrap your head •  How are the 3 teams approaching the

around the whole system at once. work of Systems Practice? What

similarities do their approaches share?
If you’re having trouble coming up with enablers How are they different? Why do you
and inhibitors, think about your system in terms of think these similarities and differences
one concrete scenario. Rather than thinking about are occurring?
the peacebuilding sector writ large, Elise’s team at
•  How do these case studies apply to
Humanity United started by just thinking in
your work? What additional lessons
concrete terms about the situation in the Central
from these case studies can you apply
African Republic. to your own Systems Practice work?
Start a thread in the Discussion Forum
and share your reflections with others.
At this stage, don’t worry about
prioritizing factors. Just brainstorm.
As Rob says, “you should use this as an opportunity
to widen your aperture on your system and allow
TIP: In the next module, you’ll look for
people to bring their own individual perspectives to
patterns in your system and start to see
bear on your framing question to let your collective
intelligence start to emerge.” how forces are tied together into
feedback loops. This will enable you to
uncover your system’s deep structure.
Take a step back and think about
whose voices and perspectives have
been represented throughout the
entirety of your process.
Make sure to seek out a diverse range of
perspectives, particularly from those who are most
impacted by the system.

Systems Practice | The Omidyar Group 8