How to take interdependent (not independent) action.

Let's talk about 'structural couplings!'

Hanna Barakat & Archival Images of AI + AIxDESIGN / https://betterimagesofai.org / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Why do system strategies fail all the time?

• We see only part of the system. (More)

• We think data are objective reflections of reality. But they’re made through interactions in the world. So we misunderstand what data say, and what they don’t, and in turn, what problem we’re actually solving. (More)

• We think technologies are ‘a solution.’ But this engineering mindset misunderstands the role of hierarchies, power dynamics, status, cultural norms etc. So power and culture — two very big things! — aren’t incorporated into our analysis of the system. (More)

• We misunderstand how technologies shape a system — they aren’t additive, they’re ecological. (More)

• We think we can predict how our intervention will impact the system but the system is complex, uncertain, and behaves in non-linear ways. (More)

I could go on.

But one of the biggest reasons system strategies fail is that we don’t see the interdependent nature of the system. We don’t see the connections between the parts — technology, people, organizations, etc. — that shape the system’s behavior. We’re entangled in relationships that shape our actions, which shape our relationships, which shape the system, which shapes our actions. Around and around we go!

In biology, this is called “structural coupling.” As Patrick Hoverstadt and Lucy Loh explain in Patterns of Strategy, it is “the process whereby an organism interacts with its environment in such a way that the organism changes the environment and the environment changes the organism.” The macro behavior of the system emerges from these interactions and the dynamics they create.

But we’re not often aware of how these relationships — without any intervention on our part — shape the direction of our strategy and the evolution of our organization. “Just as in biology,” Hoverstadt and Loh explain, “evolution doesn’t demand the hand of a conscious designer, so in organizations a structural coupling view of strategy doesn’t demand that there is any conscious strategy at work.” Systems strategy requires that we get to know the relationships that shape our behavior, and the path we’re on.