How systems mapping can help you build a better theory of change

loops should be relevant and important to the story. Theoretically, you could keep adding potential causes and effects to any systems story, until the diagram begins to resemble a plate of spaghetti. But after a few interdependencies become apparent, your team will find itself facing the underlying question: “What theme is emerging? What are the im

The tools of systems thinking—causal loop diagrams, archetypes, and computer models—allow us to talk about interrelationships more easily, because they are based on the theoretical concept of feedback processes.

For example, everybody works hard to make the country’s economy flourish, yet there is a constant economic decline. Why? Systems mapping and systems dynamics modeling can answer this question and help us understand the system’s behavior over time. By understanding the behavior, we can find the causes as to why the economy is not performing well des

YOU’VE FOUND A HIGH-LEVERAGE INTERVENTION WHEN YOU can see the long-term pattern of behavior shift qualitatively in a system: when, for example, stagnation gives way to growth, or oscillations dampen dramatically. This kind of breakthrough happens most readily when you can make alterations in the structure you’ve mapped out. You either add new elem

When changes occur in a system in a consistent pattern, a feedback loop is created. For example, if you implement certain activities that are described in the book, but none of your job applications have received a response, it only means that you need to change something in your activities.

Once we see the relationship between structure and behavior, we can begin to understand how systems work, what makes them produce poor results, and how to shift them into better behavior patterns