Case Studies

PROJECT A Soft and Critical Systems approach exploring Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) challenges in a Research Project Team PRACTITIONER Emilia Slawkowska APPROX. DATE 2023/24 SITUATION AND CONTEXT EDI implementation requires a holistic and systematic approach addressing root causes whilst setting clear goals and providing actionable solutions. This intervention focused on a Research...

PROJECT Applying insight from Systems Laws to challenge thinking on, and service design for, the Multiple Disadvantage system. PRACTITIONER Gavin Roberts DATE 2023-2025 CONTEXT AND SYSTEM OF INTEREST (SOI) Multiple Disadvantage (MD) refers to experiencing several complex issues simultaneously, such as homelessness, substance use, mental health challenges ( see article attachment for figures)...

PROJECT Patterns of Strategy: partnering in a tender process INTERVENTION CONTEXT VM is small consultancy that helps clients create organisational change through visual thinking and semantic data. One of our public infrastructure clients put out a tender for five-year packages of work to support their digital teams. The tender touched on work we currently delivered, with packages of work so large...

PROJECT Let’s Talk Safety - Bringing Safety into Systems Thinking, and Systems Thinking into Safety PRACTITIONER Robin Stowell (Apprentice) SITUATION AND CONTEXT The traditional occupational safety profession is largely dominated by a reductionist risk management paradigm. This conventional approach focuses heavily on hazard identification, risk registers, regulatory compliance, and post-incident...

PROJECT Using Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) with some Viable System Methodology (VSM) modelling to explore how best to regulate a specific construction product. PRACTITIONER Geraldine Hearne, Office for Product Safety & Standards - Department of Business & Trade APPROX. DATE 2024-2026 SITUATION AND CONTEXT In the wake of the Grenfell tragedy, the Hackitt report recommended that Government should...

PROJECT How Communities can better support people living in asylum hotel accommodation. Situation & Context Across the Diocese of Westminster, churches and faith-based groups increasingly found themselves supporting asylum seekers housed in hotels under the UK asylum system. While volunteers are eager to help, many face restrictions in accessing the hotels and are overwhelmed by the magnitude and...

How can systems thinking help turn frustration into insight and organisational learning? This reflective case study follows a charity leader’s journey from personal grievance to systemic understanding. Using Soft Systems Methodology, the Viable System Model and feedback loops, Nicola explores how inquiry and reflection can transform tensions, improve governance and reconnect purpose with practice...

Translating Systems Thinking into practical, real-world applications can be challenging. How can we collaboratively create outcomes that are compelling enough to influence policy, or accessible enough for widespread adoption? What process can we follow to form systemic maps and transform these into actionable blueprints? In this session, Teun will guide us through the process of participatory...

PROJECT Cultural inquiry and complexity PRACTITIONER Benjamin Taylor, RedQuadrant APPROX. DATE 2017–ongoing SITUATION AND CONTEXT Many clients asked for ‘culture change’—but didn’t know what culture was or how it changed. Existing tools were either superficial or overly rigid. SYSTEM OF INTEREST Organisational culture as a dynamic, emergent system shaped by behaviours, stories, systems, and power...

Nirosha’s leadership and innovative approaches learnt through JGA’s Systems Thinking apprenticeship have transformed how her team tackles public health challenges, inspiring her colleagues to adopt more comprehensive and interconnected strategies. Currently, she has just secured a critical grant for her department off the back of systems thinking methodologies. Nirosha is also co-authoring a...

Georgina Wilson, [a JGA STiP apprencticeship graduate] Founder and CEO of BUD Leaders, has spent over a decade pioneering systems change initiatives that empower Black and other Global Majority women in business. Through BUD Leaders, a pioneering black-led, female-led social enterprise, Georgina works to disrupt leadership structures and drive equity. Her organisation collaborates with large...

Having passed her Systems Thinking Practitioner apprenticeship, Elisse shares her experiences of the course and how, as her skill set developed, she was able to apply it to work based projects. "Disability inequality in the healthcare workforce is a subject close to my heart and I seized on the opportunity to utilise systems thinking approaches to reveal a new perspective on the problem in order...

Forming alternatives to established economic, technological or political systems, whatever their composition of organisations or institutions, can be difficult, and such alternatives can be susceptible or vulnerable to the 'establishment'. This presentation explores how we can use the Viable System Model as a diagnostic, from data gathered about a number of outsider organisations through dialogue...

PROJECT Coaching entrepreneurs using VSM and systems patterns PRACTITIONER Benjamin Taylor APPROX. DATE 2019–2024 SITUATION AND CONTEXT Entrepreneurs often scale their business without clarity on internal coherence or viability. SYSTEM OF INTEREST The internal structures and dynamics of small but growing businesses. APPROACH TAKEN Used Viable System Model and Patterns of Strategy to help founders...

In this talk, Simon will share some of his experiences in working with government-linked bodies in Asia and the Middle East seeking to harness new opportunities: to do new things or to do things differently. And yes: systems thinking can provide a solid basis for shaping and harnessing positive change, not just serve its traditional purpose of addressing the negative effects of ‘problematic...

Standard Causal Loop Diagrams from systems dynamics are very effective tools for describing and structuring complex problems. It enables conversations and brings different perspectives into the analysis for improving the decision-making process. However, Causal Loop Diagrams have three main limitations, i) The nature of the relationships prevents integrating people into the model effectively, ii)...

PROJECT Fixing service quality – and more – at a B2B SaaS business PRACTITIONER Kim Warren, Strategy Dynamics Ltd. APPROX DATE Summer 2023. SITUATION AND CONTEXT A young company had built a successful business to business [B2B], software-as-a-service [SaaS] enterprise, providing specialist human-resource solutions for companies in a particular industry sector. The company had captured most of the...

A case study, using the Viable Systems Model, exploring management problems of increasing complexity in a merger of several municipal hospitals. After a short introduction of VSM, different management structures and tools of hospital management (senior management, risk, quality, controlling, etc.) are mapped to the VSM systems. Special emphasis is placed on the interaction of different systems as...

Vortrag von Matvei Tobman, Chirung und Risikomanager im Krankenhaus. Nach einer kurzen Vorstellung des VSM als zentrale Struktur des Vortrags, werden verschiedene Führungsstrukturen und Tools des Krankenhausmana-gements (GF, Risikomanagement, QM, Controlling usw.) den VSM-Systemen zugeordnet. Besonderer Schwerpunkt liegt hierbei auf dem Zusammenspiel verschiedener Systeme sowie dem Einfluss von...

Systemic Change of the Healthcare System Systems thinking is an important component of the design field that looks at the complexity of a diverse group of entities and how they are all interrelated to form an “ecosystem.” Each entity is connected to the others through the direct flow of resources or indirectly via an intricate web of relationships. One change within a system impacts every other...

The terms ‘Accident’ and ‘Incident’, while in general accepted usage, are not helpful to professional in-company investigators. The proposition is that it is more useful to consider such events as failures of ‘Human Activity Systems’. This methodology, Kelvin TOP-SET, was initially developed to give offshore oil managers a means of investigation that was relatively easy to learn and apply...

PROJECT Embedding systems thinking into service transformation PRACTITIONER Benjamin Taylor, RedQuadrant APPROX. DATE 2015–2023 SITUATION AND CONTEXT Public services often adopt Lean or Agile without understanding the systemic consequences. SYSTEM OF INTEREST Service change efforts in local government, health, and wider public sector, working through Regional Transformation Academies. APPROACH...

Social learning is a set of principles, activities and behaviours, relating to how people collaborate and co-operate to learn in a variety of situations within institutional and organisational structures. This presentation explores its principles and methods, as well as providing an illustration of how it has been applied in a micro-enterprise environment, where individuals or small organisations...

This presentation charts the journey of Public Health's engagement with systems thinking, initially via Theory U and later through Community Operational Research methods. The practical application, pitfalls, considerations of using these methods in community settings brings this, sometimes conceptual focus, into the "real" world. The emergence of Adult Development as a seam of research that helps...

Nobody really understands their business....but how well does the business understand itself? In this talk will use a case study to demonstrate how a zombie organisation can transform itself into conscious collective and become the compute function for its own operation.

Roger Duck and Jane Searles share their recent experience of creating conditions to enable exploration of transformational systemic change. The work involved the collaborative development of a visionary whole system transition architecture. The specific context was regional transport, but the systemic methodology is of more general application, and they are keen to discuss with others in the...

Article in Critical Social Policy Vol 42, issue 4 [free to read and download] Discharge to Assess (D2A) models of care have been developed to expedite the process of discharging hospital patients as soon as they are medically fit to leave, thereby improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the healthcare system. This article focuses on the implementation of a D2A model in Kent, England, which...

At the September 2020 SCiO Open Day Ray Ison and Ed Straw drew on their newly published book ‘The Hidden Power of Systems Thinking’. They presented a case for the importance of Systems Thinking in Practice (STiP) for addressing a range of current crises including the climate emergency. They argued for a theory of change from within civil society and a need to move from understanding to action. In...

PROJECT Organisation design for an island government PRACTITIONER Benjamin Taylor, RedQuadrant APPROX. DATE Various interventions, 2016–2020 SITUATION AND CONTEXT Guernsey’s government sought to its internal structures and governance, taking an approach that was more joined-up and more focused on a ‘commissioning’ approach Political and service leaders wanted a coherent, effective centre—but didn...

PROJECT Using conversation mapping to surface undiscussables PRACTITIONER Benjamin Taylor APPROX. DATE 2019–2021 SITUATION AND CONTEXT Organisations often struggle to talk about the real issues—especially where there are tensions or taboos. SYSTEM OF INTEREST The informal communication patterns within teams and organisations – case study was a large County Council. APPROACH TAKEN Applied tools...

PROJECT Turning round an investment company in trouble PRACTITIONER Kim Warren, Strategy Dynamics Ltd. APPROX DATE Summer 2019. SITUATION AND CONTEXT A large company providing pensions and other investment products to high-net-worth individuals had grown strongly during some years of good economic and stock market conditions. However, an economic downturn and collapse of global markets had seen...

`Smart cities', urban development projects that design computational systems and sensory technology to monitor activity and regulate energy consumption and resource distribution, are a frontier for the prospective deployment of ICTs for sustainability. Often reduced to technological problems of optimization, these projects have implications far beyond narrow environmental and consumptive frames of...

PROJECT Place-based systems work with Save the Children PRACTITIONER Benjamin Taylor, RedQuadrant APPROX. DATE 2019 SITUATION AND CONTEXT Save the Children UK wanted to shift from direct service delivery to enabling local systems change in deprived communities. The challenge was how to work with complexity, rather than delivering simple programmes. SYSTEM OF INTEREST Local systems of support for...

SITUATION AND CONTEXT UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) were moving from 9 to 21 Industrial Challenges in their £9 billion Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF). Each challenge was a major programme involving multiple projects and in some cases hundreds of organisations. The problem was how to govern such a large and diverse set of initiatives whilst balancing the concerns of BEIS and HM...

PROJECT Systems leadership in Peterborough and Cambridgeshire PRACTITIONER Benjamin Taylor, RedQuadrant APPROX. DATE 2018–2019 SITUATION AND CONTEXT Health and care leaders in Peterborough and Cambridgeshire were struggling to work across organisational boundaries. There were siloed efforts, mistrust, and a lack of shared understanding. A systems leadership programme was commissioned to help shift...

Mike is a currently a consultant supporting ‘transformational’ projects in UK local government. His previous career has included roles in the Civil Service, Higher Education and a range of Local Authorities, including as Head of Performance & Risk at Swindon Council and Senior Business Change Manager at Trafford Council. Mike has also followed the well-trodden path of the Open University STiP...

PROJECT Organisation design for States of Guernsey PRACTITIONER Benjamin Taylor, RedQuadrant APPROX. DATE 2016–2017 SITUATION AND CONTEXT The island government needed to reform its internal structures and governance. Political and service leaders wanted a coherent, effective centre—but didn’t want to impose a standard corporate model. SYSTEM OF INTEREST The internal governance, coordination, and...

PROJECT Using the Viable System Model (VSM) to diagnose and redesign a supply chain operation PRACTITIONER Tony Korycki, M GOO SITUATION AND CONTEXT An Information & Communications Technology company was faced with serious operational issues, when working with supply chain providers during customer service order fulfilment. Problems with configuration data and order co-ordination appeared...

Transforming Turkey’s Tax Administration Through Systems Thinking PRACTITIONER R. Fatih ÖZÇELİK, Fifth Thinking Ltd. APPROX. DATE 2003-2005 SITUATION AND CONTEXT Turkey’s tax administration had long struggled with inefficiencies, low taxpayer compliance, and an extensive informal economy. At the beginning of the project, annual tax revenues were around $50 billion, a figure considered inadequate...

PROJECT Using the Viable System Model (VSM) to develop an approach to strengthening the public sector at a national level PRACTITIONER Patrick Hoverstadt, Fractal APPROX. DATE 2000 SITUATION AND CONTEXT The enormous and endemic problems of trying to establish control and stability in a volatile political environment led to this World Bank sponsored project for the Colombian government...