In a 2018 monograph on the “water” of system change, Kania, Kramer, and Senge describe “six interdependent conditions that typically play significant roles in holding an environmental problem in place.” They note that this framework draws upon an extensive literature and is inspired by the Iceberg Model and Donella Meadow’s Places to Intervene. They retain the concept that some levels are visible while others or not, as well as the notion that mental models or deeply held beliefs are key drivers in a system.
Kania, Kramer, and Senge define the six conditions as follows:
Policies: Government, institutional, and organizational rules, regulations, and priorities that guide action.
Practices: Activities of institutions, coalitions, networks, and other organizations aimed at improving progress. Also, within an organization, the procedures, guidelines, or informal shared habits that shape their work.
Resource Flows: How money, people, knowledge, information, and other assets such as infrastructure are allocated and distributed.
Relationships & Connections: The quality of connections and communication occurring among actors in the system, especially among those with differing histories and viewpoints.
Power Dynamics: The distribution of decision-making power, authority, and both formal and informal influence among individuals and organizations.
Mental Models: Habits of thought—deeply held beliefs and assumptions and taken-for-granted ways of operating that influence how we think, what we do, and how we talk.
Consider an effort to improve community health outcomes in a neighborhood experiencing food insecurity. The city might develop policies that incentivize farmers markets or grocery stores selling fresh produce to open locations in underserved areas. Existing stores could be supported to adopt new practices, like stocking fresh produce, and resources could be made available through a fund that provides low-interest loans or grants to improve their healthy food offerings. Interest holders including neighborhood residents, local government officials, food retailers, farmers, healthcare providers, and community leaders could be actively convened to build relationships and connections across silos as well as to shift power by giving residents a central role in decision making. Critical to the success of this initiative would be a shift in mental models from viewing food insecurity as an individual problem of “bad choices” or lack of effort to a systemic issue rooted in historical inequities and structural barriers.
Kania and colleagues point out that the shifts in system conditions are more likely to be sustained when working at all three levels of change. Real and equitable progress requires exceptional attention to noticing what is invisible to many.
Deeper Dive
- Kania J, Kramer M, Senge P. The water of systems change. FSG, June 2018.
Related Frameworks
- Action Scales Model: also uses accessible language
- Intervention Level Framework: similar concepts but with mental models at the top of the pyramid
- Places to Intervene: more detailed set of levels
- Systems Change Tree: includes analogy to the interdependence of levels: this one has six types of change at three levels