Thinking Systems

Sometimes we seem to be going around in circles and implementing lots of different things with no material results. There are all sorts of reasons that this can be the case. Sometimes it can help to take a step back (along with a deep breath in preparation for what you might find) and think about wider systems. This project took a systems thinking approach and so we wanted to take a moment to share with you what that means and what it could mean for your work.

A system is a collection of different things that work together in complex ways so that decisions and actions in one part of the system can have effects on other parts of the system (Welbourn et al. 2012). If we don’t zoom out to take a look at the whole system, it’s really easy for us to think that we have understood what’s happening when we haven’t. It’s also very easy to implement solutions to problems that either don’t fix them or even make them worse.

Systems thinking allows us to consider problems holistically, including thinking about how issues are connected, what assumptions are being made, how different stakeholders are linked to and have an effect on the issue and how various solutions might play out. Systems thinking approaches can create sustainable change by altering underlying structures which make the system operate in a particular way (Harries, Wharton, and Abercrombie 2015).

If you’re feeling stuck with how to improve dads’ perinatal mental health and wellbeing in your system, there are lots of systems thinking tools you could try out. Here are a couple to get you started. These can be done alone in five minutes to get your thinking started, or can be explored in a much longer session as a team to inform your long-term thinking and planning.

The Iceberg Model: helps you to get underneath the problem that you are seeing to think more deeply about the underlying causes.

Connection Loops: help you to start thinking about how cause and effect could be playing out in your system

If you’re interested in learning more about Systems Thinking we’ve listed a number of great places to start in the Additional Resources section below.