Traditional policymaking methods are becoming obsolete due to rapid technological advancements and global complexities. Governments must evolve from reactive to proactive stances, employing strategic foresight to effectively prepare for and navigate future uncertainties.
A holistic approach to policymaking, focusing on the interconnections and feedback loops within systems, is crucial for addressing global systemic challenges.
Introducing a Minister for Systemic Governance could revolutionize policymaking by ensuring it's dynamic, adaptive, and interconnected with modern challenges.
We've all heard the cliché about change being the only constant thing in the world. But it is actually right. The world is moving, and it's doing it fast. The pace that technology has imposed forces us to keep up the pace or get left behind.
Policymaking cannot continue as it has in the past. Static strategic documents are outdated. We need agile, systemic governance because the complexity of the modern world has made traditional strategic documents obsolete. Open strategies, which policymakers can continuously adjust and evolve in line with tech trends and possible scenarios, are crucial for good governance. System thinking and strategic foresight are key to this.
We live in a world where the system's equilibrium relies on many interconnected parts. A holistic approach to policymaking should be adopted. Siloing governance will only break the overall equilibrium.
The Urgency of Systemic Governance
In a time when challenges are becoming increasingly complex and interconnected, we need systems thinking more than ever. Issues like climate change are deeply intertwined with economics, politics, and social structures, and technological development's impact on everything is moving at a speed almost impossible to reach by existing governing processes.
This is precisely why embedding systems thinking into our governance framework is not just beneficial—it's essential for navigating today's multifaceted challenges.
The relentless pace at which our world evolves demands a governance model that can keep up and is as dynamic as the changes it seeks to manage. This is where the case for a new, agile framework like a Minister for Systemic Governance becomes relevant and indispensable for navigating our time's complexities. Holistic governance should be embedded in governments, and the Minister's job will be to research and oversee the overall system's behavior.
Why would we need a minister to overwatch the system? Because the system, as a collection of smaller units, is more stable than a single unit. Thus, balancing the system will bring us more stability. Understanding the forces that keep this equilibrium at bay will help us shape a stable road ahead. Also, we could identify and use universal laws of stability on different scales and fields. The organization of electrons, protons, and neutrons in an atom can teach us much about keeping supply chains stable and developing scenarios for the future. Understanding how the system's stability is maintained even in a changing environment is crucial. The keys to stability are how the parts interact and how the system's loops work. All the parts must be present, arranged, and function as a whole for the system to function. This means mapping not only key systemic players but also processes.
The Role of a Systemic Minister
The Minister for Systemic Governance would dive into a range of complex issues where traditional policymaking falls short. This could include a number of areas, such as market development, investment, the innovation process, education, and the social sphere, which, of course, makes his work highly complex and interconnected with every link in the state institutional structure. The system governance structure must ensure that policies are not siloed but are part of a coherent strategy, perhaps by leading inter-ministerial task forces or by providing systemic analysis to inform policy across the board.
Modern dynamics are too fast for traditional governments. We need a better approach to policymaking.
The key is to maintain a loosely coupled system so it can continue to function, even in a diminished capacity, if some of its parts are damaged. Then, you will have time and space to correct course and rebuild parts. The goal is to build an active, self-stabilizing system that actively responds to change. This is hard to achieve on a governmental level and even harder to make it work fast. As all active systems need a significant amount of energy to keep balance, so will the Minister's systems task force, which, being an active system by itself, will require constant input from resources. But the payout of such an investment will be greater. This will be the nervous system of a nation.
Policymakers must have a thorough and holistic understanding of how a system's visible and invisible elements interact in order to design policies that improve the system. A directed systematic approach to key leverage points is a powerful tool for achieving a desired future state. Systemic governance is needed to understand and steer as much as possible the ripple effects that today's events and decisions might have in the future. Combined with strategic foresight scenarios, this is a more robust and reliable way to make policy. The trick is to comprehensively understand the system, possible ripple effects, and scenarios. Even coincidence is going to be a powerful factor. Wild cards, the unpredictable low-probability-high-impact events, are very probable. So, the key is to be prepared. We need scenarios, not forecasts: scenarios and KPIs for them to follow which one unfolds. Building different foresight scenarios' performance indicators and following those indicators to recognize which scenario is unfolding is a better way to ensure a reliable and future-led policymaking process.
Proper knowledge and management of feedback loops (balancing and reinforcing) will help policymakers structurally guide systems' management and development and steer them in the desired direction.
Navigating Systemic Dynamics
Knowing the system can help us anticipate its behavior to given trends. Combined with strategic foresight and scenarios, this system's approach can make us more resilient. Divergent thinking and scenario planning are needed because the more obvious solution is often not the right one, and applying it could lead to a worse outcome. Such solutions could backfire in the long run because of the system's break in equilibrium. For example, killing all the pests will make this year's harvest bigger. But this would eventually lead to killing the pests' natural enemies and breaking the balance. Next year, there will be more pests than you could fight, the harvest will be in a disastrous decline, and many bad things will follow for your business until the natural state of the system returns. This is the system's self-balancing mechanism—it will automatically try to neutralize direct intervention.
Of course, such a task will be no easy business. For one, the job itself is relentlessly demanding. On the other hand, there will certainly be pushback from politicians, officials, and the public when trying to set up a new role. But we could look to countries like Finland, where a special office has been created in the government for thinking ahead and planning policies. Theirs is an example of how such a system could work with an eye to the future. And, of course, one could start small, with a minimum viable product (MVP) – small projects and/or temporary groups, to prove how useful such an approach could be. Maybe in areas like city development or emergency response. Ideas from the concept of adaptive leadership could also be used to help turn doubters into supporters by showing how this new role could make things easier and more forward-thinking.
The system should be constantly monitored, evaluated, adjusted, and developed. It should be perceived as a living, breathing organism. We can achieve natural and sustainable development only by maintaining the overall system balance. Everything else will lead to a crash. Excessive growth is as dangerous as being left behind in the modern world's space race.
Making small, incremental adjustments in governance, like the MVP process, will lead to more future-based policymaking. This is exactly what we need in such a complex and fast world. And it's a never-ending process: constant monitoring of feedback loops to course correct. A living governing mechanism. Anticipating and acting instead of reacting to change.
Knowing the system well and all or at least most of its direct and indirect linkages and feedback loops can help us make more reliable decisions. Working with it, sometimes by applying indirect influence on the system, leads to achieving a long-lasting solution and success. Direct intervention could lead to a disaster, which, unfortunately, has happened many times. For example, the introduction of heavy tariffs in 1930 in the United States significantly worsened the already shocked stock market. This led to the worsening of the crash, and the following Great Depression helped Hitler come to power, leading to WWII. This, of course, is an extreme example but a clear one that not knowing how the system works and applying an obvious (and probably helpful in the short-term) solution that is breaking the balance could lead to disastrous effects on the system in the long run. Applied indirect solutions to the system might work better or at least are cheaper if mistaken.
Systems can self-regulate, but still, a form of control is needed to preserve their stability and avoid unintended consequences. The regulatory mechanism constantly monitors the state of the system. It ensures all feedback loops work properly and/or steer positive feedback loops to achieve a desired and gradual change in the system. So, allowing decentralization and self-regulation in combination with central governance will lead to the desired balance between stability and flexibility of the system. Feedback loops are essential for the navigation of a system. Depending on whether we would like just to preserve the balance or steer the system in the desired direction, we will use our knowledge of managing balancing or reinforcing feedback loops.
Feedback loops embody the dynamic and interconnected nature of modern systems. By understanding and managing these loops—whether they amplify changes (reinforcing) or maintain stability (balancing)—a dedicated minister can guide policy in a way that anticipates and mitigates systemic shocks. Key tasks will be to proactively maintain systemic equilibrium, thereby preventing crises arising from both potential system collapse and excessive unregulated growth. The combined knowledge of feedback loops in the system will help us maintain its balance: balancing loops help maintain equilibrium and negate change, while reinforcing loops amplify change, which often leads to exponential growth or decay if left uncontrolled. We need both to know the system's thresholds.
A Vision for Systemic Resilience
Resilience is key to achieving a high-functioning system. That is why divergence in the thinking process is needed. Diversification leads to systems' self-reconstruction if the balance is somehow lost. The depletion of one stock/resource of the system leads to its ultimate destabilization. Assuring a proper stock replacement will restore the system's ability to self-restore.
The purpose of systemic-based policymaking is to keep the system in a state of dynamic equilibrium and/or to balance the gradual growth of the system if needed. Keeping a gradual decline of a system is not excluded if the purpose is to keep a more significant balance at bay. It all depends on the purpose.
A robust system governing mechanism is key for policymakers in today's interconnected, fast, and volatile world. Traditional governing mechanisms are lagging. This new era of technological and complex development presents us with a number of challenges that have not been known until now, both at the civilizational and individual levels. For this reason, it is necessary to structure the process in a dynamic way that can keep pace. With a systems minister at the helm, we could see a society where resources are managed with foresight, the environment is protected proactively, and economic stability isn't left to chance but is a product of strategic, systemic planning.
Image: canva.com
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