Chapter 3: Everything changes

In Chapter 2 we set out five axioms and 17 corollaries for systems-thinking. In this chapter we will begin to apply those axioms and corollaries and identify seven principles that we can use to guide us in our problem solving.

We will start with a very basic idea – change – embodied in axiom A4 (ubiquity of change). The Buddha (563–483 BC) said that everything changes. It is a truism, indeed almost a platitude, that ‘change is the new normal’. The pace of change in modern life seems to constantly accelerate. But ‘change is not reform any more than noise is music’ (Anon.). In reality, few people want to change and to do things differently just for the sake of being different. There have to be some impelling reasons. We will see a series of changes as a process. Corollaries C12–C17 (processes, feedback, leadership, outcomes, six ‘honest serving men’ and trade-offs) are about how we characterise change as a process. Our understanding of what we mean by ‘doing it differently’ must relate a deeper understanding of change with our reasons for promoting change and what we mean by a process both in the natural physical world and involving people (Figure 3.1).