The stimulus for this short note was a recent piece by Tom Aston exploring “What actually is social accountability?”. This note specifically engages with Tom’s comments in that piece about the wisdom and feasibility of trying to connect all the dots in a system in order to strengthen accountability and contribute to better system outcomes.
There are various ways of thinking about systems. The one that I (currently) find most useful - and which is in line with some of Tom’s previous pieces about relationships, and with Lant Pritchett’s important piece on going beyond a baby ontology of “agents” and “stuff” - is an ecological take on systems.
In this take what matters most about systems is the nature and quality of the relationships that make systems more than the sum of their parts, and the processes that support a system’s dynamics, building or undermining its capacity for innovation, learning and adaptation. This perspective is inspired in particular by the groundbreaking work of Nora Bateson on “symmathesy” (living and learning systems) but also in an emerging strand of work on “Human Learning Systems” which Toby Lowe, Marcus Jenal and others have done much to develop.
From this perspective it would be impossible and unnecessary to try to connect all the dots as some sort of master systems architect, even once you’ve defined a system boundary and thereby limited the number of dots that might be connected.
Instead, the best way of contributing to healthy system dynamics is perhaps to act in ways that improve the relationships that you are involved in, and to support and strengthen the processes - including processes of learning and accountability - that support the evolution of the system. I’d say that that is “do differently” rather than the “do more” or “do less” paths to strengthening systems and their accountabilities that Duncan Green sets out.
This emphasis on living and learning systems strongly informs the approach we take at Global Integrity, an approach that has evolved significantly in recent months. With our attention focused on the relationships and processes that make systems what they are (the “integrity” of the system, if you will), we then aim to enhance that integrity by working in ways that strengthen the relationships we are part of, and by helping the partners we work with to leverage the power of collaborative and adaptive learning to enhance the integrity and adaptiveness of the systems that they are part of, so that public resources are used more effectively to meet people’s needs.
You can find more on this perspective here, and a short note on what this looks like in practice for Global Integrity, and the systems we are part of, here.
First published on LinkedIn, 23 April 2021.