Issue 11: The magic and myth of systems thinking
Plus, let's grab a drink on November 13
WELCOME
I've been known to complain about policymakers who don't engage in "systems thinking" - that is, being able to see that their area of focus as part of a larger system with cause and effect that should be taken into consideration when making decisions. It's become something of a mantra: think systemically, map the interconnections, understand the feedback loops.
This month, we share tools for incorporating systems thinking into policymaking, including how to tackle complexity through cross-government collaboration and focused coordination from the centre. But we also feature a contrarian take that challenges the orthodoxy: maybe governments do too much systems thinking, in the vain belief that if they can map it, they can control it.
Other links examine how policy design can inadvertently reward dishonesty, explore what “f-words” make civil service advice truly valuable to decision-makers, and demonstrate a remarkable new tool for tracking how research actually influences policy.
Policycraft: The Implementation Phase
Coming out of the pandemic, being part of real-life community has become a core value for me. This means not only showing up for community being created by someone else, but trying to seed my own. That's why, to mark Policycraft's one-year anniversary, I'm hosting a meetup in Toronto.
This is networking with substance: policy talk over drinks, commiserations over shared challenges and, hopefully, connecting with like-minded people who have a vision for the future of our profession. (Make no mistake, it’s also intended to be fun).
All are welcome - bring your wonky friends and colleagues, even if they aren't Policycraft subscribers. I’m looking forward to putting faces to readers, and to hearing all about what you're working on in the real world.
Date: Thursday, November 13, 2025
Time: 5:30pm - 7:30pm
Location: Sin & Redemption Pub, Toronto
THIS MONTH’S SYLLABUS
💻"Magical systems thinking", Ed Bradon, Works in Progress
We start our investigation into systems thinking with a contrarian take. This piece dismantles the idea that we can engineer our way out of complex policy problems through sophisticated systems mapping and analysis. The author traces how Jay Forrester's World Dynamics model spectacularly failed to predict our actual future, despite its mathematical elegance. The real insight here isn't that systems thinking is useless, but that we've been doing the wrong kind. Maybe Forrester's problem was applying the engineer's "hard" systems thinking to what Peter Checkland calls "soft" systems: the messy human activity where "valid different perspectives on the issue or situation interpret information quite differently".
🏛️ Steering from the Centre of Government in Times of Complexity: Compendium of Practices, OECD
This OECD compendium offers a more optimistic take on functional systems thinking, positioning the centre of government as the critical node for managing complexity. Rather than mapping every interconnection, it focuses on how centres of government can serve as bridges between political priorities and administrative execution, stewarding cross-cutting policies that no single department can handle alone. The approach acknowledges complexity without claiming to control it, using the centre's unique position to coordinate rather than command. Think of it as systems thinking with humility: recognizing that the system is bigger than any one actor, but that strategic coordination points can still influence outcomes.
🏛️ "Systems thinking for civil servants", UK Government Office for Science
Here’s a refreshingly practical guide that doesn't promise to solve everything. This UK government toolkit acknowledges upfront that systems thinking works best for genuinely complex problems - those where stakeholders disagree, the environment is dynamic, and you're aiming for sustained change at scale. It includes a useful diagnostic to help civil servants distinguish between complicated problems (which you can solve with traditional approaches) and complex ones (where systems thinking might help). The framework maps systems tools to familiar policy development stages, making the approach accessible without overselling its capabilities. It’s also notable for what it doesn't claim: that mapping the system means you can control it.
🎓“New development: Addressing wicked policy problems through cross-government collaboration—Insights from the UK context”, Olga Siemers and Ileana Daniela Serban, Public Money & Management 💰
This study from the UK shows that successful intra-government collaboration requires leaders' sustained attention, careful management of power dynamics, and genuine public engagement. But here's the catch: the very complexity that makes collaboration necessary also makes it incredibly difficult to execute. Departments face competing incentives, misaligned accountability structures, and the challenge of thinking beyond their institutional boundaries while still fulfilling their mandates.
The most interesting finding? The system of government itself might be leveraged as a tool to manage complexity: not by eliminating silos, but by creating structured ways for them to work together when it matters. It's systems thinking applied to the machinery of government by using the existing bureaucratic ecosystem more strategically rather than trying to redesign it from scratch.
💻"The honesty tax", Kelsey Piper, The Argument
A devastating critique of how public policy design can punish honesty and reward those willing to lie. The author's key insight is that this misconduct isn't necessarily about individual moral failing, but poorly designed systems that make lying the rational choice. When rules are widely ignored because they're, for lack of a better word, stupid, we end up "selecting for liars" rather than fixing the underlying problems. The Biden administration's mixed signals on marijuana use for federal employees perfectly captures this dynamic: honest disclosure led to firings while those who stayed quiet kept their jobs. A sobering reminder that the gap between written rules and real rules can erode social trust in ways both big and small.
New Zealand's former Head of Policy Profession Andrew Kibblewhite delivers a masterclass on what makes advice truly valuable to decision-makers. His framework of "f-words" (free, frank, fearless, full, future-focused, and fallible) offers a sophisticated take on the civil servant's role that goes well beyond just "fearless advice and loyal implementation." The insight that advice should be "fallible" is particularly striking: acknowledging uncertainty and building in feedback loops is better than false confidence.
Kibblewhite tackles the tension between providing robust advice and maintaining ministerial confidence, arguing that great advisors earn the right to be challenging through their responsiveness and political savvy. His warning about the drift away from written advice is prescient: oral briefings may feel more agile, but they leave ministers (and the public) vulnerable when decisions go wrong. The speech also grapples thoughtfully with how freedom of information laws can inadvertently discourage frank advice, a dilemma that will only intensify as transparency expectations grow.
⚙️The Overton Index, Overton.io
A fascinating resource that tracks over 21 million policy documents from 30,000+ organizations worldwide, automatically identifying citations to academic research and creating a map of how insight and commentary flow into real-world decision-making. Think of it as the policy equivalent of Google Scholar: finally making the "grey literature" of government reports, think tank publications, and policy briefs searchable and analyzable at scale.
What makes this resource particularly valuable for policy practitioners is its ability to reverse-engineer influence; you can see which research actually gets cited in policy documents, track how long it takes for academic findings to reach policymakers, and identify gaps where good research isn't breaking through. For researchers trying to maximize policy impact, the Index is a goldmine for understanding what works and what doesn't in the evidence-to-policy pipeline. It also reveals the geographic and linguistic biases in policy citation patterns, offering insights into whose voices are heard in global policy conversations.