From the course: Design Thinking, Social Innovation, and Complex Systems

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Understanding systems stories

Understanding systems stories

From the course: Design Thinking, Social Innovation, and Complex Systems

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Understanding systems stories

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- Many well-intentioned efforts to address chronic social challenges generate short-term solutions that exacerbate the problem. Visualizing systems stories can prevent this. System stories are a tool to build a community's appreciation for the complexity of the systems that affect them. David Peter Stroh, author of Systems Thinking For Social Change, tells a system story called, Fixes That Backfire, where decision makers look for a quick fix to a problem that only addresses the symptoms rather than the underlying causes. You can think about this as taking an aspirin for a headache that's being caused by a brain tumor. The relief we feel from the aspirin doesn't help our long-term problem. In fact, it hides it. He uses the example that 70% of Americans freed from prison end up back behind bars within three years of their release. This is because prisoners serving longer sentences in harsher environments are exposed to…

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