#5 Systems and Place with Dominique Hes... and How-To Diagnose Complexity

In this episode of The Systems Sandbox, Matt chats with author, educator, policy advisor and regenerative thinker Dominique Hes about her take on systems thinking. She offers insights into the importance of adaptability, the importance of designing with communities and place, and why she sees herself as mycelium in the forest. 

Matt and Tenille then tackle a crucial question in the systems space - what are we seeing if we frame a problem as 'complex'? Shifting away from surface level analogies, they break down four things to look for to know if something is complex with the issue of vaping used as an example.

This thought provoking episode has something for everyone!

You can pick up a copy of Dominique's new book on the history and place of Newport Lakes in local bookstores in Yarraville and Williamstown, or online: https://www.amazon.com.au/STORIES-NEWPORT-LAKES-Creating-regeneration/dp/064670494X

For more about us and what we do check out our LinkedIn page.

Transcript

Tenille Moselen: [00:00:00] The Systems Sandbox is recorded and produced on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to Elders, past, present, and extend our respects to all First Nations people listening. 

Tenille Moselen: Hi, I'm Tenille, and this is Matt. Welcome to the Systems Sandbox, where we chat all things systems and complexity. Hi, 

Tenille Moselen: Hi Matt, How you going? 

Matt Healey: Good Tenille. How are you? 

Tenille Moselen: Yes, I'm good. Just fighting hay fever at the moment with the warmer months. 

Matt Healey: Fun. Fun. I'm, you know, weirdly enough, I would typically have said I do get hay fever yet this spring. Nothing. Absolutely zero effect. 

Tenille Moselen: Wow. I've taken all of it for you, so you're lucky. 

Matt Healey: You're welcome. Thank you. I appreciate it. 

Tenille Moselen: So remember back in episode [00:01:00] three when I did the pig model. And got you to participate in it. 

Matt Healey: Yes. Yes, I do. 

Tenille Moselen: And I asked you what you were going to bring for me next time. 

Matt Healey: Yes. Well, I did say that I would bring something next time, and then I got a bit of a break because in the last episode you spoke to, I forgot their name, can you remind me? 

Matt Healey: Ruby, yep. And it was about the 5, 3, 2, 1. Yes. Zero? Yeah. Maybe I'm inserting one too many numbers in there. I'm not quite sure either. 

Tenille Moselen: Five, three, two, one. 

Matt Healey: Yeah. Five, three, two, one. Very good. 

Tenille Moselen: Zero. 

Matt Healey: Is there a zero in there? 

Tenille Moselen: No, 

Matt Healey: there's no zero actually. There's no zero. That's all right. Ruby can get in touch and correct us. 

Matt Healey: Or people will go back and listen and they can correct us. Anyway. So I've had an extra sort of episode of time to, to come up with something and I've actually made it up to you. I've got two things for you today. So the first thing is I've got an interview actually. So I spoke to. Someone that I've known for quite a while, Dominique Hess, her name is, and she is going to introduce us [00:02:00] to a whole bunch of different concepts and topics. 

Matt Healey: But I think the thing that I always like to come back to is how people get into systems thinking and use systems thinking in their practice. And I'm not going to spoil things too much. About what Dominic's going to share with us, she's been working in the regenerative development and placemaking space has been more broadly in the sustainability field since the mid nineties. 

Matt Healey: Uh, and she's really passionate around sort of real projects, I think she would call it. So that's the on ground stuff, the messy conversations, but she's also a board director. So she's the chair of the board of a green fleet, which is a climate action, not for profit. Centered on planting native biodiverse forests, reducing carbon emissions, absorbing carbon, those sorts of things. 

Matt Healey: She's also involved in the circular economy ministerial advisory council or advisory group, I should say. So she's doing lots of really interesting stuff. So she's going to share with us some of her experiences, which I think you'll find really interesting, particularly because you come more from the health side of things, but there's probably some good stuff [00:03:00] that you'll get out of that. 

Matt Healey: But then after the interview, I do have an activity for us to run through as well. So. Uh, a whole bunch of things for today that we need to get into. 

Tenille Moselen: Yeah. Nice. You're really prepared. It sounds really interesting. I'm keen to get into it. 

Matt Healey: Yep. Sounds good. Let's go. 

Dominique Hes: My name is Dominique Hess. I was an academic for 20 years. I've been doing a bit of work for the city of Melbourne and policy work at the federal level. 

Matt Healey: So what we're here to talk about today, Dominic, is systems thinking. And in particular, I'm interested in understanding how you apply or use systems thinking in your practice. 

Matt Healey: But maybe before we get into that, what was your kind of introduction to the systems space? How did you get into it? Academic studies, all that, all those sorts of things. 

Dominique Hes: So I'm going to weave the two together because my degrees match My growth and thinking. So when I started [00:04:00] my first degree in science, uh, it was all about me, you know, late teen, um, I was all in my head with the equivalent depressions and all of that, that goes when you think too much about yourself and your position in my life and all that. 

Dominique Hes: And I was diagnosed with MS. Um, and I had a really hard look at myself and I said, well, you know, I'm actually okay. And I'm, uh, enjoying what I'm doing around science, but I'm going to focus on ecology. And then in studying ecology, I ended up. Um, wanting to understand that sort of scientific thinking and because of the situation in the mid nineties and depression there, I went, did an engineering master's and so I would very much went from that sense of ecology and science to engineering thinking. 

Dominique Hes: So we can understand everything and we can design everything. So that was my second degree. And then I went, worked overseas, came back to [00:05:00] Australia and started a PhD in architecture. And so then it was like. Okay. I understand ecosystems and science. I understand engineering and now I understand design. So all it is about designing things better and always put information. 

Dominique Hes: So it was all about getting the right, if we just had the right information, taught people the right things, they would do the right things. Uh, and then there was, um, uh, in 2009, uh, death of a 19 year old engineering student because he saw no hope in the future. And then I realized you can have all of the science, you can have all of the engineering and you can have all of the design background, but if you don't have the story of potential and care, and if you don't see your own role in that, 

Matt Healey: um, 

Dominique Hes: then we still are solving the problem. 

Dominique Hes: And why is that? Because science and engineering is about designing the stuff, understanding the stuff. Whereas us humans aren't that logical. And so it's all [00:06:00] about our relationship with the stuff that's important. So it's that story of potential, of agency. And, and so to do that, you need to understand place. 

Dominique Hes: You understand, need to understand the relationship with people with place, which then led me into regenerative development, uh, and, and placemaking. But all of that sort of still wasn't helping me have influence at that sort of governmental governance kind of level. And so then I went into studying governance and working on boards and policy and so forth. 

Dominique Hes: So there's my journey. It doesn't mean I've left the science behind. It doesn't mean I've left the engineering behind. It doesn't mean I've left the design behind. It doesn't mean I've left the people behind. It's that it's all part of the system and how I see the world, how to influence that world. 

Matt Healey: That's quite a reflective take. I really appreciate the amount of thought that you've put into your response there. There's something in particular that you mentioned right there at the end about how you haven't left the science behind. There is a lot of thinking around these sorts [00:07:00] of mechanistic or more reductionist based views and the more systemic or, or ecological sort of views. 

Matt Healey: From your perspective, how do you balance those two, those two perspectives in your day to day practice? 

Dominique Hes: You do that by bringing people on board that are specialists, but you know enough of the general stuff to understand how they play into the narrative. Because some people do like sitting behind a computer for 10 hours a day and working on an algorithm. 

Dominique Hes: Um, that's not my, that's me. I like bringing that person in and saying, okay, here's my problem. Can you help me develop this algorithm? And so it's the, the knowing enough that you can bring in the right people to help you to solve or develop potential for a particular issue that you're looking at. 

Matt Healey: I think it's quite interesting that, that idea of knowing, knowing enough about what you don't know so that you can find those, those right collaborators or those right partners to, to work with you on those sorts of [00:08:00] things. 

Matt Healey: I don't actually know if it's possible to not know what you don't know fully, but it seems like you've got some thoughts there on that. 

Dominique Hes: Yeah. And, and I don't think you ever don't know what you don't know, gives me a little bit more chance to know what I don't know. Uh, but the way that you get to know what you don't know is by starting small, testing things out and seeing how it goes, because you never know everything. 

Dominique Hes: The world's complex. People are complex. People, especially people, the world is a little bit more reacts the way we kind of expect, sort of, but it's very complex, so that's still hard, but people don't often react the way that you expect because they're carrying baggage that you don't know about and so forth. 

Dominique Hes: And so, uh, that's, that's that kind of the way of, um, getting to know what you don't know is by going slow, um, [00:09:00] and having relationship with the system that you're trying to influence, looking for feedback, having the time. To look at how things are going and, and not trying to solve everything with the silver bullet. 

Matt Healey: Yeah, which can definitely be a very appealing attitude to take. How do we fix the problem, the singular problem with the solution, a singular solution. 

Dominique Hes: And so, so to give you, give you a kind of example, I like the concept of when you're trying to change a situation, you start with at a small scale development, if talking ecologically as a niche. 

Dominique Hes: So you develop little projects all over the place. And And so if I was to think about Geelong and its car industry, you know, 40, 30, 40 years ago, when the writing started being on the wall that things were going to be starting to come from Asia more and then so forth, I would have instead of investing millions and billions of dollars in propping up the industry [00:10:00] to keep doing what they were doing, I would have funded lots of little startups and ideas and so forth and to see what bubbles up and then whatever bubbles up could then absorb some of the, The changes and, and lots of people in place and so forth, and then develop the next layer of a, a consolidate into a, um, what, what's called a regime or the next layer. 

Dominique Hes: And then that could then take over once the industry left or needed to adapt, that could then take over in a healthy way. And so that's kind of how that would work. 

Matt Healey: Yeah. Yeah, and I quite liked the idea, you mentioned it a couple of times there, but the role of place in supporting our thinking and how we approach things, I think that's really important to pick up on. 

Matt Healey: How do we make sure that any of our ideas or our solutions or our designs are kind of localized in place? And how do you think about the process in which you develop something in such a way so that it integrates or fits in, um, with the, the localized system or the place that you're talking about? 

Matt Healey: What's your experience been with some of those [00:11:00] sorts of challenges, um, and have there been examples that you've seen where it worked, has worked well? So 

Dominique Hes: I've got a couple of thoughts here. One is. The paddock project in Castle, Maine, which is a built environment project and how that worked. The other one's kind of some changes that I've made at the board level and how the whole organization's shifted. 

Dominique Hes: So I might briefly explore both. 

Matt Healey: Yeah, please. 

Dominique Hes: I'm telling you what they both are so you can remind me of the second one. Um, so the, the paddock is a project where, where there's now 28 homes. One of the homes is an Airbnb and a meeting place for everybody. Uh, and that the intention of that project was to build something very much of Castle Main that supported ecological restoration and social capacity building and a sense of community, healthy buildings, the ability to grow their own food and so forth. 

Dominique Hes: So that was the intention and we, we worked on that with the [00:12:00] design and engineering and scientific knowledge of how to place homes to get solar gain and design for airflow and all of that. Uh, but we also then designed with ecological knowledge of what was here in the past, what can we bring back. Um, effectively, what would we need to plant for that? 

Dominique Hes: We also, um, you know, designed with some kind of social aspects. How do we create places where people can meet and get together and so forth. So a yarning circle, a maker shed. A greenhouse, you know, designing all of that in and to manage all of that. I had somebody who is in charge of managing it all. So there is a, you know, the body corporate pays for somebody to maintain everything and ensure everything's working. 

Dominique Hes: Um, and then the measures of success for that one, the five species returning people being healthy and happy and so forth, but the real capacity building, the real story is when the people who live there care enough. To start looking after the place [00:13:00] themselves. So, and how you do that is you ensure that people have the, both the knowledge and feel that they have the agency to actually care for the place. 

Dominique Hes: So one example is we created a space where they do all their laundry. So you don't do laundry in your individual homes. You have one shared space. And in that shared space. It was just cubby holes and stuff. And the people now make that a sharing place. So they put leftover things there and other people can use them and they put egg cartons and you know, all of that sort of thing, instead of everyone having a washing machine, it's just shared washing machines, which means you can get higher quality, you know, all of that sort of stuff. 

Dominique Hes: So you give people permissions through designing to be involved and to have agency for that. That's that one. Moving over to Greenfleet. So Greenfleet's, um, the chair of the board there, I joined in 2000. And 17, to be honest, the first three or four years, I was just listening, doing what I could, contributing to [00:14:00] various committees and very much getting to know the business. 

Dominique Hes: Once, when I took over as chair. I knew that one of the things that the business did is they, each year as a board, we would argue about how many trees we would plant to offset people's carbon. And so probably half of the meetings, um, within that committee that looked after that was really just having discussions about how many trees we should plant. 

Dominique Hes: And therefore, you know, how much land we needed and, and, and all of that. So when I became chair, I ran on the platform of, let's just set a A target for the business to get to so that the business can just meet, as long as it's meeting that target, you know, we don't need to manage how many trees they plant or how much land they buy because they'll know that because we've worked it out with them. 

Dominique Hes: And that means that our committees now have so much more time to speak strategically and a high level and so forth, because we've kind of set, this is where we'd like to [00:15:00] go, let's go towards that. But what we've also done is like, this is the first time with WIDA strategy as a not for profit, let's see how we go. 

Dominique Hes: Like let's, that's, you know, your, your jobs aren't dependent on whether you get to that 10 million tons that we've set as a target by 2030. Let's see how we go. Let's continue the conversation. If it's too hard. Then we can reduce the target if you need other resources, you know, but at least, you know, where we want you to go. 

Dominique Hes: We had a strategic meeting sort of three years into the, and we invited kind of the exec to it, um, and the head of planting and so forth said, you know, we can double that, we should do better. Yeah. Good. Great. So that, that there's two, two very different examples, but the same kind of thinking, how, how do you provide the interventions in the system so that people feel agency to be able to drive things themselves? 

Matt Healey: The word that comes to mind for me is, uh, is stewardship. There's always like, uh, levels or layers [00:16:00] to it. There's that sort of ownership or then sort of agency. Um, but I feel like there's something deeper that we're kind of getting at here, that connection to place and a deeper layer of care. To me, the word stewardship kind of encapsulate. 

Matt Healey: And so I guess the question is then how do you create that care? 

Dominique Hes: You create that care by saying, and by telling them a story of the potential of what it could be. I mean, it was just a dirt paddock when people first decided to buy in, but we told the story of we've designed it to bring back the powerful owl and the legless lizard. 

Dominique Hes: And yes, it looks like a snake, 

Matt Healey: um, 

Dominique Hes: and the, um, golden, Thunmoth and the sugar glider and the growling grass frog. And this is how we've designed it. And this is how your houses will be wonderful and healthy. And this is how the community aspects are designed. And are you going to be producing more energy than you need? 

Dominique Hes: And, and, you know, you, you, you paint the picture of the potential, but then you also have to give people the permission to participate in that, right? And so, [00:17:00] um, particularly the early purchasers were involved in designing how. The body corporate governs the place and how decisions are made. And so it's not just painting a picture, but I guess it's, um, grounded hope. 

Dominique Hes: It's like painting a picture, but painting a picture that you can see yourself with it and contributing to, because that relates to all of those human things that make us feel, um, part of a system, um, agency or care, as you said, um, belonging, that sense of, Oh, I'm doing something good. So that, that, that sense of, um. 

Dominique Hes: Attachment and purpose. So all of those things you create by not just telling the story, but inviting people to be part of that story and help helping you to, to design that outcomes of that. 

Matt Healey: To me, it sounds like really what we're getting at is there's a very strong sense of intentionality with the process. 

Matt Healey: Effectively that there's a plan, uh, and you're not just making it up as you go along. 

Dominique Hes: Plan and flexibility to shift with the plan. Yeah. So [00:18:00] you've got. You hold, you hold your plans loosely because that's, that's what it means to be in a place observing what happens. So you bring a plan to something and then you kind of sense is this landing, is this resonating? 

Dominique Hes: And if it's not resonating, then being able to kind of listen to why. It's one of the things that, um, I say is that when I'm doing something like this and a community member's obsessed, they're angry or whatever, 

Matt Healey: they're, 

Dominique Hes: they're, um, it's just, they're caring loudly. They just don't have the, the, the skillset or they care so much that, that, that they can communicate it constructively. 

Dominique Hes: And so there's energy there. So work with that, appreciate that, try and listen to what they say, um, because yeah, there's care there. 

Matt Healey: Yeah. I really love that idea of holding your plans loosely, because it really strikes me as fitting well with the Madeira note system, which operates exactly to plan, but actually there is an unexpected outcome, you know, or, you know, there's a storm that [00:19:00] happens and suddenly the tree that was doing this amazing purpose for all of the creatures, it's fallen over and now it's not able to do that. 

Matt Healey: Um. 

Dominique Hes: Or we have an economic collapse, or we have, we have a war happening that, that, that, As, as much as the ecological stories and the social stories, they're all, um, someone in the family unexpectedly gets sick or dies or whatever, there's, these are all situations where it's not working out. Um, happening that we aren't expecting, um, which in retrospect, we go, Oh yeah, we should agree where that happened. 

Matt Healey: Dominic, you've obviously done a lot of work in this space. Um, thinking about what our listeners can take away from this conversation or maybe start to apply in their own practice, are there some ideas or some suggestions that you have on where they could potentially start? 

Dominique Hes: What to do to start with, I think, um, reflect on where things go wrong. 

Matt Healey: You 

Dominique Hes: know, I, I myself had to reflect on my own, own life. You know, things go wrong all the time for me [00:20:00] when I'm in a stressful situation and I get feedback or critique. Can't cope with it. Can't hear it. Um. In that falling apart, crying, having to leave the room, um, highly emotional. And that's really frustrating because it's stopping me from being able to step up to my potential. 

Dominique Hes: That's okay. I'm a slow learner. It's taken me 52 years, but I've just had an ADHD diagnosis, which now makes complete sense of that. Because the way my brain is, the chemicals in my brain works is whenever I get feedback, I see it as attack. And then I go into flight flight, which means I need to get away. 

Dominique Hes: My emotional reaction to that is I cry. I reflected on what keeps going wrong in my life. What's the pattern that keeps going wrong in my life, and that has now really empowered me to be more effective and more at peace with who I am, my place in the world. So there's, there's kind of a look at places where things keep going wrong and going, well, why, why is it not going right? 

Dominique Hes: And so [00:21:00] one, one of my favorite things kind of abstracty things to do is to think, who are you in the forest? He's so, um. Matt Yorke. Um, really relate to this because you know me, but I'm mycelium. I don't necessarily like being in the limelight. I, I I'll do it if I have to, but I really like being underground and I like connecting people, sharing stories, passing on energy, building the capacity of the system to be stronger by creating network, um, rather than, um, you know, being the hero. 

Dominique Hes: I don't need to be the hero. I don't need awards. I don't need any of that. I just like to see a system thrive. Um, so that's a fun exercise that people could do. 

Matt Healey: It reminds me of what you were saying before about the role of the programmer and everyone kind of having a contribution that they can make. 

Matt Healey: And I think this is kind of a nice exercise in some ways, particularly marking a group setting or in a team setting where you could almost say like, what is it that each person is bringing? Um, how much that position [00:22:00] themselves in the forest, you know, what does it mean to them as an individual, but also what does that mean as a collective? 

Dominique Hes: Well, I mean, missing. Right. Yeah, exactly. 

Matt Healey: Yeah. What's the missing piece in the forest? I really think that these sorts of analogies are really powerful when trying to sort of grapple with the idea of what it means to apply systems in our work. And obviously in this context or in the context of this, uh, podcast has been developing, you know, we're focusing a lot on health and public health, these sorts of areas, like whether it be health or of the environment are really good places for people to come into, to systems thinking, because obviously lots of things influence, um, health, for example. 

Dominique Hes: So, so an example would be, you know, think about your body, um, you know, from a health perspective, if you contribute to the health of your body, you eat well, you do exercise, you sleep enough and so forth. It ain't hard. You're building your system, you're building the strength and resilience and health of your system. 

Dominique Hes: Same in a hospital. How, how do you support the [00:23:00] hospital to be like a body where you're feeding it the system, the things that will underpin its health? How do you support the, the, the staff to be healthy? How do you, um, gives the, um, patients the best sunlight and fresh air and, and so forth? How do you provide systems for looking at where things go wrong and, and, and looking at those patterns and feeding that back? 

Dominique Hes: So I think, you know, you can. Scale systems thinking from your own body reflect on yourself to a whole country. 

Matt Healey: Even thinking about your own journey to date. To me, it's kind of almost an example of that way of scaling systems thinking from your own individual experience through to, you know, you being on boards and governance and operating at a high level of system that then goes on to influence lots of other systems. 

Matt Healey: Uh, you gave that example earlier and the, the role of target setting and how that influenced the, the people within the organization that went off and, and did their, did their thing. 

Dominique Hes: Yeah, we're given the permission and the capacity to then go and just do their jobs without needing to [00:24:00] worry about the uncertainty of every year having to re prosecute what they were doing. 

Dominique Hes: They were doing it. So I gave them trust. Yeah. Yeah. Just go and do, I trust you. Go do what you do. As long as you get to 10 million in, um, by 2030 and if that doesn't work, that's okay. I'm not holding onto it too tightly. This is our first runner doing a strategy. Let's have a check in. 

Matt Healey: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Let's see how you're 

Dominique Hes: doing. 

Matt Healey: And to me, that speaks true to those ideas that you were sharing before about not holding on too tightly to the plan. Um, and you know, you've kind of set the goal to help guide the journey. You know, there, there is some recognition that things might change or that unexpected things might come up and sounds like everyone responded quite well to that. 

Dominique Hes: Because we're people and people thrive when they give an agency, purpose, a sense of belonging. I trust you do your job. You know, I'm holding this loosely. This is an idea. See how you go with it. If it works for you, if it supports you. Yeah. And, and, and so you're creating a, I'm contributing [00:25:00] to the system, to the social system, the people in it, but trusting them. 

Matt Healey: So Dominic, what have you been working on lately? Uh, is there anything that you want to shout out or acknowledge for our listeners? 

Dominique Hes: I've just finished a book on Newport lakes, and that is a story of the transformation of lands that were cared for by the Yalukut Willam and they had relationship with it to being severely impacted by settlement and quarrying to the community and the council, some of the council fighting for its revegetation and bringing nature back to it rather than filling it up with rubbish. 

Dominique Hes: And then the way that. That natural system that had been, it's different to what it was for the Yellowcoat Willum, right? Because now there's holes and lakes and things, but that natural system then held the community safe through COVID. And so there's this beautiful, Yellowcoat Willum had relationship, settlers destroyed that relationship. 

Dominique Hes: We've re recreated [00:26:00] that relationship in a different way. And then the place has given back to us. And 

Matt Healey: so, 

Dominique Hes: yeah, it's, um, yeah, it's been a pleasure to write that book. 

Matt Healey: And I'm guessing it's available for our listeners to buy somewhere if they're interested. 

Dominique Hes: Uh, yeah, so locally in Yarraville and in Williamstown, um, otherwise, yeah, online. 

Dominique Hes: Yeah. Stories of Newport Lakes it's called. 

Matt Healey: I think in the documentation of that story, you've got, Kind of embodied a lot of what we've been talking about today in terms of that connection to place, but the plots of story and, and making sure that people can see themselves in that. And I'm guessing it was quite a rewarding experience for you as well. 

Dominique Hes: Yeah. Like anything, you know, you, you learn to run the marathon, not because, um, you enjoy every step, but because you enjoy the outcome. 

Matt Healey: Yeah. Yeah. 

Dominique Hes: I was very sick of it for the last three 

Matt Healey: or four months. What a lot of people say about writing, you know, you're like, it's the end, you know. That's right, that's right. 

Dominique Hes: Yeah. Well, why do you do hard things? Yeah. Not, not [00:27:00] because they're easy, but because, you know, what happens, um, at the end and you go, I, I contributed something and whether it's running into your health or, um, to the community by writing this book, um, all, all proceeds go to the friends of Newport lakes who are still looking after. 

Dominique Hes: Yeah. The 

Matt Healey: legs. Oh, that's fantastic. Thanks for your time today, Dominic, I really enjoyed speaking to you and hearing your take on things. 

Dominique Hes: Cool. Thanks a lot. 

Matt Healey: Thanks again to Dominic for chatting to me, I really appreciated her time and hopefully everyone got something out of that. Tania, what did you, what did you think of that interview with Dominic? 

Tenille Moselen: Yeah, she's really impressive, isn't she? I love the way her mind works. I particularly was really interested in the way Dominic described some learnings that she wanted to pass on to the audience and around reflecting when things go wrong so that you can essentially move forward. 

Tenille Moselen: And it made me think [00:28:00] about when we are working with really complex systems and having to stop and take a minute and understand. What's not working in the system, identify what that, you know, element might be and how that impacts other elements in the system and taking that step back and, and thinking, how can we shift this system to, to make a difference to whatever's not working. 

Tenille Moselen: And also just in life, I think it's a lesson we can all use every now and again. 

Matt Healey: Yeah. And I mean, I think the thing that was really Interesting to think about in that context too, was that Dominic was talking there as well about her, when things don't work well for her in her own practice, um, but also you could apply that sort of lens to different sort of levels of practice too. 

Matt Healey: So when things aren't working well across collaborations or within a collaboration or, or a team or something like that. But also still at that individual level. So if particular ways of working or things like that, don't suit you, being able to recognize that if something doesn't work for you, then it doesn't have to necessarily always [00:29:00] be that way. 

Matt Healey: It could, it could change. It's about giving yourself that space. I think that's kind of a key thing to, to work through some of that. I think the other thing that was really interesting in amongst what Dominic was sharing as well was, She used a lot of metaphors and, and very grounded descriptions of ways of explaining some of our concepts. 

Matt Healey: And I think one of the things that I've come to in my own use of systems thinking is that, Really people get stuck on some of the abstract parts of thinking about systems and having ways of grounding it through the use of metaphor, whether you're talking about, you know, forests or ecosystems or, or whatever else is a really useful way of just trying to get your point across too. 

Matt Healey: So yeah, lots of great stuff there. And hopefully everyone got something out of that. I did promise you two things. So one was that interview with Dominic, but the other thing is now we'll call it a thinking exercise. I did originally have something a bit more. I'll call it hands on, but I've decided I'm going to sort of split it into two parts.[00:30:00] 

Matt Healey: So I'm going to be a bit cheeky and I'm actually going to say that you have to go through this process, but then we're going to have another episode where I'm going to basically get you to go one step further and do some, I will say hands on activities. Effort. So this is a bit more of a thinking exercise, but there is one thing that you need to do first. 

Matt Healey: And so maybe I'll give you 10 seconds to think about it. Not that I want to put you on the spot too much, but I need you to think of a, a complex problem. Don't share it just yet, but think of a complex problem or a complex situation that you're working on or that you've, that you've come across. And before we get into anything, I do want to quiz you a little. 

Matt Healey: I think the term complex problem is used a lot. When you hear that phrase, what do you think of? 

Tenille Moselen: Good question. I guess I immediately think that there is no clear solution when I hear complex problem. Um, that there's probably multiple solutions and neither, Well, none of those multiple [00:31:00] solutions will fix the entire problem. 

Tenille Moselen: I think there's lots of little solutions to a complex problem that need to work together for the problem to be solved. That would be my definition. 

Matt Healey: Yeah, it's a good definition. I have heard it described previously that it's not so much about having silver bullet solutions or one solution, but it's actually about having networks of solutions. 

Matt Healey: So you'd need multiple things working together, addressing different parts of The broader problem or the things that are driving that problem in order to actually produce a change. And that's why sometimes we feel like we're doing so much work on a particular issue and we're not changing anything. And it's because we're actually only targeting one part of the problem or the sets of drivers of that problem, rather than maybe a bit more of a networked approach, um, that's probably a conversation for another time, coming back to this point on a complex. 

Matt Healey: So the reason why I want to pick this apart a little bit is because I think sometimes people. Use the term complex and it's a very useful term, I [00:32:00] think, in articulating why something might be challenging, but it's also good to think, well, what is it that makes this problem a complex problem? What's the sort of characteristics that we need to look for in order to diagnose whether a problem is complex, or maybe it's got a sort of different nature or different form. 

Matt Healey: So, I mean, sometimes. People use these analogies or metaphors or descriptors, and you might have come across some of these before where people say, uh, there's three different types of problem or something, or it's like baking a cake is a simple problem because there's instructions and there's steps to follow this kind of guidance. 

Matt Healey: It's pretty linear. You do some stuff and you get a result. And ostensibly, if you follow all the steps, you will get the result every time. So it's a problem because you've got a cake mix and you don't have a cake yet, but you can kind of see the pathway to get there. The next one would be a complicated problems, which is where there's multiple aspects to it. 

Matt Healey: So like sending a rocket into space is really difficult and really hard, but again, there's kind of steps that we can follow. There are problems that we'll have to solve along that journey, things that are [00:33:00] unknown in advance, but we can get there and figure out, you know, we can, we can tackle those things with the right level of knowledge and the right level of expertise in the room. 

Matt Healey: And then sometimes people say, Oh, and raising a child is complex. And again, it's like, yep. Those things feel. Cool. True, there's like a, a sort of an inherent logic to those descriptors. Yeah, that makes sense, but it doesn't tell us how to apply that line of thinking to other problems. It just gives us an outline of, well, yes, there are simple, complicated and complex problems. 

Matt Healey: Here's a way of delineating between them, but is there like a set of criteria or steps that we can think through in order to diagnose whether the problem that we're working on is complex? 

Tenille Moselen: Yeah. 

Matt Healey: So that's what I want to do with you today, if that's, if that's okay with you. 

Tenille Moselen: Yeah. Let's dive into something complex. 

Tenille Moselen: Would you like my topic yet? 

Matt Healey: Yeah. Okay. Let's start with your topic. So what have you come up with? 

Tenille Moselen: Well, I was very tempted to go with raising a child cause I thought that was a good one. Um, but let's go with vaping. 

Matt Healey: Yep. That's probably a bit more relevant in the broader public health [00:34:00] discussion that we're having. 

Matt Healey: So yeah, vaping and tobacco is. Uh, pretty common, relatively speaking, a pretty common public health area that a lot of organizations are grappling with. And what we want to do is we want to take this topic. So in this example, vaping and tobacco, but you could think of nutrition, active travel, but basically these big topic areas. 

Matt Healey: And in order to know whether that is a. Complex problem. There's four elements that we need to look for. So I'm going to run these past you and then we'll go back to the first one and then we can unpack your particular topics and have a bit of a think as we go while I describe what each of these are. 

Matt Healey: Um, so there's four components. They are interrelated and that's. There's a part of why, um, the particular issue or topic will be complex, but the first one is there has to be diversity. So when I say there's diversity, I mean that there are multiple interacting elements or components. If you've ever seen systems maps, this will be the dots on the map, but basically entities elements, but there's a degree of [00:35:00] diversity amongst them. 

Matt Healey: So they're not homogenous. They're not all of the same. There is difference among them. The second component is that. Those diverse elements entities are interdependent. So it's not that they're connected for no reason. There is a connection or set of connections or relationships between them. And there's an exchange of some forms. 

Matt Healey: There is a reason for that relationship existing. I sometimes think of it like there's fuel throwing a flowing between a pipe between two things. If you fill up a car at a petrol bowser, fuel is flowing from the bowser into the car via the pipe. There is an exchange and that's what we're looking for. So we have a diverse network of elements or entities that are interdependent or reliant on each other to exist, to function. 

Matt Healey: The next one is that there has to be a degree of broader interconnection or sometimes I might call it or refer to it like nesting with other topic areas or systems or networks. So you could think of these as like above or below systems. We actually alluded to this [00:36:00] when we were talking about your, your background talking about the determinants of health and how there was further upstream determinants of health and further downstream determinants of health. 

Matt Healey: It's that same kind of idea that there are things sitting above and beneath the particular sort of network of factors and connections that we're looking at. It doesn't have to be above and below, it could be adjacent or next to. But basically there's a set of relationships that exist outside of the things we're looking at that are also influencing the particular factors and issue that we're looking at. 

Matt Healey: And perhaps the most important thing is that there is adaptation occurring. So that, that network of diverse elements that are exchanging or interdependent or reliant on each other. Adapting to changes locally and globally, we could call it or at that bigger system level as well. So if one entity or element in that network changes, that will influence the behavior of other elements or entities in that network. 

Matt Healey: So if you think about policy change in government, so the government brings in a new regulation around [00:37:00] something, uh, increases prices of something through taxes or something like that, um, that drives a change. Organizations adapt. People's behaviors might change. So what we want to look for is these four components, but then also acknowledge that within all of this then is that inherent unpredictability. 

Matt Healey: We can assume that people's behavior will change if we do something over here, that it will have this flow on effect, that if we increase prices of something, or if we change regulations around something, that there will be a change in behavior in the direction that we want. That's often not the case, or that might not be the case either because of factors that we can see or things that we can't see. 

Matt Healey: So there's four kind of factors there to always look for when we think that we're calling something complex, which is diversity in the makeup of the, those entities or those actors within that network, that there's interdependence. So they're not connected for no reason that they're nested. So there's kind of systems or networks above and below, and there's adaptation happening in [00:38:00] response to, Shifts locally or globally or above and below. 

Matt Healey: So we can use these as a way of diagnosing any kind of problem or any situation to help us understand what it is about this that makes it complex. If we think about your example, which was I've already forgotten vaping, vaping tobacco. If we go through each of these, for instance, we could probably help unpack. 

Matt Healey: The nature of the complexity that we're talking about here. So if we start the first one, for instance, like diversity, diversity of actors or entities, if you think about trying to take this amorphous vaping issue, what, what would you say are some of the sort of actors or entities or things that make up diversity of actors? 

Matt Healey: How would you describe them? 

Tenille Moselen: Well, probably the obvious ones, like the tobacco industry and users. So people that do vape on the other end. And then I guess there's the smaller actors as well, which is, um, like maybe social [00:39:00] pressures or culture amongst young adults, um, Or, um, stress relief, um, or I should say perceptions around stress relieving activities. 

Matt Healey: What's really good about what you've done there is, so one of the things that we want to go back to is diversity of, of the makeup of those actors or entities within that system is that you've highlighted, there are a couple of different types of. Of, um, actors or factors. So you've got the, the stakeholder perspective. 

Matt Healey: So you've got, um, manufacturers, the big corporations, uh, you'll have distributors in there. You'll obviously have people that do vape or, or use tobacco. You've then got sort of the other groups that have, um, an interest in that space. So. People that regulate, for instance, you've got public health entities or agencies that are trying to prevent people from taking it up in the first place. 

Matt Healey: You could, depending on how big you want to go, you could even go down and into the path of people that manage the flow on effects of [00:40:00] people that vape and use tobacco. So at the treatment end, for instance, so for health conditions brought about by, um, By smoking and vaping, for instance, like emphysema. So like you could even just look only at stakeholders and start to almost picture all of those different groups and entities that have an interest, a role in that, in that environment. 

Matt Healey: But then the other part you mentioned there was actually some of the more like deterministic aspects. So why do people vape, for instance? So, um. Yeah. They taking up vaping because they feel a social pressure or because, um, there's a perceived benefit to how they are managing the stresses of their lives. 

Matt Healey: Um, so we could actually unpack the complexity of vaping in terms of the drivers of the behavior already. There's not just diversity within the elements or, uh, entities themselves, but actually we've almost started to frame two different types. Of networks. You've got like the actors side, but then also potentially the factor side. 

Matt Healey: And you could, you know, conceptualize them as together, [00:41:00] um, or start to think about them separately. But yeah, already that feels very messy, very complicated. Um, I don't know if I'd call it complex yet, but I think we've kind of satisfied that maybe there is a lot of diversity amongst, um, uh, the different groups in there. 

Matt Healey: So, uh, the next one that we've got is that interdependence. So I guess if we think about say. Yep. They're all connected. We can draw lines between them, um, in our minds if we need to. Um, But how would you describe the sort of the interdependence or the nature of the relationship? Like what's the exchange between some of those, uh, elements if we sort of draw that connection between them? 

Tenille Moselen: Yeah, well, I mean, some of the exchange is financial. Is this the path that you want to go down? 

Matt Healey: Oh, I mean, I think you've, that's a great question to ask because I would also say that conceptually there's not necessarily a wrong answer. Um, and it's interesting that you described it as like a financial exchanges [00:42:00] in like a customer or, um, you know, distributor purchasing the product and then on selling it. 

Matt Healey: The thing that I actually thought of as I was putting this question to you was the exchange in terms of the impact on health. So. The exchange is actually almost like a subtract subtraction. It's minusing the health from, from a young person. 

Tenille Moselen: Yeah. Well, I was thinking I always start really methodically in my head with big business and then down to, or I should say cross sectors to health. 

Tenille Moselen: So when I was going down the financial path of the exchange, I was then going to describe how that gets to The health end of it, where it's exactly what you just said. It's the, the opposite of a gain. It's essentially it subtracts or declines or has a negative impact on health. Uh, and again, I think that shows the complexity of the system. 

Tenille Moselen: One is a really positive financial gain. And then on the other hand, [00:43:00] there's, um, negative health. 

Matt Healey: Oh, absolutely. And, uh, I don't know if you've ever come across, um, causal loop diagrams, but they are very much centered around that idea of identifying the pluses and minuses in the relationships to help understand what the sort of dynamics are that are at play. 

Matt Healey: at play. The other thing that's interesting to think about there in terms of the nature of the relationship and what it does is like thinking about those more deterministic networks that we were briefly touching on around what drives a behavior and why do young people take up vaping and starting to think about it in more of the underlying drivers of a particular issue. 

Matt Healey: Is it peer pressure or is that just The surface level driver and there's actually something deep. So 

Tenille Moselen: you're touching on there, the exchange for the end users essentially, which can be, um, what they see as valuable from that product. Whether it's like we mentioned before that it's seen as a stress relief or ultimately it might just be that [00:44:00] it's addiction, whether they realize it or not. 

Tenille Moselen: Interesting. 

Matt Healey: Yeah. But also if we go back to the, the point on the exchange. It's not just a one way set of relationships where it ends with the, the young person, I keep saying young people, it doesn't have to be young people, but that's just what's front of mind for me at the moment, but there are ostensibly gains. 

Matt Healey: So social status, you know, in that vein of, it's not, it's not just a linear one way, path. Like there are always going to be other relationships or other directed connections that come out of that, that part of the network where there is that gain in social status or something else that we might not understand or perceive because from our perspective, it's not there, but for them, it might be. 

Matt Healey: And I think that is a really important thing to recognize. We could keep going and we're only halfway through, but okay. I think we've identified that there's a whole bunch of, um, interdependencies across, across these. Multiple different forms of networks that we're starting to describe, which [00:45:00] kind of addresses the next one, which is that nested idea so that we'd take an issue, um, and we can kind of start to unpack it, but it's still nested within these broader systems or networks. 

Matt Healey: Um, I kind of keep using the phrase above and below, and I guess the other way you could think about it is like highly localized, um, bounded systems within a geographic area or a place. So you could look at a township and you could say, okay, that's like a highly local system. But the Australian economic system or political system is a bigger system that that local system is still nested within and is influenced by that bigger system. 

Matt Healey: So if we go back to your topic of vaping, what systems would you see as kind of sitting above or below? I feel like I see the systems 

Tenille Moselen: as like circular around. the issue of vaping versus above and below. And there's things like the education system, obviously vaping in schools, and it can also be a place to educate and do preventative measures. 

Tenille Moselen: Then there's a health system, which obviously feels the impacts of [00:46:00] vaping. And then I suppose there is the system which benefits from vaping, which is, I guess, big business or, um, I mean, ultimately it does connect back to the tobacco industry. And then there's also, I guess, The almost the federal government level as well. 

Tenille Moselen: So the political system in terms of, um, what can be put in place around vaping. So, yeah, I, I, in my head, I conceptualize it as vaping in the middle and then all these systems that sit around the issue and essentially those systems crossover. 

Matt Healey: Oh, absolutely. What you've touched on there is we have to start drawing these almost artificial boundaries around what we're talking about. 

Matt Healey: Otherwise, we're just going to get overwhelmed because everything is connected to everything else. Um, which to me is perhaps the better way of phrasing what this particular aspect is all about, which is, are we having to insert boundaries to separate it out or delineate it from other areas [00:47:00] so that we can actually conceptualize it, make sense of it? 

Matt Healey: I mean, it's funny that you describe yours as, In the middle and your other systems wrapped around it. And I was kind of thinking of it above and below. And I think that again, it's just, it's different people visualize or conceptualize what it looks like, but it kind of doesn't matter. The main thing is that you are able to develop a bit of a mental picture of what it looks like. 

Matt Healey: The last one, which kind of flows out of all of those is that There's adaptation happening. You mentioned they like doing preventative measures in schools, for instance. If that happens, are there adaptations or if the government brings in a policy change, are there adaptations amongst the actors and factors within the network? 

Matt Healey: Um, and I'm sure you could probably think of. Some there that maybe address that point. 

Tenille Moselen: Yeah, I think the adaptations are there for sure. Often delayed much more than when we would have liked to see them. But yeah, I know, um, there is a lot more regulation around the selling and distribution of vapes now. 

Tenille Moselen: Uh, and I [00:48:00] know that when they first came out, people were vaping in no smoking areas, and they didn't see vaping the same as smoking, but I think there's been a culture shift now that if you're in a no smoking area, people aren't vaping. However, I think it has a long way to go. I know that all university campuses in Australia are non smoking campuses, and I guarantee you could step onto campus and see someone vaping because there's not the association of vaping. 

Tenille Moselen: This is smoking in a non smoking area quite yet. 

Matt Healey: That point on delays is a really good one. I think what's interesting to consider there is where, say for instance, government announces that they're going to bring in a policy change and they provide by X date next year, this is going to be the new set of rules. 

Matt Healey: And sometimes what you'll see is, uh, almost like a, um, accelerated or front loaded effort by other actors in response to that, you know, prices of this are going to go up. So I'm going to import a lot more. Now, and so again, that's [00:49:00] that point of adaptation. Like, it's not always good adaptation, but it is adaptation nonetheless. 

Matt Healey: Or, yeah, people, um, responding differently with a change in behavior over time because they're learning or see conceptually, see vaping as different or the same, um, as, tobacco use or something like that, or don't because you know, it's not the same because it's a different type of product. 

Tenille Moselen: Yeah. I think that's how it's marketed as well, that it's a different product, but I liked your point around, um, when the government announced something and there can be that front loaded effort from other actors. 

Tenille Moselen: I think it's important to remember that all the actors can adapt. So, yeah. You might have actors that, uh, have positive and more negative influences or outcomes, but you have to remember when the positive one adapts, your negative ones will adapt as well. So you have to constantly be working with the system and, um, understanding how everything influences one another. 

Matt Healey: Absolutely. And I mean, I think that's hit the nail on the head. And [00:50:00] being able to firmly say that this is clearly a complex problem, um, because of the fact that you are having to have that, um, awareness, that sort of, uh, ability to see across the system. And I think the challenge here is the inherent unpredictability, like you don't know what to expect. 

Matt Healey: Organizations and people are going to do in response to certain things. So predicting adaptations is very challenging in the short term. Maybe you could do it to a fairly reliable extent, but you know, the longer the time span that you're trying to forecast to the harder it might be to, to predict what can occur. 

Matt Healey: And so they're having that ability to pivot and make changes, try new things. Um, Sort of test in line and all that stuff is really important, but I think that goes back to what I was not so sadly dropping at the start around that sort of idea of network solutions. So not putting all your eggs in one basket with one answer to try and fix the problem, but recognizing that there's a multitude of things happening and we kind of, if we see lots of solutions all over the place that are, [00:51:00] you know, not scattergunned, that are strategic and considered, um, you know, there might be again, unpredictable. 

Matt Healey: positive outcomes. Um, because of all the adaptations that those different actors are making. Yeah. Yeah, that was great 

Tenille Moselen: to talk through the complex problem with those four different components. I really liked that. 

Matt Healey: Yeah, absolutely. So this is what I would typically suggest to people as a precursor exercise before we, you get into the more obvious stuff. 

Matt Healey: Oftentimes people will default to doing a systems map to make sense of a complex problem. And I think that you can perhaps even sometimes just having a conversation around these, areas is a good starting point before you get into the hands on stuff. So what I want to suggest to you is that, um, and this isn't because I'm disorganized by any means, but I think, uh, intentionally having this conversation has been really useful. 

Matt Healey: And then next time, um, I think we could actually start to. Dive into a bit more of a specific hands on exercise, developing a systems map, and picking up on some of these things that we've talked about here, [00:52:00] like boundaries and, and some of those other ideas too. 

Tenille Moselen: Yeah. Great. I think that sounds like a good plan and a nice little wrap up before Christmas. 

Matt Healey: Yeah, absolutely. So just to recap for, for people listening a problem is complex when you have diverse actors or entities or the things that make up the network, that the connections that All right. In existence, indicating an exchange. There's that interdependence between those actors and factors. 

Matt Healey: There's that broader nesting. So it's not sitting in isolation from other things, but there are influences from the outside or above and below or, or conceptually, whatever makes sense to you. And importantly, there's that adaptation that's occurring in response to those local changes, but also, uh, higher level sort of global changes. 

Matt Healey: Uh, and within all of that is then that unpredictability that manifests, which can make our work really challenging. Yeah. Again, I would kind of go back to this idea of sort of networks of solutions or connections between responses to those different factors. Um, and recognizing [00:53:00] that sort of having a bit of a broader strategic direction can be a good way to start thinking through how we actually respond rather than going down the silver bullet pathway. 

Matt Healey: Um, great. All right. Well, thanks to Neil for indulging me. Um, I look forward to, uh, getting to the next step of the process, which will be, uh, getting to the systems mapping stuff. 

Tenille Moselen: Yeah. Sounds great. And what a privilege it was to hear from Dominic today. 

Matt Healey: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks Dominic again for that. All right. 

Matt Healey: We'll see you next 

Tenille Moselen: time. See you Matt. 

Matt Healey: The Systems Sandbox is a first person consulting production and creation. It's a part of our work with VicHealth on our local government partnership capacity support program. 

Tenille Moselen: That's it for today's episode of The Systems Sandbox. Thanks for tuning in. I'm Tenille and with me was Matt. Until next [00:54:00] time.