#9 From Surface Change to Systems Change with Dr James Nobles

In this episode Matt chats with Dr James Nobles from Leeds Beckett University about his journey into and use of systems thinking methodologies. They cover the ways in which we can and should think about the deeper layers to target, and where to start. 

Spanning the use of techniques in design, delivery, and implementation this is a conversation that will be of value to everyone who grapples with complex problems. This includes deeper dives into the Action Scales Model and Ripple Effects Mapping - it promises to be a load of fun!

Resources mentioned or discussed in the episode:

• The Systems Thinker website
• Complex Systems Frameworks Collection hosted by Simon Fraser University
• Link to James' paper on the Action Scales Model
• Also, links to papers on Ripple Effects Mapping and some learning on implementation of a systems approach in Glouchestershire

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

Transcript

Matt Healey: Welcome back to another episode of the System Sandbox. It's hard to believe that we're already up to episode 9 in this series. And if you haven't had a chance to listen to any of the other episodes, I'd really encourage you to go back and check out some of our favorites. That includes episode 2, where we talked about systems thinking as both a process and a product with Jocelyn Bignold. 

Episode five talking about the role of systems and place with Dominic Hess, and also a bit of a discussion on what it means to diagnose complexity. How do you know something is complex? Still a really pertinent question. Now today I have the pleasure of sharing with you Great conversation that I have with Dr. James Nobles from Leeds Beckett University. James is a fascinating guy. Over the last 10 years has developed a, a really extensive research portfolio across the sort of non communicable disease prevention space. 

Really focused on the sort of systemic nature of a lot of these challenges and has some really interesting insights and experiences. to share from, from the UK. I think the thing that really stood out to me that was quite interesting was James's journey, not just into using systems methods in his work, but also the bridge between using systems techniques in the sort of design delivery end of things. 

And then also going into the evaluation side of things too, and the kind of different roles or hats that you can play as the kind of systems practitioner or systems user. If I can use that word in, in those different contexts and working with different communities on the ground as well I will flag that there's a few resources and things that do come up during the conversation with James. And you can find a link to some of those in the, in the show notes. 

So with all that in mind here's Dr. James Nobles. 

Matt Healey: , thanks James for joining me today. Like we've kind of been communicating about in the background, we're here to talk about systems. But before we get into all of that I'd be interested to learn a little bit about yourself, your background. And I think in particular how you came to the world of systems thinking practice. 

Matt Healey: So yeah, maybe just a bit about your background for our, for our listeners. 

James Nobles: Cheers, Matt. Thank you. So my route to this was definitely not a natural one. I don't think I started out. So undergraduate wise, like that was probably 15 years ago, did sports science. But one of the fields that we could study within the sports science degree was like the public health and like the health related route. 

James Nobles: And that appealed to me way more so than going down the sports performance route. So I undertook a PhD, which was in childhood weight management. And I absolutely loved, like, loved my PhD. But as I was getting towards, like, the end of it, I was very aware that, like, the majority of the work I was doing was it was quite downstream. 

James Nobles: It was focused on trying to change individual behaviors. an opportunity came up to do a postdoc on a government funded initiative called the whole systems approach to obesity program. And that for me was like a transition point really to move slightly away. Like I'm still doing a little bit of research in the field of weight management, but it was an opportunity to kind of step back. To work and understand the kind of the the factors that might be driving population levels off for health and to go a bit further upstream and really understand the problem from that kind of perspective. So I ended up, as I say, I a two year postdoc on that particular project. And what we tried to do in it was develop a load off. guidance resources for local authorities in the UK to design and implement a systems approach to the prevention of overweight and obesity in their local area. System science was very much like, not many of us really, like within the team, knew too much about system science at that point in time, but when we started looking at kind of similar resources that were available, Like system science was very much kind of a core and rightly so a core component part of those other tools and resources. 

James Nobles: So for us, it was a case of like trying to learn what we could about science and how it might be able to benefit local authorities in the UK to try and design and implement all of these systems approaches. 

Matt Healey: Mm hmm. 

James Nobles: This journey into systems science that really began this is maybe like eight years or so ago now. I loved like all the concepts I could see like the translatability of like the concepts and the methods one of the things that has always interested me is well how on earth do we make these quite like academic concepts and there's a lot of jargon in the system science field. How do we make that like translatable into local practice? And so that's where I mean the That project that was funded through Public Health England, that was all about making it applicable to local context. everything I've done since then has been trying to demystify a little bit some of the system science jargon and the concepts and translate it back into the real world. And then possibly like in more recent times, I mean, that's sort of like four or five years. then been looking at, well, how can we, there's been a real push around the use of systems approaches in the UK for physical activity for childhood obesity, like a whole range of different non communicable diseases. 

Matt Healey: Mm 

James Nobles: they're now being designed and implemented. But we're now struggling with like, how on earth do we try and evaluate these things? So the last four or five years has been. Really focusing on how do we evaluate them once they are being set up and implemented. And on the back of that, we've established the systems evaluation network. 

James Nobles: So yeah, 

Matt Healey: hmm. Mm hmm. 

James Nobles: like the, the journey that I've sort of taken so far, I think around into system science, but it's not necessarily being by design. I think it's just by, by a bit of chance, really, that I've got to this point. 

Matt Healey: Yeah, so, I mean, do you then, like, within your current role because you're at the Leeds Beckett uni. 

James Nobles: Yeah. 

Matt Healey: Yeah. So, like, within that role, then would you say that predominantly your work is more on the sort of evaluation side of systems as opposed to sort of more the design delivery of interventions side of it? 

Matt Healey: Or like, is a bit of bit of both? 

James Nobles: It's very much a bit of both. Over the last four, like I said, the last four or five years, it's been heavily focused on evaluation, but I'm also really cautious that people are still designing and implementing these approaches. And they're using maybe guidance that was developed nearly like eight years ago now. 

Matt Healey: Yeah. Yeah. 

James Nobles: It's trying to and I'm really I love that. But I love working with local authorities and local teams to help think about the ways in which they could maybe horrible word, but I optimize their approaches. 

Matt Healey: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

James Nobles: I'm very much like trying to, but also they kind of they all interlink like the evaluation very much feeds back into and the delivery of those approaches that are being undertaken on the ground. 

James Nobles: So I don't always see them as two separate things, but I'm 

Matt Healey: Yeah, 

James Nobles: wanting to evaluate what's happening and that be that. I really wanted to feedback into what's going on. 

Matt Healey: yeah, for sure. And I think like you made a good point there as well, that there's that sort of more, I mean people that work in the evaluation space would call it more, maybe more developmental style approaches of like feedback, feeding back into design and delivery type processes as well, which are equally applicable in like the systems space as well. 

Matt Healey: I mean, before we get into all of your stuff, one thing I'm really interested in. Curious to, to ask you. So last, last episode, we chatted with the snow about storytelling and systems thinking. And one of the things that we asked her was, you know, did she have a favorite story? I'm curious, do you, do you have one? 

Matt Healey: It could be from, you know, childhood or more recently, but yeah. Is there something that maybe stands out in your mind as something that's got a good, I would say good moral. That's a bit, it sounds a bit too judgmental, but you know, at least, at least 

James Nobles: judge that. 

Matt Healey: yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. 

James Nobles: Yeah. So I, I, I, I thought about this a little bit beforehand. And so we've got a two year old daughter, 

Matt Healey: Hmm. Ah, 

James Nobles: loves stories and loves and loves books. So I spend a lot of time reading stories to her. And so the one I think, like, for me at the moment that is probably like going down the best with her and like, she, and I really enjoy reading it to her as well. 

James Nobles: It's like called The Snail and the Whale by Julia Donaldson and 

Matt Healey: Don't 

James Nobles: It's basically, it's about like a snail who hitches a ride on a whale and they go 

Matt Healey: good. 

James Nobles: all, and that's it. No, they go all around the world. This snail's like, wow. The, the world is like just so big, like can't really see its place like in this big world. And then the whale that it's hitching, its ride on, gets beached. And so it's up to the snail then to try and save this whale. So it's got like a real nice little moral in there that doesn't, doesn't matter how kind of like small you are or maybe how like insig insignificant you might feel like the, the bigger scheme of things. 

James Nobles: Like there, there's maybe something that you, you can do. I think there's some way of like kind of feeding that back into the systems type arena, but yeah, it's just a really, really lovely story and she loves it. I enjoy reading it to us. I think that that for me is one of the most salient ones at the moment. 

Matt Healey: Yeah. And I mean, you can kind of draw out, I mean, often a lot of times the sort of working in systems space kind of requires you to use a lot of like metaphors and analogies and those sorts of things. And I mean, you can kind of almost draw out there, like, you know, the snail. Being really small and like not being able to have that sort of oversight or view of like the whole system. 

Matt Healey: And it's only got its perspective and and, but equally, you know, the whale getting beached and the small snails has to somehow save or shift this huge whale. Like how on earth could that actually happen? Like you could, you could very much imagine pulling out some of those sorts of you know ideas and tying them into some of the systems concepts that. 

Matt Healey: People talk about in terms of like non linearity and perspectives and diversity and all that sort of stuff too. 

James Nobles: It found a very, a very strong leverage point I think. 

Matt Healey: Yeah. Yeah. There we go. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm interested. So one of the things we're really trying to do with this, this podcast is obviously bring in different experiences or examples of practice from from all over. So obviously James, you're based in the UK and you've been doing a lot and you've been working on a lot of things over, over the last 10 years or so. 

Matt Healey: I mean, Are there maybe one or two projects that come to mind that, you know, maybe highlight or really demonstrate how some of the systems thinking work that you've been applying kind of demonstrate or embody or, you know, really, really just good examples that stand out in your mind as I don't want to say best practice again, I don't want to make it sound like I'm judging your work. 

Matt Healey: But examples of practice that you're really, really happy with, proud of, or feel embody some of those ideas. 

James Nobles: Yeah So the, the project that I worked on as part, so the postdoc project that I was working on, the whole systems approach to obesity like that, whilst it was quite a while ago now, like there's a lot of work that was undertaken in that, which I like, really, I'm like quite proud of, like being involved in and leading on aspects of certainly got some good examples. 

James Nobles: And then the other one, which we might have time to have a bit of a chat about is physical activity orientated So it was a systems approach that has been undertaken in a place called Gloucestershire, which is in England, and they were really trying to improve the physical activity opportunities for people living in some of like the most economically deprived parts of the county. And it was like our role to try and Yeah. Kind of use a developmental evaluation to to run alongside that for a two year period of time. And to feed all of those learnings like back into the continuous delivery of that, that initiative, but we can't we We developed some, no, we refined some particular methods that I think were like really useful. 

James Nobles: So they, for me, are kind of two examples that maybe we can kind of like go into in a little bit more depth. The first one's more about like the implementation and maybe the second one, a bit more evaluation orientated. 

Matt Healey: Yeah. All right. Let's let's do that. Let's maybe unpack the like for the implementation one, for, for example maybe do you want to set the scene a little bit in terms of like the, I don't want to say the problem, but like what the, what the sort of need or, or sort of opportunity was, was basically the sort of precursor to, to your postdoc actually coming Mm. 

James Nobles: Yep. So in England, we've got lots of local authorities similar to in Australia, in each of those local authorities, you've got the different different departments, one of the departments being Department of I'm sorry, it's not the Public Health Department, have Directors of Public Health, and a load of the Directors of Public Health got together, I think it was in about 2013, they were asked, like, the question, like, where do you do you sort of see your work going in the future and like where are those opportunities for academia maybe to like to contribute to helping you with that vision? 

Matt Healey: Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. 

James Nobles: the development of whole systems approaches to try and address some of these I guess aligned issues that they were facing. So say around obesity prevention, physical activity, smoking cessation. And so it was on the back of that, that got this funding from it's a non governmental agency called Public Health England. Sorry, not a government agency called Public Health England. And they provided the university with, it was about three years of funding to work alongside Quite a large number of local authorities in England to develop this guidance that would help them move from where they are now, which by and large was like using quite some silo downstream interventions to prevent overweight and obesity to work more towards getting multiple sectors engaged. really understand the complexity of the problems that they're dealing with to then design and implement a systems approach to try and address some of those issues. So we developed, it was like a six a six phase process. Whilst working with local authorities to at the beginning, it's all about trying to like, get their senior leadership team on board with this idea, because we recognize that without your senior leaders being on board, like, it's not, you're not really going to free up the time, the resource, the capacity to engage in this through to, you know, Like using group model building to try and build a collective and shared understanding of what it is that's driving the problem and then through to using some, and this is maybe like the idea I'd like to just chat a little bit about is then using some system science kind of systems thinking to identify places within that system that they might be able to intervene. And so there's all of that work historically from Danella Meadows and Diana Feingood about identifying places of leverage. And it was that we really kind of, or at least I'd say we, like, I did like a lot of work in trying to Help just simplify tools and concepts around leverage point identification and places to intervene. 

James Nobles: And so we developed something called the action scales model, which has been really quite helpful, I think, for people in the last 5, 6 years. Yeah, so that, that's, I think that's a really nice example, maybe to just to walk through here that probably has quite a lot of translatability too. 

Matt Healey: Yeah. I mean, leverage points, it's you know, for anyone that's familiar with Danielle Meadows work, like, and, or even just systems sort of practices in general, like leverage points are often pointed to as, you know, a key thing that we're trying to pick up on because, you know, it's then about figuring out, okay, which of these is, you know, a leverage point we can actually address, but then, you know, which one of those that we can address is going to have the biggest you know, Not that I want to say bang for buck, but, you know, biggest return or biggest benefit across that, across that system. 

Matt Healey: So yeah, I must admit, I'm not familiar with the the action. What was it? Action scales. 

James Nobles: Yes, model. Yeah. 

Matt Healey: yeah. So, I mean, can you, can you walk us through like what that is, what the application of that looks like, sort of what some of the, I guess, processes within that look like, 

James Nobles: Yeah. So we're going back to so you just mentioned and Daniella Meadows Daniella Meadows. Quite a good number of years ago now identified 12 potential places that you could intervene. In systems. So this goes from trying to understand like the patterns of a system and how those kind of patterns come about through to feedback loops and whether or not you can kind of reinforce these feedback loops, balance them out, trying to understand like the goals that the system is working towards through to. 

James Nobles: The kind of the mindsets and the paradigms of the people who are really kind of organizing that system implicitly or explicitly to work as it does. 

Matt Healey: Hmm. 

James Nobles: those sort of 12 places to intervene has been like really, really kind of like it's just, I guess it's quite seminal work. But when you try and apply those 12 places to intervene in practice, like it it's, it's far, what we found was that that was far too academic 

Matt Healey: Hmm. 

James Nobles: Other researchers so Peter Senge and Dianne Feingood, like they've done quite a bit of work to try and simplify that. So Peter Senge's got the iceberg model, which has just got the four kind of like different places to intervene. Dianne Feingood's like identified five. So we tried to use like these different kinds of models, but we still found that those models were they weren't very tangible. 

James Nobles: They weren't sort of speaking the public health speak. 

Matt Healey: Hmm. 

James Nobles: They were difficult to use in practice. And so rather than just force one of these upon sorry, force one of these into that guidance that we're developing. We thought, well, let's work with local authorities to maybe develop our own one of these. 

Matt Healey: Hmm. Hmm. 

James Nobles: action scales model. So it holds onto Meadows, it yeah. It very much focuses on making those principles are accessible. So we simplified the language. We created some like engaging visuals. We provided like tangible examples that people could really easily understand. We created a series of questions that would help people to maybe just. We often build these systems maps which are brilliant in that they can, like, describe the complexity of the problem, but people often, at least in England, we can often get stuck with, well, what do we do with this now? And so these kind of lenses, if you like, like the 12 places to intervene interventional framework, action scales model, like these can provide us, like, with a bit of a lens to try and, you know, To really systemically understand what it is that's driving and holding that problem in place. so, as I say, we developed like a series of questions that stakeholder groups could use to. interrogate like their systems map or interrogate the problem to really say, well, why is it that all of the intervention efforts that we've been using so far just aren't really kind of stopping this problem from getting any worse in the future. 

Matt Healey: Yeah. 

James Nobles: we did a lot of work and a lot of research, but a lot of like workshops around that trend to just understand what's happening now. Quite often like the interventions were very much like kind of sticking plasters. So I know providing education programs, like fixing potholes in the roads, all of those sorts of things, but not really kind of getting to the, to the root cause of the problem. So the action scales model has got four levels to it at the top is like the events, which is very similar to other ones. So that's quite often historically where we spent the majority of our time. It's just 

Matt Healey: Mm. 

James Nobles: to these issues that we see popping up. But. It doesn't really do anything to to prevent those things from happening further into the future. But below the surface, you've got the structures of the system. So the way in which the system is organized, like how information flows through that system. But if you start working down at that level, like you're doing things to to reorganize how that system is structured to maybe prevent those issues from occurring further down the line. 

Matt Healey: Mm. 

James Nobles: give like more of a tangible example of this in a moment. Then below that again, you've got, well, the goals that that system is set up and trying to achieve. If we think about, I don't know, the school system, for example, at the moment in the, in the UK at least, quite often those systems are set up to try and just drive academic attainment as opposed to pupil health and well being. 

James Nobles: So the 

Matt Healey: Yeah. 

James Nobles: that education system is let's try and ensure that our kids are achieving as best they possibly can, but possibly at the forfeit of something else. So if we were to redirect that goal towards, let's see if we can get the healthiest kids possible, then all of a sudden, what the school environment looks like would be very different. 

James Nobles: And therefore, what we might start seeing 

Matt Healey: Mm. 

James Nobles: years time would be very different. But in 

Matt Healey: Yeah. 

James Nobles: that, I think you've got to address like, The bottom of the action scales model, which we refer to as like the beliefs. This is the paradigms kind of stuff that Dylan Meadows talks about is how do we shift like the kind of the mindsets, the beliefs of those people who are really setting these systems up in the first place. 

James Nobles: And they might not be setting them up intentionally. They might just be as they are. How can we try and those mindsets of those kind of like key individuals who have the ability to change what those goals look like and therefore like maybe help again in the longer term reorientate how those systems work. 

James Nobles: So 

Matt Healey: Mm. 

James Nobles: scales model and as I say it was all about like trying to find some really tangible examples. The school system is a great one because there's so many examples there that you can think of and you can apply those 

Matt Healey: Yeah. 

James Nobles: to that that model in particular has been being quite widely used in the UK just to help better understand the systems that people are working in and then maybe on the flip side of that, identify those places where they, they think it would be worth trying to trying to use their, their collective efforts rather than just, let's just kind of keep putting more and more sticking plasters on the problem. 

James Nobles: Let's see if we can do something a bit deeper down. Hello. 

Matt Healey: name the system there. So, like, you're talking about, like, the school system and then, like, what is the purpose or function of the school system or the goal? 

Matt Healey: And I think it's really interesting to think about, well, we can kind of name systems and ascribe what their purpose or function is. But actually then who, what's the role of the people in, like you said they're not necessarily creating it, but at the very least they might be sustaining or maintaining that function because, and you know, undoubtedly you would have heard the same phrase of like, you know, this is what we've always done, like that type of idea, or like, that's not our Like that's not our purpose. 

Matt Healey: Like we are here for the education of kids. We're not here for health and wellbeing, for instance, but actually like by reshaping the purpose of that system to encompass maybe a more holistic view of what achievement is for a child or for a young person, like it changes the, you know, The organizational remit or the systems remit to be from education solely to, you know, more of a, more of a a thriving view for, for children, for instance. 

Matt Healey: So, I mean, with the, with the model like you mentioned, there's the kind of layers. Does it sort of have a prescribed like application of that process? Like, can you kind of jump in at any of those levels? Do you have to sort of. Start at a, you know, at a certain point that, that doesn't have to be at the events level, but like, can you just start at any level? 

Matt Healey: Like what's that application of that to a particular context look like if, you know, someone came to you and said, I want to use the action action scales model, tell me what to do first. Like what's your, what's your kind of process there? 

James Nobles: So we may there isn't like a clear answer this one because we made it said it was applicable in multiple different ways. So it 

Matt Healey: Mm. 

James Nobles: be that you use the actual scales model a way to guide a conversation with stakeholders. So you could use it almost like as a. As a topic guide really 

Matt Healey: Mm. Right. 

James Nobles: you're just getting people to like talk about, well, what are the problems that you are kind of dealing with? 

James Nobles: And then, well, let's kind of go into that in a little bit more depth. Like what is it that's driving that problem to kind of stay as it is? It's like, oh, are there, I dunno, is it that those people think that that system is set up to try and achieve a particular purpose and to kind of surface all of that? You could just use it in the sense of it's a way of guiding a conversation, but also propose that it could be used as a tool like in a participatory workshop. So it might be that stakeholders have developed a loop diagram or just a systems map, and they 

Matt Healey: Mm. 

James Nobles: use the action scales model to interrogate that map that they've developed. 

James Nobles: So that would be a case of going through. the systems map and just trying to ask questions of all of those different factors that they put in there is to well, do we think this kind of issue in the systems map is more at the event level? Or do we think this is kind of like a mindset related issue? 

James Nobles: So it's 

Matt Healey: Mm. 

James Nobles: up and down through the action scales. Well, it's more about seeing as like, as I said earlier, like that lens to through and 

Matt Healey: Mm. 

James Nobles: questions off. And then the final purpose that we talk about in the paper, and we've used it quite a lot in this way is as an evaluation tool. 

James Nobles: So to try and help us categorize isn't. It is the right word, but at the same time, it's not the right word like to try and categorize actions against so that we can kind of get a if we zoom out a little bit, we can better understand like what the collective intervention effort looks like, but 

Matt Healey: Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. 

James Nobles: to whether or not something's working at this level or that level. 

James Nobles: So We try and encourage it. It's trying to encourage a deeper level of thinking about the problems that we're dealing with. So that's sort of 33 different ways in which it can be used. But one of the core concepts within all of that is trying to ensure that there's between the different levels and that what you're doing isn't at odds with. 

James Nobles: Sort of like the goals of the system or the, the, the beliefs of those, it's trying to get them all kind of pushing in the same direction and that can be really difficult to do. But I think that's why, why we see at that more event level, right? If you're just, know in the school system, if you're just trying to educate pupils on how to make healthier decisions at lunchtime. If all if that's all you're doing, but then that the canteen is set up so that it's really easy to pick up like I don't know, a chocolate bar at the end of the checkout or they've just not got any healthier options available at lunchtime, then those kind of two efforts are really kind of clashing heads. 

James Nobles: So it's how can we. Ensure that the canteen is providing like really nutritious food as well as say providing education for pupils around just nutrition and diet, etcetera. So it's thinking 

Matt Healey: Mm. 

James Nobles: alignment 

Matt Healey: speaks to, I guess, the other part in sort of public health practice, which really goes back to, you know, multiple interventions at multiple levels as well and not kind of not, not necessarily saying, like, don't put all your eggs in one basket, but recognizing that, you know, Targeting different things at different levels in different places will ultimately in theory be more effective than just, you know, focusing only on education because like you say, if your canteen menu is loaded with I don't know if you guys have like the traffic light kind of approach to categorizing foods, but, 

James Nobles: yeah. 

Matt Healey: but like, you know, if your canteen menu has loads of red foods and then like kids can access them easily, even though they've just come out of a you know, a class or whatever on, you know, You know, the importance of eating healthily and then they can get like that. 

Matt Healey: Those are very much at odds. And so it's like, well, you're just going to cancel out or, you know, not even show any positive actual changes. And you know, if you evaluate in sort of isolation from that broader effort, great. The kids have learned a lot about the importance of eating healthily, but then, you know, you might look at other results or other data around. 

Matt Healey: Nutritional intake and be like, Oh, they're eating so much unhealthy food, like why, like, I don't understand why this program is not working. And it's like, well, the program is doing what it's meant to do, but it's just the broader context or environment that they're living in and playing in is not actually sort of conducive to. 

Matt Healey: Supporting them to implement what they've learned, for instance. 

James Nobles: Absolutely, which I think is, and I'm sure, but that for me is like, why taking a systems perspective to either evaluation or intervention design is like, it's so, so important because. But just focusing on these individual outcomes, it can quite often be, I think, distracting. There's 

Matt Healey: Mm 

James Nobles: happening in the world and the spheres that, say, children are interacting with that are having an influence upon their health, their well being, and all of these other outcomes that we typically like to sort of segment up and focus on measuring. 

Matt Healey: hmm. Oh, absolutely. And the the sort of focus on like, particularly in behavior change programming around, like, if we just, if we just give them more information, like that is the, that is the answer. It's like, well, yeah, like they can know things, but most people know, know what is bad for them. But that doesn't mean that they don't do it for other reasons or for other factors in their lives. 

Matt Healey: Like you know, I think there's just that big issue, particularly around like nutritional intake of like. The onus is on the individual because they're not eating healthy. It's like, well, we also have to have those other structures around them that support that. That includes them being able to actually access affordable, fresh food and, and those sorts of things too. 

Matt Healey: I'm curious before we move on to the, to the other example The, the, the action scales model that you were describing, like that sort of categorization of things against that, like kind of struck me as not dissimilar to what I've seen people do with the water of systems change model as well. I mean, would, would that be a fair sort of comparison around like categorizing what, what certain things are and, and that's kind of in that vein, isn't it? 

James Nobles: Yeah, so the water of systems change, like that's also another very similar, very similar model. It's not one that I've used. I've like, I've seen it and broadly know what kind of what it includes, but yeah, it's, it is, it's, it's the same kind of tool. And there are other ones as well. There's like tree diagrams, there's like icebergs that have been kind of like inverted. 

James Nobles: So you kind of go down to understand the problem. You come back up to try and identify places to intervene or to maybe like address some of those underlying Issues. So, yeah, there are, there's like, there's quite a wide range of these different tools, but each of those different tools, I think, are very much set up for different purposes and different audiences. 

Matt Healey: Okay. 

James Nobles: us, it's all been about how can we help support those working in local practice to maybe almost implicitly start drawing on some system science concepts. 

Matt Healey: Yeah, and I think there's that, there's that distinction as well between I guess trying to give people what they need so that they can like knowingly apply it versus trying to give people stuff so that just in their day to day practice, they're kind of applying bits and pieces of it. You know, which maybe is enough given who they are and the roles that they play. 

Matt Healey: Cause I think the challenge that can sometimes come up is that we're asking so much of people who are on ground to be the ones that do all of the changes. And. You know, the reality is much like your example with the snail and the whale, like they can only kind of go so far because they are only so big and actually there are, you know, bigger structures that govern what they can and can't do. 

Matt Healey: And, you know, a school system is still governed or influenced by broader policy environments that sit above them that will only allow them to push things so far. And same again for an individual practitioner in a, in a local authority, like they can only push things so far. Before they're going to come up against those other structures that, you know, basically mean that they can't go any further without other changes occurring at those higher levels too. 

James Nobles: Yeah, yeah, but within, yeah, I mean, we've heard like those kind of things, like so much in our work, it's like, and that can quite often be like a real resistance to actually like, try and work in this sort of systems, like to, yeah, to carry out a systems approach, because it's like, well, this problem is just too big, like we can't, Like the perception might be that we don't feel like we can do anything to address this issue It's like a government issue or it's a global issue I think we're starting to see some and we do see some really nice things I'm sorry as soon as you can draw some again, they're all they're all intangible I think but draw some boundaries around the system that you're trying to have an influence upon and There's lots of kind of collective action that can be taken a good examples of trying to change those systems, but I don't think that that work is just about trying to say reduce the premise of obesity. 

James Nobles: It might be that the actions that are being undertaken also have benefits on like an air pollution kind of perspective, or it might be that 

Matt Healey: Yeah, totally. 

James Nobles: right, there's just all of these other agendas that are very, very aligned. And taking this kind of like systems perspective to trying to address them might actually like encompass many of them together rather than doing things in isolation of one another. But that's like a slight side point, but yeah, I, it resonates you said about the, the degree of influence that people may perceive they have individually. 

Matt Healey: And I think the the thing around like the sort of role within a system that someone might hold and then the limits to that, I think, speaks to that idea of people working in their kind of their part of an organization or their silo and saying, like, well, I work on, you know, active travel and the environment team over there looks at, you know, air pollution and Technically, from a perspective, they are separate, but actually you could target both things with the same type of intervention. 

Matt Healey: It all kind of comes back to then, you know, your sort of underlying theory of change around how you want to get to that, that end result. 

James Nobles: Yeah. 

Matt Healey: the beauty of like systems approaches to say, evaluation come in because it can help you think about, well, what are the. You know, maybe not similar outcomes, but aligned outcomes that kind of fit within a broader, broader sort of channel of effort, which is, Oh, we want people to be healthier. 

James Nobles: Yeah. 

Matt Healey: sort of co benefits or aligned benefits that we can produce through this, that still fit within the broad remit of the organization for our, you know local authority for instance, like, you know, yep, we can fix up roads and we can also increase rates of active travel and we can also reduce air pollution. 

Matt Healey: And we can also, you know. Do this, that and the other. It's not just about filling in the pothole. We can put in, you know, fill in the pothole and put in a pedestrian crossing at the same time, you know, back that sort of that sort of thinking. But yeah, now I'm going down my own rabbit hole, but but but so the other example that you mentioned now that is kind of shifting more into that more like systems evaluation space. 

Matt Healey: Can you, can you kind of recap for us what the scope and scale of that is? And I guess what your role within that is? 

James Nobles: Yeah, and I also think like what we've just discussed actually like by complete chance is like a really good segue into bits of this too. So like we were, this is work maybe three or four years ago now, but we were We were funded to do an evaluation of a systems approach to, that was trying to like, increase activity levels for people living in some of the most kind of deprived parts of Gloucestershire, which is a, quite like a, a green a green county in England. And so this approach was called We Can Move. And there were lots of like different organizations and different sectors who were involved in this approach coming together, trying to sort of build that collective vision for how they'd improve the physical activity environments. and this approach was underpinned by system science, behavioral science, and a little bit of social movement building. 

James Nobles: So our role wasn't to help, well, not Not intentionally. It wasn't to help inform the design and delivery of this program. It's to run alongside and Initially, it was sort of proposed as like kind of quite traditional process and impact evaluation, but it ended up becoming much more of a kind of a developmental evaluation. But the nice bit about this example was that we, we use quite a, a number of different methods and systems orientated methods to understand like how this. This program of work was evolving over time. So we used mapping like through group model building to try and build that collective that collective understanding of the problem. 

James Nobles: We used social network analysis to try and see how different stakeholders like got engaged at various points in time and, and the, the interaction between those different stakeholders, whether or not the relationships between say local authority departments became stronger over time. And then the other method that we used, and we've, We've had like we've done a lot of work around this. 

James Nobles: In years kind of more recently is around ripple effects mapping. 

Matt Healey: mm 

James Nobles: and that's the one that I think actually speaks quite heavily to the other conversation having about like the multiple outcomes and unanticipated outcomes. and this method like it yeah we end we We stumbled upon this method rather than like identified it from the outset because we so one of the like the initiatives within we can move was a real community based roundup project where they worked with local residents to try and. Initially provide lots of more opportunities for the local communities to be physically active, 

Matt Healey: Mm-hmm 

James Nobles: really like a plan in place. It was just a case of we've got this money. We've got this resource. We can kind of work with these particular community groups. And we'll just see where this goes. And we were like, well, how do we try and evaluate this? or meaningfully evaluate it. And so we then started looking around for potential methods that might help us in that scenario. And we, we did, we stumbled upon ripple effects mapping. So this is a participatory method. It brings people together who've either been involved in or affected by a project, a program of work, a way of working, and you run multiple It's a qualitative method. 

James Nobles: You will run multiple workshops, concurrent to, let's say, the intervention being, or the project being delivered. And the idea of it is, is that you, you kind of map out visually on a big piece of paper, or you can use Miro or other sort of online tools, but it works best, I think, in person. And you start mapping out on a timeline all of the different activities that people have been involved in. then you start thinking, well, What do we think are some of like the kind of the perceived or the wider impacts of our way of working 

Matt Healey: Mm-hmm 

James Nobles: drawing lines between what they've done and what they've seen happen, whether or not there's been any further consequential impacts down the line, it allows us to build up like quite a and holistic picture of these intervention efforts. 

James Nobles: So recognizing that things don't always go as planned. There might 

Matt Healey: Mm-hmm 

James Nobles: happening in the world that has an influence upon like what we're doing locally. So this work happened through COVID. 

Matt Healey: I was gonna say 

James Nobles: we've got this line on the map. It's like COVID but that brought loads of things to an end, but it also opened up loads of opportunities. through ripple effects mapping, we could. We could capture all of that and we can start seeing how. This collection of really does lead to a wide range of outcomes that wasn't just about physical activity opportunities. We also had examples of how, I don't know, it might be working towards or contributing towards improved community mental health and well being or working towards like, you know an air pollution agenda. So it's a real nice method for just exploring like a diversity of impacts that might come from these kind of more organic ways of working. And that's like a real small scale example. But we've used this to to try and better understand like systems approaches. We've used it to try and understand of quite senior leader decision making processes. 

James Nobles: So it's a real It's a really adaptable method in terms of how it's used and the context in which it is used. So, yeah, I think it's been a really brilliant, brilliant tool to have in the toolbox around evaluation. 

Matt Healey: I mean, so you mentioned in there like the point on diversity. And like, I'm just wondering, and I mean, I'm sure there's obviously lots more to the method as well, but like just thinking about diversity of experiences or understanding of like how people have been impacted by their participation in those activities and things like that. 

Matt Healey: Like, how do you balance, like say very different types of experiences from the same intervention or same activity that people have been involved in? Like, how does the, the ripple effects mapping kind of reconcile, you know, someone might've had really great positive benefits that have. Float on to have, you know, X, y, and z outcomes for them. 

Matt Healey: Someone might've had, you know, not really anything, anything change, like it's been pretty neutral. Like how does it balance those, those different takes on, on what changes look like for them? 

James Nobles: And that's it. I think it's a really great question. I don't think it's one I don't like where it's one that we're grappling with, but I don't necessarily know whether or not like there will be many ways in which this could. be improved. I think the first bit like within special ripple effects mapping, but also other methods like systems mapping through group model building activities is trying to like be clear on what the boundaries either of the evaluation or what the boundaries of the problem are that you're trying to maybe like better understand. So when we did when we use ripple effects mapping in the context of we can move, we knew that if we go down to the individual level. 

Matt Healey: mm 

James Nobles: way too much information there for us to try and 

Matt Healey: Yeah. 

James Nobles: because we can't speak to. We can't speak to everyone living in that community. 

Matt Healey: Yeah, of course. Mm-hmm 

James Nobles: to focus on actions that were happening at that time. And it gets a bit, it gets a bit gray now, but like actions that were more being undertaken, like kind of a community level or a neighborhood level. So broader changes that yes, they'd have impacts on individuals, but we're more interested in saying, well, what's now available for the community? And then 

Matt Healey: Yeah. So you're lift lifting it up a level, basically. Yeah. 

James Nobles: bit. Yeah. And then in order to try and gather that information, we then go and run. The ripple effect mapping workshops with different community groups, but you, you still run into the same challenges that you've just described in that. Like, well, we're only capturing certain people's perspectives. 

James Nobles: Not everybody. Those who are in the room are probably those that have maybe got more of an interest in this particular initiative or this particular agenda. what ripple effect mapping does is. will identify people who've been involved in the project or program, or people have maybe tried to engage certain certain individuals, but those people haven't necessarily engaged. And so you could then. Go to those individuals, those organizations, and either do an interview or try to do an interview to do something meaningfully to try and gather their perspective on the thing that it is that you're evaluating or interested in. 

Matt Healey: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

James Nobles: in which you can build up that picture, but what you're not doing is bringing all of those individuals together at the same time. We quite 

Matt Healey: Yep. 

James Nobles: were running separate ripple effect mapping workshops with different stakeholder groups of community residents, the local authority, the implementation team, and we'd look at the extent to which those perspectives or the data on the ripple effect map aligned with each other. But, yeah, we weren't bringing people together into the room at the same time. 

Matt Healey: Yeah. 

James Nobles: like systems mapping, sorry go on Matt. 

Matt Healey: No, I was going to say so. I mean, it just sounds like to me. I mean, it's not dissimilar in many ways to sort of like other collaborative processes, like say co design where it's like you can't involve everyone all the time. And that there is going to be some inherent we can call a bias towards certain types of people that are involved or have the time to be involved. 

Matt Healey: But also you're not sort of looking for consensus as such. Like, it's not like you're trying to bring together all those diverse perspectives and kind of say you had a really positive example or experience. You had a really negative one and we need to kind of find like that sort of middle point where we can kind of, I don't wanna say aggregate it, but like mush it all together and say like, well, here is that single net experience from this program. 

Matt Healey: Like you're actually accounting for diversity by recognizing that it's different, as bizarre as that sounds. 

James Nobles: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Within, I think, especially within something like ripple effects mapping, where it's about what's your, almost like what's your experience being of this thing that has happened. 

Matt Healey: Hmm. 

James Nobles: think things more like say systems mapping or group model building like there, I think you can. Possibly more easily like bring different stakeholder groups together at the same time, because that, for me, is about trying to to understand different perspectives of different stakeholder groups and trying to build that bit of agreement, albeit that they'll be like variation that a bit of a collective agreement as to what it is that's kind of driving a problem to to to be as it is. 

Matt Healey: Yeah. And it's, I mean, it goes back to, you know, what is the purpose of the exercise and making sure your method fits your, your, your intent and those sorts of things. But I mean, it sounds really quite novel in the sense that you're kind of basically unlike, I think other evaluation approaches, which is trying to sort of sort of box people into like the intended outcomes. 

Matt Healey: And, you know, it's almost like not to say that unintended outcomes are bad, but like, it's almost like their second TR. Changes as opposed to just saying like, well, what's changed and like, what's the relationship between those changes? You know, how have they rippled further out? And it's kind of giving allowance to say, like, here are the changes and some of these were not intended, but they are kind of on par with the other things that have changed, like, rather than saying, oh, it's unintended. 

Matt Healey: Therefore, it's lesser than it's a secondary question, that sort of thing. 

James Nobles: Word unintended probably has quite a lot of negative connotations associated with it, but like we always use an example about like if you were to deliver like a cycle training course, like if we did like a traditional evaluation of a cycle training course, we'd probably look at people's confidence at the beginning of that cycle training, people's confidence at the end and see whether or not their confidence improved. 

James Nobles: But there might be loads of other like. unanticipated benefits or unanticipated impacts of cycle training. It might be that you have one or two people who like go and they start cycling in their local environment, but they recognize that their roads are very, very poor. So they start working with like a counselor or an elected member and they go back to the council and say, well, actually our road infrastructure is terrible. 

James Nobles: Or you might get one or two people who've attended that training really enthused about it. And they go and they set up their own cycling groups. So those are unintended impacts of attending that cycle training program, but they hold massive added value. So we're trying to like, we quite often try and reframe the unanticipated impacts as the, at least the positive ones, at least like as added value to this kind of investment, but also you're trying to capture a bit about the negative. 

James Nobles: Yeah. 

Matt Healey: think that's going back to the story type example from the start that you shared the idea of like small, like a small, Effort, a small action, having a bigger positive results, maybe not shifting a whale off a beach necessarily, but like, you know, people go, it's this thing of like, you know, one off activities don't, don't lead to sustain changes. 

Matt Healey: And it's like, well, yes, maybe not in some areas, but actually there could be benefits that we're not aware of and don't capture. And, you know, maybe, yes, on the whole, it doesn't lead to big changes, but every so often it might. And, you know, that added value type idea is, I think, a really important one. 

Matt Healey: I mean, so given your, like, experiences working with all those sorts of communities and groups and things like that, I mean, Do you feel that there are particular sort of requirements or sort of must haves for people who actually want to start applying some of this stuff in their work? I mean, it could be evaluation end or it could be sort of design delivery end, but you know, what's the, what are some of the inputs or that the sort of contextual things that need to be in place for this to start being used or applicable in people's work? 

James Nobles: Two of the ones that, like, for me, mind. Maybe like just to be like curious. And being curious about like the that you're seeing the problems that you're working with and just and just questioning things like questioning whether or not the approach that's been taken at this moment in time is that that really doing something to address like the systemic nature if we're working with systemic problems? 

James Nobles: Is it doing something to address the systemic nature of those issues that we're working with? so, yeah, being, being curious about asking questions of it and it will be difficult, like you, most people will be working in organizations, those organizations are set up to try and achieve certain things, but being curious about the, the things that we're working with might enable us to draw like new insights and, and present like new opportunities for how we go about addressing some of those, those challenges that we're working with. On the flip side of that, and the other one for me is about maybe being Then being quite creative in how we go about addressing those problems or being creative in how we maybe evaluate interventions. I think we're working in like a really exciting space. The systems feels like there is a real rich history of techniques and methods that can be used, but at least in there's kind of the spheres that I'm working in, like, It's exciting in how we bring together like multiple methods or multiple concepts to either better understand the problem or to better understand these really complex like interventions and approaches that are being delivered in the real world. 

James Nobles: So how can we just start like using these different methods to build up that more comprehensive picture of what's happening in the real world. So yeah, they're the two for me, like maybe creativity and being curious. 

Matt Healey: Yeah, great. And look, I mean, lines perfectly with the next question. I want to ask you especially the idea of being curious if someone's sort of starting out in their systems thinking journey. Not that I want to call them like seminal resources, but, you know, Where would you suggest that those curious listeners start? 

Matt Healey: You know, anything, any, anything that you want to maybe point to that would be particularly good for them, particularly maybe on that practical end for, for some of the people that are kind of doing the work or want to do the work. 

James Nobles: There's a few resources that yeah, a few that I quite often signpost people to like, and they're all websites. But one of them is Systems Thinker which I think has just like a real nice collection of different resources. There's an online network too. Predominantly, I might be wrong here, but predominantly like UK orientated, but there's nothing to stop those outside of the UK being part of it. 

James Nobles: It's called the Systems Innovation Network. Again, it's just got this, there's thousands of people involved in that network, but the questions that people are asking, it's a really good website. It's not like a, an old school sort of Reddit type website. It's, it's interactive. It's well organized. There's loads of good resources in there. 

James Nobles: So the Systems Innovation Network, And then Diane Feingood has just set up something called the complex systems collection. And in that too, it's all focused on how do we translate these system science concepts into the real world. nice visuals, really nice kind of like step by step guides on how to use different tools. 

James Nobles: So that's three for me that I think are really, really helpful. 

Matt Healey: Yeah. Awesome. That's the systems thinker is a great resource as well. Like, that's one that I was already familiar with before this. So can definitely attest to that. Look, James, before I, before I let you go back into the warmth of the UK winter or edge of winter any words of wisdom or insight to leave leave our listeners with around the use of systems in their work. 

Matt Healey: Any quotable quotes. 

James Nobles: Nothing like no quotes, more quotes, but I just think it is a really, it's a really exciting time to be to be working in this field. It is challenging. But in that there is loads of opportunity, I think, for like innovation, innovative practice. And I'd love to start seeing us coming together locally, regionally, internationally to sort of share our experiences of this and hopefully just keep driving, keep driving progress in this field.