Just one week until we launch Leyla’s newest handbook, Design Systems Change! We’re really excited about this release as we know that our community of creative changemakers are super motivated to activate their agency to help change the world in incredible ways — but just as with any skill, we all need some motivation and tools to help figure out exactly what to do!
The drive to be involved in change, whether in your personal or professional life, starts by discovering how to develop your personal agency, identifying the sphere of influence you uniquely hold and then actioning your creative potential to participate in positive change. Sustainability is about finding ways of harmonizing the social, economic and environmental impact of the things we do, and the core content of this new handbook presents provocations and concepts that support you in gaining the knowledge and tools to participate in designing a sustainable and circular future. This is the fifth in Leyla’s series on how to make positive impactful change, and it offers a practical roadmap for activating a career as a creative changemaker.
In this week's journal, we continue with sharing excerpts from the handbook (to be released on March 16th). From the Systems section, we explore the concept of the Mushroom Model, an adaptation of the Iceberg Model. If you are into or new to systems thinking, then this is one of the best ways to start to think in dynamic, complex systems! If you’ve missed the past few weeks of the journal, check out other excerpts here and here!
Excerpt from Design Systems Change, By Leyla Acaroglu
The Mushroom Model
The Iceberg Model is a classic systems thinking tool that shows how the most obvious part of the system, the tip of the iceberg, is held up by the non-obvious weight of the iceberg that is hidden under the waterline. The tip represents the events that occur around us, and right under the water, we have the patterns of behavior, then the systems structures, and finally the mental models. Moving from just seeing the events to understanding and challenging the mental models that reinforce the rest of the structure is one of the goals of a systems thinker.
In exploring the dynamic systems that allow nature to do her magic, I came to understand this concept as “emergence”, whereby the obvious parts of the system that we see with ease are deeply connected to complex elements that came together to enable the obvious thing to occur.
So for example, take a common field mushroom. If you have ever stumbled across one, you will see the delightful little cap and stem sticking out of a bit of soil, often right after the rain has come. The conditions that enable a mushroom to form have to be just right, but the mushroom is far from an isolated element. It is connected to a highly complex underground network, a giant living organism called mycelium, and it runs its long thin fungal networks all through the Earth, supporting the vitality of the ecosystem of which it is a part and allowing for mushrooms to pop up in many locations, in over 1.5 million varieties.
Just like the iceberg, much of what is sustaining a forest is not visible to us. We see a mushroom, but not the complex web of mycelium that operates like a neural network connecting all the trees and plants deep within the soil. Mycelium runs throughout the Earth, operating like an internet for trees. They work together symbiotically by sharing resources, through a mycorrhizal association whereby they connect at the root level. The fungus works to decay organic materials around it, allowing it to distribute nutrients to the other plants it’s connected to in exchange for things it can’t create. The mushroom you see popping up is only the emergent outcome of the systems needed to continue itself by forming a fruiting body that will propel millions of spores out into the world so that the mycelium can continue preforming its role within the system.
Fungi, in all their diversity, including the everyday mushrooms that we eat, are the original recyclers of nature. Their main role in an ecosystem is to support the decay of organic material so that it can be broken down into the building blocks that help new life emerge. Through this process, they themselves are born, creating spores inside the gills of the mushroom head to enable them to replicate the process of seeding new mycelium so the cycle of decay and life continues.
A mushroom is thus an emergent property of the complex hidden system of mycelium. The crown of the mushroom is the obvious outcome that we each see (the tip of the iceberg), while the gills and spores are the slightly less obvious patterns that help the system replicate itself. The stem represents the structures that hold it up, but underground is where the mycelium runs deep, representing the complex mental models or mindsets that connect all the underlying systems that sustain it all.
I thus redesigned the iceberg model to show the interconnected relationships that reinforce the systems around us through the metaphor of the way that the mushroom/mycelium system enables ecosystems to communicate, share resources and flourish.
Take a moment to think about other emergent things that are just the tip of the iceberg and what structures are hidden from your everyday view. This type of practice of considering hidden systems is a powerful tool in enabling you to effect change.
