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The Massively Parallel Strategy for Dealing with Scale and Complexity >
Ideas for Addressing Scale and Complexity to Build Upon
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Systems Thinking

BI Article
Developing a Systems/Complexity Paradigm
Introduction to key literature including Lederach, Dugan, Boulding, Coleman, Ricigliano, McDonald/Diamond and others.

BI Article
Can Complex Thinking Bring Peace To A World Of Conflict? with Guy Burgess
A podcast conversation exploring the nature of large-scale, complex social systems and how the structure of these systems demands a fundamentally different approach to resolving conflicts and building peace.

BI Article
The Decentralized, "Markets Plus" Metaphor
Markets are another manifestation of complexity that can be applied to complex conflict response.

BI Article
William Ury's Third Side
While Ury's Getting to Yes was very linear in its approach, his later book The Third Side illustrates a much more systemic/complex approach.

BI Article
Maire Dugan's "Nested Theory of Conflict"
If you intervene at the wrong level, your effectiveness is greatly reduced--understanding conflict levels is essential for good outcomes.

BI Article
Louise Diamond & John McDonald's Multi-Track Diplomacy
These nine tracks together create a synergy that constitutes another early "systems approach to peace."

BI Article
John Paul Lederach's "Big Picture of Conflict Transformation"
Another of Lederach's seminal systems ideas. This wasn't identified as systems thinking at the time, yet was a stellar example of such.

BI Article
Third Siders
Third siders act in a community threatened with destructive conflict as an immune system acts in a body threatened by disease. Average citizens such as teachers, journalists, artists and police officers can play key roles in preventing, de-escalating and resolving conflict. Bill Ury has labeled these people "third siders."

BI Article
A Reasonable Peace: Can Critical Thinking Save the Field of Peacebuilding?
Ashok Panikkar, Heidi and Guy Burgess (with facilitation from Merrick Hoben) talk about why peacebuilding is failing in much of the world, and how the use of critical thinking explains why and what might be done to be more successful.

BI Article
Reprise: The Google Maps and Adopt-a-Highway Approach to Systems
A repeat of a two-year old post, explaining "thinking and acting systemically" by using the metaphor of Google Maps and "Adopt a Highway" programs -- both systemic ways of managing vast amounts of traffic on the U.S. highway system.

BI Article
Peter Coleman's "Five Percent" -- Part 1
One of the most important concepts in Coleman's book The Five Percent--one of the first books to look explicitly at complexity science and conflict.

BI Article
Peter Coleman's Five Percent -- Part 2
Coleman advises 1) complicate to simplify, 2) build up and tear down and 3) change to stabilize intractable conflict systems.

BI Article
Robert Ricigliano: Making Peace Last
SAT= Structures, Attitudes, and Transactions; PAL = Planning, Acting, Learning. This is another new systems approach to peacebuilding.

BI Article
Chip Hauss: Beyond Polarization
People and organizations in fields allied with peacebuilding are already engaging in massively parallel problems solving. Peacebuilders can learn from their examples.

BI Article
Levels of Action (Lederach's Pyramid)
This essay explains John Paul Lederach's "triangle" which describes three levels of society at which would-be conflict resolvers might work: the grassroots, the leaders, and the middle level. While peacework must be done at all three levels, the middle level is especially important, Lederach says, at it links the top with the bottom as well as linking across party lines.

BI Article
John Paul Lederach's Peacebuilding Pyramid
Although it wasn't thought of as "systems thinking" at the time, Lederach's pyramid was an early utilization of systems concepts.

BI Article
Chip Hauss's Security 2.0 and "The New Paradigm"
A summary of Hauss's new book Security 2.0: Dealing with Global Wicked Problems.

BI Article
Julia Roig Talks about Weaving a Healthy Democracy in the United States
Julia Roig talks about her efforts to build a social movement to support democracy in the U.S. Such a movement needs to both block and build: block bad actors, and build a new pluralistic society that works.

BI Article
Rachel Kleinfeld's "Five Strategies to Support U.S. Democracy"
US democracy is failing. Each moment deepens the polarization that makes its problems harder to fix. As Americans, we must start now, at scale, strategically, with a broad, cross-party coalition to save our democracy.

BI Article
Kristin Hansen talks about the Civic Health Project's Work on De-polarization in America

BI Article
Chip Hauss: Shifting from "Me First" to "We First" and Other "Takes" on the Coronavirus
Three blogs on how peacebuilders might approach their work in the era of COVID-19.

Colleague Activities
Failing Productivity and Systems Change: Key Mindsets and Practices
As we struggle with today's many problems, we are going to have to take on deeper systemic challenges. This will require us to learn how to embrace failure as an inevitable part of the work of shifting complex systems.

Colleague Activities
Applying Regenerative Practice to Systems Beyond Place -- Some Thoughts
Applying the prinicples of living (biological) systems to social systems to help address threats and redesign those systems to thrive.

Colleague Activities
Failing Productively in Systems Change: Key Mindsets and Practices
How do we embrace failure as an inevitable part of the work of shifting complex systems?

Colleague Activities
Bringing a Conflict Lens to the US and Corporations as Agents of Peace
The first of a series of webinars held by the Alliance for Peacebuilding examining the need for and methods for doing peacebuilding in the United States.

Colleague Activities
The role and power of re-patterning in systems change.
Shifting systems towards equity is possible. But to make that happen, it is the responsibility of everyone to start doing and being differently, in every part of every system, every day.

Colleague Activities
America needs a cross-national approach to counter authoritarianism
An article describing how the authoritarianism can be countered by promoting free, fair and trusted elections, combating mis- and dis-information, and cultivating informed and engaged voters.

Colleague Activities
The Case for Expanding the Landscape of Democracy Work
A long-term, holistic vision of how democracy could evolve in the US and the role that Organizers could play in that work.