Summary
‘The Water of Systems Change’ is a 2018 paper for foundations by John Kania, Mark Kramer and Peter Senge, published by FSG. It names six conditions that hold a social problem in place, drawn as an inverted triangle. Policies, practices and resource flows are explicit. Relationships and power dynamics are semi-explicit. Mental models, defined as “deeply held beliefs and assumptions and taken-for-granted ways of operating”, are implicit: hardest to see and, the authors argue, where change goes deepest.
The title is from the joke about a fish asked how the water is. Funders swim in it too: they “cannot support efforts that run counter to their own mental models”.
Rationale
Many readers will know its inverted triangle. Our caveat is the bottom label: ‘mental models’ sounds head-bound, where Part 1 finds sense-making “through our bodies, our relationships and the environments we inhabit”.