06/16/2021

Preventing System ‘Snap Back’

Systems thinkers must learn to build change with resilience

In 2015 the Supreme Court handed down a monumental ruling sanctioning marriage equality, allowing same-sex couples the same legal right to marry as opposite-sex couples. After the decision was handed down, journalist Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post penned an editorial, “Why there won’t be a gay marriage backlash,” arguing that “opposition to same-sex marriage is, literally, dying out.”

Six years after Marcus’ editorial, however, the accuracy of her prediction is questionable. According to a 2020 American Values Survey, 70 percent of Americans now support marriage equality, the highest ever and up from 61 percent in 2017. And yet the 2015 Supreme Court ruling triggered numerous laws targeting LGBTQ rights in the workplace, health care, housing, schools, and other public accommodation. For example, since 2016 several states have passed legislation allowing state-licensed child welfare agencies to cite religious beliefs for not placing children in LGBT homes. And at present, more than half of LGBTQ adults in the United States live in states without non-discrimination laws, meaning they can be fired because of their gender identity or sexual orientation.

Why has progress been accompanied by so many setbacks? The answer is that the manner in which things shake out is about more than just people: it’s about the systemsurrounding people, the context and conditions that prevent or support social change. In “The Water of Systems Change,” we refer to six specific conditions within a social system: policies, practices, resource flows, relationships and connections, power dynamics and mental models. The coalition of proponents for marriage equality very explicitly focused on shifting each of these conditions in pursuit of their goals, and as evidenced by the 2015 Supreme Court decision, the coalition was tremendously successful for a period. Yet, like any system, the system surrounding marriage equality has been subject to what Canadian complexity theorist Brenda Zimmerman named “Snap Back.”¹

Please select this link to read the complete article from SSIR.