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Soft Systems is an approach to qualitative analysis.  This works where you have a lot of data such as anecdotes, stories, interviews, notes, and observations.  It requires a different mindset from statistical analysis of qualitative analysis.  Numbers analysed converge on a single answer or at worst a range of answers.  Qualitative data diverges.  The more you analyse, the more possibilities emerge from the data.  This approach progresses therefore by making choices.

I’m not planning to explain the soft systems method in detail.  Instead, I shall share three insights I’ve drawn from soft systems which I find helpful in developing some stories.  Sometimes the story we want to tell is embedded in a complex background and we can be overwhelmed by the need to explain everything without being boring or confusing.  These insights may help you determine what needs to be mentioned and what doesn’t.

Tasks and Issues

Amidst the chaos of any project in government, business or community it helps to distinguish between tasks and issues.

A task is a job to be done.  It could be an overarching task, eg build a house, or a minor task, eg order some bricks.  Tasks can be broken down.  So, to order bricks, you need to calculate how many you need, decide on the house style, work out when you need them, work out your policy about theft from the building site, etc.

Let’s take that last one.  Theft from the building site is an issue.  It is a factor independent of the task that needs to be considered.  Theft is something to factor into costs, if security costs more.  Or it could be a game changer and require careful planning about site security.  If the latter, there could be some projects where theft has to be resolved before the project begins.

Sometimes we know what we want to do and pay too little attention to the issues that might prevent the task from completing.  This is often resistance to the project.  If any issues are serious enough, they may need to be tackled before the project begins.

A story about a building project may require reflection.  Maybe an issue was ignored or not known about and interrupted the task.  Even if the issues are identified in retrospect, it may help you structure the story. 

Actors and Clients

Actors are all the people involved in the story, so for a house-building project, you might have actors who are builders, owners of the land, sponsoring organisations, the local authority, local residents and so on.  It’s worth making a list.  They may not all need to feature in the story but awareness of who was involved – actually or potentially – might suggest more than one story.

A client is the actor whose perspective the story is told from.  Usually, we focus on one actor.  So if the client is the individual self-building the house, for example, it may seem natural to stay with that person.

But what happens when you tell the story from the perspective of another client, for example, the local authority planning officer, the architect, a local resident who opposes the project, or the electrician?  There are potentially several stories here, all focusing on the same event.

Environment and Worldview

Each client will differ in terms of environment and worldview.  Environment is the context in which the client lives and/or works.  So, the person who wants to build a self-built house may be housed in a flat that’s too small for their family.  They may have inherited the land and it may be some distance from where they live.

Meanwhile, the planning officer may never see the house.  They are in an office and know the rules.  The architect will also be an office dweller but they will have to visit the site.  The antagonist local resident will have most likely lived near the site for some time. 

Each of these people perceives the building project from very different places.  To understand their point of view we need to inhabit where they frequent and see the project from their perspective.  However, their perspective is not solely determined by their environment.

Their worldview is how they perceive the world around them.  The local resident might see their world as determined by the socialists who run the planning department.  The house builder might find the planning department inhabited by conservative bureaucrats.  The architect may privately think the planning department is run by people who don’t understand basic house-building and should never be let near it.  The planning officer may see them all as people who do not understand the basics of council policy.

Worldview encompasses everything that makes up what the clients or actors believe.  This may cover their politics, religion, ethnicity …  Clashes between these various views create the issues that interfere with the task of building the house – for good or ill. 

Soft systems aim to see a project from multiple perspectives and anticipate the issues that arise.  Does it work?  Maybe and certainly, in hindsight, it helps to build good stories.

This is the twenty-first in a sequence of posts about business storytelling.  The first post was Marketing: Art or Science?  The last post was Dynamics. This is the final post in this sequence, for the present and I may pick it up again in the New Year.

To try out one of your business-related stories and receive feedback from me with a few other business owners, please comment below to arrange an informal conversation.  I run these sessions free of charge on the second and fourth Thursdays.  Visit my website to find out about the Telling Stories Autumn meetings.

Minerva tells me she is very angry that someone has built a house in her favourite field.  (It looks like the house was built some time ago.)  I suggested she should try to be friendly and give them a fruit cake.  This has to be the most terrifying fruit cake delivery in the history of cakes!