Systems thinking was popularized more than thirty years ago by American engineer Peter Senge at MIT. In The Fifth Discipline, Senge invites us to look at organizations as living systems: complex networks where everything is connected. He teaches us to identify patterns, causal relationships, and leverage points capable of generating deep and lasting changes.
From this perspective, we can talk about systemic problems, systemic impact, systemic investment… practically everything that matters today. The idea is as simple as it is powerful: everything we do impacts us and our environment. It is not enough to understand why, how, and who should do things; we must also ask ourselves if it is necessary to continue doing them.
S y s t e m i c.
This was, without a doubt, the most repeated, written, and breathed word during the two days of the Ship2B Impact Forum in Barcelona. An entire ecosystem —investors, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, administration, academics, activists, public and private sectors— sat down to dissect this fifth element. The challenge is as ambitious as it is urgent: to transform how we invest, how we create businesses, and how we make capitalism, sustainability, social impact, and legacy coexist. To achieve this, they proposed changing from individual impact to collective impact; from a restrictive view to a holistic view; from certainty to humility. Without humility, the systemic is impossible.
There was an idea that seemed transformative to me. That phrase we hear so many times —"you are either part of the problem or you are part of the solution"— falls apart when we think systemically. We are part of the problem and part of the solution. And this forces us to share agendas, desires, and difficulties. It changes the intention with which we frame the challenge, and it also changes the quality of the conversation to solve it.
In marketing, we talk about clientcentric. Here, they invite us to something much more challenging: to be challengecentric. To fall in love with the problem, not the solution.
Coordinating this fifth element implies bringing together at the same table those who suffer the problem and those who can solve it. Because an entire system is needed to transform the existing system. The challenge is to think like a system, but act like an entrepreneur: from complexity, be agile. It seems impossible… until you understand that the problem belongs to everyone —including you— and that the solution also belongs to everyone —including you—. That's when the attitude changes. The bond changes. Everything changes.
There is something profoundly Socratic in this approach: only through honest dialogue among all affected parties can we transform reality. And that this is happening in Barcelona is no coincidence. Perhaps the city is also beginning to think of itself systemically.