Building on these abilities, systemic wisdom offers practical, complexity-informed methods for addressing more intractable conflicts that can provide a sense of agency and efficacy. For example, elsewhere, we contrasted the more common problem-solving framework of a direct Mastery-oriented, “fix it” approach to conflict with an alternative method of working in Harmony or “in sync with” the dynamics of a problem-in- context (Coleman and Ricigliano 2017).

The Mastery approach derives from the belief that humans have the capacity and responsibility to control the social and natural world around them (Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck 1961). In general, it holds that “problems are best resolved by identifying which elements to change, and then changing them. If you control the environment, you will have fewer problems.” In contrast, a Harmony strategy assumes that humans can exercise partial but not total control of their environment—but only by becoming familiar with and living in balance with its surrounding forces, cycles, and trends. This implies that “problems are best resolved by adjusting elements in a large system to achieve and maintain balance over the big picture and long term.” These strategies tend to have fundamentally different objectives, processes, and outcomes, such as the following.

1. Harmony Objectives. Typically, problem-solving begins with clarifying what you and the community you are serving hope to achieve. However, in contrast to the narrower goals of the Mastery approach (“Fix the problem!”), working systemically recommends aiming more broadly toward improving the functioning and well-being of the system that is giving rise to the problem—mostly by enabling it to self-correct. For instance, rather than trying to fix a pattern of persistent enmity between two departments in an organization, perhaps aspire to establish an organizational culture where departmental relations are seen to complement one another and thrive together and destructive tensions are uncommon. This shifts the focus from problem-centered outcomes to more systemic-process goals, which helps direct us to address systemic causes rather than just presenting symptoms.

2. Harmony Processes. Mastery approaches to problem-solving encourage zooming into the conflict: analyzing, isolating elements, and focusing in on the target problem to determine what needs to be fixed or changed. In contrast, working systemically recommends zooming out first and developing a more holistic understanding of the relationship between the issues we care about (e.g., interdepartmental hostilities) and the forces in the surrounding environment that may give rise to them (history, incentives, culture, policies, modeling, training, etc.). This is essentially the approach that physicians who practice functional medicine take when they shift away from the standard medicine of “what’” (What disease do you have? What drug do I give?), toward the medicine of “why” (focusing instead on etiology, on causes and mechanisms for the illness; see Bland 2022).

However, once an initial understanding of the fuller system of forces is clarified, it becomes critical to identify the specific actors and activities already driving change in the local environment. Rather than trying to take control of the problem, you identify others already doing so effectively. Here, local information is everything. For instance, individuals and subgroups within your organization that evidence positive deviance—those who have managed to channel tensions from interdepartmental hostilities into creative energies for innovation—should be identified and supported (Sternin and Choo 2000).

Once the broader systemic nature of the problem is better understood and the agents of change are located, the next most important step is not to mess things up. Rather than trying to fix complex problems and trigger other unintended consequences, working in sync encourages learning to work with the flow of the situation in order to leverage how it is unfolding and facilitate desired outcomes (like supporting, scaling up, or replicating examples of positive deviance that emerged on their own). This thinking goes against traditional change theories and is much less direct, obvious, and heavy-handed. It can be realized by working at the margins or away from the primary presenting problem on more peripheral upstream conditions that can eventually help address the problem, or taking multiple actions while attempting to achieve one goal, which research has found to be more likely to result in more effective and sustainable changes with complex problems (Dörner 1997).

3. Harmony Outcomes. Decades of research has shown that leaders who have a more nuanced understanding of the complex environments in which they are operating—who are less dogmatic in their thinking, identify or implement more types of interventions, pay continual attention, and make more decisions over time—ultimately fare better (Dörner 1997; Tetlock and Gardner 2015).