This quality emphasizes that there are many inter-connections and influences between people, actions, issues, and levels.  Unlike the common “root cause” approach, a systemic approach is grounded in knots of interactions and feedback loops.  For example, there is no “root cause” of poverty – it’s a systemic interaction between a range of issues such as education, infrastructure, systemic discrimination, and economic controls. 

02 Complex

Realizing wellbeing economies is unlike simple issues where cause and effect are very closely related between few people, events, or issues;  and unlike complicated problems where there many be many people, events and issues, but the goals are very specific and dependent upon highly predictable interactions (like sending a person to the moon) and an engineering approach is appropriate.  As a complex challenge, realizing wellbeing economies is a goal that is difficult to define concretely – it rests on a new set of values;  it involves a huge number of dynamic and interactions with poorly predictable outcomes; it requires experimentation, probing, deep learning, emergence, and nudges in the desired direction.  For example, ways of integrating the wellbeing economies’ values need to be integrated into new business models and associated production systems. 

03 Integrative

A wholistic approach that encompasses internal and external transformation is critical to addressing issues of systemic oppression and developing liberatory approaches to embrace diversity.  For example, race and class inequities are the product of both mindsets, values and cultures, and of structures, processes and rules.