Did You Know?
In today’s fast-paced world—with rapidly evolving technology and a global society—organizations everywhere are struggling to adapt. Many are restructuring to keep up with the complex challenges humanity faces.
And what about our communities? For Black people, these complex challenges aren’t just global headlines—we live them daily through over-policing, underfunded schools, lack of access to housing, healthcare, and wealth. These aren’t isolated problems. They’re the result of interconnected systems working together—often against us.
But here’s the thing: some of the greatest Black leaders and freedom fighters of the 20th century were already pointing to the kinds of solutions we’re just now rediscovering—solutions rooted in systems thinking, even if they didn’t use that term.
To truly solve the problems our people face, we need more than isolated programs or policy wins—we need to understand how systems work, how they’re connected, and how to transform conditions at the root. That’s what systems thinking helps us do.
What is Systems Thinking?
Systems thinking, which emerged from disciplines such as cybernetics, ecology, engineering, and management science, is a way of understanding the world by seeing how things are interconnected—how institutions, patterns, and decisions create ripple effects across time. Instead of treating symptoms, it helps us identify root causes and shift the systems that create inequality in the first place by examining leverage points.
Understanding Systems Thinking Through Team of Teams
The “Team of Teams” model is one way systems thinking has been successfully applied in the real world. Originally used by the U.S. military to adapt to complex threats, it teaches us how to move from rigid control to strategic coordination. The lessons? When you improve how information flows, how people make decisions, and how teams trust each other—you change the system itself. These videos break down that model into short, digestible parts—and show how the same ideas can help Black communities coordinate power, build infrastructure, and respond to complex challenges in real time.
From complicated to complex
Today’s challenges aren’t just hard—they’re unpredictable.
In a complex world, cause and effect aren’t always obvious. Small changes can create massive ripple effects, and traditional planning can’t keep up. We need new tools for new realities.
Quote: “The technological changes of recent decades have led to a more interdependent and fast-paced world. This creates a state of complexity... Complexity means that, in spite of our increased abilities to track and measure, the world has become, in many ways, vastly less predictable.”
— Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Team of Teams
Complicated - Whereby a thing has many parts, such as an internal combustion engine, joined together that might be confusing. However, can be broken down in ways where you can predict, with certainty, what will happen when one part is activated or altered.
Complexity - Whereby there are so many causes and so many events linked to one another through so many direct and indirect paths that the outcome is practically unpredictable, even if it is theoretically deterministic; such as the stock market where a single news story or event across the world can cause it to plummet, skyrocket, or flatline.
Seeing the system
Solving complex problems requires seeing the whole picture—not just one piece.
Like NASA or McChrystal’s Task Force, we must train ourselves to understand how issues, people, and systems connect. Without that, we’ll keep missing the root of the problem.
Quote: “Like NASA before it, our Task Force found itself confronted with a complex problem that demanded a systems approach to its solution; because of the interdependence of the operating environment, both organizations would need members to understand the entire, interconnected system, not just individual MECE boxes on the org chart.”
— Team of Teams
MECE or "Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive" - A data-driven approach to success and problem solving for organizations to break down concepts, topics, or questions into separate, smaller parts where they are mutually exclusive AND collectively exhaustive.
Shared Consciousness - A state of emergent, adaptive organizational intelligence: where generalized awareness is fused with specialized expertise. It allows for an entire organization to share a fundamental, holistic understanding of the operating environment and organization; while preserving each team's distinct skill sets.
Empowered Execution - A radically decentralized system for pushing authority out to the edges of the organization.
Team of Teams
They restructured their system to match the complexity of the environment.
By breaking down silos and encouraging adaptability, McChrystal’s team became faster and more effective. The result was a flexible, decentralized network that could move in sync.
Quote: “We dissolved the barriers—the walls of our silos and the floors of our hierarchies... We became what we called 'a team of teams': a large command that captured at scale the traits of agility normally limited to small teams... We abandoned many of the precepts that had helped establish our efficacy in the twentieth century, because the twenty-first century is a different game with different rules.”
— Team of Teams
Scale - Scalability describes an organization or system's capability to adapt easily to increased workload or market demands.
Symmestries
True adaptability requires both structure and freedom.
McChrystal’s team found success by balancing centralized communication (transparency) with decentralized authority (empowerment). This “symmetry” is what allowed them to act fast without falling apart.
Quote: “At the core of the Task Force’s journey to adaptability lay a yin-and-yang symmetry of shared consciousness, achieved through strict, centralized forums for communication and extreme transparency, and empowered execution, which involved the decentralization of managerial authority.”— Team of Teams
A high-speed and interdependent society creates more complexity; therefore making it impossible to predict outcomes with certainty. Thus, our capability to adapt becomes essential. However, adaptability is only possible if individuals or teams at all levels can decide and act in real-time (empowered execution) , but require increasing transparency to ensure common understanding and awareness (shared consciousness).
Our Ancestors Were Systems Thinkers
Even if they didn’t use the term “systems thinking,” leaders like Ella Baker, W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, and more. were thinking in systems—recognizing how power operates across institutions, how change must be coordinated, and how liberation requires more than isolated wins.
W.E.B
Dubois
“...a group of people who can attain such consensus is able to do anything to which the group agrees. It is too much to expect that any such guiding consensus will entirely eliminate dissent, but it will make agreement so overwhelming that eventual clear irrational dissent can safely be ignored. When real and open democratic control is intelligent enough to select of its own accord on the whole the best, most courageous, most expert and scholarly leadership, then the problem of democracy within the Negro group is solved and by that same token the possibility of American Negroes entering into world democracy and taking their rightful place according to their knowledge and power is also sure.”
Du Bois, W. E. B. Dusk of Dawn (The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois) (p. 110).
Malcolm X
“Our gospel is black nationalism. We're not trying to threaten the existence of any organization, but we're spreading the gospel of black nationalism …and by August, it is then our intention to have a black nationalist convention which will consist of delegates from all over the country who are interested in the political, economic and social philosophy of black nationalism. After these delegates convene, we will hold a seminar; we will hold discussions; we will listen to everyone. We want to hear new ideas and new solutions and new answers. And at that time, if we see fit then to form a black nationalist party, we'll form a black nationalist party. If it's necessary to form a black nationalist army, we'll form a black nationalist army. It'll be the ballot or the bullet. It'll be liberty or it'll be death.”
Malcolm X, Ballot or the Bullet, 1964
Ella
Baker
“Just as teachers had to know their students, organizers had to know their communities, and comrades had to know one another and treat one another decently. Movement leaders could not condemn hierarchy, elitism, and impersonalism in the society and emulate those same values in their own work and personal interactions. “Anytime you continue to carry on the same kind of organization that you say you are fighting against, you can't prove to me that you have made any change in your thinking,” Baker observed in an interview in the 1970s. Activists could not make themselves feel more important by disparaging and “tyrannizing over others.” Baker went on to explain: “As we begin to grow in our own strength and as we flex our muscles of leadership, we can begin to feel that the other fellow should come through us. But this is not the way to create a new world ...”
Ransby, Barbara. Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement (Gender and American Culture) (pp. 369-370). The University of North Carolina Press. Kindle Edition.
Kwame
Ture
“Black people have seen the city planning commissions, the urban renewal commissions, the boards of education and the police departments fail to speak to their needs in a meaningful way. We must devise new structures, new institutions to replace those forms or to make them responsive. There is nothing sacred or inevitable about old institutions; the focus must be on people, not forms. Existing structures and established ways of doing things have a way of perpetuating themselves and for this reason, the modernizing process will be difficult. Therefore, timidity in calling into question the boards of education or the police departments will not do. They must be challenged forcefully and clearly. If this means the creation of parallel community institutions, then that must be the solution. If this means that black parents must gain control over the operation of the schools in the black community, then that must be the solution. The search for new forms means the search for institutions that will, for once, make decisions in the interest of black people.”
Hamilton, Charles V.; Ture, Kwame. Black Power (pp. 42-43). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“Our nettlesome task is to discover how to organize our strength into compelling power so that government cannot elude our demands. We must develop, from strength, a situation in which the government finds it wise and prudent to collaborate with us. It would be the height of naïveté to wait passively until the administration had somehow been infused with such blessings of goodwill that it implored us for our programs. The first course is grounded in mature realism; the other is childish fantasy… We must frankly acknowledge that in past years our creativity and imagination were not employed in learning how to develop power. We found a method in nonviolent protest that worked, and we employed it enthusiastically… Although our actions were bold and crowned with successes, they were substantially improvised and spontaneous… therefore, we must subordinate programs to studying the levers of power Negroes must grasp to influence the course of events.”
King, Martin Luther, Jr. (1986). Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos Or Community? Beacon Press. https://books.apple.com/us/book/where-do-we-go-from-here/id476023461. 1968.
Dr. Claud
Anderson
“Since the majority society has clearly failed to include the needs and interest of the Black minority population and its interests are not reflected in the nation’s laws, customs, and public policies. It is incumbent upon Black Americans not to blindly follow the majority above those of a Black minority. Playing to win as a team means Black America ought to set its own course rather than continuing to follow a game plan contrary to its own best interest. When a group is in last place within a society, if it continues to follow the pack, it will remain in last place.”
Anderson, C. (2001). Powernomics: The National Plan to Empower Black America. pg. 34
What's Next/Get Involved
Are you a subject matter expert in your field? Do you represent a community-based organization or institution? Or are you an individual ready to take action? Maybe you feel you're all three.
Wherever you’re coming from, you have a role to play in the fight for systemic change.
Explore the paths below to see where you fit—and how you can be part of building something bigger.
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