A Small Group of Systems Thinkers Takes on Democracy’s Biggest Problems

From The Forum Archives

This early profile, originally published by BeMagazine.org in 2022, offers a look at the people and ideas behind what was then the Designing Government Forum. It captures many of the questions, principles, and systems-thinking approaches that continue to shape The Forum on Citizen-Centric Democracy today.

Before The Forum on Citizen-Centric Democracy had its current name, website, and growing body of work, a small group of former government leaders, academics, cultural anthropologists, systems thinkers, and researchers was already meeting regularly around a shared concern: how might citizens, institutions, and government think differently about the challenges facing democracy?

The article captures The Forum at an important moment in its development—and many of the questions raised then remain central to our work today.

A different kind of conversation

From the beginning, the group was interested in moving beyond commentary about what was wrong with democracy. The aim was to create conditions for broader, more productive public conversation—connecting citizens, people inside government, researchers, educators, and others who bring different kinds of knowledge and experience.

The article describes this as a shift away from people talking against one another and toward a collaborative, “barn-raising” approach rooted in the participation of “We the People.” Throughout 2021, the group explored tools, ideas, and learning environments that could help citizens and institutions re-discover, re-think, and re-imagine the American experiment.

At the heart of that work was a belief that conversation is not merely an end in itself. Done well, it can become a way of drawing out the collective intelligence of a community—helping people move beyond familiar positions and discover new ways of understanding complex problems.

Thinking in systems

Systems thinking was another defining element of the group’s early work.

Lowell Christy, one of The Forum’s co-founders, described systems as the work of “putting together”—connecting ideas, information, relationships, feedback, and learning in ways that help people understand the larger whole rather than isolated pieces of a problem.

That perspective led the group to organize much of its thinking around three recurring ideas:

Re-discover — Look again at the principles, processes, checks and balances, and citizen roles embedded in the American experiment.

Re-think — Examine how government, governing, and the governed function as an interconnected system rather than as separate parts.

Re-imagine — Explore how communication, technology, systems thinking, and new forms of participation might help citizens and institutions respond to contemporary challenges.

These themes would continue to shape The Forum’s work in the years that followed.

A group with many perspectives

The BeMagazine profile also introduced several of the people who helped form the early Forum, each bringing a different perspective to the conversation.

Their backgrounds included decades of federal government service, organizational and cultural anthropology, management, education, psychology, cybernetics, systems research, and organizational change. The article highlights Robert Knisely, Carson Eoyang, Valarie Lamont, Stuart Umpleby, Doug Carmichael, Morris “Butch” Bosin, Richard Knowles, and Lowell Christy, among others.

Despite their different fields, a common idea emerges: complex civic problems are unlikely to yield to simple answers. They require better ways of seeing the whole, bringing different perspectives into conversation, testing approaches, learning from feedback, and adapting over time.

Valarie Lamont summarized the group’s role particularly clearly: The Forum was not setting itself up as the source of all the answers, but as an organization interested in enabling conversations and providing tools and methods that can improve governance and democratic life.

The conversation continues

Much has evolved since this early profile. The Designing Government Forum became The Forum on Citizen-Centric Democracy, and the organization’s work has expanded to include essays and commentary, practical models, civic conversation approaches, resources, events, and emerging initiatives.

But the underlying questions remain remarkably consistent:

How can citizens have a more meaningful role in democratic life?
How can we improve the quality of public conversation?
How can systems thinking help us understand problems that resist simple solutions?
And how can people with different experiences and perspectives contribute to a healthier civic whole?

The early article ends with an invitation to bring both voice and participation to the work of democracy.

That invitation still defines much of The Forum’s work today.

Read the Full Article

“A Small Group of Systems Thinkers Takes on the Task of Finding Solutions to Democracy’s Biggest Problems”
By Melissa Turner, Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of BeMagazine.org

Originally published by BeMagazine.org in 2022 and later republished by Lowell Christy on LinkedIn.

Read the article on LinkedIn →