The iceberg model

I had the experience again. I offered a simple ‘iceberg’ model and my client seized on it, waved it around and started using phrases like “going deeper in the iceberg”. It happens every time I share it; people love it.

You might not love this model if you’re a purist about complexity science or a stickler for precision. You might balk at its simplicity and the things it omits. You might find it wonderful and marvel at how it helps people shift to a more systemic way of looking at things.

There are many ‘iceberg’ models. The original for this one came from The Systems Thinking Playbook by Linda Booth Sweeney and Dennis Meadows (thanks and respect – it’s a brilliant book). I have adapted it as I’ve used it with people.

This model is a very simple representation of a complex system. It uses the metaphor of an iceberg to illustrate that our experiences are deeply influenced by dynamics we cannot easily see: the structures that form the framework within which we operate, and the beliefs we hold about how things work.

It’s simple and easy to understand and seems to be at a ‘Mummy Bear’, medium level of abstraction – not so specific that it’s scary and not so vague that it loses all meaning.

Its great strength seems to be that it puts the client in the driving seat in a conversation about the interventions to try in their organisation. A light goes on for people when they see the list of structures, the ‘levers’ they can pull. It often triggers new insight about what they’re experiencing and new ideas for how to intervene.

The conversation often starts with structures and flows into beliefs, and a richer picture emerges.

This example comes from a transformation project I ran for an arts organisation. One of the ‘hot’ presenting issues was the pickle they were in with creative meetings. “People weren’t talking and the meetings weren’t functional. Our work is creative, about emotion and passion, but people were detached; I was flummoxed as to why people weren’t contributing,” said the meeting owner.

Some of the hidden dynamics were around the power structures underpinning the ideas process: whose ideas were taken seriously and the process by which ideas came to life. It pointed to some organisational beliefs about creativity and the hierarchies that existed but neither of these were safe topics for discussion at the time. We could however talk about their structures such as their processes of communication and collaboration.

A shift happened after a systems game when I used the iceberg model to help them make sense of their experiences and open up a conversation about the experiments they could run in their organisation. They wanted to put their energy into something that felt exciting and began talking about a new area in their building and how they could set it up as a hot-desking space.

It proved to be a key intervention. People from other departments began to mix with ‘the ideas people’ and take part in the informal conversations leading up to creative meetings. The conversations shifted and the old beliefs about who was qualified to develop ideas began to dissolve – without us having to address them directly. There were other dynamics and interventions but the hot-desking space was an important catalyst for change. It seemed to unlock enough for people to begin to experiment in other areas.