The Third Law of Systems Thinking

We saw firearm application processing times see-sawing significantly over the past two decades. This is typical of interventions that don't address the core issues: behaviour grows better before the system starts pushing back, and it grows worse.

"Low-leverage interventions would be much less alluring if it were not for the fact that many actually work, in the short term."
Peter Senge - Fifth Discipline

Behaviour grows better before it grows worse

We saw firearm application processing times see-sawing significantly over the past two decades:

• About ten years ago, applications routinely took two years or longer and often required legal action to force it through the system. This was exasperated by the first wave of renewals.
• Eventually, the CFR appointed special task teams to speed up the flow, and applications times were reduced to acceptable levels.
• This revealed the true level of the demand for firearms. People who were discouraged by exorbitant waiting times started to purchase firearms again.
• The additional flow increased pressure on the CFR.
• At the same time, they were becoming concerned about the increased level of licensed firearms.
• In order to reduce the number of licenses, the CFR used three mechanisms:
  • Firstly, longer times lead to fewer applications - a lesson they learned during the previous cycle.
  • Then they demanded more and more in terms of motivations. Motivations that nobody would ever read. It just served to keep licenses away from the less fortunate, as discussed in Today's problems are yesterday's solutions.
  • Lastly, they just rejected applications for spurious reasons.
• At first, things grew better for the CFR. Some people accepted the rejected applications. Then the system pushed back: People learned that if they resubmitted the same applications, they would be accepted the second time. So they simply resubmitted their applications, and things grew worse for the CFR. Overwhelmed staff ended up handling the same applications twice.
• Things grew slightly better for the community, but as more and more people resubmitted instead of appealing, the CFR's decisions received less and less scrutiny. The community figured this out, and reverted to appealing. So the easy way out led right back in: The appeals board - the senior employees meant to apply their minds to borderline cases - were left considering random cases threw their way by junior level employees.
• Then the second wave of renewals hit...

The Firearms Appeal Board told the committee that many of the SAPS refusals of firearm licenses ended up as appeals at the board, but should not have ended up in court. There appears to be a lack of knowledge of the rules governing the refusals of licenses. When police couldn't back up their refusal with paperwork, the Firearm Appeals Board usually took a decision in favour of the applicant.
- Report by the portfolio committee on police following MPs' oversight visits in 2014

Time delays

Obviously, the easy way out keeps leading back in. But I am going to resist getting into that detail again. I want to focus on the effect of the time delays we see here.

With no time delay, the system is easily understood and corrective action is straightforward. Decision-makers can see the results of their decisions immediately and can quickly find out what the core problems are.

But in complex systems, the cause and effect are not closely related in time and space. Trying the easy way out seems effective because it doesn't immediately lead back in. Behaviour grows better before it grows worse.

Small errors of judgement, combined with time delays, lead to this see-saw effect as it keeps leading back in. Larger errors of judgement, combined with larger time delays, can result in the system running away. We'll look at that in the next post.