In public health, the point of thinking about systems, of mapping systems (agonising though it looks!), is to find “new ways of framing public health (that) may increase our understanding, expand our options and increase our effectiveness”, said Kenneth McLeroy in the American Journal of Public Health, March 2006.

When I took up my former role as Foundation CEO of the Institute for Safety, Compensation and Recovery Research in 2010, I initiated a project using futures methodologies.

A probable future for WHS that emerged from that work was that we would work less in isolation from others, not so much in the hero organisations.  We would have to become more collaborative to prosper.

Somebody gave me a good example of this recently. We took a reductionist view of bullying, and created a WHS rod for our backs – a systems view would have seen us mapping a complex picture of causes and potential partners for more complicated and effective solutions.