Information Management Using Systems Thinking – Martin Parr // PMOLearn! London 2025

Seeing the Bigger Picture: Systems Thinking in Practice for PMOs

What happens when we stop firefighting and start thinking like systems engineers? In our latest session from PMOLearn! in London in June 2025 on Systems Thinking, we explored how this powerful approach helps PMOs understand complexity, identify leverage points, and make smarter interventions. Here’s a recap – with key insights, reflections, and something to put into practice.

Information Management using Systems Thinking

PMOs often find themselves juggling multiple demands – reporting, governance, resource bottlenecks, and firefighting delivery challenges. But what if the answer isn’t working harder… but thinking differently?

In this session on Systems Thinking, led by Martin Parr, we explored how PMO professionals can use systems approaches to work through complexity, make smarter interventions, and deliver more meaningful outcomes. This article brings together the session highlights, key insights, a spotlight on one essential tool, a reflection exercise – and finishes with a quiz to test your thinking.

“The aim is not to simplify everything – it’s to become better at managing complexity.” — Prof Martin Parr

Recorded Session

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Session Highlights: What We Learned from Martin Parr’s Talk on Systems Thinking

The Cobra Effect: A Lesson in Unintended Consequences

Martin opened with a memorable story – the infamous “Cobra Effect.” In colonial India, officials offered bounties for every dead cobra to reduce the population. What happened? People began breeding cobras just to kill them for money. When the programme ended, the now-worthless snakes were released, and the wild cobra population increased.

Why it matters for PMOs:
When we intervene without understanding the whole system, we risk making the problem worse. PMOs often design processes, incentives or KPIs – but if we ignore systemic interdependencies, our solutions may backfire.

Seeing the Whole: What Systems Thinking Really Is

Martin described Systems Thinking as the discipline of understanding wholes, not just parts. Systems have:

• Boundaries (what’s in, what’s out)
• Interrelationships (how parts interact)
• Behaviour over time (how it evolves)

We were encouraged to move away from linear thinking (A → B → C) and instead embrace the idea of loops, feedback, and multiple influences.

Takeaway: PMOs are part of a bigger system – delivery, governance, people, power structures. Seeing your PMO as a “system within systems” gives you leverage and clarity.

Information is the Lifeblood but Use it Well

Martin challenged us to rethink what “information” actually does in organisations. It’s not just data – it’s:

• What tells us what’s safe and what’s not
• What shows whether decisions were good or bad
• What enables trust and performance

But raw data is not enough. It must be used in a way that accounts for emotion, politics and perception.

“Real decisions are a mix of rationality, emotion and politics.” – Martin Parr

For PMOs: You’re not just delivering reports – you’re shaping understanding. It’s not what you say, it’s how it’s interpreted.

Variety: Managing Complexity Effectively

We explored Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety – which says: “Only variety can absorb variety.” In plain terms, the more complex the environment, the more adaptable or nuanced your response must be.

Martin introduced the idea of:

• Attenuators – Ways to reduce complexity (e.g., filtering, dashboards, categorisation)
• Amplifiers – Ways to increase responsiveness (e.g., training, decentralisation, cross-skilling)

Example: A call centre uses an auto-menu (“Press 1 for sales…”) to reduce 1,000 customer queries into 3 channels = attenuation.
A trained rep who can handle many queries without escalation = amplification.

PMO Application:
Use attenuation to reduce noise (e.g., filtering irrelevant data), and amplification to respond to complex or unusual delivery challenges (e.g., empowering people to act without escalating everything).

Good vs Bad Variety Engineering

Martin made a key distinction: it’s not just about managing complexity – it’s about doing it well. He contrasted examples:

• Good Attenuation  – Rule-based eligibility filters and High-level dashboards for execs
• Bad Attenuation – Over-standardisation that removes useful exceptions and Annual reports that hide important trends

PMO Reflection: Are your systems filtering the right information? Or are you stripping away nuance? Equally, are you amplifying helpful behaviours or just spreading chaos?

Real Decisions Are Rarely Rational Alone

This was one of the session’s most grounding points. Decision-making isn’t a clean, logical process – it’s influenced by:

• Organisational politics
• Cultural dynamics
• Personal biases
• Emotions and anxieties

PMO Insight: Understanding this can help you influence more effectively. It’s not just what you propose, but how you frame it for stakeholders. Systems Thinking adds that layer of insight.

A New Role for PMOs: From Fixers to System Navigators

Martin closed with a compelling message: PMOs often operate as control centres, but real impact lies in becoming sense-makers. That means:

• Helping the organisation understand complexity
• Using insights to intervene at the right level
• Supporting adaptation, not just conformance

The best PMOs see, connect, and guide – not just track and report.

Three Key Insights PMOs Can Use Right Now

1️⃣ Start with the system, not the symptom
Zoom out. Look at how everything connects before jumping in to fix.

2️⃣ Balance variety
If complexity is high, use filtering to reduce noise – and empowerment to expand response options.

3️⃣ Decisions = Data + People
Logic, emotion, and politics all shape decisions. PMOs need emotional intelligence as much as metrics.

Spotlight: The Viable System Model (VSM)

This model was one of the most useful frameworks from the session – a great tool for PMOs to evaluate how well their organisation (or PMO itself) is set up to adapt and deliver.

The VSM starts with three elements

• Environment – All the external forces that affect or are affected by the system (e.g., everything outside the organisation that affects it or is affected by it)
• Operations – The people and processes doing the work (e.g., delivery teams, service desks, analysts)
• Management – The structures and roles that oversee, coordinate, and adapt operations (e.g., everything above and around the operational units that helps them work together, adapt and stay viable over time)
  • Coordination – Keeps operations from ‘bumping into’ each other (e.g., timetables, planning schedules, safey codes)
  • Inside and Now – Coordinating what’s happening today, keeping operations running smoothly and ensuring current performance is being managed and controlled
  • Managing the Future – Changes in the environment that will affect future operations
  • The Board – responsible for the overall purpose, policy, identity, and direction of the organisation

PMO application: Use the VSM to ask “Where are we strong? Where are we blind?” It helps surface structural gaps in planning, coordination, or insight.

The Practical Exercise: Using the Viable System Model (VSM)

The mai aim of the exercise was to help learners to identify the systems they’re part of; reflect on where complexity lives in those systems and think about where change could happen with the most impact (i.e., leverage points)

It was about stepping back and seeing the system, rather than reacting to its outputs.

Step-by-Step Breakdown

Here’s how the exercise unfolded:

1. We looked at a fictional organisation – a teenager counsellor service

On each table were cards – and on each card was different information that each particular team member in this organisation might need.

For example, one card said “Waiting times from referral to first session” – so this information might be either Essential, Useful or Unimportant, depending on which team member might be receiving it.

So, the first activity was about thinking about two specific team members – the Board and the Service Leader. What information do they really need to make the decisions they are expected to make in their roles?

Here’s the board member example – with each card information placed in the Essential, Useful or Unimportant categories:

A key takeaway from this part of the exercise was:

• Too little information = blind spots and poor decisions
• Too much information = analysis paralysis, wasted attention

Also – we need to focus on what information certain people really need rather than what they think they would like.

2. Information Management for PMO Services

The second part of the table exercise was getting into the PMO. We were asked to pick a role between that of the Service Owner (PMO Manager) Service Manager (Lead PMO Analyst)  and Service Operative(Administrator, Co-ordinator, Analyst etc).

We’ll use the example of the PMO Manager here.

We’re thinking about what our information management policy is in the PMO – and specifically what the key input information requirements are – and key output requirements are for a service that the PMO may be offering.

Each group mapped the following 5 elements from the Viable System Model:

• Environment
• Coordinating
• Managing Future
• The Board
• Managing Inside and Now

The example to the right – focused on the inputs needed in order to provide *any* PMO service – so no specific service was chosen by this team.

This example gives the following:

• Environment – the governance models, the customer requirements, what is already in place, what other PMOs may be already doing, priorities
• Coordinating – the overall strategy, change management approach, resources needed – their availability / capability
• Managing Future – a risk register, reviews, development plans for the PMO team (to manage future work), KPIs
• The Board – key stakeholder wants and needs, future strategies for managing change
• Managing Inside and Now – policies, processes, procedures, organisational structure, resource tracker and plan

Each member of the table were thinking about what each part of the system may need if the PMO was to provide a new service – or update an existing one – what areas of the system do we need to think about.

The group found that it was quite difficult to put yourself in others shoes when thinking about PMO service introduction – but having five different areas – and five that they’ve never really considered before was a great way to think differently about it.

The group also found that thinking about the environment and coordinating aspects of the system were the easier – or the ones that came most naturally.

Let’s look at other couple of examples:

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Final Thought: The Habit of Systems Thinking

Systems Thinking isn’t a one-off tool – it’s a mindset. It challenges PMOs to step back, see patterns, and act more strategically.

Start small. Ask better questions. Look beyond the task. Spot the system. That’s where real PMO value lives.