I was tired. Very tired. My wife and I were just getting over a nasty cold. We had been up since 4:30 am. Our travel plans had been rescheduled six times before lunch was over and we had not even left our starting point in Geneva, Switzerland.

Flying home to Jackson Tennessee at Christmas time is hard enough. The usual path home takes about 18 hours, 4 cities, 3 countries and 2 continents. As complicated as that is, it can get even more complex when one big windstorm in one European city happens to blow through at just the wrong moment. When it does, it can be chaos. It can be chaos for tens of thousands of people from all around the world. This time, we were among those people.

Julia Ewoldt Stooksberry, Jackson Grown Mentor presents “the big picture”. She helps students think bigger about smaller, day-to-day issues and what could be potential causes for challenges we see around us.

It’s a complicated, big system. Each day in a large airport many machines are needed to move equivalent of the entire Jackson, Tennessee population - more than 60,000 people - to where they want to go. Those people carry 150,000 suitcases. They climb onto 1,200 airplanes. The system must work flawlessly. Each movement and every action to make that happen must be precisely on time and perfect every time.

To take a flight from Switzerland to Tennessee, you need a few things to go right. First, you need to buy a ticket which appears in your email and on your airline app. The computer system and servers for the website and the app must work. Second, when you arrive at the airport an automated check-in machine allows you to check in and print your boarding pass for the plane. This machine (and the system it connects to) must work. Third, if you are taking a suitcase, you must be able to lift your bag onto a hefty baggage machine that then carries it until it disappears into a mystery world of baggage handling. This conveyor belt must work. And on, and on, and on.

For every next step along a traveler’s journey things must be perfect. The security line, the restaurants, the screens notifying where the plane is, the passport desk, the fuel tankers and, the most complicated machine at an airport, the plane itself - made up of 3.21 million parts created by 800 different companies - must each fit together and run perfectly to make sure a person gets home to their family for the holidays. It’s a massive “machine” made up of many, many smaller machines. It is a system of systems.

**Caris Devore, Jackson Grown Fellow from Liberty Technology High School answers questions during discussion about seeing the big picture in day-to-day challenges we see around us.**

On December 1, 2023, Fellows at the Jackson Grown Leader Fellowship continued to dig deeper into the machines and systems that a community needs to “fly” smoothly. Led by Mentor Julia Ewoldt Stooksberry, the Fellows were encouraged to think “bigger” about “smaller” level challenges such as the link between the overstuffed baggage machine and the windstorm. In this example, no flights taking off because of the windstorm meant the bags had nowhere to go which meant the conveyor belt was clogged which meant neither I, nor anyone else, could put bags on the conveyor belt. This caused the check-in lines to slow and grow to hundreds of people. This ultimately created a monstrous amount of frustration.

Similarly, in the case of the community, the students considered possible societal-level issues that could cause, as one student identified, the challenge of a frustrated parent not having enough free time to spend with friends and family. What could be a cause?

“It’ is a system of systems. They are challenges within challenges. Each with multiple causes, and even more effects.”

In this not-so-hypothetical case, there might be a war in a far-off country that produces oil (a windstorm). This might make fuel prices higher in the US which might make it expensive to operate a tractor in Tennessee (the baggage machine gets overloaded). This might cause food prices to be higher which could force a parent in Jackson to work an extra job (me not being able to load my bag on the baggage machine). This extra job could, in theory, prevent the parent from having Saturday free to spend with their children in Liberty Park, watch a football game, go shopping or just hang out (making the baggage the people in the baggage line really frustrated).

It’s a system of systems with “big” things impacting medium things which impact “small” things. There are infinite examples like this. There are also no clear causes and effects. Many things contribute to the long baggage line just as many things contribute to a parent not being able to spend time with kids. This example, however, a starting point.

Most of the time in order for someone to fly from a small city like Geneva, Switzerland to another small city in another country like Jackson, Tennessee there will be an “in-between flight” to a big city. This big city, naturally, will have a big airport that connects the smaller cities (a “layover”). For us, Amsterdam, Netherlands was our in-between, layover airport. It is one of the busiest, largest and most complex advanced airports in the world. A massive system of mini systems. Even though it was a beautiful day in Switzerland where we started our trip, the monster winter windstorm in Amsterdam prevented our flight from taking off. We wouldn’t be able to land.

Once we took off and were arriving in our in-between layover city, we found out quickly why almost all flights in Europe were delayed that day. 70 mph winds with sheets of rain pounding the windows made the plane jump and fall. It rolled and rocked as we lined up to land. When all of the plane’s wheels were on the ground, all of the passengers cheered. A person from the Netherlands in the back yelled in his native Dutch accent “We’re lucky!”.

We still had a long way to go and so did everyone on the plane. The flight attendant came on the microphone. He listed one by one every connecting flight the people on our plane were going to miss: London, England (Europe); Beijing, China (Asia); Melbourne, Australia (Australia); Accra, Ghana (Africa); Seoul, South Korea (Asia); Sao Paulo, Brazil (South America); Atlanta, Georgia (North America). They represented almost every continent on earth. No one, not one person on the plane was getting home…all because of a windstorm in one European city.

Makayla Bond, a Junior Fellow rom Jackson Central Merry High School discusses ways we can better think about, and address, challenges we see around us.

These people, all of us on the plane, were blocked from doing what we wanted to do. We couldn’t go home. It wasn’t any of our faults. We had all arrived early at the airport, dutifully packed our bags in the right way and bought Christmas presents for our families. For a reason totally out of our control however, we faced a huge challenge in missing our next flights.

Sometimes, challenges, big or small, significant or trivial start like this. There might be one or two uncontrollable things that cause a first big domino to fall. A pandemic, a global economic crisis, a family member’s illness, a factory closing. Big or small, things like this can shock even the most advanced collective or individual-level systems and cause chaos for a community or a person.

Our missed flights were only the start. Because everyone in the 4th busiest airport in the world had also missed their flights, computer systems managing the re-booking of passengers crashed. Thousands of people including elderly people in wheelchairs and babies in strollers as well as all their suitcases were stranded. As one of the airport’s “mini systems” clogged and crashed (like the computers to re-book tickets) another system would clog and crash due to the extra effort required.

Attendants at the ticket counters became overwhelmed and had no way to help tired passengers. Lines grew from the tens to the hundreds of people, football fields long and at standstills. Restaurant workers and servers became overwhelmed due to the unexpectedly huge amount of people who were hungry and couldn’t leave the airport. Hotels and taxis to take people there became overwhelmed because of thousands of people stranded as afternoon turned to night. The few stores at the airport that sold toothbrushes, deodorant and hairbrushes quickly ran out. System after system after system failed.

Andrew Ellis, Senior Fellow representing Madison Academic High School presents his idea on addressing challenges that children might face at home.

There are parallels in challenges at the global, national and local level challenges. It is tempting to think that our lives are disconnected from one another. It’s easier and more comfortable that way.

In the same way that the restaurant worker at the Amsterdam airport couldn’t do his job because a flight in Geneva (and hundreds of other cities) couldn’t take off on time because of a windstorm, a nurse in Jackson might not be able to her job because of delayed funding for road construction which slows an ambulance route which, ultimately, can have life or death impacts.

We see this across all of the “little systems” we encounter nearly every minute of every day.

Fellows with the Jackson Grown Leader Fellowship are developing a deep understanding of these interconnections. Their understanding of our big system is wiser, more nuanced and more reflective. Instead of anger and complaining about arriving late for Christmas, the Fellows are encouraged to ask “why”. And then, to again and again and again ask “why”. With these deeper questions, perhaps comes deeper understanding. And, maybe, with this understanding we may see more resilient solutions.

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