Systems Thinking

Systems thinking has had me piqued for a while now.

This morning, when in the podcast, I heard the speaker say, "clear thinking is such a rare thing, most people can't do it" is when I figured it's worth a deep dive.

It’s been said that systems thinking is one of the key management competencies for the 21st century.

While this sounds very 'system' oriented.....logical and reason based, it's way more broadly encompassing than that. It seems to almost warrant paradigm shifts. The beautiful and uplifting part of it is that paradigm shifts are very possible....

It's about wanting to, and being willing to get there.

'Systems thinking encompasses a spectrum of thinking strategies that look at problem solving and encourage questioning. While 'habit' is defined as a usual way of doing things, the habits of a Systems Thinker do not suggest that systems thinkers are limited by routine ways of thinking.

Rather, the 'Habits' encourage flexible thinking and appreciation of new, emerging insights and multiple perspectives.

A synopsis from 'How to Make Difficult Problems Easier to Solve with Systems Thinking' by Dr.Jamie Schwandt 

"If you had to think of the problem that underlies all other problems, what would you say it is? 

It is the way we think.

Einstein - “Without changing our patterns of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems created with our current pattern of thought.”

There are four simple rules of Systems Thinking, DSRP, which represents four cognitive functions that we must have to form new ideas:

• Distinctions

• Systems

• Relationships

• Perspectives

Distinctions

Distinction serves as a boundary that defines an idea or a thing.  They identify what a thing or even a problem IS and what it IS NOT.

Systems

“A change in the way an idea is organized leads to a change in the meaning of the idea.” – Derek Cabrera

Every idea or thing is a system containing parts. Any idea or thing can be split into parts . Any idea or thing can be lumped into a whole.

A person who can do both (split and lump) is called a “Slumper”.

Slumper’s are people who have the ability to both construct or deconstruct ideas to further our understanding.

Relationships

We cannot understand much about a thing or idea without understanding the relationship between or among the ideas or systems.

All types of relationships require that we consider two underlying elements: action and reaction.

Perspectives

“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” 

Sometimes perspectives are so basic and so unconscious to us, we are unaware of them but they are always aware of us.

Being aware of the perspectives we take and do not take is paramount to deeply understanding ourselves and the world around us.

Different perspectives result from changing the Point, the View, or Both.

Systems Thinking, gives you the approach or methodology and also provides techniques. For instance the first technique is called a Cognitive Jig, which uses analogies and metaphors. This is a powerful technique, one in which Derek informs us,

“Will increase our speed of thought.”

We begin at the unconscious incompetence stage (we don’t know what we don’t know).

If we are lucky, someone wakes us up and causes us to search for something more. We then move into the conscious incompetence stage, where we realize we have something we need to learn.

Once we develop some competence, we then move into the unconscious competence stage. Here we practice a skill without being fully aware of the skill. There is cognition but not metacognition (thinking about thinking or cognition about cognition).

When we finally move into the conscious-competence stage, we become aware of what we are doing so that we can adapt to where we need to be. 

Successfully progressing along the continuum means we have an increase in our metacognitive awareness, which is extremely important as everything we experience is an ever-changing mental model.

The whole article, for those interested: 'How to Make Difficult Problems Easier to Solve with Systems Thinking' by Dr.Jamie Schwandt.