What is Systems Thinking?
Tags: Non Linear, Systems, Business, Systems Thinking, Self Improvement

What is Systems Thinking?

An overview of A Definition of Systems Thinking: A Systems Approach By Ross Arnold and Jon Wade

Systems Thinking Systemigram (Ross Arnold and Jon Wade)

Ross Arnold and Jon Wade decided that a couple of sentences could not describe systems thinking in its entirety. Definitions attempting to provide a brief description of it often miss out on either the several components of Systems Thinking or the interconnectedness of them. The best most complete definition would actually be a system itself that models systems thinking.

“Systems thinking is, literally, a system of thinking about systems” (Arnold, Wade)

Before we get into it, lets take a quick diversion into Reductionism. Reductionism aims to understand a concept by breaking it down into simpler elements and analyzing them. While it has made great contributions to the scientific community over the years, it is not as helpful to understanding systems because we lose the interactions and influences of different components on each other. Systems Thinking deals with looking at the whole picture.

The Core of Systems Thinking Is Being Able to See Both the Forest and the Trees with One Eye on Each.

Photo by Lukasz Szmigiel on Unsplash

The phrase “Systems Thinking” was coined by Barry Richmond and he defined it as being able to make reliable inferences by developing a deep understanding of the underlying structure. He says “people embracing Systems Thinking position themselves such that they can see both the forest and the trees; one eye on each.” Barry refers to the fact that Systems Thinking puts a focus on understand the role of individual elements, the trees, and also understanding the sum of the parts may be different than the whole, the forest. While this definition certainly provides insight into Systems Thinking it fails to explain the interconnectedness of the different elements.

“Systems thinking is a set of synergistic analytic skills used to improve the capability of identifying and understanding systems, predicting their behaviors, and devising modifications to them in order to produce desired effects. These skills work together as a system.”(Arnold, Wade)

A System is defined by its goal. The goal of Systems Thinking is to identify systems, predict their behaviors, and understand how changes in elements manifest as changes in the system as a whole. With the goal defined its time to define the individual elements and their interconnectedness. Ross and Jon made use of previous literature that defined the elements of a system very well to craft their 8 elements of a system.

This picture is your best friend — reference it often

Recognizing Interconnections: Identifying important connections between different parts of a System. Identifying and Understanding Feedback: Systems are dynamic, which means they are always influencing and being influenced. Sometimes the connections form feedback loops where there is a cycle of elements influencing eachother. It’s important to be able to identify these loops and also understand their behavior. Understanding System Structure: I find this step to be somewhat redundant but it is defined as understanding the structure of interconnections and feedback loops and how facilitates system behavior. It is like a container element that holds 1 and 2, to make understanding how structure influences dynamic behavior and later how modifying the model as a result will again influence structure. Differentiating Types of Stocks, Flows and Variables: Stocks are the resources of a system. They could be money, blood, happiness, pinecones or anything really. Flows are the changes of these Resources. Variables are the changeable parts of the system that affect stocks and flows. They could exist as constraints or qualities. like flow rate, capacity of a stock or multipliers. Identifying and Understanding Non-Linear Relationships: This one is the same as the last one except for the fact the flows here are non-linear. The difference between linear vs non-linear conceptually can be difficult to get a grasp on. Non-Linear relationships hold emergent properties, or properties that arise from the synergy of multiple system elements. These properties make the system different from the sum of its parts. Understanding Dynamic Behavior: This element is very similar to element 3 in that it is an encapsulation of elements 4 and 5. It’s about understanding interconnections, feedback loops, stocks, flows and variables. Reducing Complexity by Modeling Systems Conceptually: This element is about modeling different parts of the system and to simplify the system, through reduction, transformation, abstraction or hoomogenization. The point of simplifying parts of the system is to make them more understandable, and from these new perspectives new insights can be discovered. Understanding Systems at Different Scales: Being able to recognize different scales of systems and systems composed of systems. For example a component of a system might be another system that also shares these 8 elements.

One more time for good luck

Just reading the descriptions will only give you half of the whole picture. The other half lies in the interactions of the elements with each other. Notice how every element an element inlfuences also gets influenced by that element even if by a weak connection. The system is constantly propagating towards the end goal of improving system thinking capabilities while also changing itself to better meet that goal.

Finally this definition can be validated as a system by using the System Test. To be classified as a system all three of these properties must be present.

(Arnold and Wade)

Purpose: To identify and understand systems, predict their behaviors, and to devise modifications to produce desired effects

Elements: The definition has 8 elements that are described in detail

Interconnections: The Systemigram portrays the relations between all elements in depth