Systems Thinking ( KEW Episode 122)

While this is not a definitive treatise on Systems Thinking, I wanted to talk a bit about this topic as it is relevant to many of my posts.

People tell me that out-of-the-box thinking is atypical. Most people seem to think of the world in simplified, or at least minimized relationships. For example, you might think your job sucks. When thinking about how to change that or do something about it, you might think about why your job sucks. Many will simply decide that they are unlucky, or a victim. That’s a simple model that has two variables. Your job and your victimhood. The energy flows from one to the other or even between them.

In reality, your job probably sucks for many reasons and not the least of which is your attitude. I have personal experience with this as I had a job I hated and decided sucked. Once I finally quit, another person took the job. This person appears to be very happy and content with the job. Does the job still suck? What changed?

Of course, the flip side of the simplified model or approach to life is an overly complex one. Neither approach is appealing because it is either too simple and thus inaccurate, or too complex and thus overwhelming.

As usual the Goldilocks approach prevails where we understand enough about our world and whatever topic is of interest (e.g., your job) to be comfortable in the world.

To me, a model with a handful of critical variables is often ‘enough’ to understand the world and make good decisions. Overly complicated models are for engineers and academics, having little value to regular people.

Systems thinking is just an idea that says we can look at our world as having a handful-to-many interacting parts. At the very least systems thinking suggests that things are usually not as simple as we tend to make them, but things are also not as complicated.

For those of you more interested in Systems Thinking, here is a link to the definitive starter book.

For a brief introduction and my thoughts about transitioning from an overly simplified approach to decision-making and understanding to a more resolute and informed method, please watch or listen!

Streaming audio: https://pdcn.co/e/https://chtbl.com/track/CGDA9D/www.buzzsprout.com/530563/12719578-kew-episode-122-systems-thinking.mp3?download=true

Streaming video: https://youtu.be/ZjPfTgvaZG0