What Is Systems Thinking? Definition, Examples and Concepts

System thinking looks at the whole and the relationship of the parts. Non-system linear thinking looks at the individual components of the process. The graph below illustrates the difference between systems thinking and non-systems thinking concepts. A systems diagram is a practical tool to help map out the structure of your organization and its systems. Drawing a systems diagram depicts the factors and relationships that are important in your organization, and helps you to start quantifying the linkages between factors. As pioneers in online higher education since 1989, University of Phoenix is an accredited online university for working adults.

This researcher considered these components both individually and holistically, then proposed a new definition of systems thinking that integrates these components as a system. The definition was tested for fidelity against a System Test and against three widely accepted system archetypes. Systems thinking is widely believed to be critical in handling the complexity facing the world in the coming decades; however, it still resides in the educational margins. In order for this important skill to receive mainstream educational attention, a complete definition is required. This research is an attempt to rectify this deficiency by providing such a definition. Systems thinking is an approach with a long history that has been applied in different fields, such as computer science, management, and ecology.

When Should You Try Using Systems Thinking? A Few Examples to Consider

Very early on in my time on the job, the division vice president asked me to work on a project related to gender equity issues at the company . Being so young and a non-native speaker, I was worried about how I could possibly tackle such a complex and challenging issue at such a large organization. And I was concerned about how I could possibly convince executive leadership to take the steps that this young, naïve American would recommend.

• Team members must clearly understand the system boundaries and how it interacts with the environment and the systems around it.
• Copyrighted image by Brian Robert Marshall, reuse allowed under Creative Commons license.
• It may inspire you to reach long-term solutions you wouldn’t have considered without working through the process backward.
• Overall, systems thinking is about reframing a problem to expose its addressable underlying causes.
• To better understand systems thinking, let’s look at these three examples.

It has been applied more recently in health policy and systems research . Systems thinking takes into consideration that action or changes in one aspect of a health system is likely to affect what results in another. It allows for a more adaptive implementation of health system policies and programmes. Learning how to adopt a systems thinking mindset can be a challenge.

Feedback loops

The big challenge in being one of the faculty instructors for MIT xPRO’s system thinking course, explains Prof. Crawley, is using examples that exhibit just the right amount of complexity. The systems need to be complicated enough that the answers aren’t too obvious but not so complicated that no one can understand how they work, even after learning the tools for system thinking. In 2012, the Alliance sponsored a special supplement of Health Policy and Planning. Until this point, use of systems thinking in HPSR had been practised predominantly in high-income countries. The supplement captured the application of systems thinking in low- and middle-income Countries and provided further guidance on its application in these settings. Overcoming change resistance is the crux of the problem and must be solved first, so it takes nine solution elements to solve this subproblem.

Consider using some of these solutions to teach everyone about systems thinking and make it your team’s go-to solutions tool. The best way to apply systems thinking in the workplace is to get everyone involved. People in general workplaces may use systems thinking processes without realizing it.

Meet the Future-Minded Leader: Your organization’s answer to uncertainty

Therefore optimizing local teams or functional departments does not enhance the flow of value through the enterprise. The value of a system passes through its interconnections. Those interfaces—and the dependencies they create—are critical to providing ultimate value. Continuous attention to those interfaces and interactions is vital. Optimizing a component of the system does not optimize the whole system. Components can become selfish and hog the resources—computing power, memory, electrical power, whatever—that other elements need.

Leaders who use the future-minded lens say they spend 147% more time planning in their lives and 159% more time planning in their work than those with low future-minded leadership skills. Without systems thinking, a team might set its goals very narrowly and pursue them. Sometimes, those pursuits result in strategies that are detrimental to another team or the bigger company objectives. Systems thinking might sound like a clunky, corporate jargon phrase. But at its heart, systems thinking is about seeing things through a wide lens, recognizing how interconnected we are, and acting with empathy and innovation. Want to learn more about how to work with people on workplace challenges?

Example 1: Convincing others of your ONE solution

Too many voters and politicians are being deceived into thinking sustainability is a low priority and need not be solved now. Popular solutions are superficial because they fail to see into the fundamental layer, where the complete causal chain runs to root causes. It’s an easy trap to fall into because it intuitively seems that popular solutions like renewable energy and strong regulations should solve the sustainability problem. But they can’t, because they don’t resolve the root causes. They give a quick introduction to the Dueling Loops model and how it explains the tremendous change resistance to solving the sustainability problem. How do you operationalize the concept of systems thinking?

Subproblems like these are several orders of magnitude easier to solve because you are no longer trying to solve them simultaneously without realizing it. This strategy has changed millions of other problems from insolvable to solvable, so it should work here too. Click on the table for the full table and a high level discussion of analysis results. You will see powerful techniques used in this analysis that are missing from what mainstream environmentalism has tried. The most eye-opening article on the site since it was written in December 2005.

What are the Systems Thinking Principles?

Everyone has to be on board with the process — you can’t have holdouts who think, ‘My idea is the best,’” Marticek says. Read how University of Phoenix alum Dennis Trujillo used his business skills to succeed at Boeing. Systems thinking wouldn’t be the optimal response if you can’t think of solutions https://www.globalcloudteam.com/ to the problem. The process requires at least one or two ideas to gauge their effects. An immediate solution would be necessary to solve the problem of backlogged tech problems in the office. A solution may take time to come to mind, so you could sit everyone down and brainstorm together.

Not all leaders gain a systems perspective, partly because of the organizational structure. In many cases, each division or team has https://www.globalcloudteam.com/glossary/system-of-systems/ its own manager, goals, tasks, budgets, and KPIs. Also, many organizations function in a top-down, command-and-control format.

Measuring Impact

“Systems thinking is useful in helping teams become more aware of how they’re interacting with each other and within the team, and it helps them understand the outcomes they’re producing,” Brown said. All people and institutions including communities, health workers, leaders and policy makers should be engaged in HSS efforts. Systems thinking is the study of complexity and the relationships and interactions among components of a system.