What is a System?

The word ‘system’  can be used to describe many different things.  Some examples:

• A collection of hi-fi audio components  – speakers, an amplifier, a turntable etc. -  is generally known as a stereo system.
• The network of cells in humans and animals that communicates information around the body is known as the nervous system.
• The interface between a computer and the person using it is known as an operating system.

A stereo that plays back recorded music is, needless to say, very different to the cells that carry information around your body.  So what do they have in common?  What does the word ‘system’ actually mean?

Using a car as an example, a system is defined in the following way:

A system is defined by its function as part of a larger system.

A car is part of the transportation system – its function is to move people around.

A system is a whole made up of essential and non-essential parts.

Even a fairly simple car is made up of lots of parts.  The parts that make up the engine are essential for the car to move.  The parts that make up the radio are not essential for the car to move.

In a system every essential part is connected in some way to every other essential part.

Everything essential on a car is connected in some way to everything else that’s essential on the car.  For example, the brakes are connected to the engine indirectly by the transmission.

In a system all the essential parts affect the whole, but no single essential part affects the whole independently – how an essential  part affects the whole depends on what at least one other essential part is doing.  This also applies to groups of essential parts within the whole.

How fast the engine moves the car depends on what the clutch is doing, if the brake is applied, what gear the car is in, and so on.

In short – a system is a whole that cannot be divided into independent parts.

Ok, so now we know what a system is.  So what?  What’s so important about the way parts that make up wholes are connected?

The important thing about understanding what a system is is the way it enables us to begin to recognise the problems caused by relying only on traditional thinking (analysis) when solving problems.  We’ll cover what these problems are in the next post.

How your brain (currently) thinks about problems

A long time ago, an Austrian ex-patent clerk is quoted as saying:

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

It’s very easy to agree with the above statement.  This is because it’s difficult to understand, and it’s very easy to agree with something that’s not understood.

What the hell is a ‘pattern of thought’?

To find out, consider this: you give a small child a new object that that they haven’t seen before.  What’s the first thing they do with it?

Easy – they try and take it apart.

This is one of those fundamental things that seems to be hard-wired into the human brain: when presented with a new thing – a problem, something to fix, something to understand – we take it apart and look at the parts.  We then try and build up an understanding of the whole from our understanding of the parts.

For example – if you talk to people who work in scientific or technical fields they will often tell you that when they were younger they were forever dismantling old radios or clocks and, significantly, usually failing to put them back together again in working order.

This three-stage process of ‘take the thing apart – understand the parts – try to build an understanding of the whole from the parts’ is called analysis, and forms the basis of most thinking everywhere.  If you asked most people to tell you the difference between analysing something and thinking about something, they wouldn’t be able to – both are generally thought of as being the same thing.

Analysis is the current dominant pattern of thought used by man – it informs everything we do.  It also forms the basis of almost all the science of the last hundred years or so – for example, think about mankind’s continuing quest to understand the universe by looking at smaller and smaller particles of matter.

Analysis has provided many useful insights and discoveries over the last hundred years or so, so why do we need any other way of thinking about things?

The truth is, relying purely on analysis has huge drawbacks and real-world consequences that are not widely appreciated or understood.  And this is what I’ll begin to cover in the next post.

A brief(ish) introduction to Systems Thinking

What the hell is a system?

What does it mean to think about something as a system?

Why should I even care?

In my experience these are usually the questions that immediately spring to mind when the term ‘Systems Thinking’ is first mentioned to someone who hasn’t heard it before.  And with good reason: Systems Thinking is not a term in everyday use, it sounds complicated and/or technical and a lot of people assume it’s got something to do with computers or engineering.  It gets worse: when people ask for a simple definition of what Systems Thinking is, it’s pretty much impossible to give one.  Systems Thinking by its very nature can’t be reduced to a simple summary or soundbite that fully explains what it’s really all about.

…Which is going to make this post a bit tricky to write, given its title.  But here goes.

A System is generally defined as ‘a set of interacting or interdependent parts forming an integrated whole’.  A useful definition of thinking is that ‘thinking allows beings to model the world and to deal with it according to their objectives, plans, ends and desires’.  In my view, the essential property of Systems Thinking is that it gives us a way of looking at things as working wholes.

Which doesn’t sound particularly earth shattering.  Thinking about a set of a parts that make up a working whole  – what’s so revolutionary about that?

To fully understand why Systems Thinking can be so useful we have to first understand how it differs from the traditional ways of how we think about the world around us, and this is something I’ll cover in the next post.  In the meantime, I’ll end with a quote for you to think about from one of the great thinkers of our time:

“If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat.” – Douglas Adams