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
October 9, 2009 at 12:56 pm |
No, if you try to take apart a cat to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands are deep scratches.