Systems Thinking — How To Build Products In The New Age
Design thinking is a familiar concept for most product managers in today’s world. Design thinking takes into account what customers are feeling and experiencing. But in the past 15 years since David Kelly coined and propagated design thinking, much has changed in our world. We now produce 3.4 terabytes of data everyday, 80% of which was produced in the last two years.
Two years of text produced on Twitter is more than the combined text published in all books ever. 50% of the world’s adults now own a smartphone. We are interconnected and networked at a scale that is unprecedented. This huge, global, connected organism — which Kevin Kelly, author of The Inevitable calls Holos — has properties that are unique to its evolution. This organism is bigger than the sum of its parts. It has emergent behaviors and impacts that are unpredictable and sometimes unimaginable.
This is where the concept of systems thinking comes in. Systems thinking is the science of thinking about interconnected parts holistically. It is a mode of analysis that is pertinent in today’s everything-is-networked, Big Data world. It is a mind-set — a way of seeing and talking about reality that recognizes the interrelatedness of things. System thinking sees collections of interdependent components as a set of relationships and consequences that are at least as important as the individual components themselves.
We may use systems thinking to understand and explain a wide range of complex structures such as inventory changes in a supply chain to the instability in Syria, to the functioning of global politics.
One way to understand systems thinking is to use The Iceberg Model. The tip of the iceberg represents events and occurrences. It is the most visible, the most prominent part of the iceberg and one which captures most of our attention. The tip of the iceberg tells you very little about its actual size. In order to understand how big the iceberg is, in order to estimate its impact, one needs to look beneath the surface. In the same vein, we expend all our attention on our daily occurrences, the ups and downs of our lives; the trivialities. Like the Titanic, our downfall ensues from focusing too much on the tip instead of the underlying causes. If events are the tip of the iceberg, systemic structures or mental models are the foundation. Systemic structures are how the components of a system are organized. Patterns of behavior (of a system, individual or society) emerge from the way these components are arranged. In the context of an individual, mental models are essentially systemic structures. Our patterns of behavior are determined by our mental models. Values are the underlying ‘why’ that give rise to our mental models.
Take an example of a getting a cup of coffee. Say your coffee is less than optimal one particular day. You could curse the barista and let it go or raise a concern and demand a refund or blame your hard luck and get on with your day. All of these are reactions to the ‘event’. But if we were to employ systems thinking and look closely, we would observe a pattern. We would realize that the quality of drinks goes down with every shift change. This pattern is created because of the barista’s mental model. Each incoming barista is only focused on their shift without concern for the next shift’s workers. The underlying value is competition. Because of this systemic structure, baristas in earlier shifts are careless about cleaning the pour over containers, or grinding the beans correctly. The real problem here is not incompetent baristas but the systemic nature of how work and incentives are structured in the coffee shop. By understanding the underlying mental models and values, we can create solutions that address the ‘why’ and not the symptoms.
There are two key concepts that define systems thinking. One is emergence and the other is leverage points.
Emergence refers to the patterns and behavior that arise from the interactions of the components of a system. A system is bigger than just a collection of its parts and this is because the interconnectedness of its parts creates synergies and feedback loops which change the behavior of the system. Emergent properties arise when a system’s parts operate in cohesion; properties that cannot be found in the individual components. Emergent properties are impossible to understand unless a system is seen in totality. In a world where our social, political, professional and financial lives are inextricably linked, we cannot design solutions without understanding the emergent patterns and impacts that our solutions will create.
Leverage points refers to the smallest action or change that can be made in order to make an impact on the overall system. In a world of 7 billion interconnected and interlinked people, the slightest change — positive or negative — can snowball and create massive impact. Often, in order to solve big problems, it is not required to create big, complex solutions. Finding ways to make incremental change, the smallest nudge for the biggest impact, is the right way to go.
As product managers and designers, it behooves us to align our thinking and consequently our approach to solving problems based on the realities of the age we live in. They key in this new age is to focus on the big picture, recognize the interconnectedness of the complex parts, identify the unique systemic patterns and look for high-impact, incremental changes.
