Decoding Systems Thinking
Living in a 2BHK flat, that houses 53 such flats in a two-storeyd building, I woke-up to a morning alarm at 5am and was getting ready for morning jog. I got stopped by my wife’ voice by the door and she handed over a list to buy that contained groceries for the day. There a small street shop to the end of my street. The shop is small, but sells all essentials. The shop-owner brings fresh fruits and vegetables everyday from near-by village. He also sells morning newspapers, milk, canned water. I regularly buy fresh vegetables from this shop . I handed-over the list to the show-owner. The shopkeeper promised to home deliver the items in the list before 6:30am. I told the shopkeeper not to delay and moved on. I also had to buy greens which, I buy them from roadside hawker. Reaching the hawker, I took one bundle of greens and gave the hawker 30 rupees. Hawker told — Sir, there are no greens in market and due to rains. He asked me to pay Rs.40/-. I checked the greens and some of its stems and leaves were in near decay condition. I knew I would get scolds back home either-ways: for buying near decay greens or for not buying greens.
I reached home, it was nearly six. My wife in middle of cooking told me that street shop did not deliver canned water. When I checked what the issue was, she said — “RO unit of the water purifying plant is under quarterly maintenance and the shopkeeper will deliver the canned water tomorrow. I confirmed if other items were delivered by doing a visual check on vegetable tray. All items were present. My wife looked at the greens and asked me, what was the cost and why I bought decayed greens. By the time I explained her what the hawker told, she examined it and told me that greens cannot be cooked as most of it was damaged. She had changed the plan cook instant rice mix with lentils.
Morning papers were waiting on the coffee table and I got my freshly brewed coffee at 6am. Sipping through the coffee, heard a knock at the door and association secretary called me and informed that monthly review of association is happening and checked my participation. My kids in half-sleep and my wife busy preparing food for the day. Follow-up shouts continued till 7am with the kids, which is very normal that keeps them busy completing the morning routine and preparing them on time for their online classes.
Time: 8:30am, my son was searching for misplaced stationery items while daughter peeping through the tab. Both kids fighting to get the comfort place within the house for the class. While the session for my daughter started, my son was waiting for the Google meet URL link to be shared for the day. After 30 minutes, my son’s teacher called and told me that first session of my son stands cancelled as his subject teacher is not well today.
Time: 9:30am, I started my day checking my outlook for reminders and meetings for the day. Quickly went through the mails in inbox, by the time breakfast was ready. All of us grouped together and quickly gulped the breakfast and went back to our respective rooms. My wife left home for her work.
It was 2pm when I realized I was hungry. I informed my colleague that I will be late by 10 minutes for the next meeting and will complete my lunch meantime. My kids were in second session for the day and food was ready waiting to be eaten. I had my quick lunch and went back to my seat plugging headset on my ears. It took first few minutes to understand the context of the discussion. It was supposed to be a review meeting, turned out as a feedback session on the recently completed Sprint. The meeting ended with applauses. The next few hours continued on documenting the report for the week.
It was around 5pm, I realized, need to stop my work and need to bring my wife back from near by bus stop. The bus, my wife supposed to come was late by 15 minutes. I was glancing through the evening papers mean time. The bus stopped 50 feet ahead of the bus stop abruptly with a sound as tyre got punctured. Luckily it was only 15 minutes delay. When we reached home, it was around 6pm and my kids were watching television. Listening to the footsteps, TV went dead. My kids were pretending to write.
8pm, my wife was preparing dinner and she told dinner it will be ready in 30 minutes. My kids were in verge of competing their homework. I was literally hungry as afternoon lunch was not enough. We got together for dinner at 9pm and told my wife to go for sleep as I had couple of unplanned discussions. Closed my laptop by 10:30pm. Everyone were fast asleep and the day has come to an end.
Based on above story, below diagram depicts the following: what a system is, its functions, components (sub-systems), interactions between systems, mal-function of a system, delays and its impact, interdependencies, multi-level system and finally entire diagram represents systems of systems. Understanding from systems perspective will help to design better solutions for the system as whole.
