Why Systems Thinking matters now?
Service designer and designer-researcher looking at what is Systems Thinking, where it comes from, and how non-experts can make use of it?
A simple act of having a cup of tea in the morning connects you directly and indirectly with many systems: utilities (water, electricity/gas etc.), the economy that sets prices for the tea, transport systems that ship the tea from it’s supplier, the tea plantation that relies on the earth’s natural resources and ecosystems, local policies, regulations and so on and so forth. Your simple everyday goal of having a cup of tea is totally dependent on a multitude of complex nuanced systems functioning and interacting well enough to get from plant to cup.
It is easy to forget that we exist in the intersection of multiple systems; in everyday life, we often focus on individual components and its interactions rather than on the birds-eye view of a whole system.
Systems thinking is an umbrella term for the methods and tools that one can use to perform systems analysis. There are various definitions of systems thinking, and definition below represents how it is commonly understood today:
Using systems thinking to understand complexity
Comprehending and dealing with complexity of systems can be difficult. The relationship between cause and effect between multiple components could be hidden and so far apart in time and space that they can seem at first unrelated. Seeing influences on the system from outside of the environment is not easy — the environment outside of systems can be made up of other systems that are composed of even more components that have complex interactions within. These factors can make predicting system behaviour over time a very challenging task.
However, various methodologies have been developed to help decipher complexity. Guiding questions and mapping tools could be used to define and understand systems. More advanced modelling and simulation tools can help to calculate and simulate possible outcomes of changes within systems.
Why systems thinking matters now?
Until recently systems thinking wasn’t a common practice outside academic disciplines that are closely related to Systems Theory or organisational/business management. Nevertheless, in the last few years there has been an increasing interest in systems thinking within innovation firms and governmental organisations. Some see systems thinking as another methodology like ‘design thinking’ which is now widely used in problem solving. However, we found in our research that unlike design thinking, systems thinking is not yet widely understood, and systems thinking tools are rarely used by non-system thinking experts. Some tools and methods that we found feel complex, unintuitive and difficult to use without professional guidance.
One of our intentions is to ‘democratise’ these tools and methods without oversimplifying them.
To do that, we didn’t want to rely solely on second-hand interpretations of systems thinking that have been produced in recent years. We wanted to look all the way back to the origins of systems thinking so as not to miss any important details, theories, or interesting applications that could lead to new insights.
In the following articles we will uncover the origins and history of systems thinking, we will share our findings about the current state of systems thinking tools, leading to a possible future state — systems thinking tools and methodologies for non-experts, that can help to understand complex systems and solve the problems of today.
This series of articles on systems thinking is written by Anastasia Vikhornova and Ruko Kuga.
