Systems Thinking – The What, How and Why.

Last week, one of my school leaders provided some notes on Learning Organisation, which included a guide to system thinking for our reading. Even before I started reading the guide, I heard of the word system many times. But what exactly is a system? How would we know one if we saw one, and why is it important to understand systems? More importantly for me, how can I manage my department more effectively by understanding systems?

Through the reading, I see that system thinking is a way of seeing and talking about reality that helps us better understand and work with systems that influence us – thus is a perspective. It also involves the use of a vocabulary for describing the interconnected systemic behavior – hence is also considered as a language. And finally, as it offers a range of diagrams for visually communication about systems, it is also a set of thinking tools.  

So, what is a system? From the article, I understand that a system is a circular relationship of interrelated, interacting or interdependent parts that form a complex whole for a purpose. I remembered my school leader speaking on how systems fit into a broader context. He spoke on we see reality based on different levels of perspectives, namely at the events, patterns and systemic structures – “The Iceberg”. Events are day to day occurrence. Patterns happen when we see accumulated events. Finally systemic structures are the ways in which parts of a system are organized. These structures create the patterns and events that observed. And among these three, events are what we observed most easily as compared to patterns and systemic structures.

So, why do I want to know about systemic structures? Well, I want to look at reality from this view so as to deepen my understanding of how such systems work and gain familiarity with some terms and tools of systems thinking in order to communicate the understanding of what really happened. To be continued….