System Thinking

 

The content Posted here is directly influenced by class discussion and prior reading. Readings are from Works of Peter F Drucker, Prof Joseph Maciariello (Drucker Scholar, faculty at Peter F Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate school of Management) and Prof Karen Higgins (Faculty at Drucker School). Many Fellow Students also contributed and purpose of posting this blog is to summarize what I learnt and thank all the contributors.

I was really amazed to see the structured way of thinking by which we can look at problem and things going around us. From reading it was very clear that great work is done in this subject which allows such to think not only about short term goals and problems but also take care of unidentified consequences that may arise because of our decisions. The concept of looking at big picture before we take decision is vitally important. So middle level managers should be taking into consideration not only the immediate cause and effect but also take a look at whole picture.

Few steps that I learned in order to do system thinking are

Awareness : You should be aware of condition and environment around which is constantly changing and dynamic. second is that you have to look the reasons behind the situation before making any assumptions. Third is to identify resistance to change, which is evident in day to day life, i.e to identify loops which seek stability. and Forth is identify areas which are growing unbound.   One more thing that is very important is that when you think more than your scope and you assume you have covered all the aspects of the decision, you can hurt some one unknowingly so you should be very careful.

The loops and cycles that explains things going around us are very important. There are positive loops, the negative loops and loops that balance. If you are facing some problems and difficulty the best way to tackle is to identify the loop. What is causing this, what is accelerating it and what is end result and how this end result is supporting start. If you can identify this then you have solved half the puzzle. Then you can devise a way a opposite loop which can reverse the whole process. Start to think about actions that can change the result, think which things will oppose the bad thing and then you can try to get out of problem.

This looks very idealistic and not always possible as there are so many factors affecting the situations, but its always better to try working towards this rather than not doing anything.

Nikhil Parchure