Systems thinking

Systems thinking lets you step back from the detail to look at the whole holistically.

I’d explain it by likening it to looking at an end to end process before diving into a specific part. Without knowledge of the whole you might focus on something while missing context or risks etc. 

One way I apply it in my current role is reviewing architecture documents to find areas of risk, ways and things to test as well as opportunities for automation and potential ways to use mocks and stubs to increase testability. In my current context it also allowed me to have early conversations about data and design.

Systems thinking I see operating in two ways, generally speaking. The first is the concept of thinking of the whole as made up of parts rather than the parts constituting a whole. Synthesis over analysis, holism over reductionism; the combination and connection of things as a concept, above the definition of things as a collection of isolated parts.

The next is an attempt to derive knowledge about systems themselves, and the approaches we can use to do so. How to deal with medium number systems in a pragmatic way. For me, that’s general systems thinking. Metalaws. Being wrong in order to find that out.

I also think of it in terms of irritating complexity. A dynamic web of interconnections of parts that can affect many others simultaneously. Adjustments to a system based on linear functional thinking can have all sorts of consequences elsewhere.

Systems thinking is also about consideration of all the relationships between modelled elements in a system, and therefore all the ones excluded from that model. As we try to supress the complexity of systems so that we can map them and apply sensible calculations we exclude factors, and as those factors become detrimental to the accuracy of our results we accept the error bars as they come.

It’s also about having the perspective to understand what system could be. To have a broad enough scope to see competing systems or human-made paradigm categorisations and treat them with neutrality. Or at least not be so invested in one system as to blind ourselves to the realities of another. It’s removal of the self in service of the possibility of things that are not connected to us. It’s removing faith from our thinking.

System thinking is an approach for looking at the system as a whole rather than just the individual components. How do each feature or function interact, connect and contribute to the overall workings of the system? By viewing the whole system we can theorise that a change in one part may have unintended consequences.

With systems thinking, a system is a group of interrelated elements with rules and guidelines that governs its action.

Systems Thinking is seeing the world from someone else's perspective to expand your world.