Why am I writing so much about Systems Thinking?

TL;DR: It’s one of the most versatile tools, that should be in everybody’s tool box.

When I think back, I’d guess that at some point in my twenties I became a solid yet unconscious systems thinker. In 2000 I started working in professional IT, and there were systems everywhere. Networks, servers, clients, databases, you name it. In IT we have systems all around us. In the first ten to twelve years, when I thought about a system it was of course an IT system. I showed a solid understanding of the ones I worked with. Sufficiently enough to take some leading and managing positions in the test projects I worked in.

When I joined a new company this skill helped me to rather quickly grasp the new products I was working with. At the same time mind mapping became a thing. So I worked on my skill to visualize systems under test, that supported my testing activities and reporting. I realized that my IT systems thinking skills were very helpful.

Then I found the book “Thinking in Systems” by the late Donella Meadows. And that book opened my eyes. I’m a slow thinker and not the brightest candle on the cake, and sometimes I need a huge hit in the face to see the obvious. Suddenly I realized that everything around me are systems. It was not Eureka!, it was more like Holy smokes! Treating everything as a system was a wild idea for me.
I think one of the first examples in the book was a bath tub. A bath tub! Think about a bath tub as a system. Jeez!

That opened a new world for me. I was ~36 years old. What a waste of time! Suddenly everything around me made more sense. Team dynamics, politics, nature, relationships, economics, everything. Of course I had a basic understanding of all these things. But it never clicked how easy it could be. I became better at systems thinking. I had learned a few tools, I practiced more, it all made sense. I made a giant step in my thinking.

I was happy with the tool set that I got from “Thinking in Systems”. And then I read the recommendation of the Cabrera Labs podcast. After a few months of having it in my list of podcasts I finally gave it a go and I was hooked from episode 1 on. Drs. Derek and Laura Cabrera are looking at systems thinking from the educational perspective, and how to teach systems thinking to people. This is completely IT-free. They offer courses and books and other material as well. The podcast is free, and as a reader of the book I can tell you, that you don’t need to buy the book. You get the content well explained spread across the episodes.

This was now a huge push for me to practice even more systems thinking and to get more active in practicing that skill again. The approach of the DSRP method is actually quite simple to understand. And then it takes practice to get better.

I realized over the last six months or so, just how immensely useful systems thinking is in nearly every aspect of life. Not only in IT. And I want to share that experience, I want to share those insights. I want to convince people to try it. I believe that it helps already young kids to improve their view of the world. It will help them in school to see the connections between subjects that have been isolated and silofied. It teaches empathy, but also the ability to spot motivations they might not agree with. It helps to find their way through the information garbage that is thrown at us every single day. I expect that some folks will do this more naturally. I observed that some mot probably don’t think that way. I can tell you that I have no idea anymore how my thinking worked before reading “Thinking in Systems”.

I hope that makes some sense to at least some. I will try to write some more anyhow. You don’t have to read it. In the end it helps me to make more sense of my crazy brain.